Last weekend
Ok, so this is getting fairly bad- waiting an entire week after an event before posting it on my blog. However, work has been fairly busy this week- we've had a major meeting between government and donors to look at how things have been going on the PRSP, aid harmonisation, and various sector strategies since the CG meeting in November. The DEPAC is only one day long, so not quite as manic as preparing for the CG meeting, but it's still been busy. Also, the DEPAC is meant to happen every quarter (unlikely with elections coming up, but still possible) so that people at the top are kept informed on how things are going to reduce poverty.
Anyway, that was all out of the way by the end of yesterday and today has taken a more relaxed pace, meaning I can write a bit on my blog.
Last weekend was a break from the walking, swimming, beaching of previous posts. we left town on Friday afternoon and went down to the beach, about 7 cars worth, but there were spaces- but in any case there were quite a few of us.
Those who wanted to be prepared to roll into bed at any hour sorted out mosquito nets and hammocks and various other contraptions that they intended to us to catch some sleep. we then chilled and chatted on the beach, ate fish and rice (with fruit for dessert), listened to music and started the campfire going.
Now, this is meant to be the warmest time of year in SL, but I'm not convinced since I felt slightly chilly when wandering away from the fire (there was a very slightly breeze which also decreased the temperature slightly). We consumed a lot of marshmallows and there was a fair amount of alcohol drunk considering the hangovers several people had the next morning. I didn't go for a 3am swim (too cold and not looking forward to the prospect of going to bed cold and wet), in fact, slept very snugly and warmly to wake up just after 7.
Someone who was very well prepared had brought a camping stove (and cafetiere) with them- I love the smell of coffee and even quite like coffee beans covered in chocolate but still don't like the taste of coffee, despite housemates and friends trying to encourage me that it's really quite nice and probably won't poison me after all ;-)
A morning swim was definitely in order and was absolutely brilliant- the water wasn't particularly cold and allowed me to work off energy without disturbing those recovering from the previous evening's undertakings.
The journey back to town was a slight fiasco- two clutches gone (one recovered enough to get back to town and the other had to be towed), so a journey that can be done in an hour took well over 2 hours, but all made it safely back to town again in the end, which was a relief.
In the evening I was at a leaving party- two of the leaders of the walking club are leaving at some point in the near future and so we had a pot luck supper to say goodbye to them. Being highly unimaginative I took along a fruit salad- I'll see what I can do about tray-bakes in the future, but having spent most of the day at or returning from the beach, I didn't really feel like I had the opportunity to try anything more adventurous.
Sunday I went to church and heard a good talk from a guy who works for YFC and then relaxed and caught up on sleep in the afternoon (so pretty boring really).
This weekend- well, if all goes well then I hope to go up country to one of the parks. Being in West Africa, we don't get the big animal safari's common in East Africa, but we'll see what wildlife is willing to be capture on camera. Will let you know sometime soonish, but probably not on Monday- Sierra Leone being a majority Islamic country is having a bank holiday to celebrate their Isalmic prohet's birthday this weekend.
Labels: beach, car, coffee, leaving party, weekend, work
Leaving Freetown
The past weekend was a bit of a mix. On Friday I went to a Hajj (sorry if the spelling's wrong) party- my director came back from Hajj (pilgrimage to
Mecca), and invited us all to his for a party. I didn’t realise this was the reason for the party until after I had arrived and it was interesting to chat to people and meet others at the party and especially to chat to people from work in a more relaxed setting
.
Saturday morning was particularly boring- I was watching and supervising as two carpenters put up mosquito nets on our windows- this will hopefully mean that as the weather gets warmer, we’ll be able to have our windows open at night without having too many extra unwanted visitors.
We spent Saturday afternoon down at Lumley beach. This was more interesting than most visits to Lumely beach as the part we went to had a beach volley ball court, so we played a few games with some Poles and Russians that we met. I haven’t played volleyball since I arrived in SL (and not for sometime before that) and greatly enjoyed it- it’s so much nicer to fall/dive onto sand than other surfaces I’ve played on!
On Saturday evening, a group of us (almost entirely Brits which is unusual to have as a whole group here, but we were joined by one of the Irish contingent so it became slightly more ‘normal’) went to the Sierra Lighthouse for supper. It took ages to arrive (we knew that this would be the case tho’, since some of the group had been there before) and two people ordered blind off the menu-ie they looked at the Indian section and ordered something without quite knowing what it was. They ended up with what looked like green and brown slop (apparently curry), of varying degrees of heat.
Sunday was somewhat more successful- I went to church in the morning and then we went to Bouré beach, which was good fun and ate mackerel and oysters. The surf wasn’t particularly promising (for those wanting to surf), but it was good for swimming. The beach itself is very strange-every time I visit it, the beach has changed shape/terrain. For example, this time, there was a small inlet of water sandwiched between two parts of the beach-I’d never seen this before, despite having come to the beach at both low and high tides previously. There were a lot of people (mainly expats and Lebanese) down at the beach, relaxing in the sunshine; the water was slightly cooler than it was when I left and we think this is because the Harmattan dust stopped the sun from keeping the water as warm as normal, but still much warmer than it would be at home, particularly at this time of the year.
Anyway, back to the title of this piece- I’m going to be leaving Freetown for a bit and heading up country with work; this means I probably won’t be putting anything on my blog for a while, since I don’t know when I’m likely to have access to the net/time to write stuff for my blog, but if all goes well, I should have some good photos to bring back with me to go on my blog, as well as hopefully having avery interesting time while I'm there. Labels: beach, bouray, boure, volley ball, weekend
A fun weekend
This weekend has been much more interesting than I anticipated on leaving the office on Friday afternoon. On Saturday, after spending a quiet morning at the house we decided to go and see if there were waves suitable for surfing down at Bouré Town beach (that might be the correct spelling but I’m not 100% certain), but en route got invited to a friend’s for lunch at another beach (Tokeh), which we accepted and enjoyed delicious fresh cooked fish and rice. We then swam and enjoyed the sun for the afternoon, some people went out on a boat trip, where they saw dolphins. The dolphins were swimming in and around the nets that fishermen had been using to catch fish and they didn’t want to catch the dolphins-possibly because it is illegal, possibly because there’s no market for dolphins. Anyway, the dolphins were jumping in and out of the nets in order to eat the fish caught therein and if I can get some photos of the dolphins, I’ll put those up here as well. There were at least 5 and possibly more of them at one time.
In the evening, we stayed on the beach, with the intention of staying there overnight, but it was getting pretty cold and most people hadn’t brought suitable clothing to stay the night and there weren’t going to be enough mattresses, so several of us decided to head back to town-after having enjoyed a bonfire on the beach. We went back at around midnight, so there wouldn’t be so much traffic (therefore much safer than going back just after it gets dark when there are a lot more maniac drivers). We took the good road all the back into town-normally we’d cut across country, but because we were heading into town so late, it meant that the traffic coming through the middle of town (that the good road takes you into) and had a fantastic surprise as we passed along Siaka Stevens St (the main street in the middle of town); there were Christmas lights out (or they may be ‘election lights’ all the way down the road). Yes-that’s right, for the first time ever, I saw a whole road of street lighting in Freetown. Not only does this mean that NPA is back and working (at least for the moment and possibly up to the elections),but it’s being used to work the streetlights, so that it’s much safer travelling around in the evenings and amusingly made the centre of the town look like a Hollywood movie set.
On Sunday, we travelled up to Tokeh by speed boat (very fun- much faster and a lot less bumpy than going by road, especially if you don’t take the good roads the whole way). We picked up those who had decided to stay over for the night and then went off to Banana Island which is slightly off the coast of the Western Province. It’s a very basic island but there is both a school and hospital there, although we didn’t see inside of either of them. They have developed an area that has a lot of potential as a weekend retreat for tourists, with some very nice huts that have been newly built to help bring more money to the island. I think I was told that they aren’t properly owned/governed by the government of Sierra Leone because they used to be inhabited by outlaws and there’s not much there for others to want. The locals mainly live off the abundant fish and fruit that’s available on the island. There’s no vehicles there and we enjoyed exploring the village (Dublin) and even met the chief (or his wife- I’m not quite sure if she was the chief or if he was away and she was filling in while he was gone) for a few minutes.
We then went back to Tokeh and en route stopped off at another small island that has had a small pool built into it that is filled by the ocean at high tide. The people we were with explained that they used to have parties on this island and had at one point started building small houses (one room) to make it easier to stay the night, but the local fishermen had stolen the doors (and roofs) so they weren’t really habitable and they just had to bring tents and camp out if they wanted to stay over.
After we ate back at Tokeh- Snapper (fish) and rice, we (or perhaps here I can say ‘I’) drove the boat back to Freetown- was very good fun (and I didn’t crash, which was useful) and also pretty easy, if feeling somewhat hedonistic.
The evening was spent relaxing at Mamba Point and just chilling out (while having a supper that didn’t include fish- I chose chicken which was a nice change).
My camera decided it didn’t want to work, so I didn’t manage to get any photos but hope to get some off a friend to put up here.
Labels: banana islands, boat, dolphins, tokeh, weekend
Winter in Salone
Ok, another newsletter will hopefully soon be winging its way to people, so here’s just a brief update on what’s been happening. Basically life has been really interesting and also really busy, but has involved a lot of conferences and such like, keeping me away from my desk and really quite busy.
The weekends have been spent at the beach, I stood up on a surf board this Saturday, tho’ only very briefly and I’m still not sure if the board had managed to beach itself by the time I stood up- ah well, I can always practice again next time I go to the beach!
We have hit winter here- well, the beginning of the Harmattan (not sure on spelling), which is their idea of winter and means the air is a bit drier and we no longer have sudden deluges of water falling from the sky. It also means that anything that stays still for long enough gets a nice coating of red dust. I’ve been told there it will get dustier and visibility will decrease further (at the moment visibility's still fine) in January. I felt almost cold for the first time on Friday evening- we were sitting on the beach watching the sun go down (gorgeous colours but sunset happens very quickly compared to home) and there was a slight breeze that made you wish it wasn’t blowing, rather than the normal refreshment you feel when there’s movement in the air. Still, having a winter where the lowest temperature is about 23 degrees C is still slightly different to what I normally face in winter!!
We’ve managed to avoid most of the pre-Christmas trappings here- decorations in shops have only just been put up in the past week and I did see a (fake) Christmas tree being carried along the side of the road-ah well, I’ll soon hit the consumerism of the West, with the temperatures to match.
Labels: surfboards, weekend, winter
Another weekend, another adventure
This Saturday was so tiring that I really could do with last week’s bank holiday to be repeated, although I did have a huge rest on Sunday which was much needed.
On Friday evening we had our second Krio lesson- lots of grammar and background, which means it’s all v interesting but is also hard work and requires a lot of concentration after a week of work, especially since it lasted for 2hours- I think in the future we might just have 1 hour on Fridays.
We had a very early evening to bed on Friday, but this was partially because we were going to get up unreasonably early for Saturday morning in order to get to the pick up point (Congo Cross for those who know it) for a hike we were going on.
Anyway, Saturday was great fun but a long hike- there are some photos from it below- involving going a very long way up a fairly steep hill and then another lesser hill and then another very steep hill. However, we did get some good views of the city and were also able to enjoy a relaxed lunch while some of the guys (both expats and local since we went on the hike with a group of local scouts) with us played football with locals living at the top of the first hill. We then walked back a different way (passing the new US embassy that’s in the process of being built). It was wonderful to get home and put my feet up (really aching after 5 hours of walking).
Saturday night involved several options- a relaxing movie with some of those we had been on the hike with, chilling at home, or a party. Since I’m still trying to get to know people and be friendly and sociable, I chose the latter, which was fun- potentially amazing views from the balcony, well, there would’ve been during the day. At night you could just see loads of lights over the hillsides, which was pretty but not amazing.
Sunday morning was a youth thanksgiving service, which was good, tho’ the invited speaker perhaps included a bit too much prosperity than I’m used to. I spent the afternoon with my feet up (still needed after Saturday) reading a fictional novel based on the West Coast of Africa; it’s v good (am almost finished despite having only started yesterday but then have always been fairly voracious in terms of reading) and I think I’ll have to try and find some more stuff to read. Fortunately all the expats seem to bring a fair amount of books with them- especially if they’re out here for sometime- plus the British Council is meant to have a fairly extensive library, so I won’t run out of books to read for a bit. In the evening we went to Alex’s- a bar/restaurant on the beach, which I really like (and the company was fun too).
Didn’t quite make it down to the beach proper (at least not during the day) this weekend, but this wasn’t really a problem since we’ve already been to 3 and have only been here 3 weeks- ah well, I’ll look forward to exploring another beach soon.
Labels: church, Krio, trek, weekend
