Thursday 3 February 2011

This is by far my favourite walk in Freetown so far. I set off from my office (and where we currently live) and immediately I’m faced with a wooden shack brimming full of soldiers (they are actually policemen but they’ve recently changed the uniform recently and been given urban camouflage outfits, making them even more menacing). It really is like walking into a bullring, so many faces just looking at you, sometimes more than others depending on whether it’s ‘chop time’ or not. They are guarding the Vice President’s house, which is next door to my office, and do shockingly long 24 hour shifts and so anything as exciting as a white girl passing by is clearly the highlight of their day! When we first arrived we were too scared to say anything to them and just tried to sneak passed anonymously, but had to re-think this strategy when one of them categorically stated that it was vital to our personal safety that we greet them! Since then we religiously wave and greet them, even if nobody is looking – “couchee... ow di body... ow di evening.”

So once I’ve survived that gauntlet, it becomes a lot friendlier. The first building on the left is ambitiously named a ‘Film Centre’ but it is really just a shack showing videos each night. At first the noise really kept me awake at night, but now I don’t notice it at all. Next along is Pa Ba’s little shop. He is a jolly fat man who always wears a grey vest and seems to be there all hours of day and night. Since I arrived, and having walked home at all hours of the night, I have only seen his shop closed twice! As there are three little shops on our road, and everyone is equally friendly, we try and distribute what we buy between them. So Pa Ba is our official seller of water bundles – huge bags of little bags of water which when we first arrived we turned our nose up but are now our water receptacle of choice. So I greet him, then pass the next little shop where we buy tomato paste.

Next along is a shop owned by the friendly brothers ‘A-Boy’ and ‘T-Boy’, who are always ready for a chat. They are our chief sellers of boiled eggs (yes, you can buy them already boiled, saves so much time!), bread and toilet rolls. All three ‘shops’ are just tiny wooden/ corrugated iron shacks with every inch of the wall action packed with their wares, ranging from mosquito coils and washing powder, to cigarettes and soft drinks. Everything can be sold in its absolute lowest denominator. Laughing Cow cheese is sold by the segment, cigarettes by the cigarette, butter by the scoop and washing powder in tiny packets that only do one wash. It’s such a huge contrast to the opportunity of bulk buying in the UK.

I carry on along the road, jumping slightly over a small cattle grid, often with a stream of sewage running underneath. To the right is a steep hill which is always full of children and random clumps of goat/sheep hair (goats and sheep look exactly the same here – every time I confidently shout “that’s got to be a sheep” it turns out to be a goat, and vice versa!), and to the left is a road with my favourite bright turquoise house at the bottom. In the distance you can see the sea, spattered with cargo ships. I carry straight on for another 30 metres or so, and now the street is lined with slightly bigger houses. Next on the left is my good friend the tailor Alpha Jalloh – what a legend he is! I’ve had so many things made and he always welcomes any feedback and requests for amendments. He sits there all day in his tiny room surrounded by fabric and dresses, with his two apprentices and their sewing machines. Occasionally he hasn’t finished something because “dis machine, it give me problem”, but mostly he is very prompt and his work is always of high quality.

I carry on past around 15 dogs – all beige and therefore exactly the same colour as the road and thus deadly camouflaged and ultimately more of a threat – as well as 5 cats and 10 families of chickens, all of whom are either sleeping on the road or running around in the rubbish/sewage that lines the side of the street. I have seen a family of chicks all pecking around in sewage before – glad I’m not eventually eating them! I turn to the right momentarily before turning left onto a dirt road that cuts through to Wilkinson Road, one of the busiest in Freetown. This dirt road always has the most troublesome dogs, especially at night, with the highest risk of accidently stepping in a huge puddle of who knows what. Just before it meets the main road there are two or three women who sell a very small selection of wares – boiled eggs, sometimes bananas, and a couple of sweets. One woman who always wears a black crotched hat had obviously only seen me and Dave separately and when she realised we were together she was so excited – ‘dis nar your man?!’

It all becomes slightly manic for a while when I hit Wilkinson Road. They are digging up the roads “for when the Queen comes to visit,” which is supposedly for the 50th anniversary of independence celebration on 27April, when clearly she will be getting ready for the royal wedding. Wills and Kate really have a lot to answer for because there are so many Sierra Leoneans who really think she’s going to come! They are attempting to widen the road, which involves bulldozing everything 10m on both sides of the road, regardless of whether it is housing or shops, leaving two huge gullies at each side. It is actually a pedestrians paradise at the moment because this is the first thing that vaguely resembles a pavement and therefore journeys that used to take 30 minutes of treacherous jay-walking are now 15 minutes of glorious uninterrupted striding. Not for long though, motorbikes are already starting to stray into this area, and as soon as it is the same level as the road it will be another free for all traffic wise, with no priority given to pedestrians at all. I then cross the road, which always takes a long time because I have to account for all different shapes and sizes of vehicle tearing along, with no regard for pedestrians. Some buses are almost horizontal and treacherously full of people, with motorbikes weaving around them.

Once I’ve made it across, I take a very steep hill up to the left. At the top is a woman who once sold me an amazing roasted cassava root and now always gets very excited when she sees me and gestures towards whatever she is cooking that day. As I’m normally on my way for a swim, and I strictly observe the 45 minute rule, I normally turn her down but sometimes I just can’t!
The route then passes through another community, this one much less affluent than the previous one, and actually resembling a favela in parts. Tens of houses all spill into each other with no beginning or end, everyone is playing, washing, cooking, shitting, sitting and anything else possible in the same place and a huge brook brimming with rubbish passes through the middle, not very savoury at all. Everyone gets very animated when they see us, shouting “white man, white man” and insisting on shaking our hands. This is where we had our first experience of people thinking we were Chinese! Yes would you believe they shouted “Chinaman” at us! After finding it hilarious for a while, we corrected them and now this little boy takes great pride in shouting ‘British’ at us every time we pass. The first time we went through there was a new born ‘pikin’ sitting in his mom’s arms about halfway up. We stopped and congratulated her and now we check in each time and watch as, baby Suleiman grows and gets more hair, and apparently already has a wife in the pipeline!

Once we get to the end of this community and cross the road, we are finally at the UN compound, where we go swimming. First you have to negotiate with the guards on the door who are sometimes very friendly, others menacing. Then you enter the compound, which strangely resembles a holiday camp. It used to be a hotel before the UN started renting it, and now each of the rooms are painted white and blue and look like bunkers. The pool is bizarre – sometimes clean, sometimes filthy and with permanent ridiculous ceramic stools at the shallow end, presumably for people to drink cocktails from but actually only serving as a dangerous obstacle to all swimmers. I’m greeted by the ever smiling Younis and Abu, who manage the pool, They sometimes challenge me to a race, but never win!

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