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!
Thursday, 3 February 2011
Wednesday, 12 January 2011
A New Year adventure
We set off on Friday morning for Kabala, a small town in the north of Sierra Leone famous for its wild parties on New Year’s Day, the best and most extravagant in the country! We stopped for lunch in Makeni, and had to persuade the restaurant to buy an egg and a bread roll for me to have an egg sandwich, which surprisingly, given the palaver, was absolutely delicious. We travelled through beautiful scenery, distant mountains, roads framed with dense foliage and palm trees. We had arranged to stay in the VSO house which was empty – it seemed like a flawless plan. Then around 15 miles away from Kabala, the engine started to make a strange noise and we smelt a smell which resembled pork scratchings but turned out to be something more sinister. Finally the accelerator gave up and the car stopped.
Almost immediately, a car stopped and tried to help us – it was something of a Mary Poppins car with what looked like 15 people and a newborn baby squeezed in. Unfortunately they didn’t have a tow rope, but sent someone back to save us. He turned out to be a saviour in more ways than one, when it turned out that the VSO house in which we planned to stay was actually abandoned and uninhabitable. Immediately he invited us to stay with him and took us back to his compound. We did feel slightly bad when he obviously turfed someone out of one of his rooms in favour of us - he came scurrying out looking bleary eyed from sleep and we were welcomed into the room in his place. But our Sierra Leonean friend (and owner of the broken car) assured us that this was just the Sierra Leonean way! As our friend was returning to Kabala after many years away, we really felt that we were the entourage of a local celebrity and that his presence was attracting some of the hospitality. Still, it really was remarkable the lengths that this family went to to make us feel welcome and to care for us during our stay, cooked all of our food and guided us everywhere. I couldn’t help but wonder whether this level of kindness would ever be bestowed on random strangers who broke down somewhere in the UK or whether we would be too suspicious. And this in a country that has so recently experienced civil war, to have come back from the situation of not being able to trust anyone to being so trusting and giving, really is remarkable.
So the party did not disappoint. It began on Friday evening at pretty much the only pub in town, ironically titled ‘Choices.’ And from there to the club, which was employing the lost art of ultra-violet light – making everything white stand out brightly – teeth, dust, bras! The club was absolutely jam packed with people of all ages, in fact some seemingly as young as 13 drinking gin from sachets, which was quite worrying! It really felt so surreal to be counting down to 2011 in a random club in North Sierra Leone, but at the same time amazing!
The night took a slight turn for the worse when our camera got stolen – these ‘teef men’ really are like Fagin – you don’t even feel a thing before you notice it’s gone, and then you really can’t tell and wouldn’t dare accuse anyone of taking it. And so suddenly you can’t trust anyone again, and everyone could have been the person who took it. I know we shouldn’t have taken it there, but you really do get so swept up in how friendly everyone is and how welcoming, that it is easy to forget that actually we do still stand out and if someone has a camera and there is the opportunity to steal it, of course they will. Having said that, all of the Sierra Leoneans we were with and those we had met that evening, took it as a real insult to them that this had happened. They were so apologetic on behalf of their country and so mortified that this had happened in their presence. There was even a shout out from DJ Wise appealing at least for the memory card but we presume the thief had already left by then with his/her ill gotten gains. It really didn’t ruin the night though thankfully, we just had to face the fact that there was nothing we could do about it and therefore should just enjoy the evening, which we duly did. We rounded it off perfectly with a slightly drunken ‘okada’ (motorbike) ride home, which in the haze of the morning really felt like we were all on broomsticks flying home (or maybe I had had more to drink than I thought!).
The party continued the next day with a hike up the hill that towers over Kabala, which is really the main celebration of NY. People from miles around plough through the masses of dust wearing socks and flip flops (we silently mocked them before realising that actually, they were having the last laugh at the top when their feet emerged from the socks clean, whilst ours blended into the ground with all the dirt that we had attracted on the walk). The hill was packed with people, all in their best clothes (many changed at the top from their walking clothes, again having the last laugh!) and there was dancing, drinking and all sort of merriment throughout the day, with the beautiful backdrop of Kabala. It really was a sight to behold and an amazing experience. Here I was approached with the best chat up line so far “I am a promising geologist, here is my compass, I hope you are not married,” – while I sneezed my way through the conversation because of all of the dust – he just didn’t give up! After a two hour power nap (waking up at 11pm which is something I don’t think I’ll ever get used to!), we were out again, this time at the slightly more sedate community centre. Although it turned out to actually be a political rally as well as a dance, and only slightly more sedate than the night club, with the dancing still going on when we left at around 3am. These Sierra Leoneans really know how to party – people of all ages were rocking the dance floor and swapping dance partners like there was no tomorrow!
We were in a very happy daze the next day when we bade farewell to our hosts and thanked them for their hospitality. We got a unique insight into the family life – the compound in which they lived had many rooms and seemed to cater for a very extended family. In fact, even by the end of the weekend we still weren’t totally sure who was married to whom and who was whose child! Amid all this friendliness, we did return from the hill to witness the severe beating of one of the children for supposedly getting a bit drunk on the hill. This seemed so shocking after the personalities that we had been privy to and highlighted the huge contradictions in society, in which the family is so close knit and integrated, and yet an action that is deemed to bring disgrace on the family leads to such severe punishment, even in the presence of strangers. Of course we couldn’t stage a large protest but our disquiet was definitely noted and the punishment stopped, or possibly was merely postponed under after we had left.
Vegetarianism
I was always prepared for it to be difficult to be a vegetarian in Sierra Leone and braced myself for the worst! It really doesn’t compute at all that someone would not want to eat meat. Even when in a restaurant, I explain “I no want meat,” “I no want fish” they will still respond with specific type of meat – “chicken?” Recently I was at the Ministry of Health canteen, and requested a salad with chips, with no meat, chicken or fish, and when it arrived it had ham in the salad and a huge leg of chicken on the top! (And randomly some cold baked beans on top of the salad which seems to be a delicacy here!) Good vegetarian meals tend to come in bouts, so I can have a few days in which I’m living off rice or eggs and then suddenly it’s all go in the vegetarian world. A few weeks ago, I had just had a luxurious vegetarian lunch, and returned to the office only to find that the Xmas dinner time had been changed and there was an enormous vegetarian meal made especially for me, and I was sitting next to the cook – so two huge meals in 2 hours it was for me!
When I visited Kamakwie though, I really had an epiphany of just how luxurious it is to be able to be a vegetarian. To be able to afford to maintain a healthy diet without meat is something almost unattainable to most people here, to whom meat is an occasional luxury to supplement rice, vegetables are even more of a luxury, and vitamin supplements are unheard of. So when visiting the communities, I really felt that it would be so rude to turn down the food that they were providing, even though the smell of the fish and meat (mixed in one big stew!) almost made me retch. I resorted to tactically picking the rice around the meat and hoping that it didn’t look suspicious.
Supermarkets are the most tantalising of all the shops here. Most big supermarkets stock everything you could possibly want – Kellogg’s cereal, Cadbury’s chocolate, Fox’s biscuits – luxurious you might think! However they are mostly always tainted with what we have coined as ‘supermarket funk’ – an indescribably pungent taste that combines mechanical engine type smells with chemicals. Rumour has it that it is something to do with the storage, but every supermarket smells of it, and a lot of the packeted food is just ruined by it. I am now at the point of almost retching when entering the supermarkets at the smell, having to cautiously smell all food stuffs before eating, and having to write off all similar food stuffs after a ‘funk incident.’ I actually returned the first box of cereal that tasted like it, I think it was Mini Chocolate Weetabix, and had to present my case to the supermarket management. I was allowed to take a different packet, only to find out that it tasted the same horrible taste!!! – like the old saying ‘water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink,’ except with glorious food!
We set off on Friday morning for Kabala, a small town in the north of Sierra Leone famous for its wild parties on New Year’s Day, the best and most extravagant in the country! We stopped for lunch in Makeni, and had to persuade the restaurant to buy an egg and a bread roll for me to have an egg sandwich, which surprisingly, given the palaver, was absolutely delicious. We travelled through beautiful scenery, distant mountains, roads framed with dense foliage and palm trees. We had arranged to stay in the VSO house which was empty – it seemed like a flawless plan. Then around 15 miles away from Kabala, the engine started to make a strange noise and we smelt a smell which resembled pork scratchings but turned out to be something more sinister. Finally the accelerator gave up and the car stopped.
Almost immediately, a car stopped and tried to help us – it was something of a Mary Poppins car with what looked like 15 people and a newborn baby squeezed in. Unfortunately they didn’t have a tow rope, but sent someone back to save us. He turned out to be a saviour in more ways than one, when it turned out that the VSO house in which we planned to stay was actually abandoned and uninhabitable. Immediately he invited us to stay with him and took us back to his compound. We did feel slightly bad when he obviously turfed someone out of one of his rooms in favour of us - he came scurrying out looking bleary eyed from sleep and we were welcomed into the room in his place. But our Sierra Leonean friend (and owner of the broken car) assured us that this was just the Sierra Leonean way! As our friend was returning to Kabala after many years away, we really felt that we were the entourage of a local celebrity and that his presence was attracting some of the hospitality. Still, it really was remarkable the lengths that this family went to to make us feel welcome and to care for us during our stay, cooked all of our food and guided us everywhere. I couldn’t help but wonder whether this level of kindness would ever be bestowed on random strangers who broke down somewhere in the UK or whether we would be too suspicious. And this in a country that has so recently experienced civil war, to have come back from the situation of not being able to trust anyone to being so trusting and giving, really is remarkable.
So the party did not disappoint. It began on Friday evening at pretty much the only pub in town, ironically titled ‘Choices.’ And from there to the club, which was employing the lost art of ultra-violet light – making everything white stand out brightly – teeth, dust, bras! The club was absolutely jam packed with people of all ages, in fact some seemingly as young as 13 drinking gin from sachets, which was quite worrying! It really felt so surreal to be counting down to 2011 in a random club in North Sierra Leone, but at the same time amazing!
The night took a slight turn for the worse when our camera got stolen – these ‘teef men’ really are like Fagin – you don’t even feel a thing before you notice it’s gone, and then you really can’t tell and wouldn’t dare accuse anyone of taking it. And so suddenly you can’t trust anyone again, and everyone could have been the person who took it. I know we shouldn’t have taken it there, but you really do get so swept up in how friendly everyone is and how welcoming, that it is easy to forget that actually we do still stand out and if someone has a camera and there is the opportunity to steal it, of course they will. Having said that, all of the Sierra Leoneans we were with and those we had met that evening, took it as a real insult to them that this had happened. They were so apologetic on behalf of their country and so mortified that this had happened in their presence. There was even a shout out from DJ Wise appealing at least for the memory card but we presume the thief had already left by then with his/her ill gotten gains. It really didn’t ruin the night though thankfully, we just had to face the fact that there was nothing we could do about it and therefore should just enjoy the evening, which we duly did. We rounded it off perfectly with a slightly drunken ‘okada’ (motorbike) ride home, which in the haze of the morning really felt like we were all on broomsticks flying home (or maybe I had had more to drink than I thought!).
The party continued the next day with a hike up the hill that towers over Kabala, which is really the main celebration of NY. People from miles around plough through the masses of dust wearing socks and flip flops (we silently mocked them before realising that actually, they were having the last laugh at the top when their feet emerged from the socks clean, whilst ours blended into the ground with all the dirt that we had attracted on the walk). The hill was packed with people, all in their best clothes (many changed at the top from their walking clothes, again having the last laugh!) and there was dancing, drinking and all sort of merriment throughout the day, with the beautiful backdrop of Kabala. It really was a sight to behold and an amazing experience. Here I was approached with the best chat up line so far “I am a promising geologist, here is my compass, I hope you are not married,” – while I sneezed my way through the conversation because of all of the dust – he just didn’t give up! After a two hour power nap (waking up at 11pm which is something I don’t think I’ll ever get used to!), we were out again, this time at the slightly more sedate community centre. Although it turned out to actually be a political rally as well as a dance, and only slightly more sedate than the night club, with the dancing still going on when we left at around 3am. These Sierra Leoneans really know how to party – people of all ages were rocking the dance floor and swapping dance partners like there was no tomorrow!
We were in a very happy daze the next day when we bade farewell to our hosts and thanked them for their hospitality. We got a unique insight into the family life – the compound in which they lived had many rooms and seemed to cater for a very extended family. In fact, even by the end of the weekend we still weren’t totally sure who was married to whom and who was whose child! Amid all this friendliness, we did return from the hill to witness the severe beating of one of the children for supposedly getting a bit drunk on the hill. This seemed so shocking after the personalities that we had been privy to and highlighted the huge contradictions in society, in which the family is so close knit and integrated, and yet an action that is deemed to bring disgrace on the family leads to such severe punishment, even in the presence of strangers. Of course we couldn’t stage a large protest but our disquiet was definitely noted and the punishment stopped, or possibly was merely postponed under after we had left.
Vegetarianism
I was always prepared for it to be difficult to be a vegetarian in Sierra Leone and braced myself for the worst! It really doesn’t compute at all that someone would not want to eat meat. Even when in a restaurant, I explain “I no want meat,” “I no want fish” they will still respond with specific type of meat – “chicken?” Recently I was at the Ministry of Health canteen, and requested a salad with chips, with no meat, chicken or fish, and when it arrived it had ham in the salad and a huge leg of chicken on the top! (And randomly some cold baked beans on top of the salad which seems to be a delicacy here!) Good vegetarian meals tend to come in bouts, so I can have a few days in which I’m living off rice or eggs and then suddenly it’s all go in the vegetarian world. A few weeks ago, I had just had a luxurious vegetarian lunch, and returned to the office only to find that the Xmas dinner time had been changed and there was an enormous vegetarian meal made especially for me, and I was sitting next to the cook – so two huge meals in 2 hours it was for me!
When I visited Kamakwie though, I really had an epiphany of just how luxurious it is to be able to be a vegetarian. To be able to afford to maintain a healthy diet without meat is something almost unattainable to most people here, to whom meat is an occasional luxury to supplement rice, vegetables are even more of a luxury, and vitamin supplements are unheard of. So when visiting the communities, I really felt that it would be so rude to turn down the food that they were providing, even though the smell of the fish and meat (mixed in one big stew!) almost made me retch. I resorted to tactically picking the rice around the meat and hoping that it didn’t look suspicious.
Supermarkets are the most tantalising of all the shops here. Most big supermarkets stock everything you could possibly want – Kellogg’s cereal, Cadbury’s chocolate, Fox’s biscuits – luxurious you might think! However they are mostly always tainted with what we have coined as ‘supermarket funk’ – an indescribably pungent taste that combines mechanical engine type smells with chemicals. Rumour has it that it is something to do with the storage, but every supermarket smells of it, and a lot of the packeted food is just ruined by it. I am now at the point of almost retching when entering the supermarkets at the smell, having to cautiously smell all food stuffs before eating, and having to write off all similar food stuffs after a ‘funk incident.’ I actually returned the first box of cereal that tasted like it, I think it was Mini Chocolate Weetabix, and had to present my case to the supermarket management. I was allowed to take a different packet, only to find out that it tasted the same horrible taste!!! – like the old saying ‘water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink,’ except with glorious food!
Friday, 24 December 2010
So this is my first blog and it all feels very strange and daunting, much like addressing a huge room full of people which is something I would usually avoid. But I’ve decided that there is so much to tell and so many people to tell it to that I will just go ahead and create one. I’m hoping that writing it feels less daunting as time goes on, fingers crossed!
Making friends
There is something very odd about arriving somewhere and not knowing anyone at all – quite unsettling, but also quite liberating as you have the potential to reinvent yourself as whoever you want to be. However, of course, I didn’t reinvent myself, just introduced myself as Laura and it was business as usual! So that first outing, the one in which you really have to sell yourself as someone that people might want to swap numbers with and meet again, is really quite crucial and scary. But at the same time, you know that almost everyone out will have been through it before when they first arrived. Which then gives you the confidence to approach people in a way that would appear brazen at home – “So did you say you were going out tomorrow...?” “So can I take your number please, just in case...?” – and it’s strange how you suddenly feel unstoppable after the first person accepts, and you just go around touting your number to everyone you meet.
By the end of the first week I ended up with a huge list of numbers of people that I couldn’t even remember their faces, so much so that most numbers were preceded by a hair colour or a nationality. Thankfully after a few weeks that all calms down, and we have found ourselves amid a really nice bunch of people in which we feel really quite settled already.
Jogging
So I’ve been jogging on the beach twice a week to try and maintain fitness. It sounds glorious, and to some extent it is in the right conditions. The first couple of times the tide was out, the sand was hard and there was a slight breeze which at least stopped me looking like I had just been for a swim, so the only thing you really had to look out for was the jelly fish.
However, when the tide is in it becomes an assault course of madness, more like orienteering than jogging. Not only do you have to dodge the waves coming in ferociously, but you also have to dodge the debris that the waves are bringing in to shore. Shoes, clothes, plastic, soiled bandages (and not disguised in a pirated Tweenie!), syringes and a whole host of undesirable materials and substances all come thundering towards your feet every time the tide comes in. I think most of the hospitals in Freetown expel their waste straight into the sea, and therefore Lumley beach is just a junk yard. So it’s not just not wanting your feet to get wet that makes you dive out of the way, but the horror of what might be drifting into your trainer. Rest assured that there are some glorious beaches just up the road from Freetown, which are unspoilt by sewage!
The hospital
There is something very unnerving about seeing a hospital in the dark. I don’t just mean a hospital whilst it’s dark outside, I mean a hospital building in absolute darkness at about 9.30pm. This is the Kamakwie Wesleyan Hospital (KWH) in which my organisation (Health Poverty Action) works, and they do not have a constant power supply. They have a generator, but this is only used between 7pm and 9pm, and if there is a caesarean section being administered. To see the building so dark, you could hardly even pick it out against the sky, it just makes you think how ridiculously lucky we are in the UK to have a free healthcare system that functions. Here in Sierra Leone, most people cannot afford medical care as it’s so expensive.
The government has recently instigated free health care for pregnant women, lactating mothers and children under 5, but only in government hospitals which KWH is not. Therefore, the people of Kamakwie have to pay to come to this hospital which only has electricity for 2 hours a night, has rats, goats and dogs running around all the time (the rats have a particular preferred route apparently although thankfully I didn’t see any!), poor quality and insufficient equipment, lack of trained staff, the list goes on and on. There are only two ambulances serving the hospital, and they can only afford to collect women in labour, and even then it’s often a 3 hour round trip on horrific roads so it doesn’t make for a pleasant journey. In some really remote areas within the district, someone needing to go to hospital would first have to rely on someone to carry them on a stretcher, then take a ferry journey across a river (canoe if the ferry is not running, which happens frequently), and only then they would have enough phone signal to call for an ambulance. So when I think back to the UK NHS, and yes it is by no means perfect, but at least it’s free, and we can normally choose between a number of hospitals, then it really does feel very luxurious compared to SL.
Kamakwie
I thoroughly enjoyed my trip to ‘the field’ 2 weeks ago. The difference between Freetown and the provinces is stark and immediately apparent. After a sitting on the ridiculously busy Kissy Road in traffic for an hour trying to leave the city, it really is a welcome break to suddenly be surrounded by lush green trees, bright orange dust and children everywhere. I don’t think there are any more children outside of Freetown than inside but they must just take a bigger interest in me. Everywhere we stopped we were greeted with “white man” “white man” – given that both of us are women this seemed quite rude! But I quickly learned that it’s almost always shouted in excitement and with glee. In Kamakwie itself, which is actually a large town in SL terms but felt about the size of the small village in which I grew up (Brewood), I really did feel an immediate relaxation that I hadn’t realised I had been lacking in Freetown. There was noise, there is always a lot of noise in SL – singing, music, generators, motorbikes, etc. – but it also had such a peace to it that I felt immediately relaxed.
There was something very liberating (and grounding) about having no water and electricity, about settling down at 9pm as there was just nothing else to do and the battery from the laptop had died. It was very grounding as well, though, as I was immediately struck by all the inconveniences caused by being there, but also the mechanisms put in place to cope with them. We didn’t have enough fuel for the generator to be on each day, so on the non-generator days we would take them to the power plant to get them charged, take our phones to the phone charging shop (literally a shop devoted to charging the hundreds of phones left there), work on our laptops with no lights on and have our torches surrounded by flies until it became unbearable and cooked on a charcoal fire outside – and all in all I did find it quite glorious. However, for me this was a trip, I knew I would be returning to Freetown at the end of it, and even if I wasn’t, I knew there would be some respite somewhere along the track. Everyone was so friendly, it actually became quite exhausting moving along the street because of all the greetings I had to do. To each person you had to greet once, ask how their sleep, day, night, work, morning, etc. had gone, then discuss when I would see them again. By the end of the week I felt like a local celebrity!
Krio
I am really trying to throw myself into everything and most importantly, the local language of Krio. After a while it becomes quite simple to understand, or at least some things do, as others remain a mystery. You can definitely get away without learning krio in Freetown as everyone speaks English, however you do miss out on a lot of office jokes and people talking about you whilst walking behind you down the street. In the provinces, as soon as you leave Freetown, it becomes a lot more imperative that you understand at least the basics.
I think the most difficult aspect of speaking Krio is just letting yourself do it. It just feels wrong as it sounds so much like lazy English with an African accent. Of course, when you get to know it in more detail you realise that it’s much more complex than that, but the basics just feel bizarre and a bit rude! For an English person particularly, it is difficult to swap our classic “excuse me, would you mind terribly, please, thank you,” for “I wan dis” and “I go take dis.” Equally, all responses to greetings tend to be just “fine” – “how de body,” “how you sleep,” “how de morning,” the only response that people give is “fine” – it all seems a bit low key. Some phrases sound really sweet like “how much o’clock,” whereas others are just strange like “which side you de go” – meaning where are you going? Having said all that, I am thoroughly throwing myself into it and hoping to become fluent soon!
Christmas
On the whole it doesn’t really feel like Christmas at all, at least not as we know it. You just can’t feel all that Christmassy when sweating like a pig! There are quite a few Christmas decorations about but it really feels like some fool has put them up in the middle of summer more than it actually being the festive season. In fact, in our local shop there is a really terrifying dwarf Father Christmas pushing an equally dwarf like trolley filled with presents, that makes me jump every time!
We have been embracing it though, and have been to two carol concerts – one at the Cathedral in town, which was more of a performance than an interactive concert, in which we yearned to sing throughout and were only given two opportunities, and the other at a rest house for people with disabilities which was much more about audience participation and letting yourself go – most enjoyable! We also attended the IRC Christmas party last night which really was a world away from the work Christmas parties I went to last year! It took place in the car park of an apartment block (the IRC house), with the loudest music imaginable and people dancing right from the beginning of the evening. In fact, even though it was also someone’s leaving do, they wouldn’t even let him open his present in order to get on with the dancing! Right from the word go EVERYONE was on the dance floor, old and young, senior and not so. Raucous dancing as well, a type of dancing you would normally reserve for dancing alone in front of the mirror, or a very drunk and debauched night. But that just added to the enjoyment of the evening, and soon we were up there too, dancing like we never thought we would in front of colleagues!
The general atmosphere does seem to have developed an extremely jolly tinge, well more jolly then usual. There is a tangible excitement in the air, parties everywhere, music louder than usual, everyone very jolly. There are also a lot of ‘JC’s’ which to people here means ‘Just Comes’ (or Jast cams in Krio!) This term describes all those Sierra Leone diaspora who return to the country for the festivities. Amazingly, it is really easy to spot them, often wearing their finest clothes, travelling in huge cars, stocking up on bottled water and making a very obvious show of their fine English. Yesterday someone approached me to ask in the ‘Queen’s’ English whether I was in the Peace Corps. Having said all that, we are very excited to be spending our first Christmas out of the UK, and will be basking in the glorious sun and mopping our sweaty brows!
Making friends
There is something very odd about arriving somewhere and not knowing anyone at all – quite unsettling, but also quite liberating as you have the potential to reinvent yourself as whoever you want to be. However, of course, I didn’t reinvent myself, just introduced myself as Laura and it was business as usual! So that first outing, the one in which you really have to sell yourself as someone that people might want to swap numbers with and meet again, is really quite crucial and scary. But at the same time, you know that almost everyone out will have been through it before when they first arrived. Which then gives you the confidence to approach people in a way that would appear brazen at home – “So did you say you were going out tomorrow...?” “So can I take your number please, just in case...?” – and it’s strange how you suddenly feel unstoppable after the first person accepts, and you just go around touting your number to everyone you meet.
By the end of the first week I ended up with a huge list of numbers of people that I couldn’t even remember their faces, so much so that most numbers were preceded by a hair colour or a nationality. Thankfully after a few weeks that all calms down, and we have found ourselves amid a really nice bunch of people in which we feel really quite settled already.
Jogging
So I’ve been jogging on the beach twice a week to try and maintain fitness. It sounds glorious, and to some extent it is in the right conditions. The first couple of times the tide was out, the sand was hard and there was a slight breeze which at least stopped me looking like I had just been for a swim, so the only thing you really had to look out for was the jelly fish.
However, when the tide is in it becomes an assault course of madness, more like orienteering than jogging. Not only do you have to dodge the waves coming in ferociously, but you also have to dodge the debris that the waves are bringing in to shore. Shoes, clothes, plastic, soiled bandages (and not disguised in a pirated Tweenie!), syringes and a whole host of undesirable materials and substances all come thundering towards your feet every time the tide comes in. I think most of the hospitals in Freetown expel their waste straight into the sea, and therefore Lumley beach is just a junk yard. So it’s not just not wanting your feet to get wet that makes you dive out of the way, but the horror of what might be drifting into your trainer. Rest assured that there are some glorious beaches just up the road from Freetown, which are unspoilt by sewage!
The hospital
There is something very unnerving about seeing a hospital in the dark. I don’t just mean a hospital whilst it’s dark outside, I mean a hospital building in absolute darkness at about 9.30pm. This is the Kamakwie Wesleyan Hospital (KWH) in which my organisation (Health Poverty Action) works, and they do not have a constant power supply. They have a generator, but this is only used between 7pm and 9pm, and if there is a caesarean section being administered. To see the building so dark, you could hardly even pick it out against the sky, it just makes you think how ridiculously lucky we are in the UK to have a free healthcare system that functions. Here in Sierra Leone, most people cannot afford medical care as it’s so expensive.
The government has recently instigated free health care for pregnant women, lactating mothers and children under 5, but only in government hospitals which KWH is not. Therefore, the people of Kamakwie have to pay to come to this hospital which only has electricity for 2 hours a night, has rats, goats and dogs running around all the time (the rats have a particular preferred route apparently although thankfully I didn’t see any!), poor quality and insufficient equipment, lack of trained staff, the list goes on and on. There are only two ambulances serving the hospital, and they can only afford to collect women in labour, and even then it’s often a 3 hour round trip on horrific roads so it doesn’t make for a pleasant journey. In some really remote areas within the district, someone needing to go to hospital would first have to rely on someone to carry them on a stretcher, then take a ferry journey across a river (canoe if the ferry is not running, which happens frequently), and only then they would have enough phone signal to call for an ambulance. So when I think back to the UK NHS, and yes it is by no means perfect, but at least it’s free, and we can normally choose between a number of hospitals, then it really does feel very luxurious compared to SL.
Kamakwie
I thoroughly enjoyed my trip to ‘the field’ 2 weeks ago. The difference between Freetown and the provinces is stark and immediately apparent. After a sitting on the ridiculously busy Kissy Road in traffic for an hour trying to leave the city, it really is a welcome break to suddenly be surrounded by lush green trees, bright orange dust and children everywhere. I don’t think there are any more children outside of Freetown than inside but they must just take a bigger interest in me. Everywhere we stopped we were greeted with “white man” “white man” – given that both of us are women this seemed quite rude! But I quickly learned that it’s almost always shouted in excitement and with glee. In Kamakwie itself, which is actually a large town in SL terms but felt about the size of the small village in which I grew up (Brewood), I really did feel an immediate relaxation that I hadn’t realised I had been lacking in Freetown. There was noise, there is always a lot of noise in SL – singing, music, generators, motorbikes, etc. – but it also had such a peace to it that I felt immediately relaxed.
There was something very liberating (and grounding) about having no water and electricity, about settling down at 9pm as there was just nothing else to do and the battery from the laptop had died. It was very grounding as well, though, as I was immediately struck by all the inconveniences caused by being there, but also the mechanisms put in place to cope with them. We didn’t have enough fuel for the generator to be on each day, so on the non-generator days we would take them to the power plant to get them charged, take our phones to the phone charging shop (literally a shop devoted to charging the hundreds of phones left there), work on our laptops with no lights on and have our torches surrounded by flies until it became unbearable and cooked on a charcoal fire outside – and all in all I did find it quite glorious. However, for me this was a trip, I knew I would be returning to Freetown at the end of it, and even if I wasn’t, I knew there would be some respite somewhere along the track. Everyone was so friendly, it actually became quite exhausting moving along the street because of all the greetings I had to do. To each person you had to greet once, ask how their sleep, day, night, work, morning, etc. had gone, then discuss when I would see them again. By the end of the week I felt like a local celebrity!
Krio
I am really trying to throw myself into everything and most importantly, the local language of Krio. After a while it becomes quite simple to understand, or at least some things do, as others remain a mystery. You can definitely get away without learning krio in Freetown as everyone speaks English, however you do miss out on a lot of office jokes and people talking about you whilst walking behind you down the street. In the provinces, as soon as you leave Freetown, it becomes a lot more imperative that you understand at least the basics.
I think the most difficult aspect of speaking Krio is just letting yourself do it. It just feels wrong as it sounds so much like lazy English with an African accent. Of course, when you get to know it in more detail you realise that it’s much more complex than that, but the basics just feel bizarre and a bit rude! For an English person particularly, it is difficult to swap our classic “excuse me, would you mind terribly, please, thank you,” for “I wan dis” and “I go take dis.” Equally, all responses to greetings tend to be just “fine” – “how de body,” “how you sleep,” “how de morning,” the only response that people give is “fine” – it all seems a bit low key. Some phrases sound really sweet like “how much o’clock,” whereas others are just strange like “which side you de go” – meaning where are you going? Having said all that, I am thoroughly throwing myself into it and hoping to become fluent soon!
Christmas
On the whole it doesn’t really feel like Christmas at all, at least not as we know it. You just can’t feel all that Christmassy when sweating like a pig! There are quite a few Christmas decorations about but it really feels like some fool has put them up in the middle of summer more than it actually being the festive season. In fact, in our local shop there is a really terrifying dwarf Father Christmas pushing an equally dwarf like trolley filled with presents, that makes me jump every time!
We have been embracing it though, and have been to two carol concerts – one at the Cathedral in town, which was more of a performance than an interactive concert, in which we yearned to sing throughout and were only given two opportunities, and the other at a rest house for people with disabilities which was much more about audience participation and letting yourself go – most enjoyable! We also attended the IRC Christmas party last night which really was a world away from the work Christmas parties I went to last year! It took place in the car park of an apartment block (the IRC house), with the loudest music imaginable and people dancing right from the beginning of the evening. In fact, even though it was also someone’s leaving do, they wouldn’t even let him open his present in order to get on with the dancing! Right from the word go EVERYONE was on the dance floor, old and young, senior and not so. Raucous dancing as well, a type of dancing you would normally reserve for dancing alone in front of the mirror, or a very drunk and debauched night. But that just added to the enjoyment of the evening, and soon we were up there too, dancing like we never thought we would in front of colleagues!
The general atmosphere does seem to have developed an extremely jolly tinge, well more jolly then usual. There is a tangible excitement in the air, parties everywhere, music louder than usual, everyone very jolly. There are also a lot of ‘JC’s’ which to people here means ‘Just Comes’ (or Jast cams in Krio!) This term describes all those Sierra Leone diaspora who return to the country for the festivities. Amazingly, it is really easy to spot them, often wearing their finest clothes, travelling in huge cars, stocking up on bottled water and making a very obvious show of their fine English. Yesterday someone approached me to ask in the ‘Queen’s’ English whether I was in the Peace Corps. Having said all that, we are very excited to be spending our first Christmas out of the UK, and will be basking in the glorious sun and mopping our sweaty brows!
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