Getting around in Sierra Leone

Although I have talked in previous posts about some of the challenges in getting around in this country, I wanted to do kind of a summary post about the various transportation options, and my experiences with them.

One of the problems with transportation options here is that there are the very expensive options and the dirt cheap options, and not too much in between. So, for example, you can the regular car ferry from the airport in Lungi across to Freetown at a cost of 2,000 Le (about $0.60). It’s cheap, but you have to arrive early, wait for the ferry, which sometimes leaves late or early (or occasionally does not go at all) and then it takes about an hour to get across. Or, you can take the helicopter or the hovercraft, which will get you to Freetown in about 20 minutes, but which both cost around $60 US.

By far the best option for getting around the country by motor vehicle is in a private vehicle, preferably a newer, 4x4 type of vehicle. Fortunately for me, this is the way I have mostly travelled. I haven’t rented a car while I’ve been here, but I think it’s fairly expensive – $100/day or so. This is because of the price of fuel (about $4 CDN a gallon) and because you can’t just rent a car by itself, you need a driver too. And trust me, you definitely need a driver! I’ve been lucky enough just to have to pay for fuel, but this is expensive too. For example, to go to Freetown and back is about 250,000 Le in fuel (about $70 CDN). In comparison, if I take public transportation, it will cost me 12,000 Le each way from Makeni (so about $15 CDN).

If you don’t have access to a private vehicle or the money to pay for one, you are stuck taking public transportation. This in itself can be quite an adventure. I’m lucky that in the few times I’ve had to take public transportation, I’ve never had too much of an adventure, but I certainly know people who have. For short trips (like around Makeni, or even Makeni to Mapaki), a motorbike taxi (or occada) is a great option. The only downside of occadas is that it’s hard to carry anything big or heavy on them (although people certainly do – I saw someone carrying a double bed headboard on an occada once). Also, in Freetown occadas can be a little scary because they go quickly and zip in and out of traffic quite a bit. I only took an occada once in Freetown, and that was enough.

Another option is a public taxi or poda poda. A poda poda is a big van that on the inside, instead of the original seats, you will find 4 benches that each seat 4-5 people. Plus at least 2 in the front seat next to the driver. So you’re talking about approximately 20 people in said van, plus sometimes there are one or more sitting on top or hanging off the back (see the photo above!). I have only ever taken a poda poda within Freetown. I wouldn’t take one on the highway, they just seem far too dangerous for that. Happily, they are cheap, only 800 Le for a one way ride in Freetown. Unhappily, they are hot, squishy and generally uncomfortable.

A public taxi is a better option than a poda poda, especially for longer distance trips. They are still squishy and hot – they seat 2 people in front with the driver and at least 4 in the back. But the cars that do long distance trips seem to often be in better working condition than the local taxis in Freetown and the poda podas, and if you wanted to you could pay for 2 seats to be more comfortable.

Regardless of whether you take a poda poda or a taxi, the process is similar. You go to the place where the vehicles gather (each city has a main spot). You find a vehicle that is going where you want to go. You get in to claim your spot and wait for it to fill up. Sometimes this can take 5 minutes, and sometimes hours. Then you depart, hopefully making it to your destination without breaking down or getting in an accident.

Within Freetown, both taxis (regular cars) and poda podas run on predefined routes as the are shared taxis. It costs 1,000 Le one way for a taxi, a little bit more than for a poda poda because the city taxis only seat 5. The problem for visitors is that you don’t know what the routes are. So to find out the best way to get from one place to another, you need to ask around. Often getting to your destination involves taking taxis on more than one route and can be a little confusing.

In Freetown you can also charter a taxi to drive you around for 15,000 Le an hour. Beware of drivers who say they know where you’re going but don’t, and be careful of the condition of the vehicle. Most of the vehicles are in terrible shape, but some are better than others. It’s always wise to check out the car before making a deal with the driver, especially if you’re going outside of Freetown where the roads are not paved. This is a lesson I learned the hard way.

A final word about the roads. From what I know, the only really good paved roads in the country are the highway from Freetown to just past Magburaka (runs through Makeni), from Kenema to Bo, and most of the way from Bo to Freetown (there are small sections of that highway that are currently being improved). On any other road you are going to be dealing with potholes (often more pothole than road) or just dirt roads, which in the rainy season become a mud swamp. Don’t be deceived by distances (“it’s only 100 km it won’t take us long to get there” . . . 5 hours later, we arrived), or by your map, which has roads marked as “primary highway – paved.” Yes, it was paved . . . 20 years ago!

To be honest, if Sierra Leone wants to become a tourist destination, roads and transportation options are one of the major things they are going to have to improve. Right now, travel in this country is definitely not for the faint of heart!

A few transportation related photos: http://picasaweb.google.ca/clarepoulev/Transportation#

The Nova Scotia Gambia Association (NSGA) and their work in Sierra Leone

When Chris and I were travelling, we had the good fortune of travelling with a friend of mine from Nova Scotia, Andrea MacDonald. Andrea is the Executive Director of the Nova Scotia Gambia Association, which works both in The Gambia and here in Sierra Leone. In Sierra Leone, their project is called the Nova Scotia Sierra Leone Program (NSSLP). Andrea was here visiting some of NSSLP’s projects and invited us to travel with her. We went with her to Koidu, Kenema, Bo and then back to Freetown. This was a great way for us to see other parts of the country without going through the trials of using public transportation or paying a lot of money for a private vehicle. Some of the roads were pretty bad (as evidenced by the mud-soaked truck in the photo) and we were thankful to be in a 4x4 vehicle. So thanks Andrea!

Over the 5 days we spent travelling with NSGA, we had the opportunity to visit some of their projects, and I really wanted to say something about the work they are doing here. The NSGA’s work focuses on peer health education. Their motto is “learn and teach others”. The also do voluntary counselling and HIV testing in coordination with health services here. We were able to see some of their peer health education work in action. In Kenema we visited a boys school that had a peer health education program around HIV/AIDS and sexual and reproductive health. It was so neat to hear the boys that are the peer leaders in this program talk openly and without embarrassment about how you can get HIV, how to prevent it, how to have safe sex, and other topics that are so important to sexual health. These boys share this information not only with their peers at school, but also with their families and communities (many of them come from villages outside of Kenema). Without open and frank discussions on these subjects, health issues like HIV (with prevalence rates currently around 2%) and teenage pregnancy (already a big problem here) are sure to become more serious problems in the country.

(As an aside, one of the boys from this group in Kenema told me at the end of the session that he wanted to marry a white woman :-) I don’t think he was proposing to me, because I was there with Chris, just expressing his general dream!)

The project that NSGA is involved in in Kono District (the eastern part of the country) was really interesting to learn about. They are doing the HIV testing and counselling and peer health education component for a larger project that is run by the German Technical Cooperation, GTZ (GTZ has a similar role to that of CIDA, the Canadian International Development Agency, in Canada). This project aims to help youth that were displaced by the civil war to urban areas like Freetown, or to the diamond-mining areas, resettle in their old villages. A 3-month pilot project just finished, and GTZ aims to soon launch a five-year project to do the same work, resettling 30,000 youth.


This is how the project works: GTZ “scouts” find young people in Freetown, or in the mining areas in Kono that want to go back home but don’t have the means to go themselves. The scouts then visit the home communities and mediate with the villagers to ensure that the return will be accepted and peaceful (some of these youth may have been perpetrators of or witnesses to atrocities committed during the war). GTZ provides returnees with basic support in terms of transportation and getting set up with farming and housing when they return to the village, and works with them to educate them and the rest of the community in the areas of hygiene, water and sanitation, reproductive health and HIV. This education work is where NSGA comes in. They also work with district health teams to HIV counselling and testing for returnees and villagers.

With Andrea, we visited one of the villages where resettlement has taken place as part of the pilot project, the village of Gbematambadu (photo of villagers to the left), about 15km outside of Koidu (on a TERRIBLE road). The villagers and returnees talked about their experiences thus far (they had been back for about 3 months I think). Everyone generally seemed to be happy with the new arrangement. The returnees were able to feed themselves from their farming (as opposed to living on Le 1,000-2,000/day doing alluvial mining in the diamond areas), and the villagers appreciated having more young people around to share in the work. While there were certainly ongoing challenges (housing and education for the new influx of children seemed to be two big ones), the project seemed for the most part to be successful.

The whole concept of the project is very interesting, as the general assumption in the west is that anyone working and receiving a salary is better off than someone depending on subsistence agriculture, and that moving to an urban centre is better than being in a rural area. However, this GTZ project seems to demonstrate that this is not the case. In fact, rural communities have a lot to offer. Although subsistence farming has its own challenges and is by no means easy, at least people have a certain measure of control over whether or not they can feed their families. Trying to live in a city and pay for lodging and food for your family on only pennies a day (Le 1,000 = about $0.28 CDN) is pretty tough.

In addition, returning to their home communities offers people a support network that they likely did not have in Freetown or Koidu. From my own experiences here, I’ve seen that extended family networks are very important, especially in rural communities. If you live close to your extended family, when you are sick, they will take care of you. When your harvest fails, they will share their food with you. You help each other with work in the fields and in the house. Children take care of parents, grandparents take care of grandchildren, siblings take care of siblings. Again, it’s certainly not a perfect or an easy life, but the family and community networks in rural communities act as an essential safety net for people here, in a country where social services provided by the government are limited or non-existent.

At the community meeting, people talked about what they had learned from the peer health education program. Topics included prevention of sexually transmitted infections, child spacing, and basic sanitation. Some spot checks in different project areas have already seen some changes in behaviour (for example, always covering food and water to prevent contamination, hanging laundry up instead of laying it on the ground to dry, etc.). In a year or two, other bigger changes (such as in the birth rate or rate of STIs) will hopefully be visible as well.

I have more to say about rural communities and about both agriculture and mining in the country, but those will be topics for other posts. For more information about NSGA’s work in Sierra Leone and The Gambia, or to donate to NSGA, please see their website, www.novascotiagambia.ca.

Freetown and area tourist review

On our travels, Chris and I spent 3 nights in Freetown and 3 nights at River No. 2, a gorgeous beach just outside the city. We were complete tourists during this time, so I wanted to write up a little review of our experiences for other potential visitors to Sierra Leone.

Food
In Freetown we ate at 4 restaurants (breakfast was at the guesthouse every morning), Balmaya’s, Mamba Point, Chez Nous, and The Rooster. They were all good. The Rooster is right downtown and more of a lunch spot – lots of shwarmas, burgers, and that kind of thing. Very reasonably priced. Balmaya’s and Mamba Point are both more expat type of spots. The food is very good, but the prices are comparable to a decent restaurant at home (i.e. $50 - $60 for dinner for two). We even had burgers at Balmaya’s one night – yummy! Chez Nous is on the Lumley beach strip and it’s nice to be right near the ocean. The food was good – lots of fresh seafood and a yummy fried rice.

Getting around
Getting around Freetown can be somewhat challenging until you figure out how the system works. Taxis generally run on pre-determined routes and are Le 1,000 a person for a one-way ride. We did this a few times, but our main challenge is that we didn’t know the routes. We got in one taxi that actually was supposed to turn in the opposite direction we wanted to go. When we realised this, the driver made the other passengers get out and took us onwards. Motorbikes also offer taxi rides and can make for a faster journey as they zip through traffic. They’re not good if you have much to carry though.

If you have a few people, you can either negotiate a one-way rate with a taxi driver, or you can charter a taxi for yourself for Le 15,000/hour. We chartered a car to take us to Charlotte Falls and Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, and to River No. 2. My only advice on chartering a vehicle to take you out of town is to inspect the car first. The roads outside of Freetown can be 4x4 territory (i.e. bad!) and the more reliable the vehicle, the better. Also, make sure you know where you are going and have an idea how to get there. Although your driver may say he knows where you are going, there is still a high possibility that he doesn’t :-)

Downtown Freetown

On Saturday we spent the day wandering around Freetown’s frenetic downtown. You really get a much better feel for a city from walking around in it. First of all, for those that have any concerns about safety, I want to point out that it is perfectly safe to wander around (although watch out for traffic!). We definitely got a few stares as you don’t see many white people walking around, but over all we didn’t attract that much attention.

We stopped in Victoria Park, a small green space in the centre of town, to sit in the shade for a while. We discovered that hundreds of bats make their homes in the trees in the park. I have never seen so many bats in the daytime before. It was quite incredible.

We decided to make our way to Fourah Bay College to see the botanical gardens (mentioned in the Bradt Sierra Leone guidebook). The college is at the top of a very big hill and the views of the city from the top are incredible and worth the trip up in and of themselves (we took motorbikes up but walked down). Less so the botanical gardens. On arriving at the campus and I suppose looking lost, a man approached us and asked what we wanted. We mentioned the gardens and he offered to point us in the right direction. He took us to a treed area behind a building. It looked like it could once have been a garden, but it certainly did not appear to have been maintained in any way. Our guide then proceeded to show us around the college campus, something we weren’t really looking for but got anyways. We did see some small alligators (or crocodiles?) in a cage near the biology building, but that was about it. There didn't seem to be anything remaining of the botanical gardens that was worth seeing.

As I said, it’s worth the trip up for the views, but there’s not too much else to see there. Fourah Bay was actually the first university in sub-Saharan Africa (founded in the early 19th century) and used to have an excellent reputation. People used to come to Sierra Leone for university from all over the continent.

After our Fourah Bay adventure and some lunch, we visited Big Market to pick up a few souvenirs. This was quite an experience. The guidebook recommends going in with a firm idea of what you want and what you are willing to pay, and I would heartily second this advice. Upstairs in the market there are some very nice things – wood carvings, batik, country cloth, gara cloth and other printed fabrics. However, the problem is that there are about 40 stalls each selling almost the same items. Once people know you are spending money, each seller eagerly tries to get you to look at the merchandise in their stall. Chris had a bit of a hard time with the persistence of the sellers, but I think the trick is really just to be firm rather than too friendly, and to get an idea of what you want before you start to buy. For example, we knew we wanted a hippo carving. Once I said this, the sellers kept bringing me different hippo carvings until I found one I liked. Now that’s service! We managed to escape without spending too much money, but I may go back for one or two more things next time I'm in Freetown :-)

Freetown photos: http://picasaweb.google.ca/clarepoulev/FreetownTrip#

Charlotte Falls

Charlotte Falls is a beautiful alternative to the beaches and is just outside Freetown, about a 30 minute drive along the Mountain Road from Congo Cross depending on the traffic and the reliability of your vehicle. The falls are beautiful and the water flows fast enough to make swimming safe. The water was so refreshing, especially after the walk in to the falls in the heat. We only had about 1.5 hours there, but it was definitely worth the trip and if I was in Freetown I would definitely go again.

FYI: do not drive down the road to Charlotte without some good quality breaks. The taxi we hired to take us out there was probably one of the worst cars I’ve seen here. The road is fairly steep with lots of loose rock, and the brakes definitely weren’t working as they should. After a slightly scary moment of sliding down the road while the driver pumped the brakes, we decided to walk the rest of the way to the falls :-)

Charlotte Falls photos: http://picasaweb.google.ca/clarepoulev/CharlotteFalls#

Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary

The Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary was a great experience, and they really do great work there (for more info, see http://www.tacugama.com/). There used to be quite a big population of chimpanzees in Sierra Leone (about 20,000 in the 1970s), but there are now only about 1,500 – 2,000 left in the whole country. They are threatened by two major factors: deforestation and hunting. Deforestation in the country due to mining and agricultural activities has been significant, and this destroys the habitat for chimps (and many other wildlife!). Chimps are also hunted for meat (a large chimp will fetch about Le 60,000 – 80,000 for the meat), and unfortunately to be sold as pets. When a hunter kills an adult chimp with a baby, the adult can be sold for meat, and the baby can be sold for about $100 - $200 US as a pet. Keeping chimps as pets in Sierra Leone is illegal, but it is apparently still a big problem. When the chimps are little, they are cute and manageable. However, as soon as they start to get bigger, people have problems (an adult chimp weighs an average 110 lbs and is 5 times as strong as a human), and the chimps are often either mistreated or killed.

Tacugama primarily rescues chimps that have been kept by people as pets. They started with only 8 chimps, but now have over 80 at the sanctuary. There are two bigger enclosures where the older adult chimps live, and two smaller areas for a group of adolescents, and for the youngest chimps. The idea is to eventually release them into the wild; however, without a safe and protected area in which to release them, which doesn’t exist right now in the country, releasing them would only further endanger them.

The coolest part was watching the young chimps swing around and play. We could have stayed there watching them for hours really. They’re amazing to watch, and so human-like! Apparently 98.6% of our DNA is the same as a chimp’s DNA.

Tacugama photos: http://picasaweb.google.ca/clarepoulev/Tacugama#

River No. 2 Beach

We spent 3 nights at River No. 2 Beach, about an hour’s drive down the coast from Freetown. River No. 2 is absolutely beautiful. I think it’s one of the top beaches in the world actually. White sand, warm blue water, and the best part – we only shared it with about 8 other people! Take a look at the photos to see what I mean: http://picasaweb.google.ca/clarepoulev/RiverNo2#

The whole set up at No. 2 is run by the community and could really serve as a model for tourism in other communities in Sierra Leone. The community members take turns working at the guesthouse. They don’t get regular salaries, just a small incentive for their work. Whatever the guesthouse brings in is used to help improve the whole community. For example, the generator used for the guesthouse for electricity in the evenings is also available to community members for electricity. The guesthouse also provides income for local fishermen and guides with their excursions and restaurant.

The accommodations are basic but comfortable. The food is delicious, freshly caught seafood for supper every night (we tried the barracuda, the lobster, the crab and the shrimp, and all were SO good!). We ate right on the beach, looking out over the water. Breakfast is included with the room rate.

We did one of the little excursions they offer as well – a trip up the river by boat, and then a hike up one of the hills (the Guma Valley nature trail). It took about an hour and a half. We didn’t see any animals (a couple of other guests saw monkeys), but the boat ride was interesting, and the view from the top of the hill was amazing.

The weather wasn’t the greatest while we were there (it rained 3 out of 4 days if you can believe that!), but the ocean was still nice and warm so we got in lots of swimming. Less lying on the beach in the sun than we hoped for, but to be honest, the sun is so hot that the clouds were a nice relief at times! We also had beach bonfires two nights we were there. We didn't need the heat from the flames, but it was really nice to sit around the fire on the beach and chat.

River No. 2 is definitely one of the nicest beaches I’ve been on, and is highly recommended!

Our OK Adventure

Yesterday evening Nancy, Vaughn, Jane, Chris and I returned to Mapaki after our trip to Outamba-Kilimi National Park (known as OK for short). The trip was definitely interesting. Unfortunately, although we saw hippo and elephant tracks, and the place where the hippos go to eat grass, we did not see any actual hippos or elephants. The elephants are very rare and you’re unlikely to see one, but most people who visit see hippos, and seeing the hippos was really the main reason for making the trip. However, because it is still raining quite a bit, and this is right at the end of the rainy season, the river was very high. Apparently the hippos stay inland when the water is high like that. I was very disappointed as I really, really wanted to see the hippos, but what can you do. On the bright side, we did see lots of monkeys, which was pretty cool, and we saw some huge trees and other interesting vegetation, some neat birds, and lots of insects (of course!).

The facilities at OK are basic – as the guidebook we have says, “serious BYO territory”. We brought all our own food and water with us, and arranged for someone there to do the cooking for Le 2,000/meal. The cabins are equipped with bed nets and keep the rain out, but not much else (for example, we found little lizards in our bed when we arrived). The toilets are pit toilets (BYO toilet paper too :-). There is a water tank that provides water through a spout for a shower, but unfortunately it was broken. Three days without a shower wouldn’t have been too big a deal, but on the drive up we all got incredibly dusty from road dust coming in the windows. Without being able to really wash properly, we pretty much just stayed dirty until we got home again.

We arrived in the late afternoon of the first day and just hung out, attempted to clean up a bit from the dust, ate supper and went to bed early. The next morning we did the hippo canoe ride. I enjoyed being out on the river, even though we didn’t see the hippos. It was about a 20 or 25 minute paddle downstream to their usual spot. When we didn’t see them, we got out of the canoes and walked a hippo trail (there's a photo of hippo footprints in my photo album, http://picasaweb.google.ca/clarepoulev/TripToOtambaKilimi#, if you're curious). We were slightly worried we might run into a hippo on the trail (apparently they are most dangerous on land and can run up to 45km/hr in short bursts), but we didn’t. And I’m sure our guides would not have taken us on that path if they didn’t think it was safe. The paddle back to camp took about an hour and was quite hard work as we were going upstream.

In the afternoon, Chris, Jane and I went on the “elephant safari” jungle walk. Talk about bushwhacking! A lot of the trail was through incredibly high elephant grass and our guide hacked his way through with a machete. I made the mistake of wearing sandals instead of sneakers (I was worried about there being a lot of mud), so my feet got a bit scratched up. We did see some elephant tracks, and the view from the elephant platform was pretty nice, but no actual animal sightings. Our guide pointed out the border with Guinea, which we could see from the platform.

After those two adventures, we were pretty tired and went to bed early the second night. In the morning we got up and headed for home by 9 am. We didn’t arrive in Mapaki though until about 8 pm, so it made for a long day. Why did it take us 11 hours to get back you ask? Well, we ran out of fuel. Our driver (we went in the Chief's vehicle so were with his driver), MO had misjudged how much fuel it would take us to get there and back. He actually didn’t really know where we were going, which I didn’t realise until he stopped to ask for directions on the way there! Anyways, we had enough fuel to get back to Kamakwie (26 km from the park – took us almost 2 hours to drive, including the ferry crossing), but not to get all the way back to Makeni. We had seen fuel stations in Kamakwie on our way up so thought we could refuel there. Unfortunately, there was no diesel anywhere to be had in the city. We visited the Chief of that area (Sella Limba Chiefdom), and he made a few calls for us, but there was no diesel anywhere. We had to wait for some to be brought from Makeni for us. 5 hours later, we were on the road again, leaving Kamakwie around 4 pm and arriving in Mapaki around 8 pm. Needless to say, we were pretty tired. We all learned a valuable lesson though – always start a journey in this country with a full tank of gas!

I think I would likely go back to OK while I’m here if I have the opportunity as I’d still like to see a hippo in the wild. The main thing that would be a deterrent in going back is the journey. Unfortunately, the road to the park is extremely bad on some stretches. To give you an idea, the distance from Makeni to OK is about 110 km, and it took us about 5 hours to drive there, including only one short stop in Kamakwie for a cold drink on the way there. I have a few pictures in my photo album of the road – some samples of some of the huge potholes we drove through. The worst stretch is actually the first 30 km or so of the road, from Makeni to Pendembu. This is a main route into the north of the province, but like the majority of the country’s roads, it is unpaved. In the rainy season (now) the roads are especially bad. We drove through some potholes the size of the car. The potholes are a problem for a few reasons – not only do they slow you down quite a bit, but they are full of water, so you’re never sure how deep the water is, or what might be underneath. I have friend that flooded their engine driving through one of these pothole puddles because the “puddle” came up over the hood of their car!! Luckily we were in the Chief’s jeep, which is in pretty good shape. We had a minor scare when the car didn’t start right away the morning we left OK, but it started with a push start, and was ok after that.

It was quite the journey overall, and I’m very happy to be back home in Mapaki! I'm looking forward to sharing some twinning letters I've received from schools in Canada with schools here this week.

Another trip through Freetown

I’m back in Mapaki now after my second trip to Freetown in a week. I’m almost getting used to the city now :-) Chris arrived safely late Sunday night (2 am on Monday really). Meeting him at the airport at that time was interesting. At around midnight both the cafes in the airport closed. It was very quiet and most people who were around were lying on whatever surface was available sleeping. MO (Chief’s driver) and I just sat around waiting. I read a lot! Luckily the flight came in on time and by 2:30 am we were headed back to our Guesthouse in Lungi. It’s not a bad place and I’ve stayed there before, but this time there were quite a few mosquitoes in our room and we also got temporarily locked in the room due to a broken lock, so I think next time I might look for somewhere else to stay.

I actually like taking the ferry from Freetown to Lungi. Although it’s long (you have to arrive about an hour before to get on with a vehicle, then the crossing takes about an hour), I find the people watching very interesting. Watching people and vehicles disembark from the ferry is also quite a sight. Everyone crowds the gangway, and generally people start jumping off the end of the boat and onto the landing area even before the ferry is properly docked. When people get off, they usually run off in order to get a place in a taxi or on a bus. Watching the cars try to come off is also pretty funny. There is only one gate on the ferry, so all the cars that drive on have to turn around in order to drive off forwards again (it’s very difficult to back off because your wheels have to be properly placed, otherwise your vehicle goes into the water). Usually every car is trying to turn around first without waiting for the other cars to get out of the way. Often there are 4 or 5 men “helping” the cars turn around but without watching what any of the others are doing. Even when told to wait for someone else, cars will just start trying to turn around. It’s incredibly chaotic. Chris got a good video of it I think. I doubt we’ll be able to post it while here because it will take too long to upload, but I’ll be sure to put a few videos online when we get home.

In the harbour where the ferry docks in Freetown, there are several old metal wrecks of ships (comforting, isn’t it?). I had noticed people in the water swimming out to these wrecks but wasn’t sure why they were out there. On the ferry trip from Freetown to Lungi someone told me that they swim out to break off metal parts of the ship. They do this by hand, with hammers or some other hand tools. Then they swim the pieces of metal back to shore to sell as scrap. Pretty incredible.

I also had an interesting experience at the immigration office in Freetown on Monday. I had to go there to renew my entry stamp. I have a visa for 6 months which allows me to enter and leave the country, but when you come in to the country you only get a one month visit permit (this is what allows you to stay in the country). I had no idea this date would be different than the six month visa I already had. Various other people I talked to here also had this same problem. Anyways, by the time someone told me about this and I actually looked at my stamp, it was already expired. Luckily, Chief has a nephew who works in the immigration office. His nephew advised Chief to write a letter explaining that I was staying here as his guest and requesting that the permit to stay be extended, and he also talked to his boss in Freetown (head of the foreign nationals section) to tell him I was coming to get this issue resolved.

So on Monday morning, I took this letter and my passport to the immigration office when we arrived in Freetown. We went there around 10:30 am, after breakfast at Crown Bakery (delicious!). When we got upstairs to the office, there were about 10 staff there. Most of them were sitting around, appearing to do nothing. One person was sleeping. The TV was on and a few were watching football. I spoke to one of the immigration officers, explained the issue and showed him the letter. He told me I’d have to come back tomorrow since the boss who needed to approve the extension was away at a meeting. I explained that I couldn’t come back tomorrow since we were headed back to Mapaki, so he advised me to try later in the afternoon.

This gave us a couple of hours to kill in Freetown. While it was a pain to have to hang around, we decided to go to the beach (Lumley beach), so at least we enjoyed ourselves! The beach was beautiful and almost deserted. We put our feet in the water and sat in the shade on the sand for a while. Then we walked down the beach and met a guy who asked us to bring some gold dust back to Canada with us to sell for him. Interesting. We decided to stay on the safe side and politely declined :-)

Finally we were able to pick up my passport around 2:30 with the extension granted and headed back to Freetown. It was around 6:30 by the time we got back to Mapaki. Chris is getting adjusted to life here and settling in. We hope to do a couple of small side trips over the next week or so, but will be staying based in Mapaki so I can continue to work.

Daily life in Sierra Leone

Food in my room - cucumber, oranges and coconuts. From Miscellaneous

I have gotten a few questions about my daily life here in Sierra Leone, so I thought I would share how I go about some of my basic tasks.

Food and Drink
I generally eat pretty well here, although I suspect that I am consuming a lot fewer calories here than I would at home, simply because there is less variety and availability of food. I do not often feel very hungry though, which is a good thing. The custom here is to eat one big meal a day, usually in the mid to late afternoon. I get my meals in Mapaki from the Chief’s kitchen (photos of the kitchen to come soon). They make me breakfast as well as the main daily meal. I have learned to keep a few other items on hand in my room (right now I have: bread, cucumbers, oranges, coconuts, some trail mix, peanut butter and granola bars brought from home, and some crackers and laughing cow cheese recently purchased in Makeni), which I usually eat around lunch time. Then I eat the main meal for my supper. So, here is a typical day of food:

Breakfast – One or some combination of eggs, fried plantain (yummy!), corn meal porridge with bread, or some combination of the above. Along with my instant coffee of course (have I talked about coffee a lot so far? Feels like I have. The true sign of an addiction to caffeine :-)

Lunch – One or some combination of bread, sometimes with peanut butter (not every day as I’m trying to stretch it out), cucumber, oranges, coconut, laughing cow cheese. I now have some mayo and ketchup as well and I may try adding these into the mix too. Perhaps I’ll get myself some spam for sandwiches too.

Supper – rice with some kind of plasa (sauce) with meat. The plasas are groundnut (peanut) soup, cassava leaf or potato leaf, squash or sweet potato. The meat is fish, chicken or some other unidentified red meat (probably bush meat of some kind).

As you can see, there isn’t much available in terms of snacking and treats. It’s a pretty basic diet, and there is definitely a lack of vegetables, although I try to eat as much as I can. Next time I’m in Freetown though I am planning to stock up on a few other goodies, perhaps some nutella, cookies and whatever else might last in the heat and taste good.

For drinking, in Mapaki I stick to bottled water, coffee, and tea. I probably drink 2-3 litres of water in a day. Pop is available here, but it’s not cold. When I was in Makeni I drank A LOT of coke because it was nice and cold, but I don’t want to make that a habit. The local beer here, Star, is also quite good and readily available many places in Makeni.

Water and Sanitation
There is no running water in Mapaki. Some places in Makeni have it when there is a generator to run the water pumps. I am lucky enough to have an “en suite” bathroom, which includes a place to bathe and wash clothes and dishes and a toilet, which is flushed by pouring water into it. Most people would have outdoor pit latrines, not indoor toilets.

In the rainy season (which it is now) water is generally not a problem, although there are shortages here in the dry season. My water for washing comes from a well just across the street. The well is chlorinated, well-maintained and protected and the water is clean. People here drink this water; I don’t because it could have microbes in it that my body isn’t used to that would upset my stomach, and I figure better safe than sorry. There are a few containers in my bathroom which are filled with water. No, I do not get my own water – Mabinty brings it for me. Some day soon I will learn how to pump water from the well though.

Despite Mabinty’s protests, I do my own laundry. There is a line in my bathroom where I hang it to dry. I try to do it on a regular basis, every day or two, so that things don’t pile up. The line is only so long, so I can only hang a few things to dry at a time. Mabinty takes care of washing the sheets and things like that.

As I mentioned before, I now use my handy dandy shower in a bag to bathe, which is awesome. Before that (or if I’m somewhere without my shower), I took bucket baths. This involves pouring water over yourself with a cup, soaping up, and then rinsing. It’s hard to rinse with one hand while pouring water with the other. This is one of the things I appreciate the most about having the shower.

Transportation
The only downside of being in Mapaki is that it is off the highway, so it is much more difficult to get places. Luckily for me, the road between Mapaki and the highway is in pretty good shape, and I have access to both Carolyn’s motorbike (with Kouame driving) and the Chief’s vehicle if needed. Fuel is about 15,000 LE per gallon (about $5 Cdn). It takes 3 gallons to go to Makeni and back in the car, and one gallon on the bike. I could also get a ride out to the highway and try to catch a taxi or a motorbike from there into Makeni, but that might prove difficult. For getting around in Mapaki I use my feet. There is also a bicycle available, but I’m not sure what shape it’s in.

Exercise
Exercise has been woefully lacking over the last few weeks, although I did manage some yoga, but now that I am back and settled in Mapaki for a little while, I plan to get into a regular yoga and running/walking habit. Plus I hear that somewhere around there’s a chin up bar that was built for Gerald van Gurp when he visited last winter. I might have to give that a try as well. I am finding my back a bit sore from the lack of ergonomically correct chairs and the soft beds, but I’m hoping regular yoga and exercise will help with that.

Did I miss anything? If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

p.s. a few new pictures from Makeni and elsewhere are up on my photo page, http://picasaweb.google.ca/clarepoulev/Miscellaneous#

Costs of living in Sierra Leone

I'm heading back to Mapaki this afternoon. Before I go, here's a quick post on some of the costs of living in Sierra Leone. I am finding that in Makeni and Mapaki it’s generally not too expensive - prices would be higher in Freetown. Below are prices for some basic things. All prices are in Leones (LE). The Canadian dollar is worth about 3,200 LE and the American dollar is about 3,900 LE per dollar.

Night in a guesthouse in Freetown with power, running water, clean beds and mosquito nets: 40,000 LE

Meal of rice and plasa (sauce – can be groundnut soup, cassava, beans, stew, etc.) plus a drink: 5,000 – 8,000 LE depending on the plasa and the drink

Bag of water (this is clean filtered water, about 10 L in a bag I think): 4,000 LE

500 units of time on your mobile phone (to send a local text is 7 units and to make a call during the day is 5-7 units per minute): 17,000 LE

Oranges: 500 LE for 3 oranges

5” foam mattress for a bed: 170,000 LE

Goat (mmmmm): 100,000 LE

Large bag of rice (not sure of the size, but they are big bags): 120,000 LE

Motorbike taxi ride anywhere within Makeni: 1,000 LE

Taxi ride from Makeni to Mayagba (12 miles on the highway): 4,000 LE (keep in mind that this fee is for the taxi shared with the driver and 4 other passengers – you could pay more to have the whole car to yourself – probably 25,000 LE or so, but that’s just a guess)

One hour at the internet café in Makeni: 5,000 LE

Printing at the internet café in Makeni: 1,000 LE per page

Coke in a can: 2,500 LE

Gallon of gas (3.8 litres): 14,800 LE

Star beer (the local beer): 3,500 LE

Lighter: 400 LE

Bread: 1,000 LE

Killdriver (short bread cookie - see my previous post on these. Yummy!): 500 LE

Swimming at Wussum hotel: 10,000 LE

Rent for KK and Heidi's house (a compound with 8 bedrooms plus a back house and a second building for a generator - fit with electricity and running water if you have a generator to power it.): 5 million LE per year

Many of the prices I’ve listed above are fixed prices, but some can vary because you have to bargain for them.

A few observations

Now that I have been in Sierra Leone a few days, here are a few things I have learned so far:

- The pace of life moves more slowly here. Despite spending vast quantities of time waiting for people or things in the first few days, I haven’t found myself feeling impatient. Perhaps that’s because I have no sense of all the things that I could otherwise be spending my time on, as I would in Canada. It’s really very nice not to feel impatient, and I’m hoping that Sierra Leone teaches me this virtue well enough for me to practice it when I'm back in Canada.

- The car horn is used differently here. The driving in general is a bit erratic and crazy, and there are usually people and/or animals and/or objects on the road at all times. (I definitely have no plans to drive here by myself at all!) So the horn is just used to say “look out, coming through”. Seems like a wise move to me, given the context.

- You see a huge variety of things for sale that people carry balanced on their heads. I saw people in Freetown and Makeni selling everything from socks and underwear, to bread and fruit, to gum, to DVDs, to firewood, all balanced on their heads. Children learn to balance things on their heads from a very young age. It’s actually quite impressive – I know my balance is nowhere near that good!

- In the rainy season (which it is now), you will get wet. Guaranteed. It seems to rain about 3-4 times a day with dry breaks in between, but sometimes it just rains for several hours, alternating between drizzle and downpour. You can’t always tell when it’s going to start pouring though, so there’s always a good chance of getting wet, which I have done several times already. Only once so far have I been absolutely soaked to the bone though. Unfortunately, it was on the way to meet with Peter Koroma, chair of the cdpeace board, in Freetown. Luckily, he was about a half hour late (see, waiting can be a good thing!), so it gave me a chance to dry off first.

- Bathing out of a bucket and drinking water out of a bag are not as hard as they sound and I am getting the hang of these things. You just have to stand the bag up right after it is open so it doesn’t spill all over (yes, I learned that lesson the hard way!).

- Villages are not quiet places. I had this idea in my head that the rural setting would be quieter than Freetown, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. You can always hear people shouting, talking, children laughing or crying, birds and insects chirping/buzzing. The sounds of the village have their own interest and beauty, and they’re generally more natural than the sounds of a city, but it is definitely not super quiet.

- Also, people get up early. The town crier wakes everyone at a certain time, usually around 5:30 or 6:00 am. It’s not really a place for sleeping in, but that suits me very well.

- Mosquito nets are wonderful things. Sleeping under a mosquito net gives me a safe, cozy feeling, and protects me from any crazy bugs that might be out there in addition to mosquitos. Given I have seen both a cockroach and a spider the size of my hand in my room, mosquito nets are my friend :-)

Mayagba – September 11

**Pictures to follow soon!**

Today was my first full day in Mayagba. After getting up, Heidi and I sat on the porch and greeted people as they walked by. I have learned a very few things to say in Krio (a pidgin English) and Temne (one of the major local languages here), but am still struggling. Looking forward to doing some Krio and Temne language training in about 10 days from now.

Around noon we had a community meeting, organized by Mr. Mark Fornah, the cdpeace Literacy Coordinator. This meeting was to introduce me to the community and vice versa. It was really wonderful. Not too long and with the opportunity to meet and talk a little bit with people. I doubt I will remember very many names though. The meeting ended with prayers and blessings for myself and Heidi and singing.

One interesting thing about Sierra Leone is that there seems to be no religious strife at all here. Perhaps that is a generalisation, but thus far it seems that Christians and Muslims coexist with no problems. There is a mosque and a church in Mayagba, and there were both prayers from the Imam and Christian prayers at the meeting today.

This afternoon, after a visit to Makeni to use the internet briefly (too briefly to type out these posts and post them on the blog!), I returned to Mayagba. I spent a few hours sitting on the porch and was soon surrounded by the small children of the village (pictures to come). The kids here are very curious about white people – they shout “opporto, opporto” (white person in Temne) anytime they see one. They all wanted to hear me talk and touch my skin and hair as well. While white people are perhaps more common in the bigger centres (still not a frequent occurrence though), they are rare in the villages. Many people, both adults and children, are curious about what I’m doing here and want to say hello. I took a few snaps of the kids (pictures coming) – they LOVE getting their picture taken and seem to find it hilarious.

One of the older kids (his name was Fred and he spoke a bit of English) brought out a deck of cards. We played cards for about an hour or so, first a game taught to me by Fred where you add cards together and collect pairs, and then I tried to teach them to play slap. I’m not sure he fully understood the game, but we had fun anyways! All the while we were playing, there were 7 or 8 other children crowded around me. I tried teaching them my name, but it turns out that Clare is a bit hard to say. I’m sure they’ll learn over time though.

Oh, also today I rode on a motorbike taxi for the first time (1,000 LE from anywhere to anywhere in Makeni) and took my first solo taxi ride from Makeni to Mayagba!

A final word about taxis in general. I am writing this post a few days in, so I have now had the opportunity to be in several “taxis”. The term taxi here is used to refer to an car that picks up passengers. The cars are not in the best shape unfortunately, but they generally get you where you need to go. Many do not have working gas or speed gauges, and often doors and windows don’t work properly. During my taxi ride from Makeni to Mayagba, when it started to rain the driver had to pull over and open each door in order to roll up the windows by manually connecting the wires. Taxis are also maximally crowded – 7 to a car is the norm. I’m learning that transportation here can definitely be an adventure!

Arrival in Sierra Leone – September 9

Leaving home is always hard. I will miss all my friends and family back home immensely, especially my husband. I know the time will go by quickly, and the experience will be well worth it, but it’s still hard to say good bye. In the days leading up to my departure, and even in London and on the flight to Freetown, I kept thinking to myself “wow, I can’t believe I’ll be in Africa on Tuesday night.” I found it kind of surreal and impossible to really understand until I arrived.

After an uneventful journey from Canada (which is what all good journeys should be!), I arrived in Sierra Leone at about 10 pm on Tuesday, September 8. Luckily for me, I was met at the airport by three people: Harold (Thomas’s cousin), Amadou (Saidu’s cousin), and Heidi, a cdpeace volunteer here in Sierra Leone. Both Amadou and Harold work at the airport and helped me get my bags and go through customs, which was nice. Then Heidi helped me change some money and took me to the guesthouse in Lungi where we stayed that night.

(An aside about the international airport in Freetown – it’s not actually in Freetown, it’s in Lungi. In order to get into Freetown proper from the airport you have several choices: take a helicopter or hovercraft (each takes about 20 minutes I think and costs around $60), drive around the bay (which takes about 5 hours) or take the ferry, which is what the locals do. We took the ferry in the next day – more on that later.)

Arriving in Sierra Leone was kind of overwhelming. Even though I feel that I did a lot of preparation before coming here in terms of finding out what to expect and reading about the country, actually experiencing it was totally different. You can only mentally prepare for something so much. Anyways, realising that I was actually in Sierra Leone and was going to be here for the next few months was initially somewhat of a shock. The first night was quite hard as I felt sad and homesick. It took me a day or two to get over that feeling of shock properly, and although I am still homesick at times, I feel much more adjusted and acclimatized at this point.

The first night in Lungi we stayed in a Guesthouse called the Gateway. It wasn’t bad – they had electricity and running water. Well, the water was kind of running when we arrived, and not at all the next day, but at least in theory they had running water. I “flushed” my first toilet by pouring water in from a bucket :-)

The following day, two of Heidi’s friends met us in Lungi (KK and Rabia, both ex-pats working for NGOs in Makeni). After dropping KK’s sister off at the airport, we headed for Freetown. We took the ferry over. It cost us 5,000 Leones (LE) for a first class ticket (equivalent to about $1.25 CDN). I certainly wouldn’t have done this by myself on my first day in Sierra Leone, but KK and Rabia speak excellent Krio and know their way around quite well, so I felt very well taken care of. As a first class passenger on the ferry (about a 40 minute ride), we got to sit on hard benches and were treated to a Sierra Leonean comedy routine. I’m afraid that most of it was lost on me as my Krio is so far pretty non-existent, but other people were laughing!

We arrived in Freetown around 10 pm and found a cab to take us to the guesthouse that Heidi had arranged for us. I can see already that it is always important to haggle on the price in Sierra Leone, and even more so if you are white. The cab driver started at 30,000 LE, but got talked down to 12,000.

The taxi ride itself was an adventure. Firstly there was both a driver and his assistant, as well as the 4 of us as passengers, so we were a little squished in. Then, the car stopped 4 times while we were in it, twice in the middle of the road. Apparently there was a problem with the fuel line (although I really doubt that is all that was wrong with the car). Finally we made it to the gas station where the taxi refuelled and managed to get to our destination without any more stops. When the cab stopped for the fourth time before hitting the station, the assistant who was sitting beside me and who was from Guinea so spoke French turned to me apologetically and said “African cars sont comme ca. L’Afrique, c’est difficile” (translation: African cars are like that. Africa is hard).