Yello from Freetown!

Here, and alive. The trip getting here was quite the adventure. Monday morning I got up at 4, met my classmate Barrett at the train station at 6, we were at the Manchester Airport by 8, and caught our flight to Brussels at 10. We landed in Brussels only to discover the airport was closed...because it was raining. No torrential downpour or thunder or lightening, just a light drizzle that caused everyone in Brussels to stop what they were doing for 30 minutes. When life finally resumed, we made it to our Sierra Leone flight just in time... to sit in the plane and wait an hour for takeoff. During this time, a rather large drunk man in our row fell asleep and was snoring more loudly and vigorously than I thought was humanly possible. Everyone chuckled at him, and then the majority of people sitting nearby migrated towards empty seats elsewhere in the plane.

Six hours later, we touched down at the Lungi Airport. Walking down the stairs of the plane, we stepped straight into a wall of humidity. Then we stepped into Sierra Leone’s international airport, which is a large crumbling room with 4 passport stalls and a luggage carousel. After passing through immigration, I was asked for my yellow fever vaccination certificate, which I didn’t bring. I was shuffled over to a folding table with lots of papers and some packaged syringes on it. Four men, one wearing a white lab coat, proceeded to tell me I needed to buy a yellow fever certificate for $10. I asked when I was going to need it again apart from going through immigration, which I’d just done. They were all rather sheepish and quiet, and I walked away. Barrett and I grabbed our bags and were told to go through customs, which consisted of a bored man behind a counter waving everyone past. 

Once outside, we were bombarded with men yelling and pushing us to various water taxi and ferry services, (required to get to the mainland). A man told us the ferry was only $17, while the water taxi was $40, so we headed to the ferry booth to buy tickets. We were about to step up to the counter when a comment my Dad made last week about paying a little more for something that’ll get you to point B  in one piece went through my head. At the same moment, Barrett turned around and said, “Do you mind if we go with the water taxi? I just have a better feeling about that.” We went with the water taxi. We took a van down to the water with various businessmen and aid workers from our flight. The first boatload of people left, taking my bag with them. Half an hour later, we were told to board, which involved walking down a rickety dock in the dark and onto this bizarre slippery plastic raft leading to the boat, with waves crashing around on either side. I think it was the only time I was relieved to have an African man grab me and loan me his arm for a while. Only after making it onto the boat did I realize the surprising amount of elderly men heading to Freetown – surprising considering the ‘hazing’ process you go through to get from your plane to wherever you’re sleeping that night. An aid worker on the boat told us he brought a middle-aged friend last year who was blind, which I found amazing. Or maybe not being able to see the danger you’re actually in would make everything much easier..

We reached Freetown and I was miraculously reunited with my bag. We also found our driver and a Restless Development worker, who had been waiting for ages and graciously took us to our flat. Throughout this entire experience, it was probably 95 degrees out with mind-boggling humidity. We took a walk through the house and met our roommates, the Cockroaches, who are large and twitchy and quiet and generally hang out in the kitchen. The exhaustion of the day helped us sleep through a cat fight, dog fight, thunderstorm, and the first hour of roosters crowing right outside the windows. It also made us forget we hadn’t had dinner, which was harder to ignore in the morning when we had 4 Fig Newtons between the two of us for breakfast.

We spent most of our first day at the office, which is a sign of things to come and means that we will be learning a lot and working hard. They order lunch for us though, which is great, except that I mistakenly agreed to rice and fish, and forgot that fish in Africa is typically served in its original form, staring hauntingly at you from its bed of rice with a toothy frown. Yummm. 

We returned home last night with an overpriced box of imported mac and cheese to make for dinner, only to discover the gas tank for the cooking hob is empty. After eating cornflakes and peanut butter and jelly, we sat down to watch some Arab tv, only to discover the tv isn’t working. So we sat down with our laptops, only to have the power go out 5 minutes later. Oh Africa. I have missed you. 

It was so surreal flying in over northern Sierra Leone at dusk, seeing familiar red dirt roads and green palm trees and tin shack roofs, and reminding myself I was in a different country, on a different coast of the continent, than what I’ve experienced before. And it is an altogether different universe from the one I exist in at home and in the UK. One that i love but nonetheless requires adjustment.

 I have photos but I can already hear the internet connection I am working with laughing uproariously at the thought of trying to upload them in less than 7 hours. 

You all feel very far away right now, but know that i miss you and am so thankful for your thoughts and prayers and notes. Sending lots of West African love!