Long Time

It’s been a long time since I last sat down to write a piece here. I have been extremely busy here in Freetown and in Kenema The street children centres in Freetown are nearly all underway and we are currently in negotiations for a final plot of land for the last shelter. In Kenema the water and sanitation projects are going well and we have been planning the programme for next year. I hope to introduce a number of new more sustainable methodologies that have been promoted by the UK’s development agency DFID and UNICEF. All interesting stuff and hopefully will lead to us securing a big chunk of additional funding. Settling into life here in Sierra Leone and have decided to sign on for at least another 6 months with the programme as a fully paid-up member of staff.

I haven’t taken much leave so far and looking forward to holidays at Christmas and early next year. In August I visited Benin, Togo and Ghana. I found out that it is not that easy to travel between Anglophone and Francophone West Africa, in particular from Freetown. I had a bit of an epic journey getting to Hugo’s place in Benin. It started with getting the helicopter to the airport in Freetown, a real old Russian boneshaker, not a relaxing 10 minute flight. Then catching a flight to Accra, spending the night and setting-off at the crack of dawn in bush taxis across Ghana, Togo and finally arriving in Cotonou, Benin. Well worth it though!

I have to say a big thank you to Hugo, Pauline, Blaise and Emanuel for their great hospitality during my stay in Benin. Paul was starting his West African Odyssey from Cotonou when I arrived and so joined him on some of his journey.

Benin is the home of Voodoo, and previously the centre of the slave trade, so plenty of grisly sites to behold around Cotonou as well as good surf. After checking-out the snake temples, slave forts and surfing down south we went up north to the lands of the Somba. Here we hired motorbikes and cruised around the countryside visiting markets, strange millet-beer bars, weird village discos and stayed the night in a Somba ancestral home, which Paul set about demolishing; feeling sick in the middle of the night he managed to knock down part of a wall.

Togo was a brief visit where I did a day or two of hiking in the hills north of Lome, which was pleasant enough. Ghana was a bit disappointing as the weather was poor, but plan to go back to Ghana and up to Mali for the music festival near Timbuctu.

Today is a national holiday as it is the official inauguration of the new president, Ernest Bai Koroma. Although there were plenty of agency security warnings over the election period and the following presidential run-off it has been largely peaceful with no serious violent incidents. Freetown has got a lot busier with the end of the election period and the rains. The expatriate community here have been making-up for lost time with the end of security lock-ins with plenty of evenings out on the town to celebrate.

Got to get back to practicing my French for the upcoming trip to Mali,

Alex