Long roads

I was originally going to start this entry by linking my Guinea and Sierra Leone narratives a little by a discussion of political culture. I was going to say how stark the difference was between Guinea and Sierra Leone on this front. I was going to talk about the pervasive spirit of resignation in Guinea, especially when contrasted against Sierra Leone, where people complain endlessly, seemingly because they still see hope of change.

I still stand by those impressions. But right now, all I can do is raise a glass to the thousands of people who gathered in a Conakry stadium and told the military regime that they didn't want crazy Captain Camara to stand in the elections. The glass goes even higher for the more than 150 people who were killed when the soldiers opened fire.

The saddest thing about this is that I'm not sure their sacrifice will accomplish much. I hope it will. But the feeling in Guinea when I was there was an almost obssessive need to see some good in the Camara regime, all evidence to the contrary. We all laughed at the hours of paranoid rants that took over the TV every night, but we all hoped that some kind of corner might be turned. I worry that people will simply resign themselves now to yet another tinpot dictator. Let's see if we perhaps can help a bit, either by keeping Guinea in the news, or by pressuring the Canadian government to make some international noise. Unfortunately, I can't help but be a bit pessimistic about the chance of success. I loved Guinea, and it's people - but it often felt like a society slowly stagnating its way downward.

Cross the Sierra Leone border, and that impression changes quickly. I spent a while trying to figure out why. Some of it was symbolic - Sierra Leonean towns are (for West Africa) shockingly tidy places, full of billboards building awareness of AIDS or peacebuilding, or what have you. Part flowed from long talks about politics with everyone (especially taxi drivers, who are the same everywhere), where I got a sense of profound annoyance that things weren't developing nearly as fast as people expect that they could. Some of it was an awareness that Sierra Leone has such obvious potential, especially as a tourism destination. Some of it was just intangible - hotel rooms where things were more likely to actually work, prices that hadn't shot up since my guide was written, etc, etc. In any case, Sierra Leone makes a solid first impession.

Funny, considering that the first thing I had to do was bribe a police officer for an entry stamp. The relevant officer at the border being "away", they sent me to the Police Station in Kabala, the first town where I stopped, where I had to part with 10,000 Leones (about 4 dollars) to hear that thunk in my passport. This was on top of the 15000 that I had paid in bribes at various stages of the motorbike journey in from Guinea - and according to my driver, we got off lightly. The cops in Sierra Leone are well known in the region for being a bit grabby, and so they were - though it wouldn't be until I hit the road out to Liberia that they tried to hit me up again. Unlike Guinea, the place is no republic of checkpoints.

My first stop was the town of Kabala, which remains my favourite upcountry town - set in gorgeous hills that I spent a while scrambling about, with plenty of good eats and small shops around. I sat around town sucking up the local gossip (in English, my oh my!) and getting my head around the partially-English rhythms of Krio, which would throw me off for the rest of my time there.

From Kabala, I made my way to Makeni, the provincial capital and another pleasant-ish town (Sierra Leonean towns being a little bit better laid out and built than their Guinean or Senegalese counterparts). It was just a night in Makeni, though, before I sped myself off on the long, dubious voyage to Outamba-Kilimbi national park.

I say dubious, because in the rainy season, this one's a doozy! The first phase was 6 hours to cover the 50 mile road to Kamakwie, crushed into the hard benches of a poda-poda (minibus). From there, it was another 16 miles by motorbike, which involved a river crossing that would normally be done by ferry. The river, though, was running too high for the ferry, so we loaded ourselves, our motorbike, and several other people into a dubious dugout canoe and were paddled shakily across. Arriving un-drowned and somehow not toppled from the motorbike, I spent 3 nights in the park, taking canoe trips and hikes with the guides, watching the monkeys, and mixing myself camp cocktails from cheap sachets of gin and local ginger juice. Animal sightings, other than monkeys, were minimal - the elephants and hippos are mighty elusive in the wet. It was still a phenomenal place to hang out for a couple of days.

From there, I caught a moto all the way back to Makeni, which my rear end thanked me for (poda-podas being the only method of long-distance African transport I truly loathe), and one excellent bush taxi ride down a great road later and the mountains of the Freetown peninsula were rising in front of me.

I got lucky with my arrival. I would stay in Freetown almost a week, and sunshine was mighty rare indeed. When I rolled in and was buzzing through the backstreets to my hotel, though, the whole city was bathed in golden afternoon light.

For reflections on life in Freetown, I strongly encourage you to head over to Mike Brown's excellent series of posts at his blog, 42.6. He does the deeper issues far more justice, with far better writing, than I can manage. I, then, will keep my reflections on Freetown nice and subjective. So, what is Freetown, to a tourist?

The short answer is, phenomenal. Unlike so many African cities, whose only shreds of character come from the remnants of colonial administrative buildings, Freetown's backstreets are visually fascinating. There are tons of old houses, built by the Krio (settlers, too, but freed slaves) in the 1800s. Central Freetown feels like a city with a history, more even than Dakar does. The setting for the city is also pretty damn gorgeous, with big green mountains running into the ocean (the only place in West Africa that this happens). I spent a good while wandering up into the hills for some glorious views over the city. There is a huge length of beach in the city itself, along the edge where most of the foreigners congregate - but Lumley beach is nothing special, and I chose to spend most of my city time downtown. I stayed in an area that became an open-air food fair a night, with piles of grilled meat and delicious snacks up by candlelight. Between that, and kicking it on the hotel balcony, watching the street craziness, I was set.

Freetown is a bit of an odd place. I saw more white people there than I have in quite some while -but only once did I see one on foot. All the rest of the time, they were driving by in SUVs. There's a vast crowd of development workers, mining people, and other folks in town but (with my utmost apologies to the hard-working non-SUV people at JHR), they definitely seem to live in an extra-strenght bubble. Double-sad, since Freetown is a phenomenally safe city to wander around.

I had visa runs to do and plenty of errands to run, but I did manage to make the 30 minute hop out into the hills outside of town to check out the Tacugama chimpanzee sanctuary, which takes in rescued pet chimps from around the country and prepares them for the wild. Or at least theoretically - they have yet to rerelease any, and that part of their plans seemed pretty seat-of-the pants. Nonetheless, the lengths to which some of the staff went during the war, running rebel lines to get supplies to the chimps, were pretty damn heroic. I arrived just too late for their morning tour, which was a blessing in disguise, as I killed the wait time by following some hiking trails they had marked out through old krio villages (with churchs that could be in Southern Ontario) and round to waterfalls and the like. Excellent times.

Finally tearing myself away from the delights of Freetown, I headed down the peninsula to little Bawbaw village, about a kilometre up the coast from River No.2, the most famous beach in Sierra Leone. The wonders of the off-season got me a beachside guest house on Bawbaw beach (gorgeous!) for 20 bucks a day, all meals included. And what meals they were. I haven't eaten so well since I left home. A typical dinner was: one huge fresh crab. One huge fresh sole. Couscous with peanut sauce. A whole papaya, sliced. I was in blissful pain for a couple of days, once of which I passed on the white sands of river 2 itself - which is, indeed, quite spectacular.

A complex plan to hop a fishing boat from the village of Tombo foundered on the boat's decision to not exist that week, so I found myself poda-podaing to the city of Bo, which was a surprisingly pleasant place to hang out, drink a cold star beer with the locals, and celebrate the end of Ramadan by stuffing myself silly. My onward plans from Bo were also foiled by the absence of boats, as after a couple hours by motorbike to get to the jumping off point for Tiwai Island animal sanctuary, we arrieved at the office to find that for the first time in 10 years, the river was running high enough to close the park. Nuts. So, instead of a couple days of monkey chasing, I got to see the obscure back roads from Bo to Kenema! Not the greatest deal, but not bad.

I only stayed one night in Kenema, at an especially dubious disco-hotel which kept me from much sleep (but did provide a parade of prostitutes to knock on my door, oi). Kenema is a diamond town, and not an especially lovely place by any standard, so I was happy to hit the road for the Liberian border in the morning. The road out, as the road in, was a doozy of mud and mess, but we reached the border town by 5 PM. I didn't feel like trying to make Monrovia that day, so I crashed in a cheap border hotel and was glad of a blissful night's sleep.

And that, there, brings the Sierra Leone narrative to a close. I'm trying hard to hold back for a second from a million digressions, so look back here soon for a Liberian catch-up.
Peace
Josh