Latest from Freetown - Week 3
Greetings from a humid and troublesome Sierra Leone with car problems, garden wildlife and a palaver in Bo.
A very rough drive to Baw Baw through red, mud torrents and across places where the road used to be. Sadly the village suffered two deaths the previous week, one natural, the other not quite, so as we pass through we pay our respects to bereaving relatives and leave a small gift.
On arrival at the cottage garden is now full of flowers and between showers a succession of tiny, turquoise butterflies hover over the blooms. A very shy family of small monkeys feeds on the trees but are soon gone.
Returning to Goderich the following day, a puncture. The spare was illegal and flat so we had to send a local lad on an ocado (motorbike), with wheel on his lap to get repaired. A big snag was that we couldn’t find the key to the locking wheelnut so could not remove the punctured wheel. A big hammer and chisel from a passing friend solved the problem. Sadly the new tyre bought to replace the illegal one deflated overnight so its back to the dealer!
Have a fantastic week and best wishes from Sierra Leone.
Mike.
Latest from Freetown - Week 2
This week in glorious Goderich, with terrific thunderstorms, final round-up at university and an ‘outbreak’ of seaweed on the beaches.
Not unusual throughout the wet season but pretty spectacular ear-splitting explosions sparking the night sky over a sleeping village. Windows blown open to drench whole rooms in minutes, zinc rooves shed serrated jets from every house scouring the foundations of roads and walls for miles. The dawn shows the cruel damage of a two hour storm from which no one escapes. For the main universities now is the time for their annual purge of ‘fake’ students. In their final few months students are finally ‘exposed’, already having been allowed to join classes as well as paying their fees (non-refundable!) for the previous years and now are finally brought to justice. A kind of justice maybe!!
In the last few weeks many of Sierra Leone’s beautiful beaches have been covered with thick, brown seaweed, allegedly due to some form of eutrophication from mining effluent brought to the coast. After three weeks of complete indecision and a lot of…. ”Who did this?”, it seems that some beach communities have used it as a blessing, raking it all together and putting it onto their farms to promote better yields of cassava.
Have a wonderful week wherever you are, Mike.
Latest from Freetown - Week 1
A big week here in hot and very wet Sierra Leone, with visits to the local bank, meetings with the Ministry and the end of Ramadan.
Finally got to see the Minister of Lands on Friday. ‘How de land Mike?’. ‘Problems’, I replied, ‘the land you gave us now has a house built on it’. ‘Ah yes we did have other clients! We’ll try for another place and send one of our surveyors who knows the area’.
We were offered the ‘very flat’ summit of a local mountain and an area only partly owned by one of the banks; neither offering much security for our future. The only remaining option will be for us now is to rent a property and start from there.
Muslims fast from 5.30am till 7.10pm every day throughout the month of Ramadan, (August 1st-30th) and today is prayer day when they break their fast. One problem is that many Muslim shops close, some for several days, whilst other, non-Muslim shops remain open. It’s a bit of a nightmare not knowing when and where to shop, but the one good thing is that it reduces our spending.
Have a wonderful week and keep the prayers going.
Thanks,
Mike.
Volunteers and staff in June 2011. Haja, Jacky, Cristina Bennett, Steve Atyeo, Su Adkinson and Samuel Babir, Ide Peterson, Justine Cutler and houseboy Ishmael.
Director goes out Freetown
Mike will search further ‘up country’ than he has before to find that perfect place where there is a need and a desire for a school to be built.
Updates will follow after his return
