Freetown is fun again!

Day: 19
Location: Freetown, Sierra Leone
Weather: overcast and comfortable, but no rain
Kilometers: 150
Hours: 6
Health: perfect
Accomodation: Place Guesthouse
Price, room: 30K LE x 2 = 60K LE
Price, water: 3K LE
Price, beer: 2K LE
Shower: no
Morale: 8
Total spend: 142K LE

AW: It is amazing how much the landscape has changed in the short distance we have covered south. In Senegal near Dakar, it was desert scrub, with controlled brushfires being the primary way to make the land fertile enough for farming. As we made it toward the Casamance, there was progressively more greenery, more and taller trees. Bissau had a little bit more of a jungle feel, and the Futa Djalon region of Guinea (near Labe) was mountainous with lots of vines, dense forest, and red earth. Conakry had a tropical feel, but was totally crushed by the city so it is hard to be sure.

But crossing the border into Sierra Leone the landscape was full blown palm jungle, with large pools of standing wattter filling the massive potholes in the dirt road. Freetown is reminiscent of pictures I've seen on Rio, with a combination of shacks and jungle following rippling mountains ascending out of Destruction Bay.

We had an ongoing struggle to get to Freetown from the border after we just missed a slightly cheaper minibus, and chose instead to take a car - faster at 3 hours for the trip (they claimed). Loaded, the car was really low, with no suspension to speak of, so we averaged 10 km/hr for the first half of the trip. Also, in a car made for 5, they had fit 8 adults and a child (someone was sharing a seat with the driver).

The car had problems and we switched to a different one after 4 hours, and then that car had problems and they dumped us in a slow minibus that almost took us to central Freetown, and we walked the rest, arriving at 4PM after a 9AM start at the border 150 KM away.

Freetown reeks of sewage, but there is an efficient waste collection service so the streets are spotless. The problem is that many of the concrete slabs covering open sewers are broken or missing, so a painful and disgusting accident is never far off if you don't watch your feet. The density is similar to Conakry (where a large number of Sierra Leoneans we met had fled during the war), but it felt a bit more threatening (i.e. more than one person yelled “fuck you let's fight!”).

Grid power seems unpredictable given the reliance on generators, yet there are streetlights at night. Based on the UN human development index, Sierra Leone is the second poorest country on earth, after Niger and followed by Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea Bissau.

Evidently there is an anti homosexual law on the books here that prohibits two adults of the same sex from sharing a hotel room, thereby doubling our accommodation expense and making this the single most expensive night.

We changed the last 30K CFA once we determined there was no real ATM, but we still don't have enough cash, so we will try a credit card cash advance tomorrow when the bank opens, before defaulting to those sharks at Western Union.

We saw the cotton tree, which may be 500 years old and dominates a central intersection in its enormity. We also saw the law courts, statehouse, and port where freed slaves arrived. We also saw a few buildings still riddled with bullet holes from the major assault on Freetown during the war. It is all picturesque, especially from a distance.

Like Nigeria (according to two Nigerian girls staying in our hotel), Sierra Leone loves its megaphones and miracle healing evangelical churches. We wandered into a service be cause we heard the music from far away and determined that it was a nightclub. It was three stories packed, with speakers blasting everywhere. We made quite a scene, but it was easily subsumed by the ruckus.

We had dinner at a local fast food chain that was out of almost everything on the menu ("Rice? That's finished. Meat pie? That's finished."). The power went out as we walked in, but it was just a generator change over. Generalizing from 2 data points, the food is bootleg here.

We caused a more scenes in pursuit of s few Star beers at some streetside bars, and then at a more formal bar, but no problems.

GB: The highlight of the day was definitely the bars, although the cotton tree was pretty cool. We ended up speaking to 2 guys about the war. Pretty horrible stories, even though they seem to be among the lucky ones. We then saw street kids beating each other up over what was described to us as a very small amount of money. The fighters were separated, but this country still bears too many scars to be able to hide them.

We then went with our friends to the big bar in the vicinity, Star Bar. And not down the dark alley where one of the 2 wanted to take us. Trust index took a big hit right there. Once inside though, it was lots of fun, although we were definitely the attraction of the night.

The latent defiance in peoples' eyes proved us right in our assumption that we were in somewhat uncharted territory. We therefore decided to not depart these guys from their perception that we were ex-military.