Week 1 - Getting Settled

Greetings from Sweet Salone everyone.  We've had a fantastic first week out here.  As it was our induction week, the objectives were clear: get to know each other; get to know our environment; reflect on our objectives for coming to Salone; and to acclimatise to our new surrounds.  I'm happy to report that we made excellent progress on each of these, and had a fun time in the process.

We spent most of the week at Tribewanted Sierra Leone, which is a eco-resort outside of Freetown.  It's hard to describe how beautiful this location is.  Virgin blue ocean meets unspoiled beach with a jungle infested mountain as a backdrop and a poor fishing village providing character.  Everything possible is done to limit the impact of tourist visits on the local environment.  Compost toilets provide fuel for banana trees, solar panels provide light and refrigeration, a deep water well lubricates the veg patch, the veg patch drastically reduces food-miles and CO2 emissions and most food is sourced from the local fishermen or at worst, the local market.  The word tribe is also not just a name - everyone contributes to the tasks required to keep the resort ticking over.  Visitors wash their dishes, clean the beach, serve themselves beer via an honour system and lug water to the bucket-showers.  While the showers aren't ideal, there are few more refreshing feelings than a cold shower at the end of a long hot day overlooking the beach as Venus edges up on the horizon.  Tribewanted was the perfect introduction to Sierra Leone, a country far more beautiful than I expected.

Our activities at Tribewanted were well designed.  Charlie and Alex, the co-founders of the Collective SL, led us through a range of activities and tasks that gave context to our sojourn.  What's the nature of community development?  What do we mean by social justice?  What are the objectives we aim to achieve while in Salone?  How do we think about culture and what happens when cultures collide?  These topics were very useful in getting us to put a framework around the challenges ahead.  We also covered Salone history and did some Krio (creol) language lessons and discussed our child protection policy.  There was lots of food for thought in these discussions and they provided the perfect context for the coming 3 months.  It wasn't all just hard work though - Tribewanted has too many attractions - so we played volleyball (I won every day!), swam, hiked, built boats (Ed and I invented a revolutionary new hull design called the Tri-Murnane, but it sunk quicker than the Titanic), raced in canoes carved out of tree trunks and sampled the local beer, which is 5%abv but apparently varies between 3% and 7% depending on the batch!

After 6 days at Tribewanted, we packed our bags and took the Craig Bellamy Foundation bus to Makeni, our home for the next 13 weeks.  Mr. Kamara, our driver, covered the 170kms as efficiently as a Kenyan long-distance runner.  Our first stop was our new house, a four bedroomed one story square block doused in pastel colours.  We meet Alisan and Fat Marta - our genial general helper / security guy and pleasant but shy cook, who is remarkably unoffended by her undeserved name.  Finally we were able to unpack and spread our clothes, gadgets and toiletries around our sparsely decorated bedrooms.  I managed to draw the second-longest straw and somehow managed to get the en suite.  Quite fitting for the elder-statesman of our team.  We drove around Makeni to get our bearings and stopped into the Clubhouse, where Ed is going to be working with Street Child Sierra Leone for some beers and darts.  The Guinness here is of Nigerian extract: strong (7.5%), flat (drank straight from the bottle), bitter (tastes like malt vinegar) and substantial.  34 years an Irish man, and it's taken a trip to the black continent for me to develop a taste for the black stuff. 

Our first day in Makeni was outstanding.  We met everyone of importance in the city.  We were treated like dignitaries. And we felt like celebrities.  We met the CBF team-managers, the deputy mayor, the deputy police commissioner, the provost of the Makeni Polytechnic, the general manager of Makeni Radio, the board of Centre for Democracy and Human Rights, the regional head of the voting commission and many more wonderful people.  Each one cancelled meetings to accommodate our unannounced arrival and welcomed us a thousand times.  They were impressed that we were volunteers (rather then well compensated NGO staff) and we shared lots of ideas on how we could work together to promote our shared objectives. 

On our second day, a football match was arranged in our honour at Wassum Field, the home of the Wassum Stars, our local Premiership soccer team.  The pitch is a stunning FIFA level 3D Astroturf and just before kick-off I estimated that there about 500 people in attendance - proving that African's will indeed watch any level of football!  Kick-off was at 5pm, presumably so that we wouldn't collapse in the 36 degree mid-day heat.  The pace of the game was good, with a lot of very talented players - we played with the general managers and took on the coaches, who were pre-match favourites.  Ed and I both had chances in the first half, but it ended scoreless.  I really struggled for breath after half time - I was covering the left flank on my own and the Harmatan sands blowing from the Sahara had to take their toll on my asthma.  I was subbed off to chants of "Johnny, Johnny, Johnny" and was met with a gaggle of children wanting to high-5 me, when all I wanted to do was drink some water.  As soon as I got back concentrating on the game, we got the breakthrough, Joe peeled of his marker at the penalty spot, crept towards the back post and directed a firm header in off the post!  After a fantastic celebration, we quickly scored a second and the bragging rights.  A truly memorable day - and at my level of football ability, probably as good as it gets!

On Sunday we woke to a breakfast of spicy eggs and local fruit, before heading to the St. Francis RC church for mass.  It was my first religious experience in Africa, and let me tell you that this is 110 minutes of prime-time entertainment.  It impacted all senses.  An array of colourful clothes, rhythmic beats and choiral singing, incense, water spray and three different languages.  Although there is still segregation (women on the right, men on the left), this is a female dominated event.  The choir, the alter girls, the ladies who bring the bread and wine to the alter and even the woman who ushers you up to make two mandatory donations.  It was all very enjoyable, even for a heathen like me, until I noticed that one of the poorer men had started having an epileptic fit.  We watched in horror as on of his friends helped him in to the recovery position and stuffed cotton wool down his throat to ensure he didn't swallow his tongue...but despite the fact that the whole congregation were now distracted and disturbed by this, the priest and his side-kick ignored the inconvenient distraction and continued to announce the upcoming weeks religious activities and last weeks church attendance.  Which brings me to my thought of the day: What kind of omnipotent, omnipresent, benevolent "god" would allow an incident like this to happen in a place of worship?  We were horrified. 

It's impossible to believe that only 10 years ago this country was being torn apart by a civil war.  If its atrocities and crimes hadn't been so well documented, I wouldn't believe it.  The people we've met are the most gentle, friendly and tolerant that I've encountered in the 34 countries I've visited.  Everywhere we walk people want to say hi to us, converse with us, ask us what we're doing here.  The children rush to shake our hands or point to us from a distance and shout "a puto", meaning "whitie".  Without TV, Internet, printed press and books, for many of them it's the first time they've seen while people in the flesh.  And they are clearly impressed!  There are other Westerners in town, but the NGO’s only see Makeni from the tinted windows of their sparkling new 4x4’s, and the expat miners only interaction with the locals is for the procurement of prostitutes.   The older teens are the exception, benignly observing our movements and occasionally nodding their head.  But that just makes them normal.  Everyone rushes to tell us how peaceful the city is and how safe we'll be here.  But we had figured that out from the warm welcome and honest smiles.  Only a week in and our fears about coming to Salone have been extinguished and our hopes of making a meaningful difference are stronger than ever.

We were scheduled to be on national radio for an hour last night, to promote the CBF and related community projects, but it was cancelled just two minutes before we were due on air.  You can’t take these things personally, after all, This Is Africa.