Monthly Archives: January 2018

Ghana Part III: Cape Coast and Sleeping in Tree Houses

31 Wednesday Jan 2018

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At the Cape Coast Slave Castle

The next morning I said goodbye to my lovely hut and outdoor toilet to get back on the truck and head east to Cape Coast. I did love my room, however, I had to employ a technique there that I hadn’t used since 2009 when I was in Nicaragua during a particularly hot and muggy spell of weather. Without a fan, which is really essential in the heat of the night, the only way one could fall asleep would be to get in the shower and get completely soaked with cold water, and then lie back down on the bed still wet and try to fall asleep before you dry off.

That technique helped me to fall asleep the prior two nights in Elmina.

Morning in Elmina at the market

Baby asleep with head all the way back while carried by mama

Woman carrying massive ice blocks on her head…Because, Africa.

Our journey out of town had us passing the exact same busy thoroughfare that me and the boys had walked the night prior – though being morning, it was even busier than what it had been. From our unique vantage point aboard the truck, it was super easy to get great photos of people passing by carrying massive baskets of fish, produce and other wares to sell in the market. The boats were heavily laden and still bearing their colorful paints and biblical names – headed out to sea as we drove by.

One of the amusing things about Ghana, given its dominant Christian makeup in the south, is that so many small businesses name their storefronts with a religious title. Here are a few examples of the names we saw along our journey:

“Thy Will Be Done Licensed Chemical Shop”

“Life in Christ Radiator Specialist”

“Merciful God Vulcanizing”

“God is My Provider Aluminium Works”

“If Jesus says yes, no one can say no market”

“God is Alive Curtains Internal”

“Charity begins at home drinking spot”

This defies belief. Hence, photo.

Special thanks go out to Mike for keeping a log of these gems.

Soon we got to Cape Coast Castle and unloaded for our tour of this castle – different to Elmina in that it was built specifically for the slave trade in 1610 and opened in 1653. On entering, we immediately saw the plaque commemorating the visit that Barack and Michelle Obama made here back in 2009.

Cape Coast Castle courtyard

Female Dungeon

View from other side of Door of No Return…where the ship would pick up the slaves passing through it.

The visit was just as haunting as my visit to Elmina, so I won’t recount my reactions here except to say that we were given a lot more free time to explore once the tour was over and I chose to go back into the dungeons alone and stand quietly in the darkness.

Even just in comparison to being down there with the group, the forboding and eeriness was far more palatable when I was alone and it was difficult to imagine the untold stories of suffering that were contained in those walls.

One item I failed to describe in my last post was the treatment of women in the female dungeons as sex slaves.  This was true in both Elmina and Cape Coast.  The governor, or any soldier residing in the castle could choose a woman to rape whenever he wanted.  The women would be marched out of the dungeon and selected from a balcony overlooking the courtyard.  She would then be washed thoroughly and brought to her captor to be violated.

On the one hand, if chosen, you’d be raped.  On the other, you finally got to bathe.

I know, not funny, and I don’t mean it to sound trite.

Many of these women became pregnant and would be taken from the dungeon to a separate building to give birth and then wean the infant, only to have it taken away from her once it could eat solid food.  She would then be returned to the dungeons or put on a slaver ship.  Later on, these “Mulatto” (their word, not mine) would be given an education in specially built schools and many went on to be leaders in the slave industry – seen as more elite and superior than their darker countrymen.

With Wayne and our guide

In comparison with Elmina, Cape Coast did house a well-curated museum regarding the slave trade and it’s impact on the New World and African American culture today. There was even displays of the branding irons that owners would use to be able to identify their “property” and visual representations of the inside of the slave ships with gut wrenching diagrams of how people were stacked.

I especially liked the room that chose to honor those African Americans who’s roots can be traced to those once in bondage and give credence to their accomplishments and continuing fight for equality. I will include a few of the pics I took here below.

Branding iron used on Slaves to mark as property…this one of the ATI company

After the visit we had only a short journey north to Kakum National park where we would be dividing into groups and hiking into the jungle for a night up in the tree canopy in the treehouses that offered a pretty unique place to sleep.

While waiting for dinner, Mike had the misfortune to step onto a wooden platform that completely gave way causing him to puncture his foot with something metallic, perhaps a nail. Watching him go down was initially quite funny until we realized that he was hurt – but after getting some alcohol to clean the wound and a bandaid…he still managed to power through and do the hike with us.

Sinead hiking to our Treehouse in Kakum National park

Treehouse in Kakum National Park

Kakum is home to a number of species including the pygmy forest elephant – but we were advised to keep our expectations very low for what wildlife we might be able to spot in the short time we were visiting.

The hike in was very easy and took just over an hour. It’s funny to me how much hikes are always made to seem so difficult and that they require such physical stamina by the hosts in countries where I am visiting – I guess it must mean that their average tourist is simply very out of shape because I find them to be generally quite tame despite their arduous descriptions.

There were around 14 of us staying at the treehouse that was a little bit of a further trek away – and in looking up at the structure, I did wonder just how safe it was for that many people to make it home for the night. Several people just brought their tent with them, but the rest of us made it up the eighty or so steps, trying not to think about how difficult it was going to be to have to come back down in the night to pee.

View from the forest canopy walk in the early morning

We formed sleeping mats in a circular fashion on the floor around the hut and tried to get set up for what was going to be an early night. After a well deserved Smirnoff Ice (Mike and I packed a few in that managed to stay cold) we headed out for a Night Walk with our guide, Sammy.

The night walk was mostly about hearing the sounds of the jungle and animals around you. It’s funny how without a headlamp, you can easily just be convinced that every creature is out to “get you”, when in reality, it is very difficult to spot wildlife with headlamps. We did get to hear the Hyrax – a rodent that is actually a genetic relative of the elephant make extremely high pitched sounds as they came down from the forest canopy to forage for food. We also managed to spot several bush babies, millipedes and an errant moth who wanted to fly into my bra for some reason – to which I emitted a rather loud shriek which in turn was received with various forms of mocking.

Overall, the experience in Kakum was fun and unique – if not exactly for its wildlife encounters then for its atmosphere.

Walking the canopy just after sunrise

In the morning, we did a walk through the upper tree canopy by walking along hanging bridges that were built from platforms to platforms. It was an early start at 0530, but how often do you get to see the sun rise from a tree canopy in a National Park in Ghana?

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Ghana Part II: Slave Castles and Photogenic Elmina Harbor

28 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by in Africa, Ghana

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Elmina had not really been touted as a destination in and of itself by the Dragoman Itinerary or trip description. In fact, almost nothing was mentioned of its stunning harbor that dramatically juxtaposed alongside its famed Slave Castle that I had read about when I was a teenager in high school.

It turned out to be the highlight of the trip so far.

That morning, all that had been organized for the group was a visit to 3 schools that had been built by a charity that Dragoman supports. The visit left me with very mixed feelings – in the first school, the conditions were ideal and the school’s facilities were superior to what I was lucky enough to experience in primary school in the UK. The kids were all clean, healthy, well-dressed with new shoes and new backpacks. When asked what the criteria was for kids to be able to come to this school, we were told that it was purely based on geography and whether parents could bring their kids to school. To me, just looking at the children told me that this wasn’t the case and that this was a group of kids from the elite upper-class persons of Elmina – who obviously deserved a good education – but why was a western supported charity helping kids who came from families that could already afford to support themselves?

The next school was far more moderate and struggled with class sizes of over 70 or 80 kids. It felt like we were diverting the children’s attention from their classwork, and so the visit didn’t sit well with me at all. In addition, these kids were some of the most aggressively “friendly” of any crowds of kids I’ve come across on this continent. When trying to leave, they practically clawed, scratched and grabbed at me to get physical hold of me, along with pulling off my hat and grabbing my hair. I didn’t appreciate that at all.

One highlight of the visit, however, was that this school itself sat on Elmina beach where a local team of fishermen just happened to be pulling in the day’s catch when we were there. It was a spectacle to witness as the men sang songs and clapped in time to create the unity and coordination necessary to pull in the thousands of tiny fish in their nets ashore. I managed to get a good video of the event which I will include here.

https://youtu.be/gFqBfDRylis

Once the visits were over (and they’d gone way overtime) we were hungry for some food and were dropped off downtown to get lunch and take a walk around Elmina.

Once we’d eaten, it became quickly obvious that there was so much here to see and do and the photographic opportunities in Elmina’s gloriously colorful harbor full of life, locals, and fishing boats coming in and out of the harbor demanded that the rest of the day be spent here.

I was also very keen to visit Elmina castle despite the fact that we were visiting the Slave Castle at Cape Coast the next day. Elmina castle is additionally historic because it wasn’t built specifically for the slave trade, but rather as a trading post for other goods’/commodities by the Portuguese in 1482 – 10 years before Columbus supposedly “found” Hispaniola.

I managed to convince Mike and “Precise” Peter (aka Pipi Lou Lou) to come along with me for the $9 tour of the castle and we further planned to make our own way walking all the way back to the beach that housed Stumble Inn and our accommodation for the night.

I could write a book about what visiting Elmina castle was like, but I will attempt to summarize my feelings/thoughts for you here in a more concise manner.   Much like visiting Aushwitz/Birkenau, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, or the Genocide Museum in Kigali – you cannot quite prepare yourself for the horror you feel when you can actually see a place that housed such a shocking testament to the cruelty, sadism and torture of living humans that other humans are capable of inflicting upon another group of people. And doing so without a sense of remorse or conscience. For me, it stirred up a lot of very heavy emotions and made me look at the history of my own nation with a new set of eyes.

Our guide was incredible, thorough and managed to infuse just the right amount of humor when it was needed so as to not detract from the serious nature of our visit. He did a wonderful job of giving us the preliminary world history that set the stage for the slave trade to begin in the first place – namely the decimation of Native Populations in the Americas due to European-introduced diseases, the noteworthy observation of the physical strength and working characteristics of the African people and a backdrop of inter-tribal warfare that set the stage for the creation of the slave trade, which was, in large part started by Africans enslaving other Africans in exchange for weapons to fight.

The Americas needed to build infrastructure and gather resources from their newly acquired lands. The Africans were warring with one another over land and resources in West Africa. The Europeans saw the opportunity for obtaining vast quantities of cheap, and subsequently “free” labor, by rewarding tribal leaders with weapons, and goods in exchange for their “enslaving” their enemy tribal members and bringing them, in chains, to Elmina and other slave castles along the West African coast to be shipped by the thousands to Brazil, South America, the Caribbean and only about 1/3 going to the continental United States.

For almost 400 years – men, women, and children were brought here against their will, separated, thrown in dungeons where a process of elimination would begin and only those “surviving” these harshest of environments would then be subjected to the grueling and inconceivably inhumane Atlantic crossing to their eternal servitude.

We visited both the male and the female dungeons at Elmina where up to a 1000 persons would be crammed, chained to another person at the wrist, feet, or neck for up to 3 months with little to no food, water, or chance to toilet/menstruate or wash. The ventilation was next to nothing with only tiny windows built into the rock, and these people were forced to live like this in almost total darkness.

What really hit me the most is when our guide showed us a section of the “floor” in the male dungeon that had actually been “cleaned/excavated” to show the original brick flooring. It was a good ½ foot lower than the rest of the floor, and he explained that we were literally standing on compressed faeces, urine, and human flesh.

A drainage system had been built into the floor but it was obviously not adequate to eliminate all waste. The stench must have been beyond imagining. In addition, the guide explained that if you wanted to sit or lie down, you would have to get the agreement of whomever you were chained to – and often this person didn’t speak the same language as you and moreover – he might have been from an enemy tribe. Sometimes, your chained partner would die and they would have to wait for a guard to find that person dead before removing him and throwing him into the ocean.

Once a ship was in the harbor ready to set sail for the “New World” – the slaves would be marched through dark tunnels to the “Door of No Return” where they would be stockpiled and chained like sardines end to end until the ship was full, totally unaware of the horrors that awaited them, and still separated from their families.

Our guide explained that it was sometimes during the rush and panic of getting the men and women onto the ships from these passages that families might be reunited for mere moments before being separated again on female or male only decks.

Even more chilling, if you didn’t see or meet up with your loved ones in the tunnels leading to the beach, then you would know that he/she didn’t make it out alive.

The Portuguese were replaced by the Dutch who were then replaced by the British who did the heavy lifting during the slave trade at Elmina. It made me sick to my stomach when after visiting the dungeons we visited the floor directly above the dungeons where the British soldiers had built a church directly over the heads of the persons they were enslaving and torturing. How a person could sing a hymn in praise of Christ with that misery below is beyond my comprehension and it filled me with rage.

If not more upsetting, above the church was the stunning floor that was the Governor’s quarters – palatial and airy with an incredible 365 degree view over Elmina harbor, the beach and the blue ocean – the color of which most of the slaves marched here never even set eyes upon.

The visit left me somber, but as I always feel when visiting important historical sites such as this – it is our duty as human beings on this planet to be informed of our bloody and barbaric history if only in order that it not be repeated. Unfortunately, given what is going on in Libya and in the global sex trade at this moment in time, it appears that slavery has not had its end, making such a site an even bigger duty to visit and ponder.

Once we left the castle – we were literally blown away by further exploration of the bustling life that was to be observed and photographed in the harbor and along the busy main street that marked our path back to the Inn.

Re-caffeinated albeit with slightly warm soft drinks, we three happily walked along smiling and chatting with the locals, high-fiving with the countless little children, and photographing the busy markets overflowing with fish and produce.

As the sun started to glow a little lower on the horizon, we took a daring early turn to the beach hoping against hope that we might be able to take advantage of the beach “wall” that had been created that year to help prevent shore erosion, but that also happened to provide a rather unique way to walk along the beach back to our accommodation.

The bet paid off and I had what turned out to be an incredibly memorable walk back along the beach as the sun turned a golden red and we got back to camp just as it set below the horizon.

I felt especially full and joyous from the day’s learning, and experiences. I would highly recommend Elmina to anyone visiting Ghana – just make sure you have longer than the one day we had!

Ghana Part I: Physical and Personal Journeys

26 Friday Jan 2018

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Tuesday the 9th turned into a super long, hot, and frustrating day of driving with a long sweaty border crossing thrown in for good measure. The guards at the Ghana border were quite funny though and kept telling us that all was good because we could finally stop having to talk in French and speak English again. “This is Ghana! We speak English here!” they kept saying.

We stopped at a market to do cook team shopping and I caught sight of an exact replica of the very first car I drove – a 4-door Silver Renault 5 from the early 80’s. I had a photo standing next to it and for some reason, it made me feel rather nostalgic.

We stopped on the side of the road to make lunch in the middle of the day and quickly were told to move by a local because an armed robbery had taken place in that exact location the day before. It was a little unnerving but I was super impressed with how efficiently the group quickly packed everything away in just a few minutes so that we could find a safer spot to eat.

We arrived at our destination for the next two nights – Elmina’s Stumble Inn – when it was already dark. Most people set up tents on the beach but I was feeling quite tired and stressed out and so I opted to upgrade to my own beach bungalow which came with its own private outdoor bathroom. I include photos of that here because it was truly a unique room to enjoy.

The reason for my stress was quite a personal one but I will share it here as I will surely look back upon it with relief rather than embarrassment. The truth was – my monthly flow was severely overdue and I had finally broken down and bought a pregnancy test. Due to the stress I’d experienced prior to my departure, my last menses was extremely light – and that fact combined with the calculation that I was now 18 days overdue had caused me to become completely paranoid that I might be pregnant. That is not something I would wish upon anyone traveling on an overland truck in West Africa. Denial was proving to be much more than a river in Africa, and I had been putting this off for days now – convincing myself that there was no WAY I could be pregnant with my ex’s baby given the fact that I have an IUD – and ignoring the fact that I had been throwing up in the morning the past few days and feeling more bloated and emotional than possibly any other time in my life.

Thoughts of what it would MEAN if I were pregnant had been haunting my every waking moment for days and it was my friend Jack who convinced me after I’d broken down crying to her in Grand Bassam that it was time to buy a test and just find out for sure.

The test was negative.

On the one hand – it was a huge relief. And on the other – an emotional kick in the gut. If a baby had found a way to form in my body, at 41 years of age, despite the measures I’d taken to prevent it, I’m almost certain I would have had the child. That possibility wiped from my mind, I immediately could stop ruminating on the “what ifs” such a scenario would impose upon my life and all of its repurcussions.

Additionally, it led me to be even more worried about my physical health. I had never before been more than a few days late. I was as regular as a clock. Clearly, I had mentally underestimated the extreme stress and heartache I’d been going through – but my body was not so easily fooled.

In the end, it wasn’t until Accra 4 days later that my period finally arrived. I don’t think I have ever felt so relieved and happy, mentally, hormonally, physically and emotionally.

Côte D’Ivoire Part III – Ridiculously expensive churches, poor chickens and hungry crocodiles

23 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by in Africa, Cote D'Ivoire

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The former president of Cote D’Ivoire, Felix Houphouet-Boigny had an ego problem. In 1985, he decided to spend an inordinate sum of government money building a colossal catholic church in his newly formed capital of Yamassoukro, built on the site of his ancestral village. This Basilica is larger than the Vatican’s St. Peter’s (which is the basis for its design) and is the largest church in the world.It was quite a stunning sight for two reasons. One, just the scope of the building itself, its lavish stained glass windows, and the architecture itself is incredibly impressive. And, more importantly, in an impoverished and struggling country where 3-700 million 1985-dollars could have built infrastructure, and hundreds of schools, universities, clinics, hospitals, and communication facilities to better the lives of it’s people (half of whom are Muslim anyway), it was the grossest and most disturbing misappropriation of financial resources I’ve ever come across.

I took some less-than-totally-respectful photos in front of the basilica to illustrate how I felt about this. And Catholicism in general (apologies for offending any sensitive sensibilities here…)

We took a few hours to rest from the heat of the day at the hotel before re-boarding the truck to visit the Presidential Palace and its famed crocodiles that get fed each day at around 5pm – supposedly to entertain the local tourists as much as to keep the crocs alive themselves.

On arrival, we were approached by armed guards who informed us that the driveway leading to the entrance of the palace was off-limits. Also, the caretaker of the crocodiles was off work on the weekend and so there was no feeding for us to view.

Poor crocs!

Someone in the group immediately suggested that we buy some chickens and feed the crocs ourselves, as is described in our lonely planets. The group came together and it was decided that Mathias would go to the local market and purchase a couple of chickens with our pooled funds. However, on learning that these chickens were going to be fed to the crocodiles ALIVE, a few members of the group started to get very upset and express themselves loudly in protest of how “cruel” and “inhumane” such an act would be.

Explanation of the fact that crocodiles would not eat an already-dead chicken as well as pointing out that having one’s head cut off to be eaten by a human or being crunched instantaneously by the powerful jaws of these ancient beasts are literally one-and-the-same was not helping to alleviate the situation and their vehement protests got louder.

I found the whole thing to be quite funny and an altogether entertaining insight into both crocodiles and human psychology. Eventually, the few folks who objected were told to remove themselves from the area and we all anxiously awaited Mathias’ return with the doomed birds.

Jodie threw the first chicken in and it managed to swim for a few seconds before it was promptly chomped in one enormous bite, feathers and all. It was over in an instant.

The second chicken was not as lucky and ended up traumatized just from being thrown up in the air instead of laterally into the water, resulting in it coming right back to the gate where we were standing like a boomerang! The guards then threw it in one more time and it was all over in a split second.

Seven crocodiles and two of them got to eat that Saturday.

Yamassoukro reminded me very much of Warsaw, Poland during the communist era. Large soviet-style concrete buildings devoid of art in their architecture, wide tree-less streets with broadly spaced urban design. And then there is the famed Presidential Hotel which reminded me of the state-ran Orbis’ hotels that we often had stayed in when I was a kid – with its red carpeted walls and enormous 80’s decorated lobby and monstrosity of an oversized concrete “block” on top of the hotel giving it the appearance of a giant mushroom.

To my delight, a group of us stopped here on our way back from the chicken massacre. Even more thrilling was the fact that I could order a gin and tonic WITH ice at their bar while we waited for the aforementioned mushroom-like restaurant to open. The hotel had a gigantic pool in the back and I sort of wished I’d come here earlier and crashed it.

Dinner that night was extra fabulous. We ordered perhaps our most expensive meal yet (around $10-15 each) and I had Rotisserie Chicken with vegetables and mashed potatoes followed by chocolate cake and real coffee. In case I haven’t mentioned it, “coffee” at breakfast was always Nescafe instant…so this was a lovely treat.

It was also a really good group dynamic and I will have very fond memories laughing with Sinead, Mike, Jack, and Mike (the driver) from that evening.

The following day’s journey (Jan 7) would take us back to the beach at the former capital of Ivory Coast – Grand Bassam with a stop for lunch on the way in the country’s largest and most modern city Abidjan. As we drove in, Peter and I contemplated what we really wanted to eat and we both agreed that Crepes would be amazing – and within seconds we saw a sign for a Creperie!!

We quickly availed ourselves with a small group to the Crepe restaurant which was ran by a French guy. I split a savory and a sweet crepe with Wayne and they tasted so good they brought tears to my eyes. We also both licked our plates – the food was that good.

On arrival at our beach hotel, we jumped into the pool with cold beers to alleviate the heat of the day and the long drive in the truck. Thousand of locals were playing, swimming, and socializing on the beach and I had quite an enthusiastic welcome from many of them when I decided to take a walk later that afternoon in my bikini and sarong.

It’s amazing to me how women here come in all shapes and sizes but it is so very rare to see a man with an ounce of body fat or sans six-pack abs. Men here are so athletic it is ridiculous. And it makes for very lovely people-watching.

Enough said.

The day’s culinary delights continued that evening as Danny and I led a group of hungry lesser spotted Dragos to the Vietnamese restaurant we had read about and had what then became the best meal of the last few days. Which even included a velvety creamy chocolate mousse to finish it off. I was super stuffed and happy when I hit my pillow that night.

The next day was relatively uneventful except for my TIA diarrhea which came back again with a vengeance in the middle of an art gallery that we were looking at. Thank God there were restaurants within a 50 meter run that had decent toilet facilities!

Since Grand Bassam was the capital in the late 1800’s – there were a number of older buildings from that era worth a visit, some of which had been converted into museums, others that had trees and vines growing out of and around them. It made for a pleasant stroll, if not interrupted by my growing bathroom requirements which led me to stay close to my room for the remainder of the afternoon.

On our last night in Ivory Coast, we ate at a beachside restaurant where I think we broke records for how long we waited to be served food…2 hours and 15 minutes – at which time the server brought bread ALONG with all of our main dishes!!! Why, oh why can’t Africa realize that a) if food is going to take that long to prepare because of a lack of staff – simply inform guests of this ahead of time and b) if it is going to be more than 2 hours before guests get food…bring the bread out FIRST….

So frustrating! This. Is. Africa!

Squid on the beachHaving said that, along with almost all of our meals in Ivory Coast, the food was delicious and the giant prawns I’d ordered were extremely tasty and had an incredible buttery/garlic sauce on them which almost made up for the pain in my belly from waiting in hunger for so long.

Côte D’Ivoire Part II – Korhogo artists and culinary delight

22 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by in Africa, Cote D'Ivoire

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Korhogo Textiles

Thursday, January 4.

It was a treat to stay at our lovely and high standard accommodation of La Rose Blanche Hotel, where we enjoyed our first internet connectivity since we departed on the 19th of December.  Having been offline for that long, I was nervous to check my email, messages, bank accounts – by this point, I don’t want to be reminded about anything that has to do with home.

I am here, being present, and not futurizing/worrying.

Luckily, upon checking, everything seemed to be in order and I happily uploaded some blog posts!

The hotel even boasted air conditioning where you could actually SET the temperature you wanted to achieve in the room, as opposed to the a/c simply progressively making the room colder and colder and colder until you wake up with ice on your nipples and get up grumbling to turn the damn thing off.  Yay!  Plus, there were hot showers, separate beds, BBC World news, a good restaurant, AND Wifi!!!  It was too good to be true and I was super grateful!

Wood Carving artist in Korhogo

The shopping day actually turned out much better than I expected it to.  We first saw demonstration from an artist who painted woven cloth with symbols and characters from Cote D’Ivoire’s folklore – and these pieces, somewhat like Batik, are designed to be hung up as artwork.  I bought a few tiny, colorful designs with the intent to frame them for my house.

We then went to a mask making/wood carving center where more Ivorian Coast MEN were making art (women cannot make art in this particular tribe and I couldn’t get an intelligible let alone compelling explanation as to why the vagina quells all artistic endeavors) out of various soft woods (ha! Get it?) and then drove further out of the city to a village where the men make beads out of clay and then hand paint them with naturally produced dyes.  I did buy several necklace/earring sets here as they were vibrant and unique.

Men making beads from clay in Korhogo

After our shopping cardio, we thankfully found a lovely pizza joint and indulged our cheese-deprived bellies with some deliciousness before heading back to the hotel for personal time.  I spent the evening blogging and then ordered a chocolate crepe with Jackie as we were still so full from lunch that ordering a full meal just didn’t make any sense.

Friday the 5th was going to be taking us to Yamassoukro or “Yakro” as its affectionately called – the official capital of Cote D’Ivoire.  This was also a very long, hot day on the truck but it was enormously helped by the fact that Sinead had agreed to let some of us “rebels” who wanted music play a selection of road trip songs from Spotify in the back of the bus.  It was a lot of fun and many passengers joined in and sang along to some great covers that spanned a few decades.  Gotta love Spotify.

Masks for sale in Korhogo

We stopped for lunch in Boukare and enjoyed our first red meat of the trip in the form of a Schwarma – a pita wrapped around steak and veggies.  It was delicious!  Food was definitely a highlight in Cote D’Ivoire.  We even got ice cream to go for the truck as we pressed on, only stopping briefly to watch a set of rural workers weaving cloth in the forest.  It is fascinating to watch as these men (yep, again) spun and ran their weaving machines manually at such a pace that it was hard to actually discern the precise nature of what made it work.  It was intoxicating and confounding to watch.

Best thing I’ve seen on a bike yet…sewing machines! For on-the-go mending entrepreneurs!!

We arrived at our accommodation in Yakro relatively late and after a quick meal of salad, I happily chilled with another passenger watching half of the movie “Blood Diamond” in the lovely air conditioning.  It was quite an experience re-watching that film, 12 years after it was first released, and AFTER having been to Freetown now in person.  Disturbing scenes capturing the civil conflict of Sierra Leone in 1998 reminded me of the horrific stories Charlie told me about the RUF chopping off people’s hands when they took over the city, occupying it for 3 terrifying months.

Even though I don’t believe the movie was made in Sierra Leone, they did a great job capturing its essence and vibe I think.

In the morning, we would be visiting the Basilica – the largest church in the whole world which was estimated to have cost a whopping 3-700 Million Dollars to build.

Cote D’Ivoire Part I – Bamboo Forests and Roof Surfing

19 Friday Jan 2018

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Roof Surfing on the truck

January 1, 2018 turned into the best transit day I’d had yet on the truck.  We had been warned that it would be excruciatingly slow going due to the fact that the road from Nzekore to the border with Cote D’Ivoire had taken almost ten hours the last time the truck had made the journey.  Lucky for us – the dirt road had been worked on somewhat and although not tarmac’ed yet, we made amazingly good time allowing us to cross the border a day ahead of schedule.  Since this was a very rural border crossing, we were able to use the “Roof seats” on the truck.  They are amazing and sitting up there on the top of the truck gives you an incredible vantage point as well as the sense, sometimes, that you’re riding a literal rollercoaster.

We journeyed through a hauntingly beautiful bamboo forest, and through some really lush tropical forests, interspersed with lively villages where the children and adults inevitably came running out to wave at the truck and us sitting on its roof!

Beautiful Bamboo Forest as we left Guinea

Getting a bit too close to the local flora

We kept on driving after the formalities of the border were fulfilled (a humorous moment was when Sinead was told that all the passengers who had listed their occupations on their entry forms as “retired” had to list their actual former occupations, and we all had a good laugh shouting out absurd careers for each individual.  “Wayne?  Exotic dancer!  Andreas?  Oh oh!  Beautician!  Graham?  MI6!!”…

You get the idea.

That night we bush camped close to a village that Sinead had arranged for us to have a tour of in the morning.  The villagers had recently had to move each and every home, being promised 200,000 CFA’s (about $400 USD) per person if they moved to allow for the Chinese construction of the new highway which engulfed their former village.  It was sad to learn that so far, the villagers had not received any payment, and whether it was the Chinese construction company or the government that owed them the money was unclear.

Another night, another bush camp with village spectators!

The tour of the village was well worth it and it was a great use of some of the time we had gained by not being stuck getting to Cote D’Ivoire in the first place.  We headed to Man (I know…what a strange name for a city, even in a country where they speak French!) and our cook group did some shopping and we all were feigning with excitement at finding a grocery store that had such variety of the foods and goods that had been absent in Guinea.

Crossing a treacherous wooden bridge…all passengers had to get off the truck while it was maneuvered across

Cote D’Ivoire has turned out to be a gastronomical delight and the meals I’ve had there were the best of the trip (so far!)  The supermarket even had fresh brie cheese and red wine for sale – and since I was going to be cooking that night for the group – I couldn’t help but buy a small wedge which I promptly ate on the bus as we continued on in the direction of Korhogo.

Before lunch we stopped at the waterfalls outside of man and took a swim.  Well, I should say a few of the ladies chose to take a swim and the men stayed dry and watched.  I was not about to pass up an opportunity to get the dust and grime off of my body…some people are just far more comfortable being dirty and smelling bad on this trip than me.

At the waterfall in Man

After our swim we made a potato salad in a field next to a school and ate in the basking hot sunshine.  As we headed out of town, I had a scary and shocking moment befall.

Sitting in the front row of the truck on the left side, I rolled the window all the way down as the truck got up to full speed to enjoy as stiff a breeze as possible due to the humidity and heat.  Since there was no oncoming traffic and we had barely even seen another vehicle these past 24 hours – I luxuriated in the cool sensation of the wind by sticking my left arm fully out of the window and “rode the air” with my hand letting it refresh me.

Then, almost immediately after I pulled my arm back into the truck, a bus overtook us, hurtling at breakneck speed from out of nowhere.  It was going so fast and so close to the truck that it actually smacked the left hand side mirror to where it snapped back and had to be manually pulled back – luckily it didn’t break.

I was stunned and just turned my head to look at Jack sitting on my right and she said “Oh, My God!  I’m so glad you pulled your arm in when you did!”

No shit.

Truck with the open window seat at the front being demo’ed by Jack!

For the next few hours, I was rattled just considering what might have happened should I have waited a few more seconds before retracting my beloved and vital appendage.  Thoughts of exactly how my arm would have broken, or whether it would have been swiped cleanly off leaving me to bleed out to my inevitable death were hard to put out of my head.

In any case, I was very lucky and I have avoided that seat on the truck ever since.  Miller, a passenger who had started the trip in Senegal came to me later and said that was the first time he could recall the truck being overtaken like that since the very start of the trip…so he understood my not giving a vehicle coming from behind on the opposite side of the road any weighty consideration.

Thankfully the rest of the drive passed without event and we arrived at our second Bush Camp location which was, for once, not within hearable distance of a village – and so we were able to make dinner without onlookers.

Village Life

I shared my red wine with my cook team while we worked away – I was also very excited to make custard from scratch and serve it hot for dessert with chopped bananas.  I used to make custard at home as a child, and while it isn’t very popular as a dessert in the States – It really is one of my favorites!  It turned out extremely well – smooth, no lumps, and just the right thickness.

I think with the Brie, wine and heaps of custard, I had really overdone things and once I’d finished dessert, I immediately abandoned my washing up, running into the tall grass in search of some private place where I might empty out the contents of my belly.

Which I did.  Another three times.  From both ends.  Oy vey!  And being sick, throwing up and having diarrhea is bad enough in a hotel room – but it is additionally challenging in the bush with no running water.  I went to my tent early and laid there, awake, much of the night waiting for further rumblings to attend to.

The kind of crazy-overloaded vehicles we see everyday on the roads

Luckily I felt fine by the morning and we had a long long and quite uneventful day driving all the way to the north to Korhogo – close to the border with Burkina Fasso.  Uneventful except for the fact that we got stopped at police checkpoints four times and once had to report to the local police station where Sinead was interrogated about our group’s “Purpose” for being in Cote D’Ivoire.  Apparently the road we were journeying on is frequently used to move drugs.

This journey eventually brought us to Korhogo – an important art/textile/handicraft center in Cote D’Ivoire and many of the passengers were very excited to go shopping.

I wasn’t one of them 😉

Guinea Part II – Ebola and Vine Bridges

16 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by in Africa, Guinea

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Vine Bridge in Guinea

On the morning of the 29th, I woke up groggy and tired from a very fitful and restless sleep.  That day we had some more heavy miles to cover before reaching the town of Gueckedou – only made famous as being the site of patient zero during the Ebola outbreak of 2015 when a young boy got bitten by a bat and came down with the virus.  Additionally, we were staying at the Hotel Fatou Rose which was set up as the logistics central point for dealing with the crisis in the town.  Our guides told us that the hotel used to have a swimming pool, but during the Ebola outbreak, scared and ailing victims hurled themselves into the pool seeking relief from their burning symptoms and the pool had since been covered in concrete.

Fatou Rose Hotel in Guedeckou with the newly covered pool

Unfortunately, I found myself coming down with a nasty cold, probably hastened by my very cold night two nights before.  After checking in, I gladly took a bucket shower and crawled into bed.  With my symptoms worsening, I decided to spare my roommate the prospect of sharing her bed with me while I was hacking and sniveling and chose to upgrade to my own room for another $20 USD.  After the hotel in Faranah, this place was a palace, but I still had a hard time getting the staff to give me the basic necessities that one simply takes for granted as being included with a hotel room for the night:

  • A top sheet (it is very rare in West Africa for a bed to have a sheet underneath the top blanket/cover)
  • A bucket of water (most hotels in Guinea don’t have running water)
  • A bin for rubbish and toilet paper since the toilet didn’t flush
  • A fan
  • A different fan because the first fan I was provided didn’t have a power cord that fit any of the power outlets in the room
  • A towel
  • A key that can be removed from the lock (yup, you read that right)

It has since become habit to check for all of these items when one arrives in a hotel room in West Africa.  And if you’re lucky enough to have air conditioning, it is additionally important to check for whether there is a temperature setting, or whether the only recourse when you are awoken by arctic frigid conditions in the middle of the night – because it just keeps spitting out progressively colder air like a refrigerator – is to yank out the plug.

A work of art, despite not working

That evening, a wedding reception was held in the hotel’s grounds and a particularly beautiful woman dressed in an exquisitely beaded gown walked into the bar area.  Another passenger and I introduced ourselves and complimented her on her dress before my friend asked if she might take her photo.  Her girlfriend seemed non-plussed and ran off and got the attention of a man who promptly walked over and informed us that he was this woman’s husband.  “Ok…”, I thought, “What does that have to do with anything?”  He then proceeded to explain with a great deal of agitation that if we wanted to take a photo of his wife, we would need to ask his permission.  This is the kind of behavior you read about happening in remote muslim-practicing areas of the world, but it is another thing entirely to come into direct contact with it in such a way.  I chose to say nothing and remove myself from the situation, in case the wife was “blamed” for attracting attention, but my friend chose to give the man a piece of her mind.  While he didn’t speak English, her tone left him in no doubt as to the injustice and disrespect she believed him to be showing.

After a brief dinner, I passed out around 8pm feeling quite sorry for myself, but grateful at least that my experience at the Fatou Rose Hotel wasn’t of life threatening Ebola-like symptoms but just a common cold.

Old signs like this one educating people about Ebola prevention are everywhere in Guinea

The following morning, still sick, we headed out after cook group shopping toward Nzerekore where we would be spending two nights, and ring in the New Year!  We had a lovely stop en-route hiking to a 100-year old Vine bridge that we each got to cross across a river.  Despite being ill, it was so nice to be off the truck and getting some fresh air and exercise.  The countryside was jungle-like and beautiful albeit very hot and sweaty.

Beautiful Guinean Landscape

Guinea is definitely the most economically impoverished countries we visit on this itinerary.  In some places, we were able to purchase a small local bottle of beer for about $0.60.  The currency, like in Sierra Leone, only afforded really small value notes – at 20,000 Guinean Francs, the largest note only carried $2.10 in purchasing power.  Compare this to Cote D’Ivoire (where I am writing this entry from) where the Central African Franc, guaranteed by France, has its largest note as $10,000 which is worth just over $18 USD.  That’s almost ten times the purchasing power of the largest note in Guinea.  What ends up happening is very interesting in psychological terms.  It is similar to the original transformation all westerners go through when they first arrive in West Africa and begin converting prices from their home currency to the local one.  While haggling, you inadvertently sometimes are arguing over pennies rather than dollars.  As soon as you arrive in Cote D’Ivoire, it becomes much easier to spend larger amount of cash, and prices are roughly 2.5 times what they were in Guinea.

Typical Guinean village with round huts

In Sierra Leone and Guinea – sometimes to pay for a larger item, such as a hotel room, one had to count out multiples of 10-30 notes to pay for something because there were no larger worth notes.  In Cote D’Ivoire, the problem is reversed – Notes signify more money, but getting change for small items is next to impossible.

It’s an interesting issue to have juxtaposed as we progress through each country.

In Nzerekore, I opted to upgrade to my own room so I could really focus on progressing to a full recovery – and it turned out that I got a lovely two-room suite to myself.  We had some drama among the ladies of the group due to who our leader paired up each of us with each night – and it certainly was something I could have done without and was quite stressful.

New Year’s Day traditional practice of demanding money for getting through a village by the “devil himself”

I really needed a few restorative days and while many left to go on a hike the next day, I chose to sleep in, write some of my blog, and get lots of rest and fluids before our New Year’s Eve party.  Sinead had made fajitas, and a pineapple rum punch.  It was lovely and there was dancing and some celebrating to be had.  Tried as I could to stay up till midnight, I ended up retiring around 10:30pm hacking away and still needing more sleep.

Guinea Part I – Truck problems, the warmest welcome and horror hotels

13 Saturday Jan 2018

Posted by in Africa, Guinea

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Beautiful Guinean Landscape

On Boxing Day we were scheduled to drive west back to the main road between Freetown and Makeni and then head north-east toward Kabala, staying in a local guesthouse there.  Unfortunately, the truck started making some very strange noises on the road and we pulled over several times for Sinead and Mike to get under it and assess what was going on.  It seemed that it had to do with the drive shaft and some loose ball bearings (I know nothing of truck mechanics, so I apologize if this makes little sense!)

We got to Makeni and were told to take a really long lunch while they found a garage to determine what repairs, if any, were necessary.  A few of us went to the Club restaurant where proceeds for our meal went to benefit the street children of Sierra Leone project.   As typical, the meal took two hours to arrive at which point we had to down it in 15 minutes flat and then bee-line it back to the truck.  As it turned out, the truck needed to stay to be worked on and so Sinead was going to try and arrange accommodation for the 22 of us in Makeni for the night.  This turned into a rather logistical nightmare with taxis back to the truck then taxis to a hotel where she’d been told there were double beds but they were only single.  Then she had to go in another taxi by herself and find another suitable hotel and then bundle us all over there.  By the time we arrived, we were hot, dusty, tired and ready for a shower.

The hotel was quite nice and afforded good views over the city of Makeni.  This region of West Africa suffers from what is known as the Hamattan winds in the dry season which brings dust and sand from the Sahara and sweeps it all across this region.  As such, it is quite hard on the respiratory and immune systems, not to mention it mixes not so well with cities already congested with carbon smog to create the most toxic combination of air.

After a refreshing shower, we took a meal in the hotel restaurant and had a great belly laugh listening to Kelly improvising spoken subtitles for a hilarious Nigerian soap opera that was on TV.  I laughed till I cried.

The following morning we were told that the issue with the truck was not so serious that we couldn’t continue onward with our journey, but we wouldn’t be able to use four-wheel drive, and the truck would need to undergo extensive repairs, probably once we got to Accra.  So, for now, it was “on the road again”!

Many of the days in the early part of this overland itinerary are spent on the truck for long distances, and this was no exception.  We passed the time creating nerdy travel quizzes with each other (which is way fun when you have this many well-traveled/seasoned overlanders in one truck) such as “Name the 9 countries in the world that only contain 4 letters in the name, and “Name all the countries that don’t have enclosed letters of A, B, D, O, P, Q, R, in their name.”  I think we pissed off some of the other passengers when the 3 Americans started quizzing each other on the states and their capitols.  And so we went back to being quiet again and trying to stay in our seats as the truck bumped along across the rough roads.

This evening was another bush camp, and again, we managed to attract some local observers who wanted to watch us cooking our dinner and setting up our campsite with western efficiency.  After dinner and whisky around the fire, I made my way back to my tent and ended up shivering all night as the temperature fell way below what I was expecting/what I was told was normal for this region and time of year.  I had bought a special light sleeping bag that’s only rated to 55f and by 4am I had put on four more layers of clothing including putting my feet/legs into my light down jacket and zipping my hood up over my head.  Even then it was brisk.  To add to the weather – we were all awoken around 1am by what sounded like the Islamic Call to Prayer – but turned out to be a funeral for the village chief nearby.  It was so loud, was broadcast from some very hefty speaker and went on for at least two hours.  Very bizarre to hear this in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere.

The next morning, still wearing my long sleeved shirt, fleece and long pants, we boarded the truck and drove on to our first border crossing into Guinea.  Guinea has to be one of the poorest countries I’ve ever visited.  We drove past village after village where several hundred families live in small communal roundhouses with one well or water pump providing fresh drinking water for the community.  By nightfall, you see the smoke coming from wood burning/charcoal fires as families prepare their evening meals and people walk around in the dark or carrying battery operated torches.  No streetlights, no power outlets, no running water, no tv – none of the day to day things we take for granted having within arms’ reach in our lives.  It really boggles the mind how so many of the world’s people live like this and seem so happy.  Having said that, if one is born into a community like this, then this would be the only reality you would ever know and it would therefore be much easier to accept and assimilate.

The border crossing was in an extremely remote section of the country and the border was literally a single rope strung across the ground between two flagpoles – there was even someone’s washing hanging out to dry on one side of the “barrier”.  Though we were able to check out of Sierra Leone, our leader had to check-in at a police station on the other side and took one passenger with her since he’d had issues obtaining his visa in advance and was going to try to gain entry via a transit visa.  Luckily, he was successful, but in Sinead’s words “there was no other option.  It had to work and that’s all there was to it”.  She really is a super smart and competent young woman and I greatly admire her capabilities and her can-do no-nonsense attitude.

Once into Guinea, the roads were so bad it was impossible to read or nap or do anything besides hang on for dear life as our bodies were jolted from side to side and up and down.  The further back in the truck one sits, the worse the being thrown around action is.  It can be quite funny, especially when an unexpected pothole is struck suddenly and you go flying.

Soon enough we arrived in Faranah – not exactly a tourist hub of a town, many residents had never seen tourists before and once again we enjoyed a continuing celebrity status as we drove in.  Our guide warned us about the hotel and told us to keep our expectations very low as it was of not a high standard.  Not a high standard?  This hotel has got to be one of the worst I’ve ever stayed in – it more closely resembled a years-long ago abandoned crack den.  Our room was filthy, had no running water, not even a bucket of water to wash in, no mosquito netting or screens on the windows, no fan, no electricity before 7pm (though this was pretty standard in Guinea and Sierra Leone) and the mattress was a thin layer of foam across old wooden planks.  One of the guests also found a hand sized spider in her room.  The staff tried to assist as best they could to the grunts and complaints from our group as everyone tried to wrap their heads around the conditions – fetching us buckets of water and answering our questions about power/fans/netting etc…most of which were answered in the extreme negative.

After doing some much needed handwashing, and a cold bucket shower, some of us walked the dusty road into town, passing by a strangely papered statue of an life sized elephant along the way.  Getting to the market, we watched and observed the frenetic selling over pots of boiling vegetables, zooming motorcycles, trash and the sounds of hundreds of people bartering and going about their evening.  I asked a local (in French, as Guinea was a former French colony) if she could recommend a good restaurant and she informed me that I would need to go to Konakry for that.  Konakry is the capital of Guinea and was about a five hour drive from Faranah.  Luckily, we found a nice street stall where a young mother, with a small baby strapped to her back, served us a very tasty and fresh meal of boiled potatoes, onions, tomatoes, eggs and mayonnaise.  It was surprisingly good.  While the others headed back to our drug den of a motel, Mike – the other American on the trip who happens to also be only a month younger than me – and I decided to walk a little more around town and make our way back a little more slowly.  It was a hot sticky night when everything clinged to your body and just dodging traffic and people gets to be quite tiring.  On our way home we were stopped, not once, not twice, but three times for photos with locals who wanted to pose with us.  It is so funny having people come running up to you and asking if they can take their picture with you just because you’re white and/or foreign.  One guy also insisted on planning a kiss on my cheek for his selfie.

Me and the mob of kids in Faranah

Just when we were getting close to our Ritz-Carlton accommodation, an entire soccer team of kids came screaming and running up to us to have their photos taken.  Here are the results of that “mob” encounter!

That night we all sat under the outdoor rotunda drinking beers and telling stories until quite late because no one wanted to go to their room.  A few people decided to stake their tents there rather than risk the unhygienic conditions of the beds.  I thought It was all quite funny and decided to embrace the experience, taking a valium before crawling into my self-contained sleeping sheet and trying desperately to fall asleep despite the hot, still night air.

Sierra Leone Part III – Tiwai Island: Christmas and Monkeys

10 Wednesday Jan 2018

Posted by in Africa, Sierra Leone

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Arriving by canoe on Tiwai Island

Tiwai Island is home to the densest population of primates in the world.  Red-tailed/black and white colobus monkeys, chimpanzees, and spider monkeys abound.  I was looking forward to a respite from the traffic heavy city to a totally natural environment that we had to get to by boat.

The drive, as is the case with any overland travel in Africa, was arduous.  For those of you unfamiliar with overland truck travel – we travel in a 4×4 overland truck that can accommodate up to 24 passengers and crew.  Everything we need to camp in the bush is on the truck: tents, stoves, utensils, gas, water jerry-cans, a fridge, plus we collect firewood as we go.  The passengers are divided up into group for truck jobs such as sweeping out the truck at the end of a long drive day; and we have cook groups made up of 4 persons who rotate to prepare meals on the road for the rest of the group.  Cook groups plan and organize shopping in local markets for gathering supplies for dinners, breakfasts and lunch; though sometimes we don’t get included meals which we would then purchase locally at restaurants – when we can find them.  West Africa, especially Guinea and rural Sierra Leone – see very few tourists.  Many villagers and especially children have never seen white people before.   As such, we are often greeted with the kind of enthusiasm that is reserved for celebrities.  Everyone waves at the truck – sometimes a local woman will start dancing with excitement and start shrieking with euphoria and spontaneous eruptions of applause are not uncommon.  It leaves one feeling both honored to be visiting such a remote location as well as providing a sense of privilege due to the lack of melanin in our skin that is quite uncomfortable to say the least.

Villagers greeting the truck

About half of the nights on the trip are spent camping in tents, and the other half is spent in local guesthouses/hotels which have ranged in quality from very basic to downright worse than camping.   In Guinea, for example, all of the hotels carry a double bed only – and since we all agreed to “share” – the women and the men are assigned a roommate and one is “forced” to make do sharing a bed or choosing the floor if that is too unsavory an experience.  This requirement has set off a number of problems within the group and tensions have surfaced resulting from fractions between certain members of the group not liking other members enough to sit next to them for a 10 hour long, hot, dusty truck journey – let alone a shared bed at night without so much as a fan for comfort.

Having said that, vast majority just accept it or choose to upgrade to their own room.

Building a fire at a Bush Camp on Christmas Day

Roads in this part of the world are notoriously bad and the further back in the truck one sits, the more one feels the impact – quite literally – of the bumps and potholes encountered along the way.  On bad road days, one really can’t nap or read a book – and so many hours are spent watching the countryside rolling by or engaging your fellow passengers in conversation.  Sometimes, conflicting desires between silent contemplation and conversation come to a head and a compromise is reluctantly found.  It can be quite a tiring and physically brutal way to travel.

I knew full well about these drawbacks – but the adventure and allure of traveling somewhere that other travelers rarely go was too appealing.  And so…off we headed to Tiwai Island.

We arrived a little late on schedule with the sun having already set.  Armed with just our daypacks for 2 nights, we boarded small power boats and set off from a jetty to the jungle island of Tiwai.  It was one of those moments when traveling where you can’t believe you’re in the middle of nowhere with the stars bright above you and nothing but nature and zero electricity awaiting you.  Crossing the mighty river you feel a bit like an ancient explorer and its very romantic.

On arrival, we set up tents under structured platforms and then enjoyed a very late dinner of bony fish and coconut flavored rice.  We would be enjoying a full day of structured activities and so I headed to bed at a reasonable hour.

Campground on Tiwai Island

Despite the oppressive heat of the day, I was glad for my 55 degree Fahrenheit rated sleeping bag and woken up in the night with a sense of chill in the air, I gladly crawled into my bag.  The inevitable “need to pee in the night” got me up around 3am and I walked to the bathrooms by headlamp listening to the sounds of the animals around me and my snoring fellow passengers.

The following morning was Christmas Eve and we gathered at 6:45am for a nature walk.  After about an hour of not seeing anything but hearing the crying calls of hornbills and monkeys, we finally saw a group of red colobus monkey effortlessly jumping from branch to branch in the canopy overhead.  We saw the white crested hornbill in its impressive display of winged flight and took some pictures of the giant trees that I’d only ever seen before in Cambodia, enmeshed with the temples at Angkor Wat.

After breakfast and some free time, four of us took a boat back to the mainland to enjoy a village tour which turned out to be fascinating.  Our guide explained that the 300-person village was primarily Muslim, but that they drank alcohol and were planning to celebrate Christmas.  We saw their school, vegetable gardens, how they grew rice and processed it, their beds with mattresses filled with grasses and dried leaves, the community water pump, as well as meeting and greeting with many adults and even greater masses of children who constantly harangued us for attention and photos – shrieking with excitement when we showed them the taken pictures on the camera screen.

Family with infant on Village Tour

Excited village children

While waiting for a canoe to take us back to the island – we had a good laugh when our guide excused himself to “make a call” for the boat to come.  He walked to the edge of the river and literally made a loud patterned cry, cupping his hands around his mouth.  We had all assumed he was going to call someone on his cellphone but we were mistaken!

Later that afternoon, during my favorite time of day – the “magic hour” – we went out on four person canoes to explore downriver.  There wasn’t much to see in terms of wildlife, but the atmosphere and cool breeze from the boat was definitely worth the $10 it cost for the two hour trip.

Canoe ride on Tiwai

Definitely one of the strangest places I’ve spent Christmas Eve – we gathered around the fire after dinner and sang Christmas carols and told stories about our personal Christmas traditions.  It was a fun evening – the highlight of which was listening to our 68-year old Spanish passenger Carme tell hilarious inebriated stories from her childhood when Spain was still under rule by Franco, lying to get a visa to enter the United States and refusing to serve a racist customer at her first job as a waitress in LA.   She has quite the personality and is easily the most loved member of the group.

Our Canadian tour leader, Sinead, came and announced that the villagers had invited us to spend Christmas morning and lunch with them.  It was an offer we could hardly refuse, despite concerns I had about any awkwardness that might result from two very different sets of people coming together to celebrate a common holiday which has widely differing expectations in terms of how it is recognized.

Children fascinated with my hair on Christmas Day

My fears turned out to be largely unsubstantiated and it was a delightful, if exhausting morning.  We were literally besieged with snotty nosed children all clamoring over the women in our group…some of us got groped, had our hair pulled and ten children grasping at our fingers looking to hold our hand as we headed off to the area designated for the party.

I found myself rather attached to a little girl who didn’t offer a single word and seemed to be very picked on by the other kids.  She seemed sad and in need of some affection so I sat with her for some time giving her some needed hugs.  At least she smiled when I did this.  Music was played and beer brought out – and those passengers who still felt rhythm in their feet got up and danced in the jungle with the villagers, united in the common celebration that Christmas still is – even if presents and holly, and mistletoe are absent.

Little girl on Village Tour

Quite exhausted but with filled hearts, we boarded the truck after finishing a delicious lunch of fried beignets and freshly cooked (and slaughtered in our honor) chicken.  We had a long drive in the direction of Makeni to complete – and since we were delayed in our journey, the plan was to find a new, good spot to bush camp for the night.

These plans made sense until you took into account that most open countryside is dense forest and/or tall grassland – not ideal for pitching tents to accommodate 22.  And we had our own Christmas dinner shopped for and to prepare for.

Jack taking pics of village kids

 

Late in the day, we pulled off the main highway at a number of promising looking locations that proved unsuitable upon further examination.  Being told there were several villages with flat ground up ahead on a dirt road, we took a 20 minute detour only to find a village all out and dressed to the nines celebrating Christmas in the open air of their local soccer field.  The entire crowd of at least a hundred came running up to the truck and started whooping and hollering in excitement at seeing us.  It became quite apparent that if we asked to “borrow” their soccer field for the night, we would be besieged with people utterly adamant in their curiosity to not give us a moment of peace.

So we pressed on as the sun began to set.

Kids playing on Christmas Day – Mike photobombs too…

After another ten minutes or so we came across a different villages’ soccer field with only a few individuals roaming around.  Their shocked faces turned to bemusement, suspicion and incredulity as our fearless leader asked if we might be able to pitch our tents in their field.  Trying to explain tents to Sierra Leoneans was rather difficult and we were asked several times what our “purpose” there was?  That we were just driving through West Africa on our way to Ghana did not seem at all plausible to these villagers, but they acquiesced and invited us to use their soccer field.

Little by little, as we poured out of the truck and began pitching our tents and preparing our evening meal, the villagers came out in growing numbers to witness the spectacle that was us.  Rarely have I felt so self-conscious, but by the time we served up the pit-roasted chicken and grilled stuffing to each other but a crowd of at least 50 were simply standing in awe of us and I got the strongest sense of what it felt like to be a chimp at the zoo.  The villagers didn’t grow bored and just kept watching us for what felt like hours as we moved on to dessert and whisky.  Of course we wanted to share our meal with them – but had we done so – we might have set off a mob with people all grabbing for food.  There wasn’t enough to feed both groups anyways, so we ate, as best we could under the ever so watchful eyes of our new neighbors.

Making Christmas Dinner with a crowd of onlookers

In setting up my tent that night I also got a little surprise of my own when I found two hapless lizards whom I had accidentally prematurely murdered when I rolled them up into my tent on Tiwai that morning.  Luckily for me, one of the Peters on the group was kind enough to extract and dispose of the poor things for me while I grimaced in disgust from a distance.

Ewwwww…..

And so, Christmas was had and enjoyed by all in a most unforgettable and strange way.  My second Christmas in Africa in three years.

Sierra Leone Part II – Peninsula Beaches

08 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by in Africa, Sierra Leone

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River No. 2 Beach, Freetown Peninsula

On the morning of the 20th we left for the 90 minute drive to the stunning beach at River No. 2, stopping en-route in one of the most frenetic markets I’ve ever experienced in Africa in a town called Waterloo.  In spaces where people are so closely packed that you have to squeeze your physical way through…mini vans arrive blasting their horns causing the already tightly packed crowds to jam ever more tightly together in the space created only on each side of the vehicle.   It was madness and I quickly made my way back to the truck after my only needed purchase of toothpaste.

Outdoor showers and bungalows on the beach

Stunning landscape and mountains jutting from the sea in Sierra Leone

The beach at River No. 2 was absolutely stunning.  It was clean and mostly trash-free with a string of bungalows lining the length of the beach where several of us also chose to pitch tents.  The next 3 days was spent in a blissful non-routine of sleeping in, having a very leisurely omelet breakfast (the leisure brought on by the length of time it takes to make food as much as our own sense of relaxation) swimming in the turquoise warm waters, chatting with new friends over beers, and dinners of grilled shrimp.  It was rather magical and a great way to begin a 48 day overland truck voyage.

Even Charlie joined us for some fun in the sun and rather reluctantly allowed the four of us ladies to convince him to actually go into the ocean.  Like many Africans, Charlie didn’t know how to swim and had spent most of his adult life living within a few minutes’ drive of this gorgeous beach without so much as setting a toe in it.  I was so proud of him (and us!!) for getting him to enjoy the water so much after much encouragement, that within a few hours he was jumping and body surfing the waves like a pro.

Charlie gets in the ocean with the ladies: Roni, Jack, and Kelly

First he was afraid, now he was jumping in the waves!

The Christmas holiday in Sierra Leone brings with it a party season and every Thursday-Saturday night, giant beach based parties are planned with loud music, dancing and partying.

On our second night on the tranquil beach, we were caught off guard seeing vans and people arriving to assemble a giant stage with even bigger speakers literally within a few feet of our accommodations.  In earnest requests with the manager, all 22 of us had the laborious task of moving to the south end of the beach so that we wouldn’t have to face brain-blasting music until 4am for the subsequent two nights.  We all wondered: why on earth wouldn’t management have simply informed us of the planned party when we checked in the day before?  As with many things in this part of the world – it appears that such matters do not occur to staff in the service industry because the tasks of the current day are all that consume their thoughts.

Stray dogs on the beach

In any case, I was sad when it was time to leave River No. 2 and head to the wildlife hotspot on Tiwai Island – a mere 10 hours’ drive away.