Ireland

My trip home from Africa includes time in Europe staying with friends. It's been a lot of fun so far and feels like I'm adding some vacation to the end of my time working overseas. My vacation:

• A couple days in France last week to see some friends, relax, and have some great food (chocolate, lots of it).
• London last weekend hanging out, seeing markets, eating curry.
• This week it's a couple days in Ireland. More relaxing.

Next it's back to the real world.

Europe

Made it out of Sierra Leone (Freetown-Dakar-Gran Canaria-Brussels-Paris) and I'm so happy to be able to drink water from the tap.

It's the little things.

Too much to record

As I get towards the end of my work here in "Salone," I see that there's so much I want to record and remember.  Everything about my daily experiences -- the walk to work, the street corners I know so well, the people I recognize, the greetings I've learned, the shortcuts I use, the bread vendors and peanut vendors and snack vendors I've met, the coworkers I greet, and on and on -- all these are things that I want to be able to remember and capture but that I know I won't be able to.  It's frankly made me a bit frantic in these last few days as I know that some of the details of this amazing experience will slowly but surely begin to fade in my memory.

I want to write about all of it and take pictures of everything but I know that this won't be enough.  

It's not all glum here, by any means!  But as I reflect on the unique opportunity that I've had, I realize that the one thing I'll miss the most is simply living in a very different reality.  And no amount of recording can capture that.

Flying out Monday, then several days in Europe.

  

Favorite picture

Self-portrait on ocada.

Some notes

• Men here sometimes hold hands with their friends out on the street. It's a scene that takes getting used to given the implications this would have in the U.S., and it's really quite nice to see, in my opinion. Women do it as well, though less frequently. I gather that one sees this in other countries on the continent as well, even very homophobic ones. This says something about perception / customs across cultures.
• I don't think there are any traffic lights in the whole country. I've been all over Freetown, the capital, and haven't seen any. I've traveled to the 2nd largest and 4th largest cities and saw none in either of those nor en route. Given electricity is only periodic, I guess this makes a lot of sense. And it's something for police officers to do.
• One of the microfinance institutions I'm working with gathers in a circle each morning and sings the group's mission statement. Singing about "delivering a financial product efficiently and effectively to meet our clients needs" is a great way to start the day, no? I think Citigroup, B of A, et al. should consider starting their days in a similar manner.

More on drinks

Part of the reason grabbing a Coke is so great and so rewarding is that alternatives for getting a drink aren't great. Water is sold in restaurants and on the street in packets, like the one here.

The packets are the size and shape of a large bean bag, they're completely sealed, and they cost about three cents. To drink them, one bites off the corner and squeezes/slurps. It's mildly amusing the first few times.

However just like in the States, packaged water isn't necessarily spring water. It can simply be taken from the tap and bottled up. And that poses a problem here in SL. There are dozens and dozens of brands for sale on the street and I've only come to know a couple of them.

Which brings me back to my options for a cold drink on a hot day. Often a soft drink is a beautiful thing.

Coke bottles

On really hot days here, like Monday, this is truly the most beautiful sight:

I'm not a huge soda drinker at home, but a cold drink at lunchtime here is the greatest thing ever. Seriously. I'll leave it to someone else to discuss the power of brands and so forth.

Ghana out of the World Cup

Last weekend after watching most of the people here (and from what I've heard, everywhere in Africa) root for Ghana to beat the U.S., I was a little sore.  For one, it was no fun losing and it was lonely to be so outnumbered.  Additionally, it felt a little to me like everyone was just a "bandwagon" fan.  I was grumpy and I convinced myself that few in Sierra Leone actually had feelings for Ghana, they were simply cheering because the U.S. had been beat.  Like I said, I was a bit of a sore loser.

But this weekend when Ghana lost a painful quarterfinal match and get knocked out of the tournament, I saw things differently.  The celebrations last week felt opportunistic to me.  But the disappointment this week was deep and genuine.  I saw how let down scores of Sierra Leoneans, as well as some Guinean and Kenyan acquaintances here really were.  They were truly crushed.  

Plenty has been written about Ghana carrying the hopes of an entire continent.  Seeing the reactions here after the loss showed me this statement was more than a cliché.  There was truth to it.  So many people here want to see their countries rise in stature and there was real hope that this tournament would provide tangible proof that African nations belonged.

That Ghana got as far as they did is admirable in my opinion.  But I can see from the widespread feeling of disappointment here that everyone hoped for something more.

Rain

It's raining more these days. This generally means waves of heavy showers throughout the day. Business slows down a bit as more people just opt to stay at home. The rains will increase throughout July and August, when the capital usually receives one seven day stretch of continuous, unabated rain. Everyone talks about that week.

Away from the main streets there are lots

of unpaved roads. This combined with the fact that Freetown is very hilly means there's considerable erosion each time it rains. I live on a steep dirt road with massive ruts that require constant maintenance. This happens from time to time thanks to unemployed men who live nearby. The main roads have deep drainage systems on each sides, as seen in this photo. These quickly fill up with all the eroded dirt so despite some being a meter deep, they're constantly being emptied by hand.

The rain tends to be heaviest at night. Imagine the hardest rain you can think of, with water just dumping from the sky. Then double it. That's what it's like when it rains hard here at night. Additionally there's more lightening than I'm used to, with the sky sometimes pulsing like a strobe light for several seconds. But the rain cools things off and despite the thunder it can be a calming sound to fall asleep to.