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on Freetown Blog (Sierra Leone), 28/Oct/2009 20:34, 34 days ago
I'm trying to find a way to describe what the immediate environment of the house is like without it sounding contradictory. Here on the West side of Freetown,  living conditions are generally much better than in the East and in relative terms it is by no means a poor area. The house has a balcony and although the next house is built so close to ours that part of the view is obscured, in one direction we do have a clear view of the sea, which is a very pleasant sight in the evening.In another direction the view is not quite as easy on the eye: And in another,  there is a more gritty reality:I could tell you that a couple of hundred metres away on the tarmac road there is a lebanese bakery and a supermarket; a bit further up the road there is an Italian restaurant; and that about a kilometre in the other direction is a patisserie. All these things would be true, but  somehow, I think the impression that gives would be misleading. It doesn't really feel like rich and poor, North and South; the chaotic mix here is far more exotic than that.Tonight we have had a plumber here, to try to sort out the problem of our lack of water. However, it seems the problem is not in the house - the pipes are not buried very deep and it seems that it has been cut and turned into an impromptu stand-pipe somewhere further up the road.