In Which Freetown Life Is Full Of Bliss
on Zoe Page (Sierra Leone), 14/Nov/2010 07:06, 34 days ago
I look like a poor imitation of a face wash commercial this morning, trying to wash my face by tossing water from a bowl to splash myself. Except I don’t think those lovelies are concerned about being frugal with their water use.Ranjan is my saviour in the form of a small pile of magazines he’s been buying second hand downtown. They range from 2002 to 2008 editions but are in immaculate condition. It’s bizarre. I start off with a November 2008 Good Housekeeping since it’s seasonally appropriate, and I wasn’t in the UK then so know I won’t have read it.For a pre-breakfast I have a Prince (as in Prinzen Rollen) cereal bar, my first such thing in 8 weeks. It’s amazingly tasty and temptingly chocolatey. Then Ranjan makes oats: as Alex is realising, every VSO house here seems to have them, even though our breakfast yesterday was her first taste of porridge here.We have a lazy morning, checking emails and supervising the cleaning boys who are here to scrubs the floors and do the laundry, and then Alex and I head out to meet Cat. We intend getting a taxi but a random car offers us a lift instead. At first I think Alex knows them, so I ask her auf Deutsch (hurray for having a lingua franca that’s not English) and, when she says they’re strangers, I ask if we pay anyway. We don’t, and we get there quickly and easily. If I learnt the rules, I’m sure I could easily get used to Freetown life. We go in to Bliss and Cat arrives a few minutes later. All but one of the tables are occupied, by white westerners without exception (except, since Salone is kinda the same longitude, I guess I should call them whitenortherners). The menu is as awesome I remember, and once again I have trouble deciding, but end up with a roasted veg and mozzarella baguette. Afterwards, Alex and I peruse the cake counter that really wouldn’t be out of place in a Viennese Konditori, and after getting the waitress to explain each cake to us, choose two to share. They are as good as they look, and amazingly only 8000 Le each.Alex shares my supermarket fetish, and wants to go to a big one nearby, so we walk down Wilkinson Road. It turns out to be one I visited 7 weeks ago, on my last trip to Bliss. After a lengthy look round, we conclude they sell everything in the world except pesto and yogurt. From here we get a cab downtown. Taxis here are random. On the plus side, they are cars, not motorbikes, which is just as well since I’m sporting a nasty leg burn from a trip on the latter a few days ago. On the downside, they’re not cars that take you where you want to go, but more wheretheywant to go. There is a flat per person rate– now 1000 Le, was 900 Le in September – but that is for ‘one way’, which confusingly does not mean going there and not back, but just a short distance. Longer one-direction trips are ‘two way’, and today we need to pay ‘three way’ but that’s fine as it is a long trip from where we’d walked to, and it’s one car all the way. To hail a cab you hold out the number of fingers corresponding to the number of seats you need, and if they have room they stop.Downtown Alex plays tour guide, showing me the (limited) sights of Freetown. We go to PZ, a crazy marketplace that fluidly moves in and out of the road as cars pass. This is the place for second hand anything and everything, from clothes to books, and a lot of the stuff is barely used. It is maybe where the contents of some of those dubious not-quite-charity clothes banks end up, or perhaps the final resting place for donations British charity shops can’t shift. It’s thirsty work, so we stop for coconuts, done in the strangest fashion. You buy them from a wheelbarrow, and they have already been carved down and the skin hacked off. The guy neatly machetes off the top and hands it to you, so you can drink out the slightly flavoured water. Then you give it back and he hacks it into pieces so you can eat the flesh, though how much there is depends on the luck of the draw. A bit like Kinder eggs, you don’t know what you’ll find inside until you open it. It’s certainly a refreshing, and interesting, way to snack.We pass Big Market again, and walk through it, noting how much less intimidating it seems now, and also how weird it is that what is supposed to be a collection of handicrafts vendors is also the place to buy carved wooden doors, and porcelain sinks and toilets. Then we pass the police station and some hospitals as we head back to the main road to get a taxi home. This time it’s two-way, and we get dropped off at Congo Cross, near Shona et al’s. We go to Mono Prix which, despite its name, is a large supermarket full of items with lots of different prices, some good, some bad. Since I have had time to memorise the range and cost of virtually every item in Choitram’sand Leader Price, it’s easy to compare prices here with those in Kenema. Some items are much cheaper, but some cost more. They have a few stellar items, though, including Diet Coke for 1000 Le (shockingly little!) and cheese in 8000 Le blocks, which will form part of our continental brekkie tomorrow. Their chocolate range is immense, with tons of imported American stuff including some I’ve never seen before. Here I could try a different one every day and it would be weeks before I had to repeat any. They have come Christmas stuff in stock – completely tacksville, of course. There are afew forlorn looking trees and some American style decorations, plus snowy landscapes to set the mood.We wander back, and I already feel like I’m learning the route (and the short cuts). We buy bread and butter and peanut candies, though unlike my favourites these are a bit weird, and look like something someone has already chewed and regurgitated. Still, for 3p you can’t complain (much).Ranjan cooks us a Sri Lankan curry which is amazing and includes a fancy shredded, toasted coconut dish, then we eat Milka in the dark as although the house has intermittent electricity it’s never too bright. By my 3rd bucket bath of the trip, I’m really getting the hang of them. I asked Alex how much water she tends to use, and was glad I did since it was a fraction of what I’d been guessing, but it’s amazing how little you need to get clean(ish) and really puts into perspective how much water goes down the drain (literally) when you shower, let alone bathe. Washing dishes with limited water is also a challenge, but it’s clearly taken Alex less than 2 months to get it down pat, and if I’d not watched her do it, I’d never have known she’d needed barely a litre of water for scrubbing, and a little more for rinsing.