Holidays!
on Shona in Sierra Leone (Sierra Leone), 19/Dec/2010 17:36, 34 days ago
I’ve had a brilliant and perfect two weeks as Andy came to visit SL (and me, obviously!) I took the two weeks off work so we could spend time together, relax and see a bit more of the country.As my facebook status said, I could have burst with excitement before he arrived! The plane was delayed unfortunately but everything else went to plan and I met him at the Pelican Water Taxi. He had brought lots of presents– contact lens solution, shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, dried herbs including basil (which you can’t get here), Worcester sauce (which you can, but is really expensive), some DVDs and nice mail and photos from people at home. Many thanks for all your gifts.We spent the first couple of days relaxing around Freetown– visiting Lumley Beach, Big Market and other sights in the centre of town, and had some fun introducing Andy to the “interesting” public transport system here (see previous blog entries for details on this). We also got to do some fun things for me like eating out in Crown Bakery (choc croissants!)and dinner at Country Lodge(real red wine!)Tacugama Chimpanzee SanctuaryWe stayed the night at Tacugama, in their beautiful, and romantic treehouse. It also had the advantage (for Andy) of being relatively cool. I even had to have a blanket in bed for the first time in months! Whilst there, we did a couple of walks, including to Charlotte Falls, and of course, the tour of the chimp sanctuary! It was set up 15 years ago, mainly to rescue chimps which had been used as pets; the aim being, eventually, to integrate them back into a normal chimp family. There are currently about 100 chimps in the sanctuary, in different enclosures depending on how well integrated they are. They are amazingly human-like (although much better at acrobatics than us!) and I could have watched them all day. We had a lovely evening eating a Basha chicken with rice and veg on the balcony with a half bottle of wine that Andy got from the plane.The HospitalI wanted Andy to see the hospital so he can picture it when I am chatting about it. We had to actually get there first! I decided it would be easier to walk from the town centre than try to get a very slow moving taxi or poda poda there so we walked through the crazy mad streets of PZ in the East End of town, opted to take the slightly longer route of Kissy Road (as it has, at least by some definition of the word, pavements! Unlike Fourah Bay Road, which has sewers where you would expect the pavements to be) and finally arrived at the hospital. I showed Andy around, introducing him to the staff while he snapped away taking photos for me. Everyone was so nice and welcoming to him and were delighted that he was visiting.It was also Meike and Nadine’s last day at work so we went to their leaving party, held in the library. We started with Christian and Muslim prayers, then everyone feasted on cassava leave with rice and washed it down with a Fanta. Lots of snapping of photos later, then we all piled into the Cap Anamur Land Cruiser for the journey home.Sugar Loaf MountainSo, the adventure up the mountain. I fear that I have now had so many adventures up mountains (I’m thinking Mt Mulanje, the volcano Pacaya, Ben Lomond, only to name a few Ros!) that maybe I should stop having adventures up mountains!I had organised for a large group of us (first two mistakes– don’t have too big a group, and don’t actually organise anything or its bound to go wrong!) to climb Sugar Loaf. Unfortunately we sort of went up the wrong path (is this sounding familiar to anyone Ros?!) and ended up bashing through the bush to actually find the correct path. By this time we had been climbing for three solid hours. So while Beth, Tash, Alex, Ollie and Marcus continued up the hill, Andy and I made the executive decision to take the all the stragglers back down to the cars. A wise decision I think as everyone made it back down safely with no broken ankles or hypothermia(not that that would really be possible here) or dehydration. And we were back in time for a brilliant Mamba Point Lunch.Hamilton BeachAndy and I had a lovely few hours at Hamilton Beach, where on the 12th December, we sat out in the sun, swum in the Atlantic Ocean and ate fresh barracuda grilled to order on the barbeque. Andy alas got burned (sorry– I take the blame for the areas of missed sunscreen!) but we got some good photos of the pair of us for Christmas cards at home which Andy has been organising.Tiwai IslandFollowing aninterestingjourney to get there (our hired landrover broke down and we became a tourist attraction for the kids in a small village for about 4 hours, before our driver realised– having sent a mechanic off to Bo with Le100,000 of his own money – that he could drive it in 4 wheel drive, so we carried on again – which must have looked truly bizarre to the children in the village) we finally arrived quite late at Tiwai. Its in a really beautiful spot, very jungley (actually I don’t think that’s a word, but you know what I mean). We stayed in a ready-pitched tent complete with a mattress inside – fairly luxury for camping if you ask me. There was even a working shower (although it was “dribbly” as Andy described it).We woke early the next morning for the forest walk before breakfast. Expecting this to last about an hour, we were back for breakfast a full two and a half hours later! On the walk we were able to see three different kinds of monkeys, and a huge variety of flora which our guide expertly pointed out. Tiwai is“famous” for having pygmy hippos. They are very shy, only come out a night, and although I believe there are two in London Zoo, they are indigenous only to Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia and the Ivory Coast (all the top tourist destinations of West Africa then. I’m kidding obviously.) Alas we didn’t see any.In the afternoon we had a great boat trip up the river, spotted some birds, some more monkeys, and marvelled at our guide’s command of both English and the Latin names for various trees and plants, especially as he had never been to school.Dinner was served at a remarkably early 4.30pm (we managed to stave off till 5pm!) so then had an early night before the long (and thankfully less eventful) trip back home.IMATTWonderful IMATT! I have such a lovely time whenever I go there. The one RAF officer there invited us up for dinner so he could get some air force chat. He and his wife were so incredibly hospitable; we had a wonderful meal and great company, as Frankie and Howard (ex-VSOs who stayed on) had also joined us, along with the IMATT doctor and another army officer, who, bizarrely has a cousin from Shetland who I know! It was a really great evening and was a bit like being transported back to the UK (they have a bath! With hot and cold running water!)Back to RealitySo Andy’s just gone  – he did get back by the skin of his teeth though. All the flights home since Friday have been cancelled as Heathrow is closed. So there are a number of stranded VSOs who were looking forward to going home for Christmas. Keep your fingers crossed for them that they manage to getback and enjoy time with their loved ones too. Back to beans and rice for dinner for me. Back to work tomorrow. Back to the daily challenge of getting to and from work. Back to the dying babies. Hopefully also, back to making some of them better, and training the nurses and doctors here to do the same.