Christmas in Freetown 

Well I have I arrived in Sierra Leone with a bang. Literally. The electricity was down at the airport and the  back up generator was broken. So one minute we were all looking out the window into the pitch black waiting for the lights of Freetown far below and the next minute we hit the runway in total darkness to a chorus of shrieks. Once over that trauma came the scramble for bags and porters and a rush to the helicopter pad. Unfortunately I was not as on the ball as the regulars and was given a card with the number three on it. I’m not sure if it meant three as in the three hour wait I would have to endure before it was my turn to board the rickety old helicopter across the bay to Freetown, along with a scrum of bodies, boxes and bags. The sole good thing about the trip was the brevity – I only had to spend seven minutes fearing for my life.

Next morning I woke to a colourful and charismatic city. The place is totally overcrowded with shacks and colourful higgledy piggedly wooden buildings piled in one on top of the other. It stretches up over a hillside covered in tropical trees and plants and down to gorgeous beaches. In between the trees and the beaches is a mass of people, houses, shacks and cars. A lot of cars. If you want to get anywhere by car leave about thee hours early and you might make it. You can spend your time reading the slogans on the minibuses – usually referring to religion or football, the two national past times: “Allah Akbar” “In God We Trust” “Come on the Gunners” “Chelsea FC” “God Bless My Wife” or in one case “Tried Women. Tried Drink. Now Trying God. Will Let you Know.,”. Or you can count the number of NGO signs you see on one road, just about every international charity I have ever heard of seems to have a presence here.  

Beyond the ramshackle houses and “streets” (i.e. potholed sandy tracks) lie the most amazing beaches. Little did I know that the beach in the Bounty ad was filmed in Sierra Leone. Although I can understand why, they are among the most stunning beaches I have ever seen and come without English lager louts and apartment blocks into the bargain. Nature at its best. So Christmas was spent lazing on a stunning beach with an Irish colleague, Jo, along with a few locals and resident Lebanese. Quiet and peaceful apart from Christmas night when we heard there was a local party on in the village and thought we’d go and sample the local culture. I was expecting dancing around a fire in traditional African costume but it was more reminiscent of dodgy teenage discos at home. Packed full of bodies wriggling along to hip hop. And there was no chance of us going in quietly for a quick look and then exiting sharply. We were hardly over the doorstep when the DJ screamed down the microphone “We have foreigners in da house! Welcome to the da White People!” At which point we were encircled by hordes. The resident middle aged and mentally imbalanced lesbian seemed to take a shine to me and I spent the next hour trying to wriggle away from her attempts at dirty dancing. We managed to escape four hours later dripping in sweat and best friends with half the village, draped in jewellery with the proud title of Da African White Girl. For the rest of the trip we were collared everywhere we went and couldn’t remember who any of the people were as they had all mingled into a mass of black bodies in the disco. Anyway we made it back to Freetown in time for Jo’s malaria to kick in…..