Rockin' those Freetown Streets

This entry will have almost nothing to do with Freetown, but I liked the title. Deal with it. While I haven't been rockin' the city, I have had an amazing time traveling around provincial Sierra Leone and visiting the variety of landscapes it offers.

I started down south near Sulima, on the coast, about as Liberian a city as you can get in Sierra Leone. It's one of those places I went to because it was out of the way, only to discover that there was very little I could actually do there. I wanted to sleep on the beach and just enjoy the ocean. The village chief didn't have any problems with it. Neither did the police or a village council. However, once the Navy got involved, my plans were quickly derailed. I ended up hanging out with Staff Sergeant Davis for the night and left early the next morning. No worries, for those who fear my current legal status after Côté d'Ivoire, they just told me it was too dangerous to sleep on the beach, and I ended up just hanging out with the Navy guys, listening to stories about the war. Not exactly a cheery subject, but of all the ways to understand a country, war stories are the some of the most interesting in a country like Sierra Leone.

The next morning, I jetted out of Sulima on a motorbike early enough to get the first bush taxi to Poturu, the jumping off point for Tiwai Island. Tiwai Island is a 12 square kilometer island in the middle of the Moa River, which flows through the Gola National Wildlife Reserve. The area is some of the most pristine in the Lower Guinea Rainforest, which stretches through Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côté d'Ivoire, and Ghana. Here, however, is one of the densest concentrations of primates in the entire region, eleven different species including the endangered diana monkey and red colobus. The island also hosts the very rare pygmy hippo, of which there are less than 2000 left in the wild. However, they're very shy, so our chances of seeing them were slim. But then we did! Ha, nope, they were just rocks. They didn't even look all that much like hippos.

I spent a bit more time than I'd originally planned in Tiwai in part because the jungle is just so beautiful: towering cotton trees with buttress roots you literally have to climb over, the gentle night noises which lull you to sleep, and some great swimming in the river (if the oyster shells imbedded in the rock don't tear you to shreds). But I also met some other white people! This was a real shock, as I hadn't really seen all that many who were traveling since I was in Mali, over a month ago. I stayed an extra night to hang out with my new friends and before I knew it I was pulled along for the beaches on Freetown Peninsula.

Now, if you've been a longtime reader (and why would you be, this is a pretty shoddy operation I'm running here), you may remember me gushing about the beaches of Busua/Dixcove. The best beaches I'd ever been to. Well no more. I've found a beach which knocks any Ghanaian beach out of the water. Freetown Peninsula has 40km of pristine beaches. Pristine mostly because of a war, but who's keeping score there? The beaches stretch the entire length of the peninsula, which is itself dominated by a mountainous green landscape. Because there are so few tourists in Sierra Leone (the war's over, I swear!), it's easy to have a beach entirely to yourself, which is exactly what we had at Bureh Beach. I could go on and on describing this paradise to those of you who are suffering in winter right now, but I'll break it down like this: fine ochre sand backed by green mountains, falling into a beautiful turquoise sea. Maroon Island, which is just a tiny little thing, is a fifteen minute swim from shore and seems to perfectly complete the image of an island paradise as an aesthetic point to the curve of the bay.

Did I mention that the only food you can get on the beaches is lobster and barracuda? Often I've faced the dilemma: Do I really want to have sweet, succulent lobster for the third time in two days? Wait, being from Indiana, I've never faced that dilemma. But I had no problem answering with an ecstatic YES.

See, now the problem with this description is that I keep wanting to say, "But the best thing was..." as if there is any one thing that could be described as "the best" in Paradise. Like there's one thing better than all the rest. However, my favorite thing I feel as if I have to describe in detail here. At night, after the moon had set, which was around midnight this night, if you braved the cold air and swam out past the breakers, you were rewarded not only by the warm water but by thousands of tiny lights which sparked with every movement you made. The scientific explanation came from one of my fellow travelers, Dave. The spot is a breeding ground for a specific species of zooplankton, which lights up as a defense mechanism when it senses another body in the water. Whatever. The explanation is fascinating, but only secondary to the wonder of thousands of tiny blue-green lights, like the stars reflected in the ocean, swarming over your entire body. Whenever we thrashed, it sparked a reaction among the plankon like a pale green aura that encompassed you like a sea spirit. As we marveled at the sight, one of the guys shouted over the roar of the surf, "I'm 30, and I feel like a kid! This is amazing!" It really was, like nothing I'd ever seen before. Exhausted after 30 minutes of swimming and trying to take in this unique experience, we returned to the shore and curled up on blankets around the fire, only a thin layer of cloth between us and the sand, nothing between us and the stars.

I'll leave it at that. My love song for Sierra Leone beaches. Tomorrow I head up to Outamba-Kilimi National Park, hopefully for some close encounters with the animal kind: hippos, elephants, leopards, etc. Don't know what we'll find, but I'll definitely write more soon.

Animal Encounters II

Every once in a while, you have to step back and think, "What the hell is that goat doing in my house?" It's times like these that make you realize that you're not in the West anymore, that animals are a natural part of life here that cannot be avoided. At post, in a village of less than 1000 people, of course one must expect a certain amount of animal interaction. The cow walking into your concession and eating the fence. The lizards that scramble over walls and rooftops. The camel parking lot at market. These things have become so natural that they don't feel unusual anymore.

However, it's when you go into Niamey, Niger's capital, that you feel like you're in the twilight zone. The largest, best developed city in the country abounds with dirt side streets and roaming livestock. It's impossible to know who these animals belong too. They just wander through the streets. I don't know where they go or what they eat, but they're there. They're always there.

A few examples. Today we walked into our hostel in Niamey, the regional hostel for Tillaberi and the national hostel for all the Volunteers in Nige, and we were greeted by a VERY pissed off ram. Probably fully aware that it was just waiting around to be eaten tonight. Don't feel too bad, goat pizza is very tasty. Or take the example today when I wanted to cross the street, but couldn't see around the camels hauling fodder along the side of the road. I just needed to take a guess and hope I wasn't killed by the crazy Nigerien traffic. This traffic doesn't even need to include vehicles. The other day we were driving back through Niamey and saw a heard of sheep in the middle of one of the largest, busiest roundabouts in the city.

Like everything else in this country, some days you just have to sit back, relax, and never think "Am I losing my mind, or is that donkey riding shotgun in an open-backed truck?" More than likely it is, and that is not unusual.

Animal Encounters: A Dialogue

April 24, 2008, I had my first major African animal experience. Let's say I'm glad I had my flashlight. Here's how it went down: in dramatic form.


(Sterling walks into darkened house)

Scorpion: Hey dude.

Sterling: WHOA! F***ING SCORPION! WHAT THE F*** ARE YOU DOING IN MY HOUSE?!

Scorpion: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Chill out dude.

Sterling: HOLY F***! F***ING SCORPION!

Scorpion: Stop shouting man, you're givin' me the fear!

Sterling: KILL IT! F***ING KILL IT!!!

Scorpion: Kill it?! Are you mental? How about we all just calm down here. We can work something out. (Sterling begins to remove sandal) Okay, let's not do anything we'll regret.

Sterling: DIE, YOU BASTARD, DIE!

(Sterling launches his sandal at scorpion with all the force he can muster. It hits the scorpion, crushing it with one mighty blow.)

Scorpion: This isn't because I ate all your beef jerky is it?

Sterling: YOU ATE MY BEEF JERKY?!

(Sterling repeatedly smashes mostly dead scorpion with his sandal.)

Scorpion: Ouch. (dies)

(The curtain falls)

THE END

I hope you've enjoyed this slightly random dramatic interpretation based on actual events. (Except for the beef jerky part. I added that for comedic release.)