Ghana – Chapter 13

Accra, August 12, 2005

 

"Sierra Leone I"

 

 

It seems to me that my last chapter was written sometime in May.  That gives you an idea of how busy I've been.  (I said “busy”, not “lazy”)

First, Ellen and David came to visit
in May.  Then I went to the
US for a couple of weeks of meetings.  Since coming back to Ghana, I've been to Liberia twice and Sierra Leone once and my mother came for a visit (and to celebrate her 86th birthday).  I'm going back to Sierra Leone this Sunday, then on to Liberia and Mali - to keep me on the road until mid-September.  So I had better get this one in the mail.

First of all, a picture for Gina:  This is Rebecca, my housekeeper, making her famous fruit salad (pineapple, bananas, mango, orange, papaya, watermelon and a little lime juice
– lots of chopping).





Now, on with the news.

I was in Sierra Leone for 10 days - and am going back there this weekend for another week.  No, it's not the holiday spot of West Africa.

Sierra Leone, like Liberia, has survived a long, really vicious civil war.  Freetown (the capital
of SL) wasn't destroyed the way that Monrovia was, but the people were pretty traumatized and I'm told that in some regions upcountry the destruction was pretty bad.  Like Liberia, a lot of people became internally displaced people (IDPs - refugees in their own country), fleeing the country side and the violence.

Freetown is a little hard to get to.  You first fly to Lungi Airport which is across a lagoon from Freetown.  Then you either take a helicopter over to Freetown or have a 2 1/2 hour drive to get there.  I chose the helicopter
and had to sit in the way back.




 


It's an old Russian helicopter, flown by some old Russian (or Ukrainian) pilots in their Hawaiian shirts and flip flops.  It's only an 8 minute ride (Thank God!).  There used to be a hydrofoil water taxi that crossed the lagoon to Freetown, but apparently it sank.  I'
m told that helicopters will float if they don't hit too hard.  Actually, it’s not a bad ride – it rattles a lot and is a little bumpy, but the view would be great if they would clean the portholes.

I stayed in a nice little hotel in
Freetown, called the Country Lodge.  Freetown is surrounded by high hills (low mountains) and the CL was up on top of one of them, overlooking part of the city.  This is the view from my room (those are the beach chairs around the pool).


 

 


I was working with the USAID mission in Sierra Leone.  Their main projects, like Liberia, are mostly involved with feeding people and trying to reintegrate the IDPs back into the country.  Sierra Leone is infamous for its "conflict" or "blood" diamonds.  These have been used to buy arms for the wars and support the rebels, as well as - apparently - for international terrorism. These are alluvial diamonds, that people find digging in the beds of creeks and rivers.  USAID/SL is working with the miners to try in what is called the Peace Diamond Alliance, along with De Beers and some other diamond companies.  Next week I'm going upcountry with De Beers to see the diamond mines and meet the farmers.

Freetown is apparently the wettest capital city in the world (most rainfall annually).  The first two days I was there were nice and sunny, but the next eight days it rained from sun up to
sun down, all day long - not just drizzle, but constant heavy downpours.  And I left my umbrella in Accra!  Freetown reminded me a lot of the old part of Kingston, Jamaica – the old British colonial architecture.  Everyone speaks a kind of English, plus Creole – which if you listen real hard contains about 30% and 70% other languages (mostly African).

SL is a poor country.  Let me show you just how poor...

If you walk across the patio at my hotel (under the red roofed structure in the photo above) and look over the side, this is what you see down below:




 


This is a man making gravel by hand.  He is one of several guys there.  They take big rocks (about 1 or 2 feet across) and break them into pieces
about the size of a large foot and then pound the pieces into gravel smaller than golf balls.  This guy worked about 12 hours a day (even in the rain).

There are whole families of people breaking up the rocks and hauling the gravel on their heads to different building sites.  Next time you see something built from concrete (gravel mixed with cement) - like a big dam - think about how many heads full of gravel it would take to build it in Sierra Leone (and everything here is built from concrete because termites can't eat it).




 


That's it for now.

Love to all,

Greg the Diamond Guy

Woops - almost forgot the weather report.  It has cooled off quite a bit these days.

Today

Tomorrow

Thu

Fri

Sat

sky: partly cloudy (night)

 

Partly Cloudy

 

High: 84°
Low: 71°

sky: isolated thunderstorms

 

Isolated Thunderstorms

 

High: 84°
Low: 72°

sky: scattered thunderstorms

 

Scattered Thunderstorms

 

High: 85°
Low: 73°

sky: scattered thunderstorms

 

Scattered Thunderstorms

 

High: 83°
Low: 73°

sky: scattered thunderstorms

 

Scattered Thunderstorms

 

High: 81°
Low: 73°

 

 

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