I went there once. It was awesome. The end.
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What, you can't just take my word for it? Fine... blogging can be so tedious sometimes.
There's a lot of reasons I decided to go to "Mountain Lion" (literally translated), including
1) I needed a vacation
2) It's not The Gambia
3) I'm in West Africa already
4) My friend Regan is a volunteer there, who also happens to be, by the same mother and father, the sister of my other friend Destin.
5) Peace Corps has pretty much restricted me from traveling to any other West African country. (Doesn't Cote D'Ivoire sound awesome right now?)
6) It's cheap.
The trip all started with Destin flying into Dakar, Senegal. I traveled up there, in relatively smooth fashion* , picked him up, and the very next morning he got some XP for the 8 hour trip back. I don't want to dilute the Sierra Leone experience, so to summarize Destin's time in The Gambia, we almost gave Des a heat stroke, blew the minds of school kids by launching a model rocket, and taught my family a magic trick.
We flew into Freetown and met with Regan. The thing that impressed me right off the bat was Regan, not Sierra Leone. Somehow within our first 20 minutes of being in Freetown we managed to eat, change money, and get a car to her village without moving. All was possible with her ability to speak English poorly. In SL, Krio is the lingua franca. Krio is pidgin English and is hilarious. The second thing that impressed me was that there are hills. And trees.
We piled 6 people into a taxi with four seats and made it to a town near her village in about 3 hours. At one point, one of the guys sharing the front seat had to get out and walk through a police checkpoint because it's technically illegal to fill a car beyond its seating capacity **. In town, the third thing that I was impressed by was PINEAPPLE. I love pineapple, but it's "a mang soto" in The Gambia. From there, we took a car to Regan's village, Mano. Destin and I collectively had about 3 hours of sleep, but within the first 24 hours in Mano we had a football match played in our honor, a dance party thrown in our honor, ate monkey soup, saw a dead 8-foot cobra on the road, had a chat with suspects involved in robbing Regan's house, held a monkey, slaughtered a chicken, and went to church.
Our remaining time there was spent more leisurely. Over the next four days, we only taught multiplication to middle schoolers, swam with naked people in the river, and slaughtered a goat.
The fourth thing that impressed me was perhaps the best part of the trip. Regan's headmaster at school took us to a neighboring village about 2 miles away. This little place near the village is one most spectacular places I've been. We hiked to a section of the river where there is a beach, a swimming hole, rapids, and little old ladies panning for gold. If I were Regan I would apply for a site transfer to that very spot immediately. After basking in the magnificence of such a place, we decided it was time to make our way back to Freetown for a couple days before we headed back home.
The only things I can say about Freetown are that it is dirty, crowded, and it contains the fifth thing that impressed me - the beach. Because SL is on the rebound from civil war, the tourism sector has not yet recovered. This means that the beaches are relatively devoid of other tourists and bumsters***.
Basically, everything about our trip went swimmingly, until we tried to fly. The Freetown airport SUCKS. Our flight was delayed by three and a half hours, the airport restaurant tried to overcharge us for cokes, and sadly, Destin had his Gerber stolen from his checked bag.
So, the verdict on Sierra Leone: Awesome for West African Peace Corps Volunteers who don't have anything valuable. For other folks, well, there's about 200 other countries in world.
* The car I was in only broke down three times. The driver eventually fixed the radiator hose with super glue and an empty water bag.
** Capacity, I have learned, is a relative term in Africa.
*** Bumster - a sleazy and probably attractive African dude who solicits old European women for financial favors, uhumm... free of charge.
I'm the white guy.
Best river ever
A random Icelander and Hollander that passed through Mano
Not cute. He bit me twice.
The village equivalent of the Wal-Mart parking lot on saturday evening
Destin was serenaded with song by these old ladies
That was a goat once.
This lady is making country cloth the old school way
Grossest thing I've seen in a while
Yes
The boys are not wearing clothes. As for myself....
A view from the old railroad bridge, which is actually the sixth thing that impressed me.
Okay.... so I'm gonna steal thunder from Sierra Leone and sneak in a few Gambia pictures, taken courtesy of Destin.
My sister's comment was that I look nice. I'll admit to that... but what's that in my pocket?
Baraji, fresh off the kill
I am here
