Freetown

Now Freetown is cool. We’re back in a city with a vibe. The city centre is one of the biggest and coolest markets I’ve seen. It is huge, and you can buy anything… the strawberry maidens have been replaced by these muscular guys with barrows full of coconuts. He hacks open a cold coconut brimming with milk, mothers milk. You walk around, drinking your cool refreshing coconut, checking out about an acre of shoe merchants. Sneakers, trainers, soccer shoes, glittery stripper heels, sandals, work shoes..you name the brand, the model, rip off, original..this is the place to be! Its really colourful, people all over, singing, shouting milling down the street. Cars edge along, walking pace, the speed governed by the shopping rate of local women. You can get anything there, the range is tremendous, and everyone wants to do business, we haggled over green converse shoes  (didn’t have my size), we checked out the belt buckles. Electronics, clothes, food… its all there, spread on the streets, being moved for cars, making cars move for it. The call to prayer breaks the noise only momentarily, the crowd continuing to edge along the road. Freetown is cool.

They have cool bars and clubs to. We went partying with our new best friend Jo, a rather amusing Englishman we had met on Tiwai. Off we went to hit the clubs and check the local scene. Too much fun, riding around on motorbike taxis from club to club. Checking out the nightlife, music, people, dancing. Sierra Leone has its own sound I really enjoyed Freetown.

I did spend most of my time in Freetown in the police station. You see at the one beach we had a bunch of our stuff lifted from us. Being anal retentive I keep all my stuff together in a few bags, so when one of them is taken they get quite a lot. Unfortunately there was a heap of MAPA money in the bag too. So I had to spend some time at the police station, greasing palms along the way to lubricate the machine that is the Sierra Leone police. I need a statement for insurance you see, just a statement. Its pretty cool, once you have been there for 4 hours in a day you become part of the furniture, I saw the ends of a fight in the holding cell. I started running errands for the big guy, calling people for him. I pretty much met every person and went to every office. I’d sit and watch Cbaz down below as he fixed the roof-rack, contemplating how much I would not like to be incarcerated here! But it got it done and after lifting the one police lady to the other station, paying a beer drinking typist to type up a document for me and then getting the police lady to take it to the big cheese and getting all the official stamps etc, 2 days later, fourty thousand of the local currency and two days later, I had the report.

We moved on and are in the middle of Guinea somewhere.

-Chris-