Despite the title, I’ve decided not to make this one a bloated merry-go-round of what Christmas was like in Sierra Leone. Fear not, though, as I will be touching on a few nuggets here and there – and also be fully reassured that it was a-mazing to be here for the weird and wonderful festivities that the country has to offer.
Sipping on gin and juice (well, water) out of a bag
So you’re drenched with sweat from a five minute walk to the shop, and your brain tells you to get some fluids in. Now you’d probably and rightly expect for the obvious next action to be to open a bottle of water and take a swig (gulp, more likely, maybe even a glug) – but as with most things here, I’m being proved wrong at an exponential rate. Long words aside, you get water in bags here – yes, that’s 500ml bags of water that you rip off the corner with your teeth and then squeeze the dehydration killer into your throat.
This took some getting used to, in fact I scoffed massively at other people doing this when I first arrived that I vowed never to do it, but it actually has some merits. Firstly, it’s cheaper than getting water from supermarkets (and thus you buy it from small Sierra Leonean shops), secondly it’s quick and simple to do and finally you can always squeeze multiples of them into a large bottle you’d like to reuse and carry around without the fear of an embarrassing water bomb incident.
Whilst lounging around on Christmas Day, some of our friends ventured to the next beach along to find some booze for cocktails. I was expecting a bottle of vodka, but they returned with sachets of gin! This made me wonder where they draw the line – could they put Real Ale in one? Or for your really hard drinker, Special Brew? Methinks it would be quite funny to see how they would go down in places where you have to put a brown bag around your alcoholic drink in public. Maybe that’s just me.
Showing them how it’s done on the football beach
Since being here, I haven’t been able to get away from the craving for playing football. Kids play it in the street with whatever they can find, and there are always people playing on the beach – usually with ‘keepy-uppy’ (which I hate, for the record) being the usual choice. However, on Boxing Day I noticed that there was a proper game being played on the beach only 20 metres away from our table. This was too tempting.
So I whipped off my shirt, wandered over and asked if I could join in. It was quite a serious game, it turned out, and I had to wait my turn as one of the nominal substitutes once I’d got permission to play from the chap wearing a full Chelsea strip and wearing (very wet, from the sea) trainers. When I was finally let loose, they actually seemed to think I was quite good, in so far as they passed actually passed me the ball, something that rarely happened when I was in football teams as a child (boo hoo). They soon realised I wasn’t, of course, but I did play as well as could be expected given the circumstances (i.e. I’m rubbish) and was pretty good at not giving the ball away. My team lost – they play one goal then change the teams – which is something I’m quite used to. I was wearing my Wolves swimming shorts, after all!
Following this, I returned to our table where Laura informed me that she’d never seen me so red, and it duly dawned on me quite how hot I’d become. Hence followed a 20 minute dip in the sea, but it was a good few hours until I’d got my normal colour back. I was no longer “white boy” (my quickly acquired nickname, more on this later) and was “red boy” instead!
Who let the dogs out?
As some readers of this will be acutely aware, Laura and I are not the greatest fans of our canine counterparts. This has led to putting us into jeopardy given the number of stray dogs that wander all over the place, and especially on our walk home from the main road we usually get dropped off on when taking taxis.
When travelling in 2005, our survival technique to evade the attentions of street dogs was to imitate them. I developed quite the bark, which has served me well across the world, as a means of stopping a dog coming near us and in some cases they actively slope off in terror. Here, however, you simply say the word “pass” in a deep voice and it seems to do the trick – but that doesn’t mean we haven’t had to be chaperoned by the nearest Sierra Leonean to take pity on us, when dogs start loud barking or showing their gnashers for a fight with a pal of theirs.
Dogs here are essentially mongrels of the highest order, and essentially quite ugly. Some friends and colleagues have taken some in as pets and done the requisite inoculations for them. My views on pet ownership are well documented (well, in the pub anyway), and here it seems even more odd, but Sierra Leone is the not the place to preach. It’s an extra security measure, if nothing else.
Mobile refrigeration
Freetown (and Sierra Leone at large) has many oddities, but one of my personal ironic favourites is the procurement of wheelchairs and pushchairs for the housing of cool boxes in which the owners sell cold drinks from!
Nobody pushes a child around in a pushchair, or at least I haven’t seen them do so yet, so it makes you wonder where they came from. It could be that they have been supplied by NGOs (and thus from donor’s money) as part of a project, as I’m sure the wheelchairs have. Which is a shame, of course, but at least the new owners are being resourceful even if they have got their new wheels illicitly. I’ve yet to purchase from one of them, but that day will come soon I’m sure.
Answering the call
Given the obvious physical differences between Sierra Leoneans and expats, it’s no surprise that there is one or two simple term for foreigners. As I teased earlier, the term that is generally used for me is “white boy” or “white man,” with Laura often called the same but sometimes treated to “white girl” for her troubles.
What is really fun about this is the fact that there is no concept of keeping these terms under wraps. If I recall correctly, Thai people used the word “falang” but it was generally hidden in a sentence. This is the not the case here – the words are simply touretted out at you as you walk past. Depending on where you’re walking, you often have a group of 10 children ecstatically chanting it in an echo-like scenario. This happens routinely during our short-cut walk to the UN swimming pool through a small community (where I’ve also been called “Peter Crouch” by some youths on a few occasions), and oddly I quite look forward to it!
When I get chance to say my name, it is usually greeted with glee from any Christians I speak to, and thus my “Bible name” seems to impress. One of the great things about being here is that you so rarely meet any animosity from the local people, and pretty much everyone says hello on a daily basis. It doesn’t seem to get boring either, as simply saying “kuche, ow di body?” (“hello, how are you?” in Krio) gets an enthusiastic response from children and adults alike.
This blog’s random sport shirt
It seems the lower leagues of English football are a hotbed of action for Sierra Leoneans to engage with. Following my Norwich find, I happened upon the following:
Southend United home shirt, circa 2007-08!
This one is from around the time when Wolves reject Freddie Eastwood scored a magnificent free-kick against United in the Carling Cup. We signed him on that evidence, foolishly. One day I will pluck the courage to ask the wearer of the shirt whether he actually supports the team. For now, I’m just happy to be reporting the randomness of what I’m seeing.
Signing off
So that’s it for another Rhythm. In terms of other festive occurrences, should you be interested: I sang carols (and enjoyed doing so, in my baritones) for the first time in 11 years; I had barracuda instead of turkey on Christmas Day; I bought the best Secret Santa present, if I do say so myself – a set of scary three Beefeater-esque dolls that need to be seen to be believed; and we spent an amazingly unique and enjoyable few days in Kabala, one of Northern provinces of Sierra Leone for New Year.
That brings me to my blatant plug of Laura’s fab blog, and handily has an excellent breakdown of our New Year fun, meaning I don’t need to replicate! You can find it at: http://owdibody.blogspot.com/
Any and all feedback on my scribing and stories is very welcome. And I do hope all readers had a jolly festive period and are enjoying the fruits that 2011 has to offer so far.
Ciao, D.
