Our first steps in Sierra Leone

After skipping around Europe, Amsterdam to Frankfurt to London to, finally, Freetown, Sierra Leone, we were ready to arrive, which we did, on time at 8 pm. Freetown's airport is refreshingly small and surprisingly located on an island near Freetown. Freetown is hilly, whereas that island is flat. The island then, would be a much lower cost place to build a budget international airport. Once inside the building, you see everything at once, Customs, the waiting room, the baggage belt, etc. All went efficiently and quickly and we found ourselves outside greeting Lisa, Kai and Haven along with Hawa who came along to help. Hawa found us two small taxis that took us to the ferry. The ferry ride was about a half an hour with perhaps a one hour wait for the ship to load with cars and passengers. Landing ashore, another taxi needed to be found, this time we found one large enough for all of us to fit in, arriving together at St. Edward's on the outskirts of the city. By the time we had disembarked into our room and readied for bed, the time was midnight, the hot air stirred lazily by a ceiling fan.

The alarm signalled the start of our day for 430. We wanted to be at the bus station by 530, still before light and before any of the generators started around town to be first in line to buy bus tickets to Kabala. We were at the bus station to be in line, watch the employees start the generators, create some light inside the building, bring benches out upon which to sit, to wait, to wait. The ticket window opened... But no tickets available for Kabala! These buses were low cost busses sponsored by the government; there was only one per day to Kabala and held about 30 people. However, there was the next most expensive way to get there, and that was the privately run bus lines. Hawa found us one heading to Makeni, a 'big' town on the way to Kabala, which would be our intermediate destination. The bus was crowded, but nothing like Guatemalan standards. In fact, compared to our Guate bus travel experience, this was luxury, only one person per seat. However, there was no accomodation for luggage, so that was in our laps and in the aisle, making the ride feel crowded.

At Makeni, our next ride was a taxi, a Renault three seat station wagon. There the model is called a Nevada. It is a station wagon, not a van or SUV. This Renault wagon seems to be the standard vehicle for Sierra Leonian taxis. Nominally an 8 person vehicle, 'full' status was 11, 10 passengers plus the driver. 4 to the back seat, 4 to the middle seat and two to the single bucket seat on the passenger side in the front. Of course, the driver enjoyed his own space. The paved road to Makeni was relatively good. Leaving Makeni, the road was still paved, mostly. The parts missing the pavement did have a feature to them which the driver avoided: holes. The last 25 miles to Kabala took perhaps 1.5 hours to negotiate. Our taxi driver was a good driver; we liked him and hope to find him for our return trip. He showed us his finger, shut in a door a couple of months ago. I'll not describe it here, but suffice a summary to note that he must not have seen a doctor about this problem.

We encountered some enterprising youth along the way; about 5 or 6 times we had to stop for 'roadblocks' where kids had freshly filled a few nearby pot holes and wanted a toll for their service. The driver would give them 1000 Leones, the equivalent of about 25 cents, the road block removed and on our way we would go.

We arrived, getting our first glimpses of Kabala, its dusty main street a buzz with many people on foot, some motorcycles, store fronts, and more dust. This has to feel much like a western U.S. town of the 1880's, except there was none of the horses in sight. Arriving at the Nar Sarah clinic guest house we were reunited with Michael and Ahmae, our party now complete!

Why Africa?

Good question; not easily answered as there are multiple reasons that added up to go.


One is our desire to expose the kids to seeing how people live in other parts of the world.

Another is that Willa, ever since learning to talk, has, for some reason, asked to see Africa.

The timing was as good as it would probably ever be. Willa is still home schooling. Tias is motivated to go as evidenced by no complaints about having to do 5 weeks of his junior year school work ahead of time, not to mention taking 6 finals and 3 other tests during his last five school days to make up everything going on while he is gone. The unfortunate part of the timing is that Jessica could not go because of job interviews, one of which happens this same day I find myself writing these words.

Originally when thinking about travelling Africa, I thought to show my family the highlights of my bicycle travels back in '86. However, I've learned the truth of the saying that one can not 'go back.' Our dear friends, the Varnes-Epstein's are over in a small town in Sierra Leone right now, Lisa delivering babies, Michael working on a variety of projects while Kai, Haven and Ahmae helping where the can. They urged us to come share in their adventures. We jumped for this special opportunity to spend part of our time sharing an African adventure with the V-E's! This opportunity settled us as to the country of destination. We anticipate spending some time helping at the place where they are, and part of the time sightseeing around the country.


Linda took on the task of getting the family ready to go. She organized us for yellow fever shots, malaria and typhoid anti-dotes, obtained the visas necessary, found the airplane tickets, etc. Linda and Willa have studied the language (Krio) a bit, having some laughs over the phrases, sounds and in one case, a phrase we don't allow them to use here at home. Krio seems to be a mix of English and other languages.

Unless our internet experience changes, I'll likely be posting written material of this blog and add pictures later. Internet access is limited, and the speed is even more limited, making the handling of pictures difficult. If pictures do not happen during our actual travel time, I will add pictures after we get home.

We saw an opportunity to lay over a few days in Europe on the way over to give the kids an opportunity to have a taste of the Netherlands while getting to see our good friends Fred & Gerda Langendorff who visited us in Germantown back in 2002 during the big 100 year anniversary Nash meet. Also wanted to organize a visit with my friends Joost and Mary Kingma whom I have not seen since their wedding in 1989.









So that's the genesis of this adventure!

Our Netherlands Visit

The day arrived for our departure from home, Saturday morning about 9 am, January 14th, 2012.

Jim Bracewell, our friend from the Nash Club kindly offered to host our car while we were gone and drive us to Ohare Airport. All timing pulled off well, we found ourselves on the plane at 6 pm. Later we were eating a great meal with great service on a United flight to Amsterdam.

All these pictures were taken in the Netherlands, in and around Laren.

By noon Sunday, we were greeting our friends Fred and Gerda Langendorff. We intended to stay a couple of days and travel around the other couple of days. However, they wouldn't let us do it! We had a great time seeing sights from inside Fred's Nashes. Who else but true Wisconsin Nash nuts would be begging our friends to drive us around in an open touring car on a day when the frost never left the grass? Our first day's touring was in Fred's blue 1925 Nash Special Six touring. The next day we travelled in their classy 1931 Nash convertible sedan pictured by the windmill. The windmill is a meer 400 yards from their house. Also pictured is with Fred driving and Jim co-piloting is an inside shot of the 31. I got a ride in Fred's Nash Healey too...

We saw Muiden Castle, though closed that day, the gardner opened the gate for us to walk inside the castle walls to see the courtyard. The castle was originally built in 1285. Not having stones available in the Netherlands, the castle is made of brick.

Fred and Gerda drove us down to southern Netherlands so that we could join Joost and Mary Kingma whom I had not seen since their wedding in 1989. Of course we both had kids to show off, in each of our cases, the oldest of which weren't able to come since they weren't living at home any longer. What a great time catching up on 22 years, reminiscing about the 'old days,' and speculating about what we could do next time we get together.

We had a great and relaxing time with Fred and Gerda, eating, laughing, playing with Nashes, seeing the sights, we were undeservedly spoiled.

We can't thank Fred and Gerda enough for everything. Such wonderful, gracious and fun hosts. So with sad hearts for leaving, we departed at 330 am to get to the airport in time for our flight(s) to Sierra Leone.

Footnote: in editing this one last time, half the pictures vaporized, which I can't reclaim until arriving home. I hope to add to this once I get home.

Leaving Nebaj

We all had a difficult time saying goodbye for 2011.

Looking for the silver lining, we can say returning as soon as possible will be great!

Pictures that need no words

Mayan Hope School for the Disabled

The Mayan Hope School for the Disabled was going through a transition from 9 students and Don supplying the special ed teacher, to the school system supplying two teachers for perhaps up to 28 children (though they all do not attend at the same time.) There was a one week void between this transition for which Don asked Linda, Rachael, Willa, Haven, and as Lisa had time, to be the teachers.

I am hoping Linda or any of the rest who helped would add their own words to this write up, but I want to relate the story of their last day teaching when Linda had the kids create their own little pop-up books. The kids sounded almost estatic with their creations, hugging Linda and Rachael for having them make the booklets. When the parents came to pick up the kids, Linda said seeing the excitement of them showing their family their work was quite rewarding.

Advanced Marketing Techniques

Julie brought about 15 plastic sign holders for table tops. While there, she skillfully created signs featuring some of Popi´s menu items. We are anxious to see if sales of these items increase noticeably

!

Roasted chickens are generally a popular item in larger cities. Nebaj has no roasted chickens available to buy, so Don hatched the quite sound idea to fill this void with the goal being to keep Mayan Hope financially self sustaining. Julie brought Don a 2 or 3 chicken rotisserie. We were the guinea pigs for the first roasted chickens (they tasted great!) I asked Don how he would get word out around town of his new offering. Turns out a short radio ad costs less than one (that´s right, 1) dollar.

A Traditional Hike

We hiked our favorite trail, Nebaj to Cocop and then followed the beautiful spring fed Rio Azul to the town of the same name. Unfortunately, we managed a late start and could not take advantage of Julie´s offer of an water color lesson along this inspiring river.

We stopped and took the traditional picture of us on ´The Rock´ (see previous years´ blogs) along the trail just as Cocop emerges into our view. No one was around to snap the picture for us, so unfortunately, Tias is missing from the group photo.

A welcome rest stop.

The UFO siting.

A photo op.

Julie brought along tennis balls to give out to kids along the way. Thinking we were out of town, she gave a few to kids along the trail. What seemed like an instantaneous reaction, kids poured out of doorways of house up our trail. A mob of kids formed behind us making Julie seem like the Pied Piper. This experience proves that good news travels fast even without modern appliances such as cell phones. This picture shows the beginning of the mob formation, notice the reinforcements coming up from the rear.

Our crowded bus ride back to Nebaj accepted happily by tired hikers.

Assisting the Local Economy

Several in our gang of nine did their share of directly injecting money into the local economy. As in years past, women would invite us into their homes to show what they had to sell to keep their family afloat. This picture shows Lisa and Linda sporting their new skirts and belts purchased directly from a family near the Mayan Hope School.

More Projects!

Lisa, being a midwife, offered to give a birthing clinic. The offer was enthusiastically accepted, well attended with many questions from the approximately 20 local midwives in attendance. I did not get to attend being of the wrong gender, but I heard the presentation, questions and interpreter all had their funny moments.

Most everyone helped with waitressing the dining customers and ourselves.

There was also the plumbing project, various electrical system repairs, moving light switches to doorways, grouting tile, etc. Here you see the grouters at work.

The bathroom (that was started last year for the new dorm room) moved along primarily by Kai, Ti and Jim into having a second functioning toilet and sink by the time we left. This master piece of work shown to the right involved taking up a concrete floor and part of a foundation wall to get into the main sewer line.

The shower was all but commissioned by installing piping, a shower head and the expensive and heavy cable needed to bring electriciy to the water heater. Holding the coiled plastic tubing straight while the two single conductors of heavy wire were fed into the tubing was a six person job, Ti, Ki, Willa, Haven, Rachael and Jim. After pulling about 120´ of wire into 100´ of tubing, we then hustled this very long item up to the roof, laying it out from fuse box to shower head. The last 20´ of wire was pushed through conduit inside the building. The one item lacking is a breaker to connect this cable to the power source. As soon as that is installed, there will be two toilets and sinks and one shower to serve the rooms and beds on the second floor

Here Kai and Ti are running the newly made electrical wire and conduit in place.

Up on the Roof

Don was looking to build a 10 by 15 poultry pen and a 12 by 20 greenhouse roof (for plants not wanting as much water as Nebaj receives during the summer.) These structures were to be built on the flat topped concrete roof. The ladder access hole through the lower roof had to be enlarged as well. There was a pile of hand hewn 1" boards, 3 by 3´s and 2 by 4´s as well as some sawn 4 by 4´s. We did not have much for tools with which to work, an almost spent hammer, a small hand saw, a wrecking bar, wire cutters, electric drill and a few other misc tools. Especially having another hammer would have sped progress along, not to mention another saw, but I did not realize the importance of this until the projects were almost completed. However, we persevered with what we had and made it work.

Kai at work sawing.

Jim directing.

Haven coming up to offer her help.

Plasticing the green house roof.
(How's that for a new verb?)

These pictures show the finished greenhouse roof (sides may be added later if found to be advantageous) and the poultry pen, now affectionately referred to as ´Popi´s Poultry Pen.´

Misc note of interest to the do-it-yourselfer without many tools: Not realizing we had access to a tin snips until much later, I developed a technique to cut tin roofing with a machete and hammer. I simply pierced the tin with the tip of the machette. Then, holding the machette vertical to the tin´s surface, I simply used the hammer to hit the blade sideways through the sheet metal. The resulting cuts were quite nice!