Nataša's Sierra Leone Adventure - Part 5 - The Little Things

When I come to new places I always walk a lot. I cover on foot many distances for which I would usually find different means of transportation at home. It gives me a sense of the place, of where I am, it also winds me down. And last but not least, it gives me opportunity to see the little details of life: a sad old man sitting for hours in front of his shoe shop, voices of a couple loudly arguing behind the thin corrugated walls of their house, children driving around in a self-made cart and playing ball in the street, clouds gathering for an afternoon storm, a big funeral procession with a band walking down the busy street, and completely congesting the traffic. What else is life besides the few major events we can count on the fingers of one hand, but the many little everyday things we all experience, encounter and are sorrounded by. It makes me aware of how similar we all are, regardless of differences as our skin colour, culture, age, or wealth. Down at the bottom we are merely human beings with our feelings, thoughts, worries, good and bad moments. Such realisation makes travelling worthwhile.

The same thing I did in Freetown, I walked up and down and around the Freetown streets, downtown, and beyond. No wonder some people started recognising me. As I wore quite a few colourful bracelets from Burkina Faso, which by the way would definitely make a good trading item, people regularly stopped me to at least have a look at them, some started calling me not only white lady, but also white lady with cultures, and also African lady. I really liked that, thought it was a compliment. In other places they also called me potho, oporto, porto, the remnant word of the first Portuguese colonialists, as it originally means the Portuguese One, but is now used for any European I guess.

I saw all the sights, but mainly I was just taking in the buzz of life. And the life in Freetown is buzzing. I often sat down, had a drink or something to eat, and just watched the life go by. It gave me an opportunity to talk to people, who wanted to talk to me, and many did. I was interesting for them, being obviously from abroad, and of course people always interest me. I collected their stories as colorful pebbles to take home. Each of them unique, special, of its own character, shape and size, sometimes polished, some rough and even sharp, some transparent, others deep black or of various colours. Not many stories were happy ones in Sierra Leone, most were actually very far from that, the war experience seeping into clefts and pores of their lives.

People who approached me as a traveller usually asked, where I was from. And what was my name. What was new for me in Sierra Leone is they would follow with the question, which NGO I was working for. What was my mission in Sierra Leone, they would ask. Failing to answer that question, made me feel strange, the institution of travelling has not yet become common. Why would I come to have fun in a country, that has been so impoverished by the war. I actually had a couple of meetings arranged so I started to compromise with an answer, that I came for business and pleasure as well. That seemed to work out fine for me. But it also planted the thought, that maybe I should come back on, as they put it, a mission.

After walking the streets of Freetown for a couple of days, I started taking poda podas to the beaches. I first drove to Lumley, came across an internet cafe at the junction. The fans were working, and the internet connection was pretty fast. I spent a while there. It was refreshing to reply to private and business mails. It somehow put me in context again, this was my first internet cafe since coming to Sierra Loene. I left my computer at home, and only then realised how much I missed it.

I then spent half of the day walking to the beach and slowly strolling from one side to another. It was midday, it was hot, I had to tie a scarf on my head, I could feel my nose was getting burnt. There were no other strollers, just a couple of white joggers, who both greeted me, I guess because I am white too. A father with a young daughter was idling around the beach, finding shade under one of the few trees. He followed me and made his lovely little daughter dance around me and beg me for money. It seemed he was not having many other options to earn money for the day, and took to begging as a small proffesion, or maybe he just tried his luck. Right then I spotted in the sand a lovely hair pin, gave it to to the girl, made her happy, and they went away.

I kept sitting down in the sand and watching the fisherman pull out the nets. It's really hard work and you just sit there and do nothing, a perverse kind of pleasure, while ten or more men slowly but with all their might pull out the net in rhythmical tugs. I had a lot of company of the young fisherman, who left their work for a while to talk with me. Some like to be fisherman, and are proud, others would rather be businessmen, some would prefer to come back to Europe with me. Honestly, quite a lot of those could be my sons.

There was this fisherman, who took our casual encounter more seriously. Let's call him Edward. He left his fishermen companions, to join me sitting in the sand. He was in his swimming shorts, aware of his own body glistening from youth and strength. His hands showed he had to work hard, pulling those net ropes day after day. His nails were bitten off. Edward took his time with me, to get to know me, talk with me, make me like him. There was no reason for him to like me that much, I was neither fresh nor fabulous. I had a feeling he did this kind of act before, and I would guess more often than not got more abruptly rejected. Was this his beach boy trainingship? Well, I had time on me.

A young woman slowly passed by with a washbasin to collect some of the fisherman's catch. On her way back, she was carrying in it a couple of small fish and a crab, they were still alive. A meager lunch I thought. She stood around shyly but curiously, and then came to sit with me and Edward at a safe distance, I could see she knew him. She hardly spoke any English. I treated us all with Cokes. Edward spoke of his various jobs. How he worked at a hospital, where he carefully observed proffesionals give a massage, so, as he stated, was now really good at that. How he was trying himself in some trading business, and wanted to eventually get successful, and wealthy. It was amusing to observe his quite transparent strategy, leaving his current fishing job, to talk with me. I was his however scarce hope to help him move somewhere onward from where he was then and there. He knew getting to Europe could be a bit far-fetched, but he also knew it would not hurt to try. He then started teasing the crab, who moved back in the washbasin defensively thrusting forward and opening its claws. Eventually it got hold of his finger over the base of the nail. Edward's face reflected pain, but he bravely hid it, and laughed. The crab didn't let go, he couldn't open its claw. He started hitting it, and finally tried to break it off. He had to kill it, I looked away, it was a massacre, I emphatised with the poor animal. The crabs owner wasn't too happy with the mutilated animal either, but what could she do.

Edward kept persuading me to go swimming with him. It was hot, but in that situation I was definitely in no swimming mood, and didn't feel like I wanted to take off my clothes in the first place. Eventually Edward gave up on me, and ran into the water by himself, showing off and splashing around, diving into the water. He took his time, and I decided not to wait for him, but slowly walked back down the beach. When I was quite a distance away, I could see someone riding a bycicle on the street calling and waving. Don't you recognise me the man asked. It was Edward. He was quite disappointed I didn't wait for him to come out. By then I told him once more to stay cool, and after a while he understood.

Next day I wanted to go to Lakka, but arriving to Lumley junction, there was no shared taxi around at that time, so I took a poda poda to Goderich instead. I walked through the whole village all the way to the beach, and loved it there, it was really peaceful. I felt so safe and took a swim leaving my things on the shore, and it was fine. Noone seemed to care about me, and it made a nice change.