Nataša's Sierra Leone Adventure - Part 14 - Kabala Rocks

After a couple of days I set off to Kabala. I called my motorbike driver to take me to the station in the morning. Before he left me there, he said, he was there for me, any time. I just had to call. Hmm. I told him to stay cool nevertheless. I got a shared taxi to Makeni there. We had to wait for some more passengers. I sat down on the bench at the nearby gas station, and had a close look at the non-modern manual device they hade for measuring gallons and pumping gas into cars or canisters. No numbers of gallons, or price. Just a glass bottle the size of a gallon being filled with the brownish petrol before poured through the hose into the vehicle.

It was early morning and street vendor women came to the car park with the food they prepared in the even earlier morning to sell as breakfast for hungry passengers. The food was in plastic buckets, and they had some plastic cups or plates to serve it. Their children were running around, some holding cups of their own pap, hot porridge. Some had soup, others porridge. They poured it into little plastic cups, and offered you a spoon. Everything got washed in a small basin of water, and was reused by the next customer. I had some fresh bread I bought at the nearby stall, with butter, which came in a small chunk in a small plastic bag and had it spread on the bread, and also bought a couple of biscuits to eat on the way later.

A couple of young ladies, a petit shy one and a bigger bolder one, both from Makeni, who came to an Amnesty International seminar in Port Loko, and myself waited for more passengers to fill up the shared taxi. In the end there were four of us seated in the front, I shared my seat with the petit Amnesty atendee, who didn't take up much space, and the driver shared his with another boy passenger, who had to lift his leg, when the driver wanted to use the shifting stick. At the back there were four more people. We changed the car once, it was a kind of a deal between different drivers, although we paid only to the first one. I was wondering if they had a trade union, even if an informal one. The journey was smooth. Once in Makeni, we were stopped by the police. They didn't seem to mind the number of passengers in the car, but they were carefully checking the license sticker. They were right, it did expire last year. They tore it off, much to the objection of the driver. There were some hard and loud words, as the driver was obviously distressed, but in the end they let him take us to the car park. The driver told me obtaining the license was quite expensive, and so most of them cheated. Here we departed, and me and another young man with a business suitcase were heading further on to Kabala.

The first vehicle to leave Makeni was a poda poda, so we got on that one. In the meantime I had a quick look of Makeni. It seemed quite devastated by the war. Many buildings were ruined, burnt and run down. But there was definitely a big market activity going on. Even when sitted on the bus, you could buy literally anything, from underwear, watches, sunglasses, cosmetics, cloth, not to mention food. A lot of trading was going on, and people bought provisions, presents or just something they needed. I asked my fellow passenger if he knew of a nice guesthouse in Kabala. The lady sitting in front told me, she will help me once we get there. The road to Kabala was one of the best in the country. Newly paved and straight with a nice view of the sorroundings, slightly curving and climbing up, as we were approaching hilly region. All the way and everywhere along the road there were signposts with the names of NGO organisations, their branches and projects, you name it, it was there, UN, UNHCR, UNAMSIL, UNICEF, CARE, CAUSE CARITAS.

In Kabala the lady, who promised to help me find a guesthouse, got us a motorbike each and we drove down the road to one of the streets under the big rocky Kabala mountain. The guesthouse was owned by the Canadian NGO Cause. It was locked and noone was around, so we called the cell phone number that was posted on the door, sat down in the shade of the front porch verandah and waited. In the meanwhile I went across the street to check another guest house. All guests have just left there the previous day, and they were in the middle of major cleaning. It looked OK, just a bit empty with no chairs or anything in. The caretaker of the Cause guesthouse was Rebecca, who was also the NGO's secretary, a competent and reliable young lady, as I soon found out. Eseta, by then we got introduced, also worked for Cause in Makeni and occasionally in Kabala. She worked with the handicapped, people who were physically or mentally traumatised, invalids, orphans and such. Many of them were war victims. Eseta said she loved her job, she must had been good at it. She was very straightforward, and energetic. When she talked of her work I started to respect her. She was also a good friend of Rebecca. I appreciated their company and I loved the house right away. Again I was the only one to stay there. The Canadian lady Barbara McKintosh who was in charge of the Cause project in the region left a week ago for her summer holidays back to Canada, so I got her room. Barbara, thank you! It was like having a home. I had a mirror, and little things that made it cosy. I also had a big bathroom with four buckets of water, which was plenty, coming from Freetown, where I got just one small one.

There was Sarah as well, the cleaning lady, but she was just overcoming a bout of malaria, and was resting. My nightguard was a Guinean man, he never failed to tell me, when we met in the evening. His family was not around. He came in the evening to start the generator, and also turn it off later in the evening, and then to stay on his night duty in front of the house. It was great to feel safe once and again.

Rebecca and others told me that the Canadian lady and myself looked somewhat similar, that we were built the same way, were of the same age and the colour and style of hair, and I still wondered if they thought so, because we were both white, People immediately thought I was there replacing her. I could had easily pretended I was an NGO worker. Not that it was very foreign to me, had done a bit of that work before. The guesthouse was full of books, and Canadian magazines, and almost for a whole day I just sat around and read. I found a travel book Harmattan by a Canadian writer Marcello de Cintio, who recounted his travelling in West Africa, and chose that one. In front of the house there was a hamaka. If the rains were not too heavy, I could sit or lie outside and read. When the downpour started, the children living across the street ran over in their underwear, and took a dancing shower under the water pouring down from our roof. All this was done with a lot of laughter and happiness. It was fun to even watch them.

They told me white people like to climb the Kabala mountain, while the local people don't do it. I intended to go up there, but then thought I will go against the usual and just walked around Kabala and out of Kabala as well. Rebecca was busy during the day, but she always came to check me in the morning or the afternoon after her work. One evening she came over with her colleague, and we talked about Cause and their projects. They established a network of individual sponsors among Canadians, and case files of individual children and families to the sponsors to choose a child they want to support. The sponsors could follow their lives through case files, and also establish personal contacts. Sometimes the money was used for larger projects, that contributed to the whole community, such as building a well. If there is no water in the village it is hard to expect children to learn well. Striving for children's education, but it is so interconnected with their living conditions. The illiteracy is extremely high, especially in this region and strongly connected to poverty. Even if schooling is free, the parents still need the money for school uniforms, books or notebooks, which they do not have, plus they cannot count on the children's help in the fields. Rebecca and her colleague were both from Freetown, and got their job here now.

One of the mornings I took the long road north, that went further on to Guinean border, which was around 70 miles away. I walked several miles, and took more pictures. Gradually I was leaving town and getting into the rural area. There was a lot of cattle with their herders on the road, also some goats. There were fields around, and some people just went about their daily chores. Somewhere half on my way, I saw another motorbike approaching from the other directions with two people. It suddenly stopped and someone waved to me. It was Eseta, she was sitting at the back with a black scarf on her head to protect her from wind. We greeted, she was just returning back from one of her work missions in one of the villages, but busy going to another one.

Finally I got to one of the checkpoints. I was tired, it was quite hot in spite of the milder climate in this hilly area, and I forgot my water bottle. I was invited to sit down on the bench by a beautiful police officer woman with lovely braided hair, who was then on duty. She offered me some guavas, and later packed some more to take with me. In the meanwhile she was opening and closing the ramp. I sat there, and watched. A woman was next to me was selling curdled milk. She put it in a narrow plastic bag, added a lot of sugar and shook well. It made a nice refreshing and filling drink. The house on the other side of the road was painted with interesting drawings, children were playing in front of it. The traffic on this road was heavy, cattle, motorbikes, ocassional cars, some NGO 4WD vehicles, and a lot of trucks. I decided to go back, and asked the police officer, if I could find some means of transportation from there. She offered her help, if I could wait. After a while there was a young motorbike driver, who was willing to take me to the centre of Kabala. He was fast and reckless, I was happy I managed to stay on the honda. There were many holes and some rocks on the road, and we were jumping and swerving on the seats, hitting some, or trying to avoid them. I thought I was all ready and set for the Paris Dakar rally after this ride.