-Nikos Kazantzaki-
As most bush camps go I slept well. I was woken by munching cows just after
midnight, and they were close to the tent, like that close I could literally
hear them pull the grass out of the soggy ground and their breathing as they
chewed. I wasn’t scared as such, but I
was worried about them chewing my thongs that I had left outside my tent last
night. I was tempted to unzip my tent
and pull them in, but then I didn’t want to freak out the cows and they turn
from nice, but noisy munchers, into stampeding, terrified, cow killers, so I
just hoped for the best and also prayed that if they were that close, that they
wouldn’t trip over my tent pegs and actually fall on me-now that would be a
disaster, a good blog entry, but a disaster all the same. I awoke again with the belting rain on the
tent and again I thought about getting up and closing my tent flaps, but I
didn’t think any water was coming in, so I was happy to let the cool breeze
through and then the nice, noisy, killer cows returned at 2am, passing back
past the tents a little close for comfort for me, but they did no harm and I am
happy to report my thongs were still there this morning.
We only had 20km to travel today, even if the roads
deteriorated even further due to all the rain we had last night, we would still
make it to Kabala today. We were
officially a bush camp short now off the itinerary, and even though I do enjoy
the camping, for some reason I always think it is a hassle until everything is
unpacked and the tents are up. It is a
bit silly really, as the tents don’t take long, even with me being an ‘expert’
now and getting mine up on my own in record time, it doesn’t worry me not
having a toilet anymore, as long as I am in a secluded enough spot, I am happy
to take a bush wee and god forbid a bush number 2 when I have to, but it is
just the hassle that I have created in my mind, and really at the end of the
day, if you can have a bed, a toilet to sit on (even if it doesn’t flush) and a
roof over your head, wouldn’t you also want to have that over a bush camp? Yeah I thought so.
As mentioned in my previous blog, I was not sure what I
expected of Sierra Leone, but I may have had a perceived idea in my head that
it was going to be a hostile place after its recent civil war, and too be
honest I think I may have been a little brain washed by people. When I told people where I was going there
were a lot of worried expressions, some ‘good-lucks’ and it then filled me with
apprehension. So to enter the country yesterday
and have all the locals happy to see us and not a single person was hostile, it
just surprised me to say the least and I think that the country is going to
surprise me further and I will hopefully prove that it has been tarred with a
certain brush that I hope to help eliminate in the coming weeks. The helpfulness and friendliness has been
overwhelming. Knowing little about the
country as a whole, I took the time to read the Lonely Planet yesterday and it
gave me more insight into the troubles that they have had and it with it being
so recent, right up there with the Rwandan Genocide 10-15 years ago, it really
makes you wonder as I look at people that are over the age of 23, what they saw
during the civil war, were they the boy soldiers, what do they remember and how
did they move on. It was a brutal 10
years, and these people lived through it and if they didn’t experience it first
hand, they for sure would have known people or had family members that were
affected to some extent and I am looking at these young people and just
wondering how they forget such atrocities.
I was 23 when all this was happening a world away from me in
Australia-it makes the mind boggle for sure, and if given the opportunity I
would love to speak to someone from that time and hear some personal stories of
what they went through, but I think the likelihood of that is slim.
After breakfast and packing everything away, including
the pain in the arse awning, we set off and the roads didn’t get any worse and
they didn’t get any better, so we knew we were going to make good time today to
our destination. We were stopped just
before entering the town of Kabala for an ID checkpoint and Madge also got
checked over by guys that are employed to make sure that the vehicles are safe
enough to drive their roads. We all had
to get out at this check point as our visas were checked and also our stamps
and then our passport details taken down and a form filled in for Madge. It all took around 30 minutes and one of the
officer guys asked what we were doing in Sierra Leone and we told him we were
here for tourism and he replied ‘oh yes we had some tourist come through here
in 1985’!!!!! It was hilarious,
especially since that was 28 years ago, but then you think why, and then the
whole civil war rears its ugly head again and the instability of the country
has never been that great anyway, well until recently now. Lonely Planet rekons it is now one of the
safest African countries to travel to these days, and that is good for a
country that is still trying to find its feet.
We had one more police check 15 minutes further down the
road and again we were asked why we were here and when we replied tourism, he
just shook his head in bewilderment and said welcome to my country. They are really shocked that we are here for
holidays. Driving along yesterday and
then this morning I have noticed a lot of Aid Agencies in the villages. There are the big contributors like USAid, UN
run projects and other projects that involved Canada, Germany and Ireland to
name a few. I think it is the first
country where I have seen so much aid out of the last 5 countries anyway, and
some parts of the country must be used to seeing some whitie’s as that would go
hand in hand with the aid work, but to see whitie’s here for a holiday seems to
be unusual. But with that said, we have
been made to feel welcome at every turn.
We arrived into Kabala officially 1.5 days earlier than expected at
11.30am and as we hadn’t booked anything, we used the LP (Lonely Planet) to
find out where the best place in town was and once we were in the town, we paid
a motor taxi to take us directly to the accommodation. Sam and Zoe checked that they had rooms and
they reported back that all was well and we would have power at 7pm, it was
bucket showers, but large rooms. We’ll
take it.
Kabala is
the capital and largest city of Koinadugu District in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone.
Kabala is one of the main towns in Northern Sierra Leone and is set in a rural landscape, surrounded by mountains.
Kabala is an agricultural center and lies on the far north of
Sierra Leone, with close proximity to Kono District and the international border with Guinea .
Kabala lies approximately 137 km north-east of Makeni, the
largest city in the north, and approximately 320 km east of the capital Freetown. The population of Kabala was 14,108 in the
2004 census, and a current estimate of 35,074.
Kabala is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in Sierra Leone,
with no single ethnic group forming a majority.
Its inhabitant are largely from the Kuranko, Mandingo, Yalunka, Limba and Fula ethnic groups. The population of
Kabala is largely Muslim. Kabala
is one of the few major cities in Northern Sierra Leone with a very small
minority Temne population, the largest ethnic group
in Northern Sierra Leone.
Sierra Leone's president Ernest Bai
Koroma celebrate 2012 New Year in Kabala.
President Koroma held a town hall
meeting at the
Yogomaia Field in Kabala and attended New Year church
services at the Holy
Martyrs Catholic Church in the town.
We had an hour to freshen up and chill out before we had
a truck lunch in their breakfast room.
So we pulled off all the boxes we needed for lunch and the stove so that
tea and coffee could be made and then it was instant, we all hit a brick wall
and we were all just so lethargic and out of energy. To compound it all, the heavens opened up
again and the rain was torrential, like it was a sign telling us to stay in and
read a book type of sign. The couples
were all going to go for a walk up the mountain that was located next to the
hotel, but with me not being interested in that I was going to work on my
blog. As it turned out it was a great
idea as Ian, Suzanne and Rich got caught in some more rain on the walk and were
soaked through by the time they got back.
I actually had a 2 hour nana nap and woke up feeling just as tired. I think the 5 weeks of the trip are catching
up a little and I do need to recharge my batteries. We all needed to get some local money, now
that we were in yet another new country.
It seems in Kabala they will only accept USD and not EUR, so Sam said he
would take out euro and use his USD for the exchange and that we would be back
soon. Well he also got caught up in the
storm while he was in town, and took shelter in a gold miner’s house for the
storm to pass. He came back and for my
100EUR worked out to be 135USD and then that got me 580,000 Leones. The rate was 4300 to the dollar, so again we
are going to be working with the large denominations for Sierra Leone. Luckily I am good at my 5 times tables!!!!!
At 5pm, everyone was awake and back, so Zoe and a few
others went in search for some beers and bought some from a shop just down the
road from us. While they were out Sam
was stringing away on his guitar on the balcony when I heard him talking to an
American lady, well she was young, but a lady all the same. She has been in Sierra Leone for 2.5 months
and 2.5 weeks in Kabala. She is an NGO
completing a module for her university degree and her organization is
introducing working cattle (ie: cows) back into the local communities as they
were desiccated during the civil war.
She was super chatty and after a few minutes she said to Sam that if she
was talking too much to just tell her so, but she hasn’t had a good English
conversation with some-one in over 2 months.
Even though they speak English in the country, there are just some
western things/sayings that just cannot be explained to some-one that wouldn’t
get the joke/inference. After relocating
to Kenya in January, it took me nearly 10 weeks before I met people and made
friends, so I know exactly just how she feels and to have some westerners blow
in for the night must have just made her day, and to have a chat over a beer on
the balcony would have been an unexpected blessing indeed.
Today signifies a week until the end of this leg. The end of just the 5 of us on the truck as
the numbers swell to 12 for the last 3 weeks.
It also means we have exactly 4 weeks left of the whole trip (where has
the time gone) and 5 weeks until I am back in Australia. I haven’t had too much time to count days and
even think about Australia at the moment and I know that that is a good sign
that this trip is going so well. Time is
just flying by and they say that time flies when you are having fun, and indeed
we are doing just that. Maybe not today
as we have all been hit with the lethargic stick, but this pioneering thing
really takes it out of you, and so does the heat. It is expected to have days like this and we
are just lucky that we are all having ‘that day’ on the same day!
Dinner was a simple fare of chicken and chips and I LOVE
chicken, but I have not eaten so much chicken before arriving into West
Africa. 99% of the time, if we are
eating in guest houses or simple accommodations, the choice seems to always be
chicken or fish and tonight’s dinner, we didn’t even get a choice, was just
chicken. So I do consider myself a
little bit of chicken connoisseur now and to date, the best chicken I had was my
braised chicken dish in Yamoussoukro a few weeks ago, it was divine and I am
sure the menu options will not expand too much the further north we head. It’s chicken, chicken, and chicken for me and
if we get to Freetown and there us a KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) I am not
going to be that over chicken and I will be in there quicker than you can say
‘more chicken’ and ordering a 2 piece feed with chips and gravy. Oh my, my mouth is salivating already. We tend to do this, as a group, when we are
hungry, or eating our tuna sandwiches for lunch for the 4th day in a
road, we talk about the food we love and what we will eat when we get home and
KFC is high on the list with me. We do
have KFC in Nairobi, but there is not one my side of town, so even when I am
back in Kenya, it is always a treat to be having it there as well.
Over dinner we also had to discuss what we would be doing
for the last 6 days of the trip. As
Tiwai Island Sanctuary has closed, it has thrown our itinerary into a bit of a
spin and we now need to re-jig what we plan to do with those 2 missing
nights. There seem to be 2 options. One is to still head east, where Tiwai was
located and push on a little further as there are 2 national parks out there we
could see, but the condition of the roads are unknown and also what animal we
would see, this option sounded like a lot of time in the truck for little to no
reward at the end. The other option was
to head west, and take our time along the famous beaches of Sierra Leone, there
seem to be plenty of things to see and do in this part of the country and the
travel days would not be as long, we are on tarmac roads and there was a lot
more information in Bradt and the Lonely Planet on this section of the country
than the east. Either way, we had to
head to Makeni tomorrow anyway before we had to branch out for either
itinerary, but I am pretty sure I know which way I want to go, but it will be a
majority rules, with a vote to be cast tomorrow which will decide where we will
be for the last week, before arriving into the capital, Freetown. So it was a short day on the truck, a relax
day in the afternoon which I think we all needed it. Every single one of us.
Tomorrow we push on to Makeni and from there, who
knows.
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