I’M A VICTIM OF PICKPOCKETING AND I SURVIVED TO TELL THE STORY-SIERRA LEONE

To get away from one’s working environment is, in a sense, to get away from one’s self and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change.

-Charles Horton Cooley-

We have a free day in Free-town, quite fitting really.  The newbies have their meeting at 10am and I was heading into town with Rich, Ellie, Ian and Suzanne for a few hours, we had all agreed and then be back at the hotel for the afternoon which suited me fine as I still had a few blogs to load and a few messages to send out.  I would have loved to have just stayed in the hotelall day-it was a crazy thought though as I actually did want to go into town to have a look around and not knowing what the capital of Sierra Leone was going to be like, I was happy to go in with people.  I had to gather all my crap in my ‘suite’ as I was now getting a roomie for the last section of the trip.  I was happy and disappointed all at the same time as I liked having a tent to myself but also relished the idea of sharing the trip with a roomie.  I have always been lucky with all my roomies on all my trips and I after meeting Helen last night I think that luck was going to continue.  I am sure 3 weeks will certainly tell the anyway.  Considering I went to bed at nearly 4am, I was up at 7.30am so that I could keep plugging away on the blog and uploading all I could.  Now is that showing dedication or what? 

Freetown is the capital and largest city of Sierra Leone. It is a major port city in the Atlantic Ocean and is located in the Western Area of the country. Freetown is Sierra Leone's major urban, economic, financial, cultural, educational and political center. The city proper had a population of 772,873 at the 2004 census, as of 2010, the population of Freetown is estimated at 1.2 million. The city's economy revolves largely around its harbor - occupying a part of the estuary of the Sierra Leone River in one of the world's largest natural deep water harbours. Freetown is home to the Fourah Bay College, the oldest university in West Africa, founded in 1827. The university not only played a key role in Sierra Leone’s colonial history, but also a key role in the history of the English-speaking West-African nations.  As the capital of Sierra Leone, Freetown is home to the Sierra Leone House of Parliament, the Supreme Court of Sierra Leone and the State House, the official workplace of the President of Sierra Leone. All of the foreign embassies in Sierra Leone are based in the city.  The population of Freetown is ethnically, culturally, and religiously diverse among Muslims and Christians. The city is home to a large population of all of the country's ethnic groups, with no single ethnic group forming a majority of the city's population. As in virtually all parts of Sierra Leone, the Krio language is the city's primary language of communication and is the most widely spoken language in the city.  Britain planted a colony in the area in 1787 as a place to relocate black poor from London, but it was overcome by native hostility. In 1792 the city of Freetown was founded as a colony for freed slaves by Nova Scotian abolitionist John Clarkson, who had fought on the British side during the American Revolutionary War.  The settlers called their new settlement Freetown.  Around 500 freed Jamaican slaves made the journey to Freetown in 1800 through the Sierra Leone Company. During the next decades, thousands of freed African American, West Indian and Liberated Africans came to Freetown as settlers, through the Sierra Leone Company.  Their descendants are known today as the Sierra Leone Creole people.

After an included breakfast, and meeting the last 2 new team members, Cathy and Sian, I dropped in some washing and then we were on our way into town and were waiting out the front of the hotel with 2 staff as they tried to get us a taxi.  The first guy that stopped would not squeeze all 5 of us illegally into his car, so we had to get 2 taxis.  It seemed a little difficult to find ones that didn’t have people already in them as they seem to use the taxis as a bus service, so it will stop and pick up and drop off people at call.  Eventually we got 2 taxis and after agreeing to a price of 25,000 leones total for the ride, Rich, Ellie and I got into one cab and Suzanne and Ian into the other and with the plan that we would meet at one of the famous icons of the city, the Cotton Tree.On the20 minute drive into the city, it felt a little weird and refreshing that we were travelling around incognito, being in a normal car and not an 8 ton truck for once and it made it easier to observe everyone without being stared at ourselves.  Safety is a big thing, well maybe it is the 400,000 leone fine, but when I sat in the front of the cab I was asked to pop on my seatbelt, and it is good to know, even though it is the monetary value that makes them wear their seatbelts, it is a good thing that they do and I had no qualms putting one on.  The Road Traffic Act of Sierra Leone 2008 brought in some major changes in particular but not exclusively, to the public transport system.So the Road Traffic Act 2008 for example: introduced compulsory seat belts in the front seat of cars, limits the number of passengers to the number of seats available i.e. four in the back and one in the front and made crash helmets for both rider and passenger on Okadas a requirement and there are many traffic police there making sure these laws are followed.

Freetown the city, seemed a flat city, surrounded by the beautiful mountains on 3 sides and then the Atlantic Ocean on the forth.  Like any other capital city, it was busy with people and traffic, but nowhere near as bad as Nairobi or Abidjan.  There were a lot of taxis, and I couldn’t really see any busses or public transport as such on the roads and the taxis seemed to be filling that void.  There are three main forms of public transport in and around Freetown and the Peninsular, listed below but in no particular order:
1 Shared taxis. They have set routes and set prices. It is also possible to charter one of these for a negotiated price, by destination or hourly rate.2 Poda-poda.  A shared minibus taxi. It has extra seats that slide out on each row so every row sits four people. Twenty two passengers is the norm in Freetown and lastly 3 Okada.  Motorbike taxis, which are very handy for moving around the traffic congestion in Freetown.There are national buses as well that have recently been reintroduced but they tend to do the long distance routes to the provinces (up line).If you were in a western county, half of the taxis looked like they would not pass a safety inspection as they looked very worn for want of a better word.  Yes worn I think sums up the taxi fleet in Freetown, but 2 of them got us safe to the city dropping us out the front of the National Museum to the left and the Cotton Tree directly in front of us.

The Cotton Tree is a historic symbol of Freetown, the capital city of Sierra Leone. According to legend, the "Cotton Tree" gained importance in 1792 when a group of former African American slaves, who had gained their freedom by fighting for the British during the American War of Independence, settled the site of modern Freetown. These Black Loyalist settlers, called "Nova Scotians" or "Navitians" in Sierra Leone, founded Freetown on March 11th 1792. According to tradition, they landed on the shoreline and walked up to a giant tree just above the bay and held a thanksgiving service there, gathering around the tree in a large group and praying and singing hymns to thank God for their deliverance to a free land. Its exact age is unknown, but it is known to have existed in 1787.  Today, a huge Cotton Tree stands in the oldest part of Freetown near the Supreme Court building, music club building and the National Museum. Sierra Leonians believe that this very tree was where the Nova Scotian settlers prayed more than two hundreds years ago, and they regard it as the symbol of their capital city. Sierra Leonians still pray and make offerings to the ancestors for peace and prosperity beneath the great ancestry Cotton Tree. This was especially true during the Sierra Leone civil war (1991-2002).

It was a shame that the first glimpse you get of the cotton tree was the mobile phone advertising boards that ran the whole circumference of the tree, taking away a little of the ‘magic’ of the tree.  It was a massive tree and after paying off the taxis we made the walk down one of the main streets to get a photo.  You need your wits about you when you walk and not so much for the people around you but for the condition of the footpaths as they were uneven and there were also sections of the footpath that were covers for a 1m drop drain, and if you weren’t paying attention you could easily fall down one.  There weren’t too many foreigners around in the streets, but we weren’t really hassled either.  There were certain crossroads that had men in wheel chairs and a few beggars which I think were victims and survivors of the civil war, but once they asked you for money and you said no they would let it drop.  There did seem to be a bit of a vibe to the city, and not really in a good light, there was something that we couldn’t put our finger on, but Ellie summed up with a word and it was’EDGY’ and I think that summed it all up completley.  Freetown was edgy.  The buildings were rundown from the colonial days and hadn’t had any money spent on them and some looked a little like the 60’s concrete Russian looking buildings, either way, they were drab and I couldn’t see anything new at all that hod gone up in the last 10 years since the end of the war.  There was the usual African traffic of ladies with baskets on their heads, stalls located on the pavements, shops, banks, the poor and needy asking for money and also street barbers. 

It was a buzz, an edgy buzz and after photographing the Cotton Tree, we needed to top up the ‘bank’ so we walked nearly the full length of the main street and then turned off to use an ATM that Ian and Suzanne had used yesterday.  So with us all standing around the ATM as each other security, cashed up, we felt a little more of a target than usual, but we knew we just had to be careful and city smart and we would be okay.  While we were in that part of town, we looked at the LP and there were some historic steps where the slaves RETURNED after the slave trade had been abolished.  The Old Wharf Steps, sometimes erroneously called the Portuguese Steps, lead up from Government Wharf. The stones were set in 1818. Many of the new arrivals brought here by the British to start a new life climbed these steps.

When we were leaving the waterfront that is now all government buildings, there was a large black vehicle that pulled into the cul-de-sac (it had a flag on the front) and when we try to have a gander, a bystander told us that the Mayor of Freetown was inside!!!  How cool.  We stood around for a minute or two to see if he would get out, but we figured that we wouldn’t know what he looked like anyway, so I said to the man to tell the mayor we say hello and he thought it was the funniest thing and we left him laughing as we made a game plan for the rest of the day.  On our way to the steps, we passed one of the street barbers and as it happened Ian wanted to get a haircut, so we walked up to the guy that was literally set up on the sidewalk of street.  He had a taupaulin as the roof supported on a few long bits of wood, a meter long mirror that was propped up against the brickwall of a building that also had a ‘menu’ of cuts in pictures, which showcased the types of cuts that the barber could do( I wonder if he could) represented by a number and there were some pretty funky cuts with shapes and lines shaved onto the wiry hair of the locals.  There was an office chair that had its wheels removed and the guy was open for business.  So we asked the price and he replied straight back that it was 10,000 leones (2AUD) and still knowing that it was an inflated price because we were foreigners, how can you bargain or say no to a 2 buck haircut.  Ian’s first question was what did he use, what were his tools of choice and he pulled out a razor blade, to Ian’s shock, and then he shrugged and said sure, let’s do it.  So he took a seat and a plastic sheet was wrapped around him and then the barber pulled out a pair of what looked like the large coloured handle type of paper sissors and he proceeded to cut all the wispy hair and bulk of it with these.  Once it was a manageable length, he then pulled out a new razor and with a comb as a guide then ran that over the hair shortening it to the required length.  At times he would get a large old fashioned yellow sponge and flick off the hair, and my first thoughts were how many sweaty necks had he brushed with that?  15 minutes later, Ian was looking 10 years younger, the barber was 10,000 leones richer and we were then onto our next stop. 

The fabric market apparently had hundreds of the gara material that I have been oggling for the last 7 weeks and it sounded like heaven to me and I had high hopes of finding some nice pieces.  We had been told the direction of where to go and that the markets were called the Victorian Markets.  So we made our way a few blocks and found the markets with no hassle, but it was the general markets and we wanted the material market.  We found an alley off that,which had clothes already made and when we all took a wander down the muddy lane we were jumped all over with stall holders wanting to show us all their wares.  I asked about fabric and they pulled out some that I didn’t like, and I hate to be fussy, but there is no point buying stuff that I don’t like, so we dodged all the sellers with one guy wanting to sell us some football shirts.  Ellie was buying one for her nephew and I was getting one for Charles, my building manager that was looking after my place.  He initaially asked for 80,000 leones for one, we went back and forth until we said we would take 2 for 100,000, final offer.  He wasn’t too keen on that price and Ellie and I had all but lost interest, so we walked off with his counter offers all falling on deaf ears.  We weren’t worried and knew we would find more somewhere else.  We had to stop while Suzanne went into a chemist and the football man had followed us and said ok, 45,000 each.  What a wally!  We had offered 50,000 and he had said no and then comes up to us offering 45,000.  Well we couldn’t say no to that now, it is the bargaining etiquette and we both paid the money happy campers indeed.

Someone had mentioned that Fridays in Freetown is ‘African Day’ where the government has made a law that people wear their African colours.  Looking around there were people in all their bright clothes, but certainly not as many as you would expect if it was a government law in place.  I have found that Togo and Benin are the most brightly dressed out of the West African countries so far.  No matter what your financial status, 95% of people were always beautifully dressed, including the men in their pimping outfits and happy to wear colours of pink, purple and oranges and I liked that. 

There was another guy from the clothing lane that said he could take us to a shop that hadmaterial and not clothes, so we figured we would give him a chance, as he may take us to where we needed to go and after a false start at a shop that must have belonged to a friend, he took us further down the street that then ended and turned into a full blown market that looked promising with ladies setting up material stalls.  We passed them and made our way to a building that ran the length of the market and there was a small shop that had floor to ceiling material.  Jackpot!  If I couldn’t find anything in here then I was being too fussy.  The guys waited outside while Ellie came in to help me wade through the eye candy of material.  I think part of the fussiness is I have seen so many beautiful pieces on the women in the streets and villages, I had a high expectation’s of what I wanted and although she had some nice patterns, there was nothing jumping out at me.  The owner started to pull out a few pieces and I saw 2 that I liked and after a bit of back and forth I got 2 pieces (3 yards each) for 130,000 (23AUD).  As we were on our way out, some of the other stalls were ready and I spotted straight up a pattern I liked and while the others made it back to the street, I made a snap purchase of the material for 30,000 leones.  A big price difference to what I had just paid (75,000 for one) but you could see and feel a quality difference and was happy to pay what I had. 

I hate keeping people waiting, so I made haste and popped out onto the main road, and we then in single file walked down one of the side streets with our next location in mind, lunch at Crown Bakery.  After waking just a few minutes dodging the traffic and sidewalks, we had to pass a hearse that was parked on the street.  We climbed up to the road with the pavement in bad shape and I had a quick peak in the hearse and there was a white coffin inside.  As soon as I averted my eyes, I had a lady on my arm and she was thumping my back and pulling my arm yelling at me.  To start with I didn’t know what she was talking about and she was very agrevated and after coming out of the busy market and the one previous to that where people we all over us I thought that maybe she was doing something like that.  I then thought maybe she was upset that I had looked into the hearse and then it started to click that there was a commotion and it had something to do with me, but I just didn’t know what it was.  I got the micro-second sick to the stomach feeling, as my first thought was that something had happened to one of the guys and then I heard the lady saying your mobile phone, your mobile phone, your mobile phone.  I hadn’t bought my mobile phone with me as it doesn’t work in Sierra Leone and then the penny dropped and I reached into the front pocket of my bag where I keep my small camera aka my drinking camera and it was gone.  The lady had apparently seen the guy dip into my bag and was trying to let me know.  It was nice that she spke up and so did a few other people, but no one made the effort to chase the guy, but then they are there everyday and you don’t know what trouble would be stirred up if they did do more than alert the person in question.  With a few people also looking around, there was only Ellie and I at this point as the others didn’t know what was happening and had kept walking.  I hadn’t felt a thing and certainly hadn’t seen anyone near enough to me to even know what the thief was wearing and not wanting to stop, Ellie and I kept walking catching up with the guys as we reached Crown Bakery.  Bugger it, I had just been pickpocketed.  Bloody Hell!!!  I was taking comfort in the fact that I had just downloaded all my pictures the night before, so I had all my photos saved, otherwise I would have been super duper upset for sure.  I knew I shouldn’t keep the camera in there in places like Freetown and this time I just pushed that envelope a little too far and I paid the price this time.  As Ellie and I kept walking a guy walked past us telling us we should be more careful, especially in Freetown and to make sure all our possessions were secure, yeah thanks buddy-I didn’t really need to hear that right at that second, but with a smile I thanked him as we hightailed it out of there.  My positive spin on the incident was that I hoped he got a good price for my camera and that he would be able to feed his family.  What else can I do or say?  My other positive spin as that I would prefer to get robbed/pickpocketed without my knowledge rather than get held up by knife or a gun and to really make myself feel better in all my travels EVER, but especially on my world odyssey, I had never been robbed or pickpocketed, and I have been to some pretty wacky places, been drunk more times than I can remember and still made it through unscathed.  I mean I do live in Nairobi after all.  So I think I need to take this one on the chin, it could have been a hell of a lot worse, no one was hurt, I was oblivious and I think that is the way I would prefer it to be done, well if at all.  So I was pickpocketed in Freetown, Sierra Leone and even after that episode I am not letting that dampen my outlook on the country.  I have had a marvelous time in Sierra Leone, it is a country I can see myself coming back to and the loss of the camera is just a small mark on a very positive score card.  There aren’t many countries I say that I would go back to, but here is one of them for sure. 

Lunch was at a bakery, which I haven’t really seen since leaving Australia.  When we arrived there was only one table that had people at it, and by the time we had eaten, the place was packed.  It was a mix of locals and expats, so we knew we must have been at a good place.  The menu was so extensive it was hard to decide what to have.  I was a little rocked about the pickpocket thing, but not as upset as I would have been had I not backed up my photos which I have actually been a little lax doing on this trip and I also bought with me an external hard drive that I am still to use at all.  I MUST get onto that in the next few days.  So with some food in the belly, we were off to the last stop of the day, the National Museum where we had originally been dropped off this morning. 

The heat really takes it out of you and after the first 30 minutes in the section of the museum that housed all the tribal artifacts, I was starting to wane in the stuffy room, which we were not allowed to take photos in.  The second section of the building was more about the recent history (excluding the civil war), with photos from the early 20’s and I always find old photos interesting of a time that has now passed.  There was also a great presentation on Bunce Island and I think that from now on it will be the last of the slave trade as we head further north.  I have to say even though it is a devastating history, unforgivable to humanity and to Africa and her people, it was probably the highlight of the trip for me to see all the forts and castles and any other historic place and information we have received on the slave trade.  I was oblivious to it all and it really makes you take stock and hope and pray that something like that will never happen again in anyone’s life time.  The world and its people do crazy things sometimes, WWI and WWII, Vietnam War, Rwanda Genocide, September 11, Boston Marathon, Syria Gas attacks and more recently the siege in a Nairobi shopping centre, yes indeed we live in a crazy crazy world. 

Bunce Island is the site of an 18th-century British slave castle, located about 20 miles upriver from Sierra Leone's capital city of Freetown on the coast, Bunce Island lies in the Sierra Leone River (also called the "Freetown Harbour"), the vast estuary formed by the Rokel River and Port Loko Creek. Although a small island about 1650 feet long and 350 feet wide, its strategic position at the limit of navigation in Africa's largest natural harbor made it an ideal base for European slave merchants.  Bunce Island is best known as one of the chief suppliers of slaves to planters for the rice industry in the British colonies of South Carolina and Georgia. Rice requires a great deal of technical knowledge for its successful cultivation. South Carolina and Georgia planters were willing to pay premium prices for slave labor brought from what they called the "Rice Coast" of West Africa, the traditional rice-growing region stretching from what is now Senegal and Gambia in the north down to Sierra Leone and Liberia in the south.  Bunce Island was the largest British slave castle on the Rice Coast. African farmers with rice-growing skills were kidnapped from inland areas and sold at the castle or at one of its many "outfactories" (trading posts) along the coast before being transported to North America. Several thousand slaves from Bunce Island were taken to the ports of Charleston (South Carolina) and Savannah (Georgia) during the second half of the 18th century. Slave auction advertisements in those cities often announced slave cargoes arriving from "Bance" or "Bense" Island.  Henry Laurens, Bunce Island's business agent in Charleston, a wealthy rice planter and slave dealer, later became President of the Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War and then United States (US) envoy to Holland. Captured by the British en route to his post in Europe, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. After hostilities ended, he became one of the Peace Commissioners who negotiated United States independence under the Treaty of Paris. The chief negotiator on the British side was Richard Oswald, the principal owner of Bunce Island, and Laurens' friend for 30 years. United States independence was negotiated in part between the British owner of Bunce Island and his American business agent in South Carolina. This reflects the wealth and position achieved by these men by their trade in rice and slaves.  Bunce Island was also linked to the Northern Colonies of Britain. Slave ships based in northern ports frequently called at Bunce Island, taking on supplies such as fresh water and provisions for the Atlantic crossing, and buying slaves for sale in the British islands of the West Indies and the Southern Colonies. The North American slave ships that called at Bunce Island were sailing out of Newport (Rhode Island), New London (Connecticut), Salem (Massachusetts), and New York.

By the time we exited the museum it was 2.15pm and I was ready, and I think everyone was, to go home.  We did want to make a supermarket stop, so we walked pretty much the rest of the main street finding a Lebanese supermarket that once we entered was the treasure at the end of the rainbow.  It was NGO city and had anything that you could possibly want and we have really seen anything like it since leaving the Ivory Coast when I spent 50 bucks on snacks, which I am proud to say I still have a packet of biscuits left from that shop, so it did last me 4 weeks.  I found my fav’s, Doritos, but at 6AUD for a packet, I was not going to pay that for a bag of chips so instead I bought a few cans of coke for the road and 2 Cadbury chocolates to see me through my sugar fix.  After we had all shopped, it was time to head home.  My feet were starting to kill me, the internet was calling and I had seen enough of the living breathing city of Freetown.  It seemed quite difficualtti find a taxi again that didn’t have people in it, but after 10 minutes, Ian managed to hail one and at the same time Rich got one, so we separated off and I went with Ellie and Rich and we shared a cab with a woman in the front to a spot on the way where we dropped her off.  We checked the price of the taxi when we got in and they do scam you, and this is taxi drivers anywhere, the return journey always seems to be more than the first one even though they take the same roads and it is still in daylight hours.  Today we were not going to argue knowing full well it could take another 10 minutes to find one to stop for us and with the cost of 35,000 leones (it cost 25,000 this morning) to get home, I think we would have paid more anyway to be honest as we were all on struggle street. 

So I had the afternoon to chillax and when I got back Helen had moved in but was not currently home.  It will be strange to share with someone after having my own space for 4 weeks, but it was the first time that I have had a single share on a trip that I hadn’t paid for and it felt like I was getting a bit more bang for my buck knowing I hadn’t paid for a single room.  In saying that, I will welcome Helen with open roomie arms for the last 3 weeks of the trip.  Speaking of which Helen got back around 4pm and then we both sat in the lounge room and blogged, wrote in our diaries and listen to my IPod music until 7pm when we headed downstairs to find out what the dinner plan was going to be.  Apparently Paddy’s was still closed (the pub across the road) so the only options was to head back to Indochine again (take another hit to the wallet), stay at the hotel or there was a group that headed out to a place called Sarah’s.  As everyone still doesn’t know each other properly yet, Helen took off with Ollie (who she is travelling with) Karl and Roger-Ellie and Rich decided to splurge and head back to Indochine and I stayed at the hotel’s restaurant with the rest of the group and ate in-house, which I was totally happy with as I had the last of the blogs to upload and then respond to a few emails/messages before we leave communication world again for an indefinite period of time when we leave Freetown in the morning. 

So the next and last section starts in earnest tomorrow.  I am not sure how 12 in the truck is going to go, ordering meals, crossing borders and everything else that goes with a group that grows from 5 to 12, but that it the true art of travelling and I just hope that the group as a whole will gel and that we have a cracking few weeks like I did with my first family and my second family and lastly the new members of third family. 

I was pickpocketed today in Freetown and I survived!