Kabala Government Hospital Article

I ran across an article in a Freetown newspaper describing the Kabala Government Hospital. This hospital was constructed by the World Bank. It currently has no doctors, water, electricity, or waste disposal system and is the main source of medical care for the district. The one thing it does have: untrained volunteers!

http://www.news.sl/drwebsite/publish/article_200513270.shtml

http://www.thepatrioticvanguard.com/spip.php?article4486

An article written by a recent Salone immigrant to the US. Reveals very commonly held attitudes towards the west, brutal patriarchy women live under, shows how easy it is for anyone to understand more progressive viewpoints while still maintaining regressive and oppressive attitudes.

Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary

Lakka Beach

Road Into Town

River #2

Abraham

In the week before I left Sierra Leone, I wanted to visit the beaches. I felt extremely nervous about my options for getting there. I was hoping James could help me charter a car inexpensively, but we only found a driver willing to do it for a very high price. James had his own private driver and twice it worked out that I could use him, for the cost of gasoline, to get through Freetown. The first day I did this I caught a poda to Godrich Village. Catching one further on to River #2 proved problematic. I ended up in a car with a driver who took me far off from the taxi area – which I had no way of knowing - to negotiate a price. He wasted much of my time trying to negotiate an extremely inflated price. In frustration I called James to ask him to speak to the driver, but James just repeated that he had told me this would happen if I tried to visit the beach. I agreed to an inflated price, but the driver’s car broke down and we had to return any way. Unfortunately not before being stopped by the police. The bizarre site of a white girl alone in a car was clearly enough to make them stop us out of curiosity. At first they may have been trying to discern whether the driver was out to kidnap me, but the interrogation quickly disintegrated into questioning on whether I was married and could they have my phone number and come the beach or New York with me. The driver enjoyed the attention and I managed to end the conversation by continually looking the other way and not responding to their questions (since rudely responding had no effect). The police became embarrassed and let us go.
Fortunately the driver returned my money and left me at the proper car park. Standers-by arranged a ride for me with an honest driver. This driver, realizing their dubious nature, refused to stop when police signaled us to pull over. I had no trouble until I tried to leave the beach. A young man had been following me around River #2. I forcefully told him to go his way and he did, but then he took the same poda back to Godrich as I. I ending up speaking with him at length. Abraham had a masters in teaching from Fourah Bay and was tri-lingual. An older American woman he had met on the beach had agreed to pay for his education. He told me he was not interested in teaching because the pay was so low. He pressed hard for me to agree to hire him to keep house for my home in the United States. Given that I live in a one bedroom and own four plates I tried to convey how unnecessary that would be. He argued that Africans could only be responsible for small jobs. This was a sentiment I heard frequently in Sierra Leone. All I knew to do was state that I didn’t agree, I saw Sierra Leoneans doing great things, and to point out he had more education than I did, knew more about languages, and that I believed he had a responsibility to teach.
We arrived at car park where you need to catch a new poda to continue into Freetown. It became clear to him that I had no idea how to find a poda back into Freetown. He offered to go with me back into the city even though it was far outside his destination. I may have made it back without his help, but certainly not before dark and certainly not without relying on the help of others instead. One mistake I was continually making was in not attempting to ‘make a friend’ as soon as I arrived somewhere new. This is very un-American. We take great pride in our individualism and doing things on our own. But when there are no posted signs or a set of commonly understood rules and infrastructure to abide by, this does not work. My driver would immediately befriend a new person when we arrived somewhere new. He needed an ally to find the correct turnoff, a parking spot, and a lunch.

Fantah's Birth

I had a chance to observe a few births. The first was in Theresa’s home. This was the first birth I have ever witnessed and it certainly took place in unforgettable circumstances. The hygienic quality and lack of comfort in the birthing environment was stunning. The woman, Fantah, gave birth on the floor of the room I had been staying in. A thin sheet of plastic similar to a cheap shower curtain was laid over the dusty floor in the dimly lit bedroom. She had no pillow. Many body fluids are expelled during birth and we had no way of keeping the area sanitary. The same gloves worn while mopping up fluids were worn while delivering the baby; the same towel used to mop up one fluid was passed near the woman’s body again to clean up another fluid. But Fantah delivered the baby quickly with no complication and in nearly absolute silence. This was also my first experience seeing female genital mutilation. Fantah had had everything removed. Only a slit in her body remained. It is absolutely shocking to me that a human body could survive such a procedure, much less be able to birth. It actually wasn’t until I had seen several other mutilations that I understood what I had been looking at – it was so disorienting to see these parts missing. A fifteen year old came in to the clinic with complications in birth (someone had not properly removed the placenta). She had had slightly less removed and the scars were still easily visible which helped me more easily understand what I had seen earlier.

Nutrition Education is Important

I’m not sure the effects and extent of a lack of knowledge about nutrition in this area can be overstated. Once while out walking, Adrienne and I happened past a woman with a severely starved infant. We stopped and spoke with the woman encouraging her to bring the infant to the clinic (which was about a two minute walk away) for formula. Again, there is really no overstating how extreme this infant’s condition was. The woman said it was 9 months old; it was the size of a one month old. Everyone has seen photos of the starving babies in Africa, but it is incredibly disturbing to see a baby in this condition face to face. The baby’s eyes were protruding, the bones in the neck sticking out, the ribs protruding, the sagging skin around her hips where there was no fat surrounding her femur. She barely moved or held her head on her own. To make sense of this, we in the West usually tell ourselves that these people are so poor they cannot afford food or are so poor they want the child to die so they do not need to pay for its food or school or clothes. We learned from the mother that the child’s biological mother had died and the infant was left for this woman to care for along with four others. Watching the foster mother and grandmother interact with the child in the clinic it was very clear that they loved it. They knew she was ill, but I think they were genuinely unaware of how close to death the baby was. They were feeding it cornflakes. Which is shocking to hear, because it is so clear to us that an infant fed exclusively cornflakes would starve, but is even more shocking because cornflakes are the most expensive food available in Kabala. The family apparently had quite a bit of money available to buy food for the infant. Theresa spent some time with the mother and grandmother explaining how to prepare baby food from bananas, sugar, salt, and rice, and other techniques she had used to raise an orphaned infant herself. I am not sure how things progressed in this case, but hopefully the family believed Theresa. Without understanding the nutritional value of cornflakes verses the baby food, it is simply trust that would motivate them to prepare the food Theresa described. I believe they wanted cornflakes for the infant because as the most expensive food they must believe it to be the most healthy. I am sure it does not help that when radiantly healthy Westerners visit, we buy cornflakes religiously.

Too Many Men

The evenings I generally spent writing, reading, visiting with the family or the other North Americans in town. Theresa took me along several times on nights out with friends of hers or evening events related to her community work. Samuel, her son, took me out to films a few times as well. I greatly appreciated their entertainment, not only for the obvious enjoyment of their company and the opportunity to get to know the town a little better, but I tended to draw unwelcome visits from men in the evening otherwise. I was often confused by Hawa’s announcements that so-and-so wanted me to go out and talk to him. I usually told her I did not know him and I wanted him to leave, because I was never able to place a face I knew to the names I was being told were here to visit me. I am concerned that I may have offended people I was on friendly terms with though. I took the risk of just asking them to leave for three reasons. One, even if I did know the man he was clearly there to propose marriage or just proposition me for sex. Two, I had a very difficult time ending these conversations. And three, the Sierra Leonean notion of the home not being a private space is something I never adjusted to. If I was in my room for the evening, I did not want men lining up on the porch waiting for me. Few actual difficulties came from this other than a vague sense of unease in the house. One of the construction workers building the new clinic took to spending quite a bit of time waiting for me at the house. Being rude enough to these men to keep them away came easily to me, but with this guy I would actually need to physically shove him out of the door and brace against it to keep him out. I was of course aware that women in Kabala do not enjoy a status equal to men the way I am used to, but it was shocking to realize that men in Kabala did not take what I said very seriously. It became clear over time that many men did me the favor of conversing with me because I was a stranger, but they did not consider me a partner in conversation. A second very strange thing I experienced with men was the use of the phrase “I want to take you by force.” I had several men say this to me as though conversationally. Once this happened at the house in the presence of other women. They did not seem bothered by this statement. My best assessment of what this meant is that it is slang in Krio with a meaning similar to having victory. I noticed “take by force” on a poster in Freetown advertising a soccer match so I think these men were telling me they would “win my heart.”

Hawa's Plight

Hawa’s, a relative of Theresa’s living with her while I was there, ongoing difficulty with her husband stands out to me as a distinctively Sierra Leonean story and as having a number of aspects many Americans can identify with. Hawa’s husband, Sorie, has a history of running away and abandoning his family for periods of time. He both returned and abandoned them again while I was staying with Theresa. He had recently returned from Kono where he had been living “with a very fat woman” until she left him. His newest departure was signaled by the theft of a bag of ground nut seed belonging to the Women Against Poverty group that was stored at Theresa’s house. Sorie stole the ground nut and passed it on to his oldest son to sell in the market. Sorie took the profits and abandoned his family. If the theft of the ground nut didn’t make it clear that he was not intending to return soon his difficulties with the police did. The police had attempted to arrest him a few weeks earlier for debts he owed but Theresa persuaded them to wait since she had hired him to replace the roof on the house. The house would remain roofless if the police took Sorie away so they agreed to wait until the job was finished. He ran off the next day. Without his income, Theresa said she would not be able to support Hawa and her five children and gave Hawa until the end of the week to leave. This sent the usual stoic Hawa (she gave birth alone without so much as a peep) into a state of panic. She refused to eat. She reached out to Theresa’s daughter to advocate on her behalf. They begged money to buy a phone card and call Sorie. Sorie told them they could all die for all he cared and Theresa was adamant that it was not possible for her to continue to provide everything for all of them. It seemed that Hawa’s only option was to move back in with her parents in their village. School would not be an option for her children, but as I understood that was not one of the main issues for Hawa in moving back with her family. Her children had always had a sporadic record of attendance at school. With such a low social status from the abandonment, Hawa would likely effectively become a house/field slave in the village. She would have to work in fields living in the village unlike at Theresa’s house. I imagine rape is a constant concern for a woman in such circumstances. By the time I left, Hawa was still being allowed to stay with Theresa. I had heard that the resolution reached was that Hawa and her girls could stay, but the boys would need to leave. I have heard since that all have relocated.
Having been raised by my mother, I felt particularly upset at Hawa’s situation. It is incredibly difficult in our society for a single person to raise a family because of certain social stigmas and lack of economic opportunities and economic restraints. But in Kabala, there are almost no options for a woman to better her situation. Theresa had long encouraged Hawa to become involved in FAWA, a program which teaches women skills that should be economically beneficial such as weaving and garment dyeing. Hawa resisted becoming involved. I understand her lack of interest to be primarily based on two issues. One, I think there is a serious class stigma against women who sell certain things in the market. It would be very difficult for Hawa to go from sharing Theresa’s large home to placing herself so publicly as a merchant in the town marketplace. Two, there are so few, if any, instances that women have in their own lives of other woman who have become independent entrepreneurially. I do not think most women believe it is possible to earn money independently because they do not see any one else doing it.
In addition to my own identification with her situation, it was difficult to witness the increased discipline brought on her boys. Some blamed the oldest boy for his role in his father’s theft. Samuel, in particular, stepped in to discipline the boys. He is twenty and has had his own family broken apart by the departure of his father. His father died suddenly rather than running off, but the lack of a male head of household left him largely on his own to find money for books, school fees, etc. It requires an immense amount of maturity and good decision making to be upwardly mobile from his position – a goal which he is stridently focused on. Several times I watched all the kids in the house study. Samuel is very good at school. He clearly believes it is vital for Hawa’s boys (about 7, 8, and 10) to be successful in school in order to be successful in life. He watched over their studying, whipping their arms with a strip of tire when they were wrong or not fast enough. Several times at night I heard him whipping the boys for misbehavior. Since it was extremely disturbing to me to listen to the whipping and crying, I went over once to ask him to stop on the grounds that it was disturbing me. The boys, naked but not visibly bleeding, ran from the room. Samuel explained to me that it was not too much, that the boys had been very naughty in not obeying orders to help with housework, and they needed to be taught discipline. He was not happy for me to have intervened but fortunately it did not happen again while I was home.

Desperate Housewives of Kabala

Identifying, getting used to and internalizing the mindset here has been difficult, but spending time almost exclusively with members of one's own gender is a big part of it. The new nurse the clinic has hired, Mariama, has been taking me to her second job at the government hospital. We also like to watch Nigerian soap operas at her house on the weekend. Before Nar Sarah clinic, she was head nurse of the maternity ward at the Kabala government hospital. Now she volunteers for the same position after work at our clinic. She has shown me all the wards: ante-natal, post-natal, the delivery area, the men's ward, and the TB/leprosy ward. I was like, "Oh Mariama, I've never seen a person with leprosy." She said they see it often and would find me one. The nurses don't really do rounds or anything so there is a lot of time spent chatting and napping in the wards. One of the nurses - who has the same name that they've given me, Kumba Kargbo - brought a man in and introduced him as Lansana. We shook hands and he left. Mariama came in as he was leaving and was like "Oh Charmaine did you see the leper?" I explained the handshaking but she is confidant that I don't have leprosy.
I see Peacemaker's wife, Merah, and her friend Fermah a lot as well. I sort of think of them as the Desperate Housewives of Kabala. The live in a nice part of town and are stylish and gossipy. They seem to always be fully decked out and headed to the market to stir something up. Merah and Peace were married when Merah was about 16 and Peace about 40. He keeps girlfriends which is the norm especially for a respectable son of a chief. Merah will tell you she only stays because of the kids.
Saio, a fifteen year old girl who lives with us, was examining my Environmentalists for Obama button. It has a picture of Al Gore. She was like, "Is this George?" I laughed til I cried because maybe George does look a little like Al Gore, but Saio hasn't seen a picture of him. It's just more reasonable than not that at my age I would be with a 55 year old man.
Hawa, Theresa's niece who does all of my cooking and cleaning, had a baby two weeks ago. No one was around to assist her. But apparently she had it very quickly with no problems in her room. I hear that happens a lot. It's her fifth. About a year ago - must have been shortly before or after Finah, her one year old, was born - her husband left her "for a very fat woman," Theresa tells me, who lives in Kono. But now she has left him so he is back living with the family. Hawa doesn't speak English because she didn't go to school, but she doesn't seem super thrilled with her husband. I haven't really noticed them interacting too much though they are both in the house most of the day. Even though it means even more financial hardship, I think many women feel a little relieved when their husbands leave.
Theresa likes to take me out in the evenings to have a drink with a friend or so of hers. I'm usually one of the few people in the bar drinking something alcoholic. Most people go with a non-alcoholic beer.
There is more to be afraid of in Kabala than I can keep track of. As each day is a little hotter than the last, one of my recent fixations is the idea of vipers and puff adders being in the house. The cement houses are usually maybe 20 degrees or more cooler than outside, often totally dark and a little damp. I don't see how they could be more specifically designed to attract snakes. Every night I'm more afraid that the cockroaches I hear scurrying around are actually vipers flicking their tongues in search for the most likely place for me to unknowingly step on them in the morning. At the bar recently, a video of a zoo with the lyrics to 'Happy Birthday' was showing. I was hoping this could be an opportunity for Theresa to tell me something about they ensure snakes don't get inside. "Theresa, are there snakes here?" "Oh yes." "Should I be afraid of them?" "Oh yes! They will bite you." "Do they come into the house?" "Oh yes, but someone will stand between you and the snake." It's a plan.

Patients

We had an old guy come into the clinic who was very weak, had a rattle in his chest, and low blood pressure. We told them to go to the government hospital or the private surgeon. Maybe four hours later our volunteer nurse from Canada went to the surgeon's on an errand. The old man was waiting there and in considerably worse condition. She recognized it this time as congestive heart failure. She asked the nurses why he hadn't been seen especially since his blood pressure had dropped to 60/40 (and at that point you can stop calling it blood 'pressure') and asked them to give him diuretics to force the fluid out of his lungs. They said the doctor was not in and they would not do anything without the doctor's order. The nurses had the professional knowledge and skill to help the man and just weren't doing so. He died later that day.
I've asked myself so many times here, "Why won't they take reasonable courses of action?" The clinic has received over 10 boxes of donations that sat - many for well over a year - unopened in the clinic - useful items taking up space, becoming termite-eaten and expiring. How could they not open them?
I have absolutely no idea. Just a sense that it's an important question. All I can figure is that these are people whose lives have been so brutal for so long that an old man's trouble breathing just doesn't seen urgent. And almost everyone's authority in any given situation is somehow severely mitigated. Women aren't quite fully people here; so for the female nurses to defy clinic policy and administer medicine without the male doctor's consent probably would've been quite extraordinary. Abd because they lived such brutal lives for so long, that actually would be more extraordinary than an old man dying needlessly suffocating in a doctor's waiting room. But why didn't his family advocate for the nurses to do something? The doctor's office is such a foreign place I doubt the family knew the nurses had the medicine to help. They may have fully accepted the need for a doctor's order as the nurses did. And living without any control of any aspect of their lives, arguing with the nurses would have possibly been the first instance in their lives that they stood up to a system and demanded their rights. Or even the first time they had witnessed such. And all Sierra Leoneans live with such a deeply felt sense of inferiority. They do not believe they have the capacity to do things for themselves.

Clinic

On busy days the clinic sees about 30 patients. It seems that most days are busy, but sometimes only 10 or so will come. Public health announcements over the radio make an astonishing difference. The Women's Health Program or some other NGO or government agency will announce something along the lines of 'everyone who experiences abdominal pain should see a doctor.' So people will show up that day saying they feel abdominal pain.
The clinic is equipped with one exam room, one room for births (which they use for exams), an injection room, and a waiting room. Everything is completely covered in a layer of dirt and the waiting room is accentuated with wasps. Patients come in, have their blood pressure and pulse measured and a patient card prepared by a nurse, and wait in plastic chairs for one of the two rooms to call them in.
Once in the exam room, the patient's experience differs dramatically from what I'm used to in a doctor's office. One of our nurses will stay behind his desk throughout the exam. He doesn't usually touch or examine the patient - just listens to their description and prescribes medicine. The other nurses tend to be more thorough. If you are called into the delivery room you will probably be asked to lie on a bed draped with a quilt that hasn't been washed in ages. Numerous pregnant women, women with STI's, and vaginal discharges, and other mysterious abdominal pains have lain on it before you. On one side of you lies a shelf stuffed with donated gauze, band aids, Q-tips, sutures, and soap - all in widely varying conditions. On the other side lies a bare exam table where women give birth. The woman's family is in charge of cleaning the table after the delivery - so it too may be in widely varying degrees of cleanliness. Other patients will wander in and out of the room whether you are dressed or not. The door may be kept open during your exam. It's hard to tell what patients' reactions are to everything. Going to the doctor is a novel mysterious experience for most people. There's definitely no sense of invasion if someone wanders in during their vaginal exam. I think I have yet to see someone ask a question to their nurse.
One of the volunteer nurses implemented hand washing stations - bowls of clean soapy water. I think she and I are the only people using them. I've seen mother bathe their children in them. I've also seen a nurse touch an infected eye and then palpate a pregnant woman. The underutilization of existing supplies and knowledge is stunning.
The clinic isn't set up to do basic lab testing, so diagnoses are made on a best assessment basis. They give out antibiotics like penicillin, flagyl, ACT for malaria, aspirins, anti-diarrheals, and iron for anemia. There is a government hospital and a private surgeon who we refer cases to.

On the Daily

So what do I do every day? That is something that has been somewhat of an obstacle so far. The planned roles for me were dependent on the new clinic facility being open, which it is not. The current clinic has only two exam rooms - so it is actually a bit overstaffed currently with two volunteer nurses and three regular nurses. Although since no one plans ahead in Kabala - including who will be at work the next day - it has been working out. I have shadowed Theresa's pre-natal exams to get a sense of how the clinic works. I might keep working with her doing health education with patients on a one to one kind of basis during their exams with her. I have undertaken an enormous project of unpacking, organizing, and cataloguing donations the clinic has received. It is difficult to understand why, but the clinic is not in the practice of unpacking and using the donations it receives. They are kept in boxes in the exam rooms or packed away in an extraordinarily musty basement. And they've been that way for years. With the help of another volunteer (a nurse from Canada who is with CITA for a year) I've unloaded quite a few boxes of musty bandaids, un-usable surgery equipment, toothbrushes, miscellaneous medicine samples and old prescriptions. There is far more than the clinic can actually hold. I'm in favor of burning much of it, but Theresa wants to keep most things.

I have also taken on grant writing sooner than planned. I've been working with a grant quite a bit - but there are some difficulties. The grant is mostly ready to submit but communication and planning are difficult to the point that I have no way of knowing if anyone wants to implement the project the grant has planned. We've in fact, already won another grant to do the project, but no one is doing big parts of it. The project involves a lot of education regarding health rights, which I could have come prepared to do, but didn't.

So my days are spent at the clinic in a combination of observing, considering grants, unloading, and other miscellaneous jobs.

The harder part is the evening. Which starts at 4 or earlier. People's work days end early in Kabala. If I haven't already, I will search out internet (I can only access it until about 5pm). After 7, reading and writing become significantly more difficult with no electricity, but unless I'm passing the time with some of the other 8 English speaking people in town, that's about all there is to do. I try to stay up until at least 10, but I'm often asleep by 9. There's random activities I get drawn into by Theresa's kids as well such as 'seeing a film in town*' or heading to the chief's house to watch CNN. *Seeing a film involves going to a building in the market and sitting down in front of your choice of 1 of 6 Nigerian soap operas or terrible American action movies. The play them continuously on a loop. The first time I went I saw the last half of a later Wesley Snipes movie and the first half of Half Past Dead.

Cooking

After being sick, I’ve spent some time with Theresa helping her make food that shouldn’t make me sick. I had been happily disengaged with the cooking process until this. It’s truly stunning nothing worse has happened to my health. I have yet to see a local clean their hands. In a place where every thing you touch is coated in dirt, that’s a big deal. We started the soup by peeling potatoes – and dropping them in the dirt once peeled. The same dirt chickens peck through and children urinate in. With no running water we can only clean them by dropping them into a somewhat clean bucket filled with somewhat clean water to rinse the dirt off. There are no cutting boards or tables around so you have to fully clasp whatever food you are peeling or slicing (and store the knife on the ground while not using it). And then everything gets boiled – I guess that’s been my saving grace. Just taking the food off the fire and transferring it to a bowl was really hard. There are no potholders. A soiled rag was laying in the corner so Theresa used it that to grasp the pot. By the time I managed to refocus her attention from the sick infants and back to my soup, all my broth had boiled away. As I write, a chicken is wandering into the house after pooping on the table. Since there is no money for feed, roaming around scavenging for bugs is the only way farm animals eat. There would need to be a radical re-zoning of the town for everyone to pin in their chickens and goats and ducks and still allow them enough room to scavenge. I’m supposed to be working with health education. I hadn’t realized the people I’d be working with would not be utilizing their own knowledge.

Home

But we managed to make it to Kabala. I am staying with one of the founders of the Nar Sarah clinic, Theresa Kargbo (who makes an appearance in the book The Land of Magic Soldiers which is worth finding). I am not sure how many other people live in the house. There are maybe about 12 adopted children living with Theresa; her husband lives in Freetown with his other wife (as in second of two current wives) but stays occaisionally in Kabala as well. They were kind enough to clear out a bedroom for me. There is a window that opens onto the yard making the room bright and breezy at times. The room is occupied solely by a bed and a table. Hawa, Theresa’s niece, takes care of me. She brings me boiled water to wash my face, washes my clothes, sweeps my floor, lights my lamp, brings my food, washes my dishes, fills a bucket of bathe water for me, and cooks my food. I sleep under a mosquito net feeling very much like a colonial queen.
I have recently been displaced from their house while the roof is being replaced. The thatching under the tin is rotting. I’m staying with Theresa’s brother, Peacemaker, the clinic’s medical director, for about a week. While also full of children, their house is quite a bit different. Peacemaker’s has an actual living room. One of the big challenges for me has been balancing time spent with others with time I need alone to do my own things. Most people in Kabala don’t seem to have enough activities to occupy their time. People visit each other or hang out on their own porches. Constantly socializing. Theresa’s porch has a bench on it with people coming and going at all hours. Peacemaker has a yard with a table very much like this except there is also a living room with a light that centralizes activities and makes things at the house much less chaotic. They cook for me here as well. After 4 days of dysentery I’m eating more Western food than I had been – even though Merah’s, Peacemaker’s wife’s, food is good (if lacking in variety and nutrients). My only complaint is the rocks I find in every meal.

Arriving

When Heathrow began offering flights to Freetown a few years ago, the New York Times sent their travel coorespondent on a mission to visit as a tourist and a decide if it was ready for tourism. The result was a somber no. This country is not ready for visitors; don’t come. The bottom of the UN Index of Quality of Life is no joke. My nearly two weeks here have been very tough.
I got a taste of the obstacles that permeate every daily activity here as soon as I arrived at Lunghi airport. CITA’s representative, James, met me at the airport to escort me to Freetown. We needed to walk a ways from the airport before finding a cab for less than $60. The price plummets to about $2.50 once outside the gates. A cab missing its door handles and seatbelts took us a few miles away to the ferry. Our hour long ride was serendaded by select videos from the early 80’s of American pop and homemade evangelical films: Krio dubbed film of Christ’s baptism, Sierra Leoneans on a ranch dressed as cowboys singing contemporary praise songs, the original Live Aid (or something) with Kenny Rogers, Tina Turner, Michael and Janet, and Bryan Adams Everything I Do. Some war amputees then performed a song for the first class passengers. Then we landed in the worst city I been in yet; worse than Guatemala City and Cleveland. We dodged through people and cars pouring off the ferry and continued dodging people and cars through the unlit streets of Sierra Leone’s only city. Masses of people crowded off the street with candles and blaring radios. After several bouts of aggressive price haggling we caught a cab for local fare. Thankfully, I only spent two nights in Freetown. I gathered my stuff from James’ apartment and set off with him and Sarah, CITA’s treasurer, for Kabala.
I had thought we were taking a bus the 230 km to Kabala. If I had known what to expect, I may have not been able to go through with it. The three of us with baggage in tow hailed cabs. We slowly cut through the smog and crowds of Freetown until we got to the edge of town. We waited around for a half hour or so while various cab drivers competed to fill their cars with passengers trying to get out of town. The three of us stuffed into a backseat of a decrepit Toyota, I thought we were finally ready to go. An older woman took the front seat. An older woman joined the first in the front seat. A man with baggage of is own squeezed in next to me. Sweating on each other with scarcely enough room to breathe in the humid polluted air, we were ready. I still assumed the other people packed in with us must only be heading a mile out of town or so. We were able to stop several times to add water to the car to keep it going which gave us a needed chance to stretch legs and readjust positions. Our first car only took us to Makeni – about halfway. There we stopped in the market and searched around again for drivers filling cars headed through Kabala. I hadn’t realized our fortunate we had been with our first driver. The second cab was significantly more broken down and crowded. The crew headed from one rural outpost to another was noticeably more haggard and sweaty than the Freetown crew we started out with. Two to a seat, children coughing on me, and the gearshift ramming into my leg every 10 seconds we set off again. Once we made it past the first checkpoint, the driver stopped to pick up another passenger to share his seat. Fortunately James nearly came to blows with the driver telling him he’d lose our 3 fares if he insisted on such a dangerous arrangement. Somewhat fortunately as well the car burst into smoke every few miles so we needed to stop frequently. Picking up passengers for the roof each time.