Everyday life in SL

So still no photos and I am sorry about that but I will try very hard to get some up soon.

I am now in Makeni, having arrived here nearly 3 weeks ago now. It was a nice journey up here in a decent vehicle (don't get many trips in that so we enjoy them when we do travel in it). The country is really beautiful, very lush and verdant with mountains (or big hills maybe). The human georgraphy is not so great! Makeni has city status but if you come from somewhere like London, it's just a town. I live in a detached single storey house in a compound: ie it is surrounded by a wall with a locked gate. There is razor wire atop the wall and spikes on the gate. In Sierra Leoneon terms, it is a good house; we have four bedrooms with the master having an en-suite bathroom and verandah and study. The other bedrooms share a bathroom. We have a kitchen, dining area and sitting room. There is also accomodation for servants out in the back yard. We live much better than our neighbours over the road (shanty type dwellings) but don't think of my housing in western terms! Maintainance is not a readily understood concept over here. You build something and then that's it! You leave it to its own devices. So our loo has not been flushing (buckets again! Where would we be without them?), the 'shower' is a trickle, we have no mains electricity in common with the rest of this town, so no fridge/freezer, tv etc etc. It makes life boring.

To those of you I told I wanted a simpler life: I was wrong. It is not simpler but just difficult in a different way. We buy rice, for instance, loose and this means you have to pick through it to get out the stones and insects! It took me about 45 minutes to work through a bowl for 4 last week. The shops are not what you would consider shops for the most part. There are a few Lebanese supermarkets (not much stuff in them) and the rest is stalls by the side of the road or bits for sale on people's verandahs. I didn't recognise some of them as shops at first. The food here is very limited and the cost is going up all the time. That is ok for me but not if one onion costs about a quarter of your daily income, as it does for most locals. Life is hard here; I can and will come back but not everyone can. I am so glad I was born in the developed world.

Transport is a nightmare. We (the Brits) left a railway behind which was dismantled. I don't know why. Hardly any of the vehicles on the road are road worthy. When one of my house mates and I came back from Freetown last week we paid for the middle row of a 3 row vehicle. The driver got 2 men in the passenger seat and four in the row behind us!

I don't want anyone to think I am not ok: I am. It is just all quite strange and I have so much to learn. Time is doing very odd things; I really feel I have been here at least 3 months or so and can't believe I was in the UK a month back. I will try to write about work next time; that's a whole different ball game!