March 2 :: Freetown, Sierra Leone
March 2 :: Freetown, Sierra Leone :: 30km / 3522km total
After breakfast I said goodbye to my fellow overlanders and pedalled away from Sukuta Camping. I had to get some backup money from the tourist strip, in the opposite direction from the airport, but I had lots of time. Or so I thought. To my great dismay there was a huge lineup in front of the ATM, full of rocket scientists (all tourists) who had great difficulties with punching in 4 digits and hitting "OK". Nervously I glanced at my watch as I crept agonizingly slowly towards the machine. Operating an ATM... is... just... not... that... hard. Finally the magic moment, and I raced over to a change bureau to get Euros for the local currency. Then, a hard one hour ride to the airport.
Of course, my promised bike box did not exist, and I was handed a large cubic box for my bike. I had half expected this, not being new to Africa, the 3rd world, etc, pulled out my knife, and got to work. With the eager help of about 7 baggage handlers the box was reshaped, with tape and strategic cuts, into something totally unresembling a bike box, but something that did contain my bike and wheels. I handed out lots of cash, about $6 in total, and all were happy as I entered the airport.
Slok Air is a Gambian run airline, and my particular flight down the coast to Freetown was part of a larger Dakar-Banjul(Gambia)-Freetown-Monrovia(Liberia) milkrun. Some passengers get on at Dakar, and stay on all the way through to Monrovia. Brutal, for such a short distance, as flights go. Anyways, as expected we left late, just late enough to ensure problems catching a ferry to the mainland in Freetown... but I'm getting ahead of myself. In Banjul airport I met a Liberian expat who was returning to Liberia, with her Dutch husband, after being away for over 20 years (due to civil war). She was going to see her mother and the rest of her family for the first time since she had left in the 1980's. Understandably she was terribly ancy with the flight delays, on her way, as she was, to one of the most significant moments of her life. I wished her all the best as I disembarked in Sierra Leone, hardly able to imagine her experience and what was about to be.
Lungi Airport in Sierra Leone is separated from Freetown by a large channel of water, one that requires a ferry crossing. I knew the schedules, I knew the time we landed, and I knew things were going to be really, really dicey in the dark on this boat. At Lungi a local Sierra Leonean, Alpha, who had been on the flight with me, had gathered two other Sierra Leoneans and invited me to be the 4th in a small group to make things easier, cheaper, and safer. Normally wary and fiercely independent, I figured that an 8km bike ride in the dark to a night ferry crossing, to an 8km dark ride into Freetown was not something I wanted to do, so I joined in, leaving the bike in its box. The 4 of us commandeered a taxi and down at the port Alpha seemed to know everyone, smoothing our way to the front of the queue, waiting for the ferry. All of us sat on our bags, watching other 'passengers' weave their way through the waiting crowd. Finally around 10pm the ferry from Freetown arrived, and onto the boat we went. God it was horrible, even worse than the Banjul ferry, if thats possible, and tired though I was I paid scrupulous attention to the goings on around me on this crowded, almost overloaded boat. Alpha was paying for everything, he knew everyone, and he told me he was a pharmacist with one 'location' in Freetown's crime-ridden East end, and one in the tourist area of Aberdeen. Hmmm. I think I know what kind of pharmacist he was, and grew even more paranoid about events around me.
The ferry unloading was utter madness, particularly as I was carrying my 2 cycling saddlebags, one of the Sierra Leonean's suitcases, trying to keep track of my bike box, and wondering just what the hell I was doing following this guy towards his waiting car. The fact that the other 2 were female and seemingly calm helped to reassure me that I wasn't in over my head, and I gave Alpha, now driving, directions to my Lonely Planet-referenced hotel. Of course LP West Africa screwed up again, and I found myself in front of what could only be described as a shithole. But I had all my stuff, apparently, and I was thankful to be shown into a room, any room, in which I could collapse on the bed, and bed, and take tomorrow as it comes.
After breakfast I said goodbye to my fellow overlanders and pedalled away from Sukuta Camping. I had to get some backup money from the tourist strip, in the opposite direction from the airport, but I had lots of time. Or so I thought. To my great dismay there was a huge lineup in front of the ATM, full of rocket scientists (all tourists) who had great difficulties with punching in 4 digits and hitting "OK". Nervously I glanced at my watch as I crept agonizingly slowly towards the machine. Operating an ATM... is... just... not... that... hard. Finally the magic moment, and I raced over to a change bureau to get Euros for the local currency. Then, a hard one hour ride to the airport.
Of course, my promised bike box did not exist, and I was handed a large cubic box for my bike. I had half expected this, not being new to Africa, the 3rd world, etc, pulled out my knife, and got to work. With the eager help of about 7 baggage handlers the box was reshaped, with tape and strategic cuts, into something totally unresembling a bike box, but something that did contain my bike and wheels. I handed out lots of cash, about $6 in total, and all were happy as I entered the airport.
Slok Air is a Gambian run airline, and my particular flight down the coast to Freetown was part of a larger Dakar-Banjul(Gambia)-Freetown-Monrovia(Liberia) milkrun. Some passengers get on at Dakar, and stay on all the way through to Monrovia. Brutal, for such a short distance, as flights go. Anyways, as expected we left late, just late enough to ensure problems catching a ferry to the mainland in Freetown... but I'm getting ahead of myself. In Banjul airport I met a Liberian expat who was returning to Liberia, with her Dutch husband, after being away for over 20 years (due to civil war). She was going to see her mother and the rest of her family for the first time since she had left in the 1980's. Understandably she was terribly ancy with the flight delays, on her way, as she was, to one of the most significant moments of her life. I wished her all the best as I disembarked in Sierra Leone, hardly able to imagine her experience and what was about to be.
Lungi Airport in Sierra Leone is separated from Freetown by a large channel of water, one that requires a ferry crossing. I knew the schedules, I knew the time we landed, and I knew things were going to be really, really dicey in the dark on this boat. At Lungi a local Sierra Leonean, Alpha, who had been on the flight with me, had gathered two other Sierra Leoneans and invited me to be the 4th in a small group to make things easier, cheaper, and safer. Normally wary and fiercely independent, I figured that an 8km bike ride in the dark to a night ferry crossing, to an 8km dark ride into Freetown was not something I wanted to do, so I joined in, leaving the bike in its box. The 4 of us commandeered a taxi and down at the port Alpha seemed to know everyone, smoothing our way to the front of the queue, waiting for the ferry. All of us sat on our bags, watching other 'passengers' weave their way through the waiting crowd. Finally around 10pm the ferry from Freetown arrived, and onto the boat we went. God it was horrible, even worse than the Banjul ferry, if thats possible, and tired though I was I paid scrupulous attention to the goings on around me on this crowded, almost overloaded boat. Alpha was paying for everything, he knew everyone, and he told me he was a pharmacist with one 'location' in Freetown's crime-ridden East end, and one in the tourist area of Aberdeen. Hmmm. I think I know what kind of pharmacist he was, and grew even more paranoid about events around me.
The ferry unloading was utter madness, particularly as I was carrying my 2 cycling saddlebags, one of the Sierra Leonean's suitcases, trying to keep track of my bike box, and wondering just what the hell I was doing following this guy towards his waiting car. The fact that the other 2 were female and seemingly calm helped to reassure me that I wasn't in over my head, and I gave Alpha, now driving, directions to my Lonely Planet-referenced hotel. Of course LP West Africa screwed up again, and I found myself in front of what could only be described as a shithole. But I had all my stuff, apparently, and I was thankful to be shown into a room, any room, in which I could collapse on the bed, and bed, and take tomorrow as it comes.
posted by Graham Durrant at 12:28 PM
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