In March 2008

It just occurred to me I never really post anything about what I have been up to. It's not as if I am to my neck with a million things, I just conveniently forget to put in into writing. I mean, that's the very reason why I started out this blog - to let the wide wide world who cares or gives me 5 seconds of their time a glimpse into my life here in Sierra Leone. 

So let me give you a prosaic account into what I've been up to lately since the mid of March..

1. During the Easter break (5 days holiday here!), we went to Mama Beach for a camping trip. The initial idea was to drive up to Conakry (Guinea) and spend the Easter weekend there, bumming around, behaving all touristy. Asaf, T and myself were so keen to do this. Until my bosses' boss who's also my boss technically said "NO". And a NO from this man means something. Soon we found out that it's just not that safe and convenient to drive up there for a variety of reasons (bandits, car registration, boring place, too much to be spent bribing officials, visa etc.). So we shelved the idea aside for another time. Eventually we ended up going camping - German style in African conditions. German style because we went with 3 other Germans and we were all fully equipped with 'army' tents, torches and of course plenty to drink. It turned out to be a great, relaxing and definitely enjoyable trip inspite of the sandy sleeping conditions. 

Mama Beach is a magical place when the sun sets. If you stand along the shoreline, with the warm water trickling your feet, and you looked around you, you see the hills outlined against the dark sky and that I must say was one of the most memorable moment of the trip. In the evening, we had a fire going. Asaf brought his guitar and we sang what we could. We toasted mashmallows, drink and chat the night away.. it's was surreal considering that we are in Sierra Leone, a country so devastated by  a decade of civil war and yet standing there amongst the untouched beauty, one feels so extremely blessed. I was feeling so, for sure. We did a fair bit, cooking fish, barbequing, swimming, a ride on Henry's boat to Banana Island. So that was what we did during Easter. Other than that, I woudn't say I have been up to anything exciting really. Ooh, we hosted a party for our favourite Bolivian, Antonio who's leaving at the end of March. The party was fantastic! BBQ, drinks, good friends and good laughs plus plenty of Latino folks and of course enough salsa music to shake things up! Lovely! You should have been there.