"I like to take some snaps"

Thursday, 14 June
We woke up to Junior and Yarabe - the two young men who hang around the house and pretty much live here doing the odd chores - listening to Capital Radio's "The Breakfast Show" which plays a very Western mix (Beatles, Black Eyed Peas, Maroon 5, Simon and Garfunkel, etc...) of music interspersed by a female DJ with a very British accent. Although she predicts SL having a woman president by 2015, she believes much that is too long of a wait and that SL needs a woman president as soon as possible, reflecting Liberia's recent election of economist Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. She beat out a famous football star, which means that she is not very popular among some Sierra Leoneans.

I sat on back porch with Junior and Yarabe for about an hour, watching people walk by and taking some pictures as they've become relatively comfortable having a camera around. Joshua walked out from our room holding my small point-and-shoot digital camera, saying it was "very fine." I showed him how to "take some snaps" around the house - it was quite the attraction with everyone wanting to see their snap on the screen. He took it to work at Celtel as well, so hopefully there will be some interesting images.

Moses accompanied Sara and I down to Wilberforce from the barracks. The barracks is on either side of the road; the officers live above the road while the enlisted men and the shantytowns are below the road. The barracks are fairly relaxed; there's a few concrete and camouflaged-net guard posts and a bushstick fence that surrounds most of it, with the important buildings having concertina wire around them as well. Other than that, it looks no different than any other part of Freetown. The soldiers' main occupation seems to be manual labor - fetching water and building more fences and guard posts. I've never seen a soldier carry a weapon; in fact, I've only seen two men with guns the entire time I've been here.

Most of the expat community lives in compounds surrounded with concertina wire in the West - Wilberforce, Lumley, Aberdeen, Murraytown - and so every morning there is a procession of flagged embassy and NGO vehicles through Wilberforce going to the embassies above Freetown. We even waved to the US ambassador, but he ignored us. Alas.

After a quick taxi ride to the National Stadium, we went to the internet cafe while Moses walked back up the hill to Wilberforce to check on his family - he came down with us just to make sure we had a safe taxi ride, but we've negotiated the taxi system all around the city, so I'm not sure why he came with us. We found what was essentially a western gas station convenience store at which Sara bought a Coke Light with Lime and a bar of chocolate - we looked quite out of place walking back to center.

We ran the second session of the identity class, with Sara doing work about self and family while I worked with them on brainstorming and freewriting for their self-portrait. After we returned from a cassava leaf and rice lunch, a group from the EU was supposed to stop by the center, as they are touring through West Africa looking at youth initiatives. They never showed up, although Moses and Frederic waited outside all afternoon for them We ran another session with the afternoon kids, which was a bit too large for my liking. I'm still impressed by these kids - the session was almost an hour and a half long - and they remained interested, even though they only spend three hours a day in school. It was great actually accomplishing something for once.

Sara busy teaching

I helped Andrew with a few tech things around the center and then we headed into town for dinner. We met Amanda at the YMCA and ventured down Fort Street to this fantastic little restaurant she found - she's been eating there three times a day. A storm was blowing in - the air was full of dust from the streets and window shutters and doors slammed open and closed. People ran by, hurrying home. Thankfully, we made it to the restaurant in time to watch the storm, safe and dry inside. The groundnut stew was the best African food I've had yet.

We went back to the Y and chilled on the balcony for a few hours, which has quite the impressive view overlooking all of Freetown:

We met twenty-one-year-old Harry from Sierra Leone. Words can not adequately describe him. He was working for the UN radio station in 2005 when he denounced the Sierra Leoneans who signed up to go to Iraq as manual labor for US military sub-contractors. He says he couldn't understand why someone would want to go, so he decided to find out their motivations - by going himself. He signed up in Freetown and 24 hours later was wearing a flak jacket driving through Baghdad - he didn't tell anyone he was leaving. He worked there for 90 days for a US military sub-contractor, making $150 a month. Upon his return he worked at iEARN for about a year, where he met Amanda last summer. He knows just about everyone - from the presidents of Sierra Leone and Liberia to the recent West African music stars. If everything works out, he will be the local director of the Miracle Corners of the World community center that Amanda is building in Kissy.

We also encountered Wolfe, a German war photographer who has worked in just about every combat zone in the last twenty years in Africa and the Middle East. He's in SL doing a follow up story on the progress made since the war ended.

When the storm passed into the distance, Harry escorted us back to Wilberforce before going on to his house in Lumley. Exhausted, we went to bed after saying hello to Joshua, Ola and Moses back at our house.