Cooking Lessons! [Sunday, July 22]
“I give you nice price…say 40 thousand."
"No no. 20!"
"35!"
"I'll give you 25 and no more..."
And so goes shopping in a country where everything is negotiable. Amanda and I were at the the Lumley Beach Market on a Sunday afternoon, purchasing a few touristy items to take back home with us. We had gone to Royal Hall in Aberdeen for a late brunch and after contemplating a few bush animals that roamed the grounds specificallly for the viewing pleasure of foreigners like ourselves, we walked down the beach to the market. After enough screaming and shouting at the market, we went to "Harri's Beach Bar" and chilled under a thatch umbrella, watching a seemingly countless number of football games that stopped only when an errant ball had to be retrieved from the ocean.
The owner of Kieman's, who we simply call Mama, had promised to show us how to cook Groundnut Stew, so Rachel, Amanda and myself went to Kiemans, where Mama had set up three chairs for us in the kitchen and taught us how to make her scrumptious groundnut stew - it was just like the Food Network!
As it was Amanda's last day, Patricia, one of the Miracle Corners SL board members, invited Amanda and Harry to come over to her house for dinner.
As I stepped out of her immaculate Mercedes-Benz SUV that she had picked us up in, I was so amazed by her beautiful house that I failed to notice my backpack was unzipped. My cameras toppled out and landed with a sickening thud on the concrete. Thankfully, my (well actually it's on loan from my father...) 35 mm film camera is nearly indestructible and was only scratched...but my brand new digital SLR didn't fair so well and, despite the exterior plastic not even showing any signs of damage, the lens mount broke in half. Thankfully, it it still functions as long as you hold the lens just right and don't move it too much....after returning home I managed to duck tape it all back together.
Patricia spent about thirty years working the US and has dual US-SL citizenship, but after the war ended she returned to Freetown where she now owns KTI travel. She had an interesting perspective on Sierra Leone as one of the few members of the African diaspora who manage to return to their home country. She's dedicated her time here in SL to promoting tourism - it's only a matter of time before Sierra Leone's beaches are once again filled with tourists from Europe. We had a fantastic dinner on her balcony overlooking Freetown as some "sentimental" music (what Sierra Leoneans call Celion Dion and the like) played in the background.
It was a wonderful break from the hustle and bustle of town...unfortunately, all things come to an end and we soon found ourselves in a taxi with a crazy man from Ghana who claimed to have spent "much time" in New York City, but when we asked him what part of NY, he said Boston. He was continually insulting the US and Sierra Leone - he insisted that Ghana was better becuase it has 42 embassies around the world while Sierra Leone only has 14...anyways, the Sierra Leonean taxi driver and the two of us were quite relieved when he finally got out of the car.
"No no. 20!"
"35!"
"I'll give you 25 and no more..."
And so goes shopping in a country where everything is negotiable. Amanda and I were at the the Lumley Beach Market on a Sunday afternoon, purchasing a few touristy items to take back home with us. We had gone to Royal Hall in Aberdeen for a late brunch and after contemplating a few bush animals that roamed the grounds specificallly for the viewing pleasure of foreigners like ourselves, we walked down the beach to the market. After enough screaming and shouting at the market, we went to "Harri's Beach Bar" and chilled under a thatch umbrella, watching a seemingly countless number of football games that stopped only when an errant ball had to be retrieved from the ocean.
The owner of Kieman's, who we simply call Mama, had promised to show us how to cook Groundnut Stew, so Rachel, Amanda and myself went to Kiemans, where Mama had set up three chairs for us in the kitchen and taught us how to make her scrumptious groundnut stew - it was just like the Food Network!
As it was Amanda's last day, Patricia, one of the Miracle Corners SL board members, invited Amanda and Harry to come over to her house for dinner.
As I stepped out of her immaculate Mercedes-Benz SUV that she had picked us up in, I was so amazed by her beautiful house that I failed to notice my backpack was unzipped. My cameras toppled out and landed with a sickening thud on the concrete. Thankfully, my (well actually it's on loan from my father...) 35 mm film camera is nearly indestructible and was only scratched...but my brand new digital SLR didn't fair so well and, despite the exterior plastic not even showing any signs of damage, the lens mount broke in half. Thankfully, it it still functions as long as you hold the lens just right and don't move it too much....after returning home I managed to duck tape it all back together.
Patricia spent about thirty years working the US and has dual US-SL citizenship, but after the war ended she returned to Freetown where she now owns KTI travel. She had an interesting perspective on Sierra Leone as one of the few members of the African diaspora who manage to return to their home country. She's dedicated her time here in SL to promoting tourism - it's only a matter of time before Sierra Leone's beaches are once again filled with tourists from Europe. We had a fantastic dinner on her balcony overlooking Freetown as some "sentimental" music (what Sierra Leoneans call Celion Dion and the like) played in the background.
posted by Paul at
12:02 PM
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