Deadly water [Sunday, July 15]

Rain drizzled from the sky, silently rolling off the grass roof, a change from the constant, reassuring din of the zinc roofs outside my window in town. We were at Lakka beach, having just enjoyed grilled barracuda and lobster, the fruits of Paul B's wonderful culinary skills.

I sat in a ubitquious white plastic chair, gazing through the misty rain at the ocean and reading "The Shadow of the Sun" by Ryszard Kapuściński, a Polish journalist who captures the real Africa, not the one you see on CNN or in the political science books. Here's a quote from the prologue:

I lived in Africa for several years. I first went there in 1957. Then, over the next forty years, I returned whenever the opportunity arose. I traveled extensively, avoiding official routes, palaces, important personages, and high-level politics. Instead, I opted to hitch rides on passing trucks, wander with nomads through the desert, be the guest of peasants of the tropical savannah. Their life is endless toil, a torment they endure with astonishing patience and good humor.

This is therefore not a book about Africa, but rather about some people from there, about encounters with them, and time spent together. The continent is too large to describe. It is a veritable ocean, a separate planet, a varied, immensely rich cosmos. Only with the greatest simplification, for the sake of convenience, can we say "Africa." In reality, except as a geographical appellation, Africa does not exist.

I was absorbed in his wonderfully accurate descriptions of such a non-existent place when Patrick (an Australian working at a nearby NGO) returned from a walk down the beach with a Sierra Leonean in tow. Patrick, looking quite shaken, came up to us and had just seen the lifeless body of the man's dead five-year-old daughter - she had died earlier that morning from "the water" - probably meaning typhoid, one of those many diseases I received a vaccination for before even setting foot in Africa - but most people can't afford vaccination or treatment, so typhoid still ravages through Sierra Leone. I kept reading my book and barely looked up as I handed Patrick a few dollars worth of Leones, as the man needed money to enough money for a proper funeral and to pay the gravediggers.

It didn't even bother me that the child had died. Then, when I realized I didn't even care, I began to worry - not about the man or his family, but about myself.

At first glance from an air-conditioned Land Cruiser, Freetown is just another city. It is only when you leave behind that imported western amenity and enter the real Sierra Leone, when you walk down the street with the mud squishing under your sandals and splattering onto your feet, that you see the beggars, the amputees, the devastation of a decade of war that's slowly fading into the past. The first time I entered that Sierra Leone, I was overwhelmed - just read the first few weeks of blog entries. But after a while I simply accepted that poverty as an unfortunate reality. To some extent, that apathy is necessary for a Westerner to survive here. But is my survival more valuable than the man crawling on the side of the road, waiting for change from passing cars? Westerners ignore him; Sierra Leoneans might toss a coin or two out the window for him to chase down. It's easy for the Westerner to spend the working week at the NGO office, sometimes having to encounter that reality, but always being able to escape back to the razor-wire compound with a generator that runs long into the night.

The six of us - Amanda, Nick, Michelle, Rachel, Patrick and myself - squeezed into a taxi for a subdued hour-long ride back to Freetown. We accidently ended up in a bit of a parade, as one of the political parties was out campaigning with a few Land Crusiers decked out in megaphones and posters. We were treated to a dance party, as all the children alongside the road danced to the music blared out of the politician's loudspeakers.

Upon finally arriving back at the Y, we made vegetable sandwiches for dinner. Saidu and Ahmed, the egg seller, came over and chilled in Adam's room for the evening. Talk turned to health and before long I soon realized the necessity of the signs "HIV EXISTS!" as Ahmed said "I've never seen anyone die of HIV, so I don't believe it's real." There is no room for a virus in a society that bases knowledge on what can be seen and heard with one's own eyes and ears.