"Is Africa Poor?" [Saturday, July 21]

Sometimes there's those days that stand out as fantastical, even though nothing extraordinary happened. Today was one of those days. It all started with an beautiful run through the city over to Aberdeen beach with Osman. Then I ate breakfast on Y balcony overlooking all of Freetown, still drenched in sweat from almost two hours of running. I strolled on over to PZ to say hello to the Mohammed the egg-seller, but unfortunately he had gone to visit a friend who was sick. I walked through town, intending to buy lunch off of someone's head, but then I walked past Crown Bakery and simply couldn't resist its air-conditioned goodness. I had a wonderful sandwich with two physicians working for Mercy Ships in Aberdeen - one a gynecologist from the US working on a VVF program, the other a German pediatrician doing general health and nutrition programs.

I then schlepped on over to iEARN and watched the youth at their "Saturday Debate." The topic was "Is Africa Poor?" which provoked a wide array of responses.

Then I went with Tamara up the hill to Wilberforce to visit Moses and his family. Although Moses lost his family during the war, he lives with his aunt and sisters; the girls were all busy doing their hair. After relaxing at their house for a few hours, we returned to the YMCA and went to Kieman's for dinner and then came back to the Y.

The exciting news of the day was that a picture of me was in "The Spark Newspaper." Amanda's MCW community center had a full page feature, and they used the pictures I had taken at the opening. For some reason, one of the pictures (they downloaded them from my Picasa site) was of me with the children at an orphanage in Makeni - it's a great picture, but it has nothing to do with MCW or the community center...quite typical of the newspapers here, unfortunately.