Surf to save the world

I met someone here who is teaching low income communities to surf.

Yes, for real.

That was my reaction too.

But it turns out it’s an awesome idea!

They’re setting up a surf club on Bureh beach. Imagine paradise: a long strip of perfect white gold sand, stretching away as far as the eye can see, curving round bays and inlets, narrowing and broadening, off into the horizon. Palm trees growing above, the trunks curving out over the sand, providing shade. Fresh coconuts, mango, pineapple. A picturesque little island in swimming distance. A rocky shelf forming a natural harbour to protect against currents. Clear blue warm water. And surf.

As well as being quite simply the most beautiful beach on the peninsula, Bureh also gets the most waves. And while it’s currently under-developed, like it or not, tourist resorts are on their way.

Right now, the charming Prince William (yep, also for real) will provide you with a tent in his secure campsite (50 Leones a night – £7.50) or a room in a basic guest house (150 Le – £22.50), plus a delicious omelette breakfast and fresh lobster dinner (20 / 30 Le). You can call him to book on +232 (0)77 424 902 / +232 (0)78 803 547.

So the Bureh surf club will serve drinks, snacks and refreshments, rent out boards, and give surfing lessons. The founders have raised money from family and friends to construct a simple wooden building to house it.  After six months the enterprise will be handed over to the 30 or so club members, all from the local community, aged 5 to 35. In the meantime, they are being trained up to give surfing lessons. Magic!

The plan is to help protect the environment too. Surf club teams will do regular beach sweeps, clearing up rubbish and junk left lying around from the numerous “outings” – busloads of Freetown revellers who land on Bureh beach for a night’s partying before taking off again the next morning, leaving carnage behind.

Preserving the pristine beach, and running a small business catering to newbie surfer tourist types, will help provide a sustainable income for the community. What could be better?  

So it is possible to save the world through surfing! Awesome. 

Goat update take 2

Discovery: our goat is, in fact, a sheep. Ooops.

Cue much laughter at work. Don’t you know a goat from a sheep? Didn’t you know goats have curly horns? Oh dear.

We fed it aubergine, cabbage, mangoes and grass last night. This, too, is apparently not quite the done thing. Spoiling one’s goat, sorry, sheep, is a bit baffling to people who see it as a walking meal rather than a pet.

So we’ve named it Stew. Sorry, I mean, Stu. Just to keep the end objective in mind.

(This text was supposed to go with the photo below… computer issues!)

Goat update

Audrey, Sioux, his brother, and the sheep!

A surprising gift

We have a goat.

Yes, a goat.

Our friend Sioux, who does our laundry, has been up-country for the last few weeks visiting his family. My flatmate Audrey wished him on his way with gifts for his mother and sisters… and they’ve sent us back a goat.

It’s a choice specimen! White, fluffy, adorably cute. It needs water and cassava leaves each day, apparently. And possibly a pen to protect it from our psychotic guard dog.

It’s a lavish gift from a family here. In two years it will be all grown up and ready for, ahem. It’s not really polite to discuss this in front of him, is it. Suffice to say, I can foresee a tasty stew coming up on the menu.

Quite how we will manage transforming our fluffy goat friend into, um, stew material, after feeding and taking care of him for two years, is another question.

In the meantime, the noises I can hear from my bedroom window have expanded to include goat braying, along with chicken cock-a-doodle-doo-ing, cicadas chirping, and, um, the dulcet tones of our neighbour’s stereo on full blast. Plus the generator.

Sadly Audrey is leaving Sierra Leone in a few weeks! Her placement is done, and it’s time to go home. What, we asked Sioux, will we do with the goat then?!

You don’t want to take it back to your family in Ireland? he asked in some surprise.

Ah the complexities of goat etiquette! I consulted Debretts online, but answers are not forthcoming…

Paradise Found

I nearly kissed a plumber yesterday. This would have been A Mistake. Partly because I have a boyfriend who I’m exceedingly fond of. But mostly because the plumber in question had spent the last twenty minutes sucking an airlock out of my shower pipes with his mouth… spitting iron, rust, gunk, dirt, manky water, small dead insects and general grimness all over the floor as he went.

Words cannot express the overwhelming gratitude that comes with having water in your home again for the first time in a week. Our plumber friend bent over double laughing as I skipped and jumped around the house, turning the taps on and off, splashing water everywhere, flushing the loo over and over like I’d never get the chance again. ‘Crazy white woman!’ I’m sure he was thinking.

Sadly the shower joy didn’t last long. I was warned not to touch it for five hours while the cement re-set… dutifully made myself scarce… came bouncing back five hours later with extreme excitement at the prospect of a wash that wouldn’t involve buckets… hopped in, turned the handle… which promptly came off in my hand. Leaving a large hole in the wall, which immediately began gushing water. Gah!

Never mind. He’s coming back again tonight, and it’s almost worth the hassle for that Christmas-feeling of restored water, all over again.

I’m noticing a pattern in my feelings about Sierra Leone. As the week wears on, I get more and more grumpy: no electricity, water problems, bugs, mozzies, and all the challenges of settling into a workplace with unfamiliar language, customs and culture.

Then at the weekend my friends come to the rescue and drag me off to Sierra Leone’s stunning beaches, and all becomes worthwhile! Decadent three course meals including, can you believe, smoked salmon canapés while watching the sunset at Baw Baw, a tiny beach all to ourselves…

Lazing at Bureh beach waiting for some decent waves so Mary can teach me how to surf…

Freshly caught fish kebabs at Tokeh beach…

Somewhat perilous boat trips out to the Robinson Crusoe-esque Banana Islands, where lush foliage, birds, and animals give way to tiny guest huts nestling in the jungle.

Where birds weave exquisitely crafted, intricate, tiny nests…

…locals fish each day for their living and children have the incredible carpentry skills to build a full scale sea-worthy boat…

Celebrating Sierra Leone’s 51st year of independence, with parties and lantern parades and dancing everywhere in Freetown… Passing out in a sun lounger at Mama beach for the afternoon after partying til 5 a.m. at Freetown’s Atlantic bar (no pictures of this one, I’m afraid!)…

Relaxing at the UN pool (potentially the UN’s best gift toFreetown… oh yep, the peace-building force isn’t bad either) with a drink on a hot sunny Sunday…

Well, it’s a tough life. But someone has to do it.

The Light Bulb Moment

The day after my mango epiphany experience, I had a light bulb moment. Not as good as it sounds. To be precise: my bedroom light bulb exploded.

I was sat in my bedroom, checking my phone messages, when there was a power surge. Loud explosion, followed by the delicate tinkling sound of raining hot glass.

Turns out the nice electrician who last wired my light socket did an amateur repair job with some strange black sticky substance. That would be a strange black sticky substance that melts at high temperatures. The sort of temperatures you get in a power surge, for example.

Ho hum. The funny thing is, once I’d taken in the shock, and ventured to stick my head back out from my hasty brace position, and then swept up the glass shards, springs, bits of wire and socket distributed scatter-gun across my floor…. I felt pretty calm again, pretty quickly.

Is this a newfound zen-like equilibrium? Or a disturbing acclimatisation to danger?

Sierra Leoneans take danger in their stride with a cheerful grin on a daily basis. On my way into work, I see young lads on rollerskates being pulled along on a rope by some handy passing vehicle they’ve hitched onto. Trucks over-flowing with people sitting on top, standing on the back, waving at passers-by, not a handhold or a care in the world. Motorcycles driving the wrong way down the road to avoid a traffic jam. And that’s just the roads!

Perhaps all this is rubbing off on me. If you spot me hopping on the roof of a car for a ride when I’m back in the UK, give me a sharp nudge…

The Mango Epiphany

I had an epiphany last night. While eating a mango. In a power cut.

The seeds were planted at the weekend. (The seeds of the epiphany, that is. Not the mango. Crops grow fast here, but not that fast!). A friend had given me some blue tack, a gift extraordinaire, and I was excitedly putting up photos on my bedroom wall. Very much like a teenager at boarding school: my walls are now adorned with pictures of my family, boyfriend, holidays, etc. And as they were going up, I came across a picture of a waymark from the Camino de Santiago.

This sparked a whole wave of nostalgia. Oh to be in Spain right now! With Spring sunshine falling across the rolling hills, picturesque little villages every few miles, fresh cheese and ham for lunch, eating ice cream on a sunny bench, without a care in the world… no traffic, pollution, horns beeping, speeding motorbikes, frenetic crowds, power cuts, mosquitoes, dirty drinking water, endless hassle.

And this got me to thinking. It’s all very well enjoying the simple joy of living, in-the-moment mindfulness, trust in the benevolent all-providing nature of the universe, when life is giving you beautiful countryside and sunny ice-creams. But how about when life gives you cockroaches and power cuts?

And hence we come to my mango epiphany. There I was, just home: no electricity, bugs scuttling about in the kitchen, no water in the kitchen taps, food developing an alarming mouldy smell in our dripping, un-powered fridge. The only food that looked unlikely to scuttle off under the kitchen units to join the bugs was a bread bun, a tin of tuna, and a mango.

Thoroughly fed up with everything, I grabbed a knife, speared the mango, tore off the skin and sank my teeth in… to the most delicious, juicy, pulpy, sweet, rich fruit I’ve ever tasted.

Suddenly everything looked different. Doing battle with every last challenge of Sierra Leone will be a fast track to an early return home. Give in! Sit back. Enjoy the mango…