Sierra Leone.

Arrived in Freetown after a two day trip from home. Left early Saturday morning and stayed overnight in London with my old friend Elaine. Had a nice curry around Sundridge Park and a few beers whilst catching up.

Sunday morning off to LHR and another adventure into the unknown. First time flying with bmi, first time to Freetown, Sierra Leone and first time sitting across the aisle from a handcuffed imigration deportee. Apart from being confronted with 4 immigration and custome officials, 3 plain clothes and 2 uniformed coppers all that seemd to be missing was the partridge in the pear tree.

Arriving in Freetown was the usual fun of travelling to the third world, all off the plane and then hanging around on the tarmac for a bus as we weren't allowed to walk the 500yds to the terminal. More chaos in the terminal with scrambles for the immigration desks. Fortunatly the customer had arranger for us to be met air side of immigration so we were whisked through with little formality. Due to the deportee returning to Freetown ALL luggage was subject to a search causing another delay.

Outside were the usual multitude of new friends who want to help with bags and then pester you for money even if you carry them yourself. I suppose they are charging for their friendly, insistent welcome to their so called beutiful country.

From the airport to Freetown city there are 4 possible ways. Firstly you can drive around the river estuary which can take over 4 hours and is pretty ropey, secondly you can take the ferry which takes about an hour depending on traffic, third you can get the bus and hovercraft to Aberdeen which is on the edge of Freetown and finally there is the helicopter again to Aberdeen. They all have their drawbacks, 1 takes a long time and during the rainy season the road could be missing, 2 necessitates a crossing of the estuary on a ferry and a drive through Freetown and can be slow depending on traffic, 3 the hovercraft has been known to sink occasionally and does not always run, 4 the helicopters are old Russian ones flown by dipso russian pilots and have been known to crash. We travelled by ferry.

And what fun that was. After driving the land cruiser we were in through a couple of feet of water and up a steep ramp onto the deck we alighted and went up on the passenger deck. Thankfully it was dark so we couldn't see just how decrepit the hulk was,

Loading the ferry.

The departure was delayed due to the inefficient way the boat was loaded. There were 4 motorbikes that were loaded last and did not quite fit which meant that the bow ramp could not be raised therefore no departure. This resulted in much shouting and geticulating by all interested parties including the captain, crew, car drivers, bikers and just about anybody who cared to give their two hap'orth. Resulting in, for my part, a very entertaining 45 minutes. Eventually they shuffled around a couple of cars and mover the bikes to a space to the side of the ferry and we were off, chugging away across the bay to Freetown. Finally arrived at the hotel at around midnight.

Almost a fight on the ferry.

The hotel did not look up to much when we arrived and we spent a while sorting out rooms as there were none assigned to up. In the morning I had to change rooms and still in the daylight the hotel did not look up to much. Good job it is only a two week assignment.

On the first morning I was suprised to find out that all the people I need to talk to are on a training course for all but two days of my visit. Bloody great organisation that. I will have to work late each evening to discuss things with them after the course has ended for the day. The upshot of that is that I do not have to get to their office until late afternoon and thus can sleep in which means I can go out and party in the evenings, life is sometimes pretty good.