Africanna?

Valentine's dinner with my dad, a glass of deep red wine by my side, some melatonin in my system and a terrible case of jet lag. This country is freezing cold even though it's only -13 C. I went to the gym today for two hours and haven't been smoking since I left Paris yesterday morning. Most importantly, this morning I was offered a tentative contract with Save the Children for a 2-month consultancy project in Freetown. I'd logged on this morning to my computer to do two things: 1) Send an email to Save the Children thanking them for the opportunity they gave me to volounteer for them and 2) Search for a job.

Instead, when I opened my inbox I had an email from one of my line-managers at STC asking if I would be interested in coming back: "Most important: we are seriously considering to offer you another consultancy to support the write up of the alternative report on the UN CRC, we are looking for funding and we got a positive feedback from a Save Sweden, although not confirmed yet. It will be a 2 months consultancy, I cant tell you now the terms and benefits, but for sure you wont be a volunteer!"

!!!!!!!

I have spent the day alternatively smiling and feeling anxious, shopping in my head ("I need a dentist appointment before I go, a haircut, a mosquito net, a... a... a....") and feeling something that I can't quite place, can't quite articulate. But I think the closest thing to it might be fear.

Fear. After my initial thoughts of holy fuck you're fucking kidding me I love you Save the Children yes yes yes my thoughts immediately returned to the email I received a couple of days ago from my darling boyfriend - informing me that he was seriously thinking about not returning to Sierra Leone after his vacation. I, having seen that he had long since been worn down by the extreme difficulty of living in Sierra Leone, strongly encouraged him to move on. Job opportunities exist all over the world and he couldn't access them when he couldn't be available for interviews. He deserves more responsibility and more credit. He wasn't happy there. And, of course, there was me: I wasn't going to be in Sierra Leone anymore. How was he possibly going to have fun, eh? Four days later, Mike has quit his job in Sierra Leone, is on his way back to Canada, and I am being offered work in Africa. Oops. Nice timing. On this Valentine's Day, Cupid really hates me.

So I'm going to be alone this time and it makes me a little nervous. I don't have a support network there, can't regularly chat with friends, can't log online after work to send cyber kisses to my loved ones, and I'm probably going to live alone in a tin shanty by myself. What will happen when I get typhoid this time and puke all over myself? Who is going to make sure that I am safe? Who will even care? I have never been the type of person to fear loneliness or solitude, feel extremely safe in Sierra Leone, and feel capable of living there again. But I will admit, that anxiety is there and I am nervous.

But - Never for a second would I think about refusing the offer. It's my dream job - a consultancy with an NGO on human rights.

This is what it's all about: Each State who is a signatory of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is required to regularly send a report to the UN explaining how the Convention has been implemented and if/how the State has responded to its international obligations. In December, Sierra Leone completed its first report in over ten years. I read it over regularly and noted to my co-workers that it is riddled with factual errors, blatant exaggerations and outright lies. So Save the Children has been asked to write a counter-report to the one submitted by the Government. During my work there I regularly gave tips on what to look for in the document - how it mentioned that children were protected from sexual abuse (truth: only those under 14 actually receive protection, and only sometimes); how the age of criminal responsibility was going to be raised to 16 years of age (truth: it will be raised to 14); etc, etc, etc. Factual errors and exaggerations abound. Soooo... they want me to come back and work with STC in collaboration with UNICEF to write a report on how the Government of Sierra Leone has lied erred in its report. I can't refuse this. I have dreamed of doing this. I live for this and want to do this for the rest of my life. And this time I'd actually get paid for it! I'm scared, I hate Cupid and will one day kill Lady Luck for all the shit she's thrown my way, but I am so incredibly elated at the chance to go back and work on this.

Now. Can we have some kind of donation-drive going where I can collect all your left-over antibiotics? I think that I am going to need a lot of them.

Most Boring Entry Ever: To The Airport I Go.

To the airport I went, really. I sit at the airport as I write this. It is 12:30am and my flight is at 3:45am. We will fly to Senegal first before going to London, but thankfully the time in Senegal will be very short (only 45 minutes.) In the meantime, let me tell my faithful readers about my evening.

In order to get to Freetown it is necessary to traverse the great big bay that separates the airport from the rest of the country. Freetown is one of the only cities that actually has, like, roads and even the crudest form of infrastructure. Outside of Freetown (and around the airport) they don't have this infrastructure - you need a landrover to travel over pseudo-roads and bumpy, unlit, hilly pathways. This means that getting into the country from the airport (and vice versa) is very difficult. You have the following options:

a) a bright yellow and blue helicopter (that I call "the submarine," because I think that thing looks way more like it should be underwater than flapping about in the air) that looks like it is falling apart (which, incidentally, it did... but not while I was on it, don't worry)

b) a hovercraft (which does not work)

c) a taxi or shuttle (which take four to five hours to travel around the bay) or

d) a ferry.

Since the helicopters servicing the airport both caught fire two weeks ago they have been grounded and there's really no other way to get to Freetown (or to the airport) except for the ferry. So, in order to catch my early-morning flight, I organised with Save the Children that I would have transportation to this ferry whose dock is an hour away from my home.

Taking a ferry is not a big deal, usually. But I tend to get violently seasick even on short journeys, so, for me, the idea of a ferry brings about a natural feeling of dread and vivid memories of my sweaty head leaning over a toilet in the basement of a ferry in the Canary Islands on my way to the island of Gomera. I digress, but I guess that's because I so badly do not want to write about my ferry ride. I hate ferries.

I must start off by saying that upon arrival in Sierra Leone I had a lot of natural fears about the country, the war, the people, the fact that here I am translucent white even with my orange tan. Within three weeks it went away and though I was proud of my calm demeanour at the time of my fearfulness, I was interiorly quite tense and constantly darting my eyes, just waiting to be robbed or beaten by some thug mistakenly thinking that I might actually have money. After the first three weeks I realised that I'd probably never been safer in my entire life and I waltzed around town with ease, taking 4-6 taxis a day by myself, in the mornings, in the evenings, commanding better fares, bringing out the A-Lach in me and calling bullshit on people who tried to make me pay 2000 leones for an 800-leone trip. I was safe, I was happy, and I was in control. Tonight, for the first time since the beginning of December, I felt those initial fears arise again.

During my trip in a kick-ass landrover larger than my house treehouse, our night-driver Immanuel asked me how I was going to carry my suitcases from the ferry to the taxi and then to the airport. We were driving through the slums at the time and there were people crowding the streets, fights were breaking out, it was far past sundown and I had never been on a ferry crowded with boisterous locals at night. That is enough of a problem, but considering that I had two heavy suitcases, a laptop bag crammed with a digital camera, usb keys, and various other klunky things that were practically falling out, plus a purse full of euros, pounds and leones, was wearing a brightly coloured turquoise dress and am really fucking white... Well, that all meant trouble. Combine those things with the fact that I was going to be taking an overcrowded ferry dating from the 60's at night by myself, hailing a taxi by myself in an area I don't know when 400 locals are also pushing frantically at one another to get into the cars suddenly had me clenching my stomach muscles and swallowing with difficulty.

"What do you mean you are not coming with me?" I demanded, probably very A-Lach-like and therefore rather impolitely. (Hey, I was scared.) Immanuel told me that he was told to take me only to the ferry but that personally he thought that it was dangerous. I called Charly to ask her what my plan should be. She said "Woah, that is totally dangerous." She called our logistics guy to see what could be done, could Immanuel take me over the ferry with the car and drive me to the airport? What about fuel? Who will pay? Because that's like, totally dangerous. Logistics Guy said that if Immanuel was willing to use his time to take care of me (he gets off at 11pm and would definitely be working overtime if he came with me - and not getting paid for it) then Save the Children would front the fuel costs. I asked Immanuel if he was willing and he said yes. I asked him how he would get home afterwards. He shrugged and said that my safety was his primary concern. "You are white girl," he said. "It is not secure. And dose bags..." Ok. So it was ok, Immanuel was going to come with me, it's ok. Except that I would have to front the bill for his return. That's ok, he's keeping me safe. So how are you getting home Immanuel? "... Uh... It is not secure. We do dat first." Ok. I will be secure.

We arrive at the ferry and I pay for us to park the car. The man issuing the parking pass is military. He leans into the driver seat, peering at me. He points at me, turns to Immanuel and says something creepy in Krio. I ask what he said. Immanuel looks at me pointedly and translates: "He said, 'You need to watch out for her.'" My stomach muscles clench tightly with anxiety once again.

We get to the ferry and all is pitch-black except for the lights on the boat. There are people crowded around the boat, around the cars in the parking lot, around each other. They are talking and yelling, bartering and arguing. They all stare at me. The men look at my orange white legs. We stand in the parking lot for a while, me clutching my purse, thinking passport-money-tickets-laptop-shit-shit-shit. Men approach Immanuel, eyeing my bags, and trying to determine if he is my husband. They talk prices. ("What are you talking about?" I ask.) I am glanced-at and ignored. Horns boom loudly from the rusty boat, people scatter, and cars rev up their engines. It is time to board. I drop my suitcase when the police officer asks me for my ticket and it clatters as it rolls down the ramp of the boat. It's embarrassing. I hold up the crowd behind me and feel like a lost, scared idiot. We board.

Immanuel doesn't know what to do with me. We have first-class tickets which means that we can go upstairs, away from the parked cars on the ferry and actually have a seat behind glass, our skin protected from the wind and splashing of the waves. But my suitcases are too heavy for the stairs - He tells me to go anyway and he will watch over my bags. I glow with thanks at the idea and tell him that I will stay with him in the crowd and with the cars on the lower level. I sure as all hell don't want to, but after all, he's not even supposed to be coming with me in the first place. No way is he going to be watching my bags while I drink a Fanta upstairs. So I stand in the crowd of people and cars, with men, women and children staring at me openly as we all squish against one another and against car doors as I think passport-laptop-passport-wallet-ticket-passport-I'm-so-getting-robbed-tonight, shit.

A fight breaks out about 30cm away from me. Some dude is yelling at some other dude about his rusty Mercedes that blahblahblahKrioblahwhoknows. Punches are thrown and a larger crowd forms around them with me in the middle of it. I flinch and probably cower but there's not really anywhere to move. A man comes up to Immanuel and speaks with him animatedly about the white girl and I have no idea what they're saying, but the deal is five thousand leones. I find out that they have decided that it would be safer for me to sit in this man's car than to stand around the deck with all these people. I don't like the idea one bit but it definitely seems safer than being caught in a fight over a Mercedes that I don't own, non? Ya. So we load up my junk in this man's landrover and I sit in the backseat for the rest of the ferry ride. I lock the door, ignore the stares of people walking by, and finally feel a little calmer.

Then the boat starts to move.

Oh, how I hate boats! I love fish and cichlids and whales and dolphins and eels and coral and spent many years in my youth dreaming of being an oceanographer, but it's just not fucking possible. That weaving, rocking movement of the water inevitably fills my throat with dread and vomit. Despite that, I did not throw up on this ferry, which is a miracle that I credit to my desire to remain as unnoticeable as possible, as throwing up over the side of this crowded ferry and having the wind blow vomit into my face and those of the other passengers really wouldn't help my invisibility would it?

Sooooo... I made it to the airport in the same car that I hung out in for an hour on the boat. The guy drove us to the airport (about a 25-minute ride on barely definable roads that would have scared the shite out of me if I'd have been by myself.) I did so without taking the helicopter that caught on fire, without being robbed on the boat, without vomiting, and without being lost on arrival since Immanuel came with me. However, I think that the only reason Immanuel came with me was to get a free night's stay in Lungi because the bastard admitted to me on arrival that uh, no, he didn't have a way home since that was the last ferry. "WHAT?! Why didn't you say something the last three times I asked? How are you going to get home?!" I'm not even going to go into the details, but I ended up having to fork over the emergency money Mike had given me to set Immanuel up in a guest-house for the night so that he could take the ferry back to Freetown in the morning. I felt bad because I really didn't feel that it was Mike's responsibility to pay for my security guards' hotel stay, but it was definitely needed because I would NEVER have made it over the ferry by myself at night with all those bags and my short dress.

End result: I'm feeling safe and sound, profoundly bored, and sore from these plastic airport-lounge seats. Hence this tedious entry about a trip to the airport. It's 2:39am, only about another hour to wait. Thanks for listening. :)