Thursday, February 01, 2007

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. :)

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