Home Straight

I’m 28 hours into my trip back home and I'm at Euston waiting for this flashy Virgin train to take me home and into the arms of my mum and sis. I had lots of advice about how to handle ‘re-entry’ into European society but its difficult not to talk about being in Africa when everyone asks you about it. I’ve already made some stupid or thoughtless comments and which make no sense of course, apart from to me or can be misinterpreted! It’s lucky that I have amazingly tolerant and caring friends who don’t really care how freaky I am and are just glad to see me (Cat, Mike, Justine and Matt, thanks, especially for the sausage butty and veggie risotto). Also thanks to Jerry and Jules who threw a great party last night for Matt and Justine, who move to NYC next week…. Good luck and I’ll be visiting!

There are many things that never reach this blog because they are too private or distressing to write about or more usually I just forget!! Blogs are inevitably a little sanitised for public consumption. So now I’m watching the lovely English countryside go by (very fast) and I am really trying to be honest about how I feel at the moment....but I’m lost for words. There are times since I landed yesterday when I been close to tears due to feeling overwhelmed to be home and times when its all felt incredibly normal, like I’ve never been away. I’ll write more soon when I’ve figured out what’s going in my head and heart!!!

Guns and Toilets

Yesterday morning we walked into town over Parliment hill and it was a truely beautiful day, all day. And of course I needed to pee, so my Sierra Leonian friend negociated with one of the police officers at the guard post of one the government buildings for me to use their toilet explaining that I needed to 'go ease myself''.

So the office leads me into the guard building and I'm bracing myself for the inevitable state of the toilet. However not only was it relatively clean, it actually flushed (most toilets just have a bucket of water next to them, if you are lucky!!) but the most shocking thing was the stack of automatic rifles in the corner of the toilet!

I suppose I should blog a bit more about my work??? I haven't left Freetown for a while but things have picked up a little. I am working on the Global fund round 10 proposals and I am writing a proposal on strengthening Leadership and I've stolen the NHS Leadership Qualities Framework as a guide (see photo). Also I'm helping with negociations and providing contracting expertise with the non-governmental hospitals so that they also can provide free health care to the target groups.... and a few other things. In 5 days I come home but apparently I'll still be working on these things from the UK, according to my colleagues!!!

One final thing... did I mention the fridge? Its one year old and purchased from Frankie and Howard, ex VSOs still in Freetown. Howard told me it was the only household appliance he had ever hugged. After living for a year in a VSO house and managing on the VSO allowance, with the only kitchen applicance being a 2 ring gas burner, then I can fully understand why hugging was involved!!! However despite keeping walking into the kitchen to look at my fridge and smile, I havent felt the need to cuddle it. It even has a freezer compartment but of course the only item in there is a bottle of Vodka!

Can you force yourself to buy the Sun on 27th July?

Well I hope so... because my boss and the Free Health Care initiative in Salone will be mentioned in an article as part of the follow up to 'Make Poverty History' campaign. Spoke to Charly, the comms lead the other day who told me that the Sun journalists were impressed with me, something which I should find rather disturbing! But you never know, I might get a mention in the paper too. Is that good or bad???? Last time I was quoted in a newspaper it was the Sunday Times!

I searched for an appropriate image for the Sun to go with this blog and it just had to be this one!!!! Also found these links which make interesting reading!

http://www.the-sun-lies.blogspot.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sun_(newspaper)

A load of old rubbish!

I keep meaning to take a photo of the rubbish tip on Old Railway Line. Its a very new tip in that its surrounded by a breeze block wall with the words ' Please dump inside here' painted on one side and 'Do not dump against this wall' on the other side. Maybe its my juvenile sense of humour but I smile every time I drive past. Old Railway Line is actually a road, but it used to be a railway, in fact there are bits of railway in a few places upcountry, all disused now and parts missing as the sleepers were melted down for metal during the war. Maybe one day trains will return to Salone but I just hope they arent red with the words VIRGIN written across the side, this also might offend here!

Back to rubbish. There is no dustbin collection here and you have to carry all your rubbish to the nearest tip. Ours is just a few minutes away across the main road (amusingly actually called Main Motor Road), next to the Mosque (the one whose call to prayer has a habit of waking me at 5am every morning, if the howling dogs havent beaten the caller to it). So ours isnt a 21st century tip, like the one described above (ie having got instructions and walls and everything!!), this is literally a massive pile of rubbish. The routine is that you walk down there as far as you possibly can before the stench turns your stomach and then you throw the rubbish towards the huge pile, hoping you dont mis aim too much. However, this doesnt really matter because people hang about there to go through your rubbish to see if there is anything worth eating or keeping and a white women's rubbish might be more lucrative, so its usually picked up before I've got back up to the main road. Interestingly the tip is next to a food market (and my dept at work is in charge of environmental health for the country!!).

Two good things about today.... (1) I've been offered a second hand fridge for a good price and (2) Its another crazy Phillipino party tonight so I'll no doubt be singing on the Karoake and line dancing all at once. Although the lighlight is always Reynaldo's adobe chicken.... to die for. Happy Saturday!!!!

Happiness can sneak in through a window you didn’t realise you had left open….

Francis, the smiley IT guy in the Ministry was trusted with my precious but poorly laptop today. I must admit to being highly sceptical that anything good would come out of this and when I saw him attacking the back of it with a precision screw driver ….well…. was this one high risk decision too far??? A couple of hours later I was presented with my laptop, now working and with the spare hard drive fitted (thanks to my incredible foresight(!!!! didnt back anything up) and Adam’s ability to magic a spare one from nowhere at the last minute). However, Francis tried and failed to retrieve my files so the tiny cloud in the silver lining is that the damaged hard drive will be coming back to the UK with me in the vain hope that my photos and documents can be resurrected!!!

So the proverb for today on the BBC World Service is the title of this blog, submitted by a lady called Isatu of Freetown! To be honest the only thing that gets through the netting and bars covering my windows, is rain (sometimes) and the occasional mosquito, but I suppose she didn’t mean it lierally! Didn’t I mention the bars? All windows have them, I assume so you can leave the windows open without fear of theft. However, some creative thieves use rods and coat hangers to extract items and so its best to leave things out of ‘fishing distance’.

However Isatu was right, I didn’t think such joy could be gained out of the fixing of an inanimate object. Although offering to marry Francis was probably showing my gratitude too much!

The only photo I have of an open window is with my much missed cat (Scuzzy) staring out over the Oxfordshire countryside, when he first moved with Pauline and Lawrence. He is probably wondering where the hell I'd disappeared to and is what this strange place... a bit like me when I first arrived in Freetown.

Broken Lifeline

In retrospect, yesterday obviously went too well. If you are an eternal optimist like me, then statements like this should never apply, apart from about yesterday. So I was about to host my first dinner party. I nipped home to get my laptop (its last ever visit to the office) and came back to the office. On this trip I managed to buy all the fruit and salad for the dinner… apart from apples (nowhere to be seen). I was looking out of the window contemplating the sea, thinking of my lack of apples and writing a letter on behalf of the Government of Sierra Leone to the Chinese Embassy about a topic I’d known nothing about half an hour ago... all at the time same of course! Then a lady appeared out of nowhere, never seen her before, selling rosy shiny red apples and like Eve I could not stop myself from being tempted to buy, not one but three lovely specimens.

I left work early in a good mood passing by the biscuit lady (peanut brittle and sesame snaps to go with the fruit salad) and the bread seller who had lovely fresh rolls at the office entrance (for garlic bread). By this point I was feeling very pleased with myself and my ability to buy everything so easily and in time and went home looking forward to putting together all these lovely ingredients into a sumptuous feast!

Well the evening was a lot of fun and I went to bed feeling content, full, but still sober! However at 3am I’m wide awake, tossing and turning and eventually decide to answer a few emails as my laptop is lying in the corner of the bed. There’s no power and so very dark. I switch on the laptop and squint at the keys immediately realizing what a silly idea this is! So I switch it off and slightly push it out of my way to continue the serious business of sleeping and push it straight onto the tiled floor. So if I couldn’t sleep before I certainly couldn’t after smashing my laptop (it no longer works) and the sentence ‘just how stupid can I possibly be?’ going round and round in my head. I remain hopeful that somehow 4 months of photos and documents can be retrieved

As luck would have it, my work computer was fixed yesterday (yes the day did go well) after 2 months. I had switched it on one day and the button disappeared into the machine and … well, that was that! So today I have some access to the outside world in order to tell this sorry story and also to write to the Chinese Government!

So what are the morals of this tale? Never buy apples from strangers in case your laptop breaks in a freaky bedroom accident? Or maybe don’t try and cure insomnia by answering emails, just drink horlicks instead? Whatever it is, remember to back up important stuff that’s for sure!

Did I mention the football? And a bit about African meetings

Probably not! But I have to admit to being slightly interested in the whole affair, especially how Saloneans make every match into a big occasion. There is really no need to watch or listen to the match. I could just sit on the balcony and listen to my neighbours etc and figure out what's happening. The whole country was behind Ghana in the quarter finals and Freetown let out several big community sighs, that I'm sure could have been heard upcountry, when those penalties were missed. I listened to the match on the radio. I love the BBC World Service Africa, especially the quote of the morning which often are quirky and dont make sense but never mind! I'll have to write a few down for the blog. So is it Holland or Spain? I have no idea who the locals will support but I'm guessing Spain.

So I'm hosting a dinner party tonight for 7! Its a bit of grand title for pasta and salad, buts the first since I've been living alone and majorily spruced up the flat and here are photos as promised. Its a bit difficult turning a cavenous flat with hardly any furniture into a cosy place, but I'm trying (please admire my homemade cushions!!).

At the moment I am experiencing with a slight amusement (because I went through the same thing) my new UK colleagues settling into the Ministry. Yesterday I went to a big workshop for all Districts for well over 100 people. It was supposed to start at 9am. We arrived 7 minutes earlier and there were only 4 other people there and none of them were the organisers or speakers! It eventually started at nearer to 10am and we were encouraged to take our seats on account of it running a few minutes late!

Meeting etiquette makes me smile. As well as usually starting late, the meetings themselves can go on for an age. The minutes are often long winded but can be quite entertaining! I was once in a meeting with the Vice President just before Free Health Care was launched and it went on for 5 hours without a break! Some people dont ask questions but get up and make long statements. On occasion, some folks openly sleep, others speak on their mobile phones whispering in Krio, 'I'm in a meeting, call later I'm in a meeting'. Making note of actions (who, what, where and when) has got noticably better and somehow things seem to work, not sure how sometimes. Like this workshop. I wrote the programme and it was finalised less than 24hrs before the event, but it wasn't my role to brief the speakers but somehow everyone turned up prepared, with powerpoint presentations!

BLOG requests! Sometimes I struggle to know what to write about so happy to take suggestions! carolergreen@hotmail.com More after the weekend....