Fleeing the Jurisdiction

It had been something of a rough week of having my room ransacked; learning the compound had been attacked with rocks; my housemate getting malaria; and night after night of wrenching, testimony-inspired dreams of, among other things,  a pregnant woman disemboweled for the sake of a bet on the sex of her child. There was clearly only one thing to do: get out and hit the beach. The roads around the Freetown peninsula are so bad that most travellers go hours of their way in order to travel on surfaces marginally less pitted, uneven and likely to snap an axle. The red of these sinuous trails has been added to of late by the dust of the approaching Harmattan. This is the Saharan wind that blows into Sierra Leone during the dry season, lowering temperatures by way of its impressive trick of blocking out the sun. Its name, from the Ghanaian language Twi, means ‘to tear the breath apart’, and it’s classified a natural hazard. Though barely beginning, already a fine haze has settled like a bloody fog. So, coughing as we went, we meandered our way through the dense ghettos of the city’s east, where the retreat of the rebels had hit hardest, and into the thick green of the hills.

Past abandoned airstrips, burned-out police stations and countless near-misses with oncoming traffic, we made slow progress. Local bush taxis and vans known as ‘poda poda’ are often painted with slogans that range from the rather sweet ‘God Bless My Wife’, to the moralistic ‘Show Respect to Elders’, to the downright puzzling ‘Baby Rose Power’. Most common, though, is the religious invocation, which is generally a variation on ‘God/Allah is One’. A dictum setting itself apart on this trip, however, was the admonition to ‘Try Jesus’. More refreshing than the omnipresent Coca-Cola, presumably. I had much occasion to wonder if these religious motifs were believed by the drivers to provide a divine protection from road accidents. That would have explained alot. Despite the regular threat of collision, I enjoyed the view of communities washing colourful clothes at the river, beating and drying them on the flat black rocks. Others were busy tending small gardens of rice and maize in the silt at the banks. Under a bridge I saw chalked graffiti reading ‘Black Nations Will Rule’. In communities centred on facilities for the war wounded, many of them amputees or otherwise disfigured, pride must be a life skill.

Our travel was, beyond this, expedited through police checkpoints with a flash of the driver’s Anti-Corruption Commission badge and disappointed looks all around from the attending uniforms. Further along, we passed the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, crossed off my list of tourist to-dos upon hearing that the apes had escaped, killing the owner and terrorizing the locals. Shouldn’t have made them wear those tutus and rollerskates, I guess. Just before reaching the beach, we drove by Tombo Town, from the road an oddly beautiful patchwork of rusting tin roofs and papery UNHCR tarpaulins close against the shoreline, a mosque rising above the huddle of shanties. A crowd gathered at the water’s edge, greeting arriving boats, and the day’s meal. The scene was only slightly diminished by the presence of a telephone tower. Turning off the road at a barely noticeable sign, the vista opened up to a palm-fringed coast and fine white sand. Not to mention a host of white four wheel drives indicating we’d been preceded by the better part of Freetown’s expat community. Nonetheless, a day splashing in the waves and cracking open lobster (helpfully brought to us for approval, feelers waving angrily) did wonders in relieving the week’s frustrations, and it was with some chagrin that I returned, pleasantly tired, to the greying hulk of the compound, and bed.