ARRIVAL SIERRA LEONE AND A BUCKET BATH

The first of 4 flights I am to take to get to Freetown, Sierra Leone leaves Cairo on October 1 at 11:25PM on time.  It stops in Khartoum, Sudan to off load and take on passengers. Ongoing passengers are required to stay on board for the 1 hour it takes.  Eight hours after leaving Cairo I arrive in Nairobi. After a 2+ hour layover the flight for Freetown leaves Nairobi.  After 7 hours it stops in Accra, Ghana for one hour while we sit on the plane.  Two hours later on October 2 at 3:25PM I arrive in Freetown. Long story short?  You can’t get there from here nonstop in Africa

 :-).

I am met at the airport by Ernest and Ahmed sent by Fambul Tok.  They arrange for a water taxi to take me to Freetown.  The airport, for whatever the reason, is on an island in the middle of the river!  

Water Taxi Note Airport Island In The Background

My luggage goes in one van and I in another. There are a whole group of us doing this, so I relax.  Once at the boat dock, they load the luggage then they load us, or at least the first 19 of us.  I am number 16 - hooray!  How they know what luggage goes where, I haven’t a clue.  But it works!  We are handed orange life jackets and off we go. Upon examination I find my zipper is broken and half the stings torn off, but Hey!it's a fashion statement!

As I walk up the wooden plank dragging one of my suitcases with my backpack on my back, a young man offers to bring up my bigger case.  Lovely!  At the top of the plank is a woman with my name on a sign.  She and a young man are there to take me to my apartment in a guest house.  Their names are Onita and Lamaine.

We wind our way through the streets of Freetown and they are just as I remembered; stock full of cars, motorbikes and people.  The address of my place is 47 Fort Street.  It looks like one.  Very high grey cement walls with curled barbed wire on top surround the establishment. Grill work on the windows. HMMMMM-guess I’ll be safe in there!

We knock on the steel door in the wall.  It is answered by a tall thin young man who invites us in to the reception area.  At first the young lady at the desk is quoting a price for a single room that is much more per month than I was quoted for an apartment. I explain that Michaela from Fambul Tok arranged for an apartment and I named the price.

Onita, the representative from Fambul Tok, says that Michaela is out of town.  Adama, the woman at the desk, calls someone and all is well.

I am escorted to the floor above with a two bedroom, two bath furnished apartment complete with small kitchen, large living room and dining nook.  The bedrooms have A/C.  Important for sleeping.

Alpha, the greeter, then appears with two buckets of water which he places in the shower.  He then comes back with a huge electric kettle full of water.

Even though the apartment looks newly refurbished with a new frig, microwave and two gas burners, there is no running water!

I am told it will be fixed in the morning but I can heat the water in the electric kettle and add it to the bucket for a bucket bath.  The other bucket of water is for flushing the toilet.  Hey!  I can manage anything!

Too tired to deal with all of that I unpack and fall into bed.

Buckets with Dipping Cup. Note Color Coordination!

This morning I began to contemplate how to take the bucket bath.  It’s plain I won’t fit in the bucket and I’ve used all the water in one bucket and some of the water in the other one to flush the toilet. Have I left myself enough water?

Electric Kettle

O.K. time to heat the water in the kettle and hope for the best.  Now, what do I wash first? This requires some planning and takes me back to when my mother had a washing machine with a thing called a “suds saver”.

A suds saver uses the same water over and over as you do the laundry.  Because of that Mom always washed the whites first.  Thinking it through I decide my hair is the white load, no pun intended. Uhhh, white hair, white load???

I step into the shower next to the bucket with just the right temperature water thanks to the kettle full of hot water.  One other provided handy item is a smaller measuring type cup to bail out the water.

It works out great!  Keeping my head over the bucket allows me to recreate the suds saver leaving me enough water to wash the rest of me.  Plus this method keeps my hair from getting rinsed with soapy body water. Last, I step into the bucket and wash my feet. Done! 

All of this adds to the adventure and gets the creative juices going to solve an issue with the best outcome!

Today has been spent at the office of Fambul Tok.  They were amazed I got here with no trouble.  None of the streets have street signs, but the map shows exactly how many streets there are between turns so I just counted the streets.  Thank goodness for Google Maps and Alpha who explained an even better way to walk.

Walking is not for the faint of heart.  There are no sidewalks on the narrow busy streets.  I watch the natives and do what they do which is basically close your eyes and hope for the best.  On the big main crossing a policeman stopped traffic so I could cross safely.

The whole day is spent getting my ballot for the November 6 Presidential election downloaded, printed, signed, scanned and attached to an email.

Much Love To You All,

Mom/Grandma/Sara