So I'm here. In Freetown. In Africa. My chest is filled with some feeling I can't name just thinking about it. I loved the air the minute I stepped off the plane. It's warm, wet, close, full-bodied and leaves a sticky residue on your skin that just makes you feel alive. The airport was chaotic as expected but nothing we couldn't handle. Just hand over your passport, find your luggage (we did) give a few polite "no's" and you're through. Our guide -can't remember his name- told us we were late for our ferry and our first 11 minutes out of the airport spend speeding through the country side in the pitch-black. We covered 15 km in that time. The scents, the taste, the sights and the speed were exhilarating and had everyone excited and laughing hysterically. The ferry was chaotic like I've realized most of Sierra Leone is so far but it was great fun. We went up on deck amid a sea of stares and had some fun talking to the locals. Amy joined a group of dancing little people and "shook waist"- made my night as if it hadn't been made already.
Afterwards driving through Freetown was such an intense experience we could hardly take it in. - everyone just silently and wonderingly stared out of the windows. The sidewalks are covered with people doing every sort of thing imaginable. here's a man barbecuing some chicken over over a ghetto-looking fridge, here's a boy reading a book next to a pile of rubble, here's a woman breastfeeding her baby, here's a child sleeping feet up on a park bench... and it goes on. There's people everywhere and everything you see has so much texture. Sheds with 50 layers of paint and peeling advertisements, make shift stores made out of abandoned cargo containers and people selling Nike shoes in the middle of the street.
I'm just too sleepy to think through everything I saw today and relate it but I saw a lot. Packs of stray dogs, gaping holes in the concrete sidewalks, the largest tree I've ever seen... I think I'll stop now.
I'm just glad to be in a air-conditioned room with a soft bed and a mosquito net even if the landlady did charge us an extravagant amount for it. A stab of loneliness hits me now as I think back on my beloved friends in Canada and a family I haven't had contact with yet. But I got a lot to live for.
-Yours always, Caleb V.
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