Trip to Bonthe

Well, to bring you up to speed a bit, I have spent the past week primarily supporting the logistics side, supporting Doug Mole. He and I have been busy overseeing the final loading of delivery trucks taking the last of the 800 000 nets out of the central warehouse and out to the Regional centres.

We recently returned from a trip to Bonthe where we went to meet with the Sierra Leone Red Cross Field Officer to check on the distribution of nets from the Regional centre to the outlying communities. Bonthe is located on an island on the southern coast requiring a six hour drive and a four hour boat ride and so provided a good opportunity to see a bit of the country outside of Freetown.

To say the roads in Sierra Leone are bad is to do it somewhat of an injustice. The broken pavement that paves most of Freetown virtually ends outside of the immediate surrounding area. The roads in most of the country are narrow dirt lanes filled with at best - potholes, at worst - vast craters that turn to impassable ponds and mud bogs with the rains.

Shacking and bouncing along in one of the trademark white Landcrusiers with Red Cross emblems I was amazed out how thick the jungle walls were on either side of the road. I immediately gained an appreciation for why it is referred to as the bush… It is so thick it like one giant, seemingly impenetrable plant. The only noticeable breaks were the cotton trees that rose stories above the rest of the jungle like huge otherworldly giants.

Along the way we passed through small rural villages that typified how different rural Sierra Leone is from urban Freetown. In Freetown the maze of streets are jammed with taxis and overflow with crowds of people carrying or selling modern wares. The streets are lined by decayed colonial buildings, the gaps between them filled by shanty dwellings.

By contrast, most villages number at most only a few hundred. They live in mud-brick homes with palm thatched roofs or occasionally made of correlated tin. Visitors and vehicles aren’t a common sight and through each village we were greeted by the smiles and waves of young children – some dressed neatly in formal school uniforms, others barely dressed at all.

The following day we arrived at the dock to board the boat that would take us to Bonthe Island. A long, low, narrow wood boat was being loaded up with the large bails of nets along with other cargo. Standing there in the relentless heat and humidity I couldn’t help but marvel at how they managed to fit it all on board… My confidence in the seaworthiness of the vessel only came it to question once they started to squeeze most of the crowd of people who stood patiently by into all crooks and corners of the craft.

Having stood out in the heat for so long I had started to feel a bit faint and Doug commented that I looked white. That got a good laugh from the locals… To them it was stating the obvious :)

Puttering along the Jong River as it fed out to the Atlantic, I looked out at the remote villages that bordered the river - seemingly cut off by not just roads but time. Further out, mangrove trees lined the banks of islands made entirely from the sand that had settled out of the river.

Surrounded by the laughter and chatter of the women on board, I played with a young girl with beautifully big eyes who had taken an interest in my finger. Her mother’s smile, like so many I have seen since I arrived, spoke volumes of the people of Sierra Leone. The signs of poverty and disease in this country are perhaps only outnumbered by the signs of the strength and spirit of its people. ‘Welcome to Sierra Leone’, the Mayor of Bonthe says to me with a warm smile and hand shake, reaching across a crowd of people on the boat. Welcome indeed.