Having a doctor address you while wearing a protective face mask and full-length disposable gown is a surreal experience.
But our being confined to quarters at Liverpool’s Alder Hey Children’s Hospital was only the latest in a bizarre sequence of events involving an emergency flight home and ambulance ride from the airport.
Image: Chris Parkes/Street Child
The floodlit astroturf of Wusum Field at 5.30am felt a million miles from the “race village” of any marathon back home.
There wasn’t a Portaloo in sight at the start of the Sierra Leone Marathon, let alone merchandise stalls, masseurs’ tents, coffee vans or snack bars.
There are few things more alarming to wake up to than a cockerel loudly crowing at 5am.
One of them, I’ve discovered, is an irate Irishwoman bellowing “that feckin’ cock” from across the pillow.
Terrorism steals as many headlines in Sierra Leone as it does in the West. The Global Times notes the number of Lebanese nationals on the US security services’ latest list of “blocked persons” but reminds readers that it foes not mean that all folk from Lebanon are terrorists. Freetown has a large and wealthy Lebanese expat population.
If we were going to end up without any water, it just had to happen on a day we were going to a wedding.
We were surprised but delighted with the invitation to an evening do in Lakka, a short hop south of Freetown along Sierra Leone’s Western Peninsular.
I knew she’d come in handy one day
When the cop flagged me down, I knew what was coming.
I’d previously given a couple of his colleagues the swerve by pretending not to see them while negotiating roundabouts.
But as this bloke was standing directly in front of me, it was either run him over or stop and face the music. I wound down the window and offered my sunniest persona. He asked to see my licence.
Football’s perennial disappointments – twice delivered with particular cruelty in the last week – were at least, for me, accompanied by some interesting experiences.
While my friends and family spent Saturday at Wembley, hoping for a miraculous turnaround in Everton’s fortunes, I was suppressing my anxiety in the airy bar of Freetown Aqua Sports Club.
The introduction of a car into family life has offered us a freedom that’s gone a long way to making us feel at home.
But it’s not all been plain sailing – or even driving – as a snap decision to head to the beauty spot of Charlotte Falls, east of Freetown, proved.
Our life in Sierra Leone has got a fair bit more comfortable since I last posted.
That’s thanks in no small part to the fact our own generator is no longer a seemingly unobtainable dream but is instead parked out back.
You know it’s been a trying week when your highlights include an electric shock and being taken to the police.
But a combination of the heat, total culture shock, a toddler with a temperature and a running battle with a generator made my first week in Sierra Leone a stressful one.
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