Gaze out from the water’s edge at Kroo Bay and you see a typical West African seaside vista.
It’s not picture postcard exactly but attractive enough, with traditional wooden fishing vessels rounding a coastline punctuated by cotton trees and the odd leaning palm.
But this is no place for a picnic.
Turn 180 degrees and you’ll take in the rusting metal roofs of tiny slum dwellings that house somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 people. Continue reading
Another visitor, another excuse to explore further afield.
Rather than a relaxing tour of the Western Peninsular beaches, my old uni mate Jody fancied climbing a mountain.
Not just any mountain. At 1,948m Bintumani is the highest peak between Cameroon and Morocco. And it’s a long way from anywhere sizeable enough to be called a town. Continue reading
Wherever we are in the world and no matter how adventurous or varied our lives, I suspect we all crave a bit of routine.
We need an anchor to hold us steady as we negotiate life’s highs and lows, pegging us to a state of relative “normality”.
For us, that anchor comes in the shape of buns.
It’s been a week that’s highlighted some sad realities about life in Sierra Leone.
Firstly, we heard two vehicles had been stolen during a break-in at the One With The Common Sense’s office.
Worse, however, was finding out later that one of the night watchmen had been killed in the robbery. Men armed with machetes – or cutlasses, as they call them here – had tied him up and strangled him. Continue reading
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