Blogs from Sierra Leone, Africa - page 3

One of my main projects since coming to Sierra Leone has been to organise an educational roadshow to forest edge communities around Gola Rainforest National Park (GRNP). We’re now half way through the programme and so far the events have proven to be a really good way to bring the community together to deliver some important messages in an engaging and interactive way. I’ve been working with the support of a great team in GRNP including the education officer Eddie, a park ranger, our media and publicity officer, a community development relations officer, one of the research technicians and one of the drivers. It’s really good to have people from a range of departments coming together so the community can see the breadth of the work that we do and get questions answered by the appropriate ... read more

Dear All, Thank you again to those who have written. It is great to hear from home. We last blogged in Dakar, whilst staying with an ex-pat friend, and we are now in a similar situation in Freetown, staying with an old school friend of Jo, Lynn and Tim, who have been looking after us royally! thank you! We are spending a few days in the city before heading to Masanga at the weekend. Jo has been trying to meet as many of the four physios that work in Sierra Leone as possible, and we have visited the national rehabilitation centre and the military equivalent, as well as doing a few touristy things, and we have met a whole bunch of interesting people so we are feeling up to speed with politics, mining, religion, traffic laws, ... read more

It was a glorious sunny morning (as it is pretty much every day) and myself and five expat friends packed up the car ready for a long weekend away over the Easter holiday. Our destination was Tiwai Island (said T-Y) which is a wildlife sanctuary and one of the few reasonably well known tourist destinations in Sierra Leone. We set off early to make the most of the day and it was a good job that we did as the journey there took rather longer than expected. The first reason for our delay was that Meredith, who was driving, had been given directions to take a route that passed via Bo rather than going directly south. The second reason was that the car we had borrowed from her organisation broke down when we reached Bo. The ... read more

Wedding celebrations vary all over the world with different religions and different cultures having their own unique style. One interesting aspect of weddings in Sierra Leone is that groups of people that know the bride or groom for a particular reason all buy the same fabric and get the tailor to make them an outfit. The material is the same but everyone will have their own preference of dress, top, skirt or shirt so each will look different and be able to show their own style. In this case the group that I was part of was the Gola team as it was a colleague from work who was getting married, the fabric (which I wouldn’t have chosen myself) was almost like camouflage and the outfit I chose was a dress. The wedding ceremony took place ... read more

So – Monday in Freetown! Mark and I headed out to seek out more accommodation for the international runners to stay in the night before they head home. In the evening we headed to the Hash – The Drinking Club with a Running Problem. Apparently there are Hash Harrier groups all over the world, and seeing as they are all keen runners, we thought they were a prime target for our marathon promotion. What an amazing experience! So there are runners and walkers, and for totally social reasons (yeah right!) I joined the walkers group so I could chat to people. Every week they start in a different location. The runners have trails left out for them and the walkers have a leader. Halfway around, someone has carefully planned a water stop (cold water!) and we ... read more