What a Week!

What a week….

Sunday of last week, I spent the day with my new friends and their boat/jet ski on a private Island 30mins from Freetown. It’s called Tokai beach and as the pictures attempt to show, it is one of the most beautiful places on earth, I’m sure of it! The day was like a dream, fresh coconut from the palm trees, BBQ on the beach, Malibu and fresh pineapple juice, beautiful sun, sand, surrounded by new friends…heaven really. I had to take a deep breath and remind myself that it was indeed real! I couldn’t believe it. The extremes here are crazy…I leave in the morning from one of the poorest cities on the whole planet to spend the day being treated like a queen. How quickly we forget about others when everything is going our way. It’s the perfect picture of Africa though…1% of the population owning 90% + of the wealth. Just as I was starting to feel spoiled….

I am sure those of you who have experienced the joys of food poisoning will sympathize with me and the last week of my life here in Africa. One bad decision and you find yourself on the floor of a hot, smelly bathroom for days. Of course it makes it THAT much more enjoyable when you are also burnt and suffering from heat exhaustion….how quickly the dream fades….

After a few days and a trip to our local hospital I discovered that the oyster I ate ( I KNOW I KNOW…what the HECK was I doing eating oysters in Africa?!!!!) had now given me a nasty infection…AWESOME!

I can’t even tell you how well I was looked after though. I’m a very blessed girl. Plus, I figure now that I’ve made use of most of my meds that I brought, my stomach will be stronger and I’ll be in the clear…by the grace of God.

Yesterday, I attended a forum on girl’s education that was held at the British Council. It was held by SLeGEN (Sierra Leone Girls Empowerment Network), the Ministry of Education and UNICEF to speak about the challenges and solutions keeping girls out of school. I must say I felt - as I somewhat expected to - a bit disheartened by the complexity of it all. I unfortunately missed out on the march that I was making posters for all last week, but I did see a picture of my “works-of-art” on the front page of the paper being held by hundreds of young women! OH YA!!

And of course, I returned to my glamorous weekend lifestyle here in Freetown last night when I was invited to a big fancy Lebanese dinner at my new friends for an evening that could have been in Paris…wine, plates and plates of the most amazing food, music, entertainment, people from Peru, France, Lebanon, Brazil, Sierra Leone and well, of course, OH CANADA!

Stay turned…

---

---