Phil Dobson - Freetown - 20 May 2010 - www.ourmaninsierraleone.com

Patience is a virtue and a necessary virtue in Sierra Leone. Everything takes more time, things move slower and delays are inevitable. Getting served in a restaurant or bar is a test of patience, travelling from Freetown to Waterloo is tortuous in this heat and getting cement from the only cement factory in Sierra Leone to get the slab complete is frustrating. We are now 3 weeks behind programme, all because the contractor has had problems acquiring the reinforcement and now the cement.

The heat is relentless; I though it was suppose to cool down in May as the rainy season approaches. Not so, it just gets hotter and hotter. It’s so uncomfortable, there’s nowhere to hide, even in the shade it’s hot, if you go inside it’s like walking into an oven. The concrete houses aren’t suited for this climate, they absorb too much heat, bring back the board and laterite houses! There has been the occasional downpour, it’s fantastic when it does rain, I thought it rained hard in Manchester but this is on a different scale, I’ve never seen it rain as hard as it does here, it’s like standing under a waterfall. The lightning is spectacular, it seems to get pretty close, seems like their God is after me.

Shopping here is great, I can sit on my front step and wait for bread, mangos, bananas and nuts to come to me. It’s just a matter of time before someone passes with something for sale on their head. It’s bizarre having to look what people are carrying on their head. I like the idea of not having to go to find things, just wait for it them to come to me.

In Freetown the market is a real adventure, you can’t wait around there, hang around at your peril. You can buy almost anything there, yesterday as I walked through I heard a guy shout “Sir, sir!” I looked around and behold, the man had a large grey rat on a piece of string. Not really sure what I was to do with it had I bought it, I don’t fancy the prospect of eating one, but probably at some point I’ve unknowingly eaten one anyway. This was as bizarre as the man in the taxi who had a bag of snakes, not sure what species of snake he had but I’m sure they weren’t vipers.