Fire and Brine

Given that a few of us had a day off together, yesterday we had one of the drivers, Mohammed, take us in a toyota minivan into Freetown.  It is about 80 miles west of Lunsar.  There are a number of Ebola and police check points along the way.  Mandated stopping points result in a bustling throng of petty hawkers who set up transient rickety wooden booths just before and after the makeshift gate.  Just in case you want a boiled egg, flashlight, bag of charcoal, or a large regimen of plantains.  Most of the toll arms are mere pieces of rope with tied colorful plastic bags that hang like dirty synthetic prayer flags.  The rope is attached on either side to a thick tree limb stuck into the ground and, once granted passage, is let down on one side so you can drive over what was never a barrier.  If it is an Ebola checkpoint the policemen will point the thermometer gun at your forehead, look at the International Medical Corps logo on the van door, and let you pass.

The entire road to Freetown is a live organism with many shifting systems of cement trucks, bush taxis, bicyclists, walkers, motorcyclists, dogs, goats, and sheep all mounting and dismounting the road in time with a schizophrenic metronome.  The village life is on display in frames of young girls getting their hair braids pulled tight underneath a stick and limb framed hut, in frames of boys with long bamboo poles trying to dislodge green papayas.  Faded billboards featuring "Mr Condom," a cartoon character smiling underneath the latex bubble of a condom, urge us to prevent HIV and sexually transmitted infections.  The song, "I've Been Everywhere Man," by Johnny Cash, comes to mind.  I re-write it in my head with all the names of the villages I see in a passing blur.  Minor intrusions have not altered the basic subsistence of villagers here for centuries.

The closer we get to Freetown, the more dense and industrial the landscape becomes.  Buildings in varying stages of construction and destruction add more than a touch of grey to the green palette.   All the "modern" houses are made of locally made cinderblock and cement pillars.  The scaffolding is made of well positioned tree limbs and has a unique combination of emptiness and danger.  Codes, if they exist, can be circumvented with bribery in most African settings.  Mohammed tells me that a lot of Freetown was destroyed in the civil war and has been being rebuilt now for over a decade.  There are dirt roads that cling tightly to the waistlines of mountains in the heart of the city.  The city itself is a collection of steep hills and circuitous streets congested with the constant transport of goods and humans in a dizzying display of ingenuity and disregard for potential catastrophe.  One motorcyclist was sitting atop a twin mattress that spread bilaterally in a horizontal direction as he weaved through the traffic.  Another motorcycle passenger carried at least a 10 foot 2x6 plank.  Another a hand-crafted dresser replete with a mirror.  Toyota corrolla wagon taxis dragged along so overloaded they had to be strapped with rubber fasteners to keep the hatchbacks somewhat closed.  A far cry from our sleepy Lunsar and showing no Ebola driven slow down, the city buzzed in a cacophony of beeps, shouts, and songs so intermixed you couldn't tell where all the noise was being generated.  It just became a unified wall of sound, behind which the smoke-hazed outlines of the mountains could be glimpsed.

We traveled to a point called "River No. 2," which is on the coast about 30 minutes out of Freetown, a spot popular with locals and ex-patriates alike in a village called BawBaw.  It is a small patch of white sandy beach equipped with a small bar/restaurant and several umbrellas.  We had a group of 9, mostly American, Russian, and Sierra Leoneans.  The water was see-through clean and warm but refreshing nonetheless.  My body floated out as the waves raised and lowered any sadness or anger or confusion I may have been harboring from the work here, each time massaging it all out and using the undertow to take it all out to sea.  All human constraints seem to dissolve when you get to the ocean.  And it isn't until you are there that you realize how much you needed it.

We swam (watch out for giant Man O Wars!) ate shrimp and chips, and watched a group of children play soccer on the wet packed sand.  We didn't speak of Ebola or what we have seen here.  We kept our feet in the sand and listened to the reliable breaking of waves.  Communion.

The others stayed in the city while I headed back with Mohammed to Lunsar late last night.  Brush fires sliced along the mountains at night, leaving gushes of orange blood visible from afar.   The road back had less traffic, but the cars, people, and animals that were out were more hidden.  It was not hard to see why traffic fatalities here still far outnumber Ebola deaths.  I stayed awake and talked to Mohammed about the Civil War, his three children, and the politics of Sierra Leone.  Beach tired and sandy, I felt like the heavy industry of self had had an oil change.  My underground chambers had been sprayed out clean, windows in the long, chalky corridors had been opened, and secret stairways were given light.  As Mohammed and I sat in silence, whizzing through the African night, after a while the road grew emptier and there were no fires visible on the horizon.  There was peace in the darkness, the stars up above in quiet salute.  I would be home soon.