My COS Trip to Sierra Leone and a Day Trip to Dubai

A day after we all became RPCVs, Amanda, Meera, Leah and took a flight on Arik Air to Sierra Leone for a 7 day trip. We landed at the Lungi airport which is situated on another peninsula away from the main Freetown Peninsula (where we spent the entire trip). While waiting for a ferry to take us from Tagrin to the Kissy Ferry terminal in Freetown (the capital of Sierra Leone, or Salone as they call it there), we got to experience the best of street chicken, fried plantains and assorted odd cans of beer that we had never encountered in Senegal.

Our ferry friend, my bag, Leah, Amanda and Meera, all with beer, of course

After a few days in Freetown visiting the Peace Corps HQ/House/Fortress, enjoying the Lumley Beach and trying to figure out how to get enough money out of the ATMs for our trip (you could only take out $40 at a time and almost none of the ATMs would accept an American bank card) we hired a taxi to take us to the town of Kent on the southern tip of the Freetown Peninsula.

me, Leah, Amanda and Meera, this is basically how we got around all of our trip, except for boats

beautiful countryside views throughout the entire drive

some of the beach at Kent, the fishing village and where we caught the boat to Banana Island

In Kent we got a boat ride over to Banana Island where we spent a couple days at the most relaxing quest house. There was a private beach, tons of places to go snorkeling, a cute village nearby and most importantly double punch rum for afternoon cocktails.

our guesthouse's beach on Banana Island

the main area of the guesthouse, with a second floor sitting canopy

Double Punch Rum, literally a kickass and cheap packet of rum perfect for afternoon cocktails with FreshUp a sprite knockoff

back in Kent we saw these hammerhead sharks that the fishermen had just brought in

After a few days we took the boat back to Kent, ate some more amazing street chicken and fried plantains while waiting to hire another car to drive us northward, up the Atlantic coast to a beach called Tokeh. We arrived in Tokeh without any place to stay and had trouble at first trying to find a hotel or guest house that was reasonably priced. Finally we me a teenage boy in the market who called himself the Oyster Man. He said he had a place for us to stay on the beach, and it was cheap. Turns out the two shacks that he readied up for us were probably where his family was living but I’m sure they had extended family to stay with while we rented their waterfront shacks for a few nights. The best thing about Tokeh and the Oyster Man was the seafood and Savannas that he’d bring us whenever we ordered some. Savannas are this cider that Leah had seen before in South Africa but they were plentiful in Sierra Leone, delicious and alcoholic; so they were perfect for the beach! We had fresh oysters, lobster, crab and fish for our meals and it was amazing.

our beachfront shacks

Amanda holding one of our dinner lobsters and all the oysters we had for an afternoon snack

lobster and capitaine fish dinner with a nice ice cold Savanna cider, that's the best

Going into town in Tokeh was a lot of fun too. I was obsessed with this other street dish that would only come out in the late afternoon. I think it was called Acheki (or something like that) and it consists of spaghetti, mashed cassava root, a hunk of grilled fish, beans, an egg and a huge glob of mayonnaise and ketchup…seriously that stuff is the best! When going to find some snacks on one of my first trips into the market in Tokeh I began to speak Pulaar and someone there actually knew what I was saying and directed me towards the maybe 5 Pulaar speakers in the market and their little shops. It was amazing seeing everyone’s reaction to this, I think they had never seen a white person speak Pulaar there before, but because I did I was family and we got way more food than I was paying for.

Leah, Meera, Amanda and I on a walk down the white sand Tokeh Beach

Amanda, Me and Meera saying goodbye to the Oyster Man (middle and shirtless) and his brother or cousin...who was also holding a bottle of extremely strong locally fermented Palm Wine

After several days relaxing on the white sand beaches in Tokeh we hired a car back to Freetown. Unfortunately along that ride I got violently ill, probably one of the worst food poisonings that I encountered during my entire service. Luckily I was able to keep it all in (everything in my body wanted out, and from all ends, I’ll leave it at that) by the time we arrived at our hotel. The girls went out for our last night in Sierra Leone while I stayed in hugging the toilet until I was comfortable enough to try and curl up into a ball on one of the beds. I didn't mind it too much though since we had gone out and enjoyed the nightlife in Freetown and that neighborhood called Lumley at the beginning of our trip. Leah and I woke up early to catch our flight back to Senegal and Amanda and Meera continued back towards Kedougou by land on an intense Guinean journey.

When Leah and I finally got back to Dakar I had a few more days to relax with other COSing volunteers before my flight home. I was actually supposed to leave a day earlier but Emirates bumped my flight back a day. I took one of those days to take the bus back to Sangalkam, my training village, back where it all started. That visit to see my first host family was one of the nicest moments of my entire goodbyes. I definitely had a close connection with that family since I was their first volunteer and they were my first host family. My camera died when I made it to their compound but just before it did I was able to snatch one last photo in Sangalkam. It was of the mural my training group had painted there two years earlier, and you might remember it from the blog. Here’s the before and after.

Before: April 2010

After: April 2012

On May 1^st, 2012 I flew out of Dakar officially ending my time in Senegal as a Peace Corps Volunteer. To drown out the sadness I quickly enjoyed a number of the inflight drinks, since I was one of the few non-Muslims on the plane I was probably given more tiny bottles of gin and red wine than I needed. I probably should have slept more on the plane considering I had a 22 hour layover in Dubai. I pulled myself together with some coffee and took an open top, hop-on hop-off, big bus tour of Dubai, which was a ridiculous spectacle to say the least. At the end of the day I took a trip up the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world (at some point it was) and then relaxed in the Dubai Mall until it was time to head back to the airport for my flight home. Go to my Picasa album for the Dubai photos, there’s really no way to explain it with words, it’s just a bunch of construction gone mad in the middle of the desert.

me from the observation deck of the Burj Khalifa

The Burj Khalifa before sunset