Toby’s notes

67 notes from Sierra Leone

Within 24 hours of arriving in Sierra Leone, I found myself searching for some way to process just a little of the many gloriously unfamiliar things that came our way…  And so each night, under the security of my trusty mosi-net and by the light of a torch, given the generator had long-since been switched off, I jotted down a few brief notes about pretty much anything that came into my mind.

What you read here is not intended to document the passage of our fortnight (something that Clare’s journal achieves with poetic ease), rather it attempts to portray some of the wonderful people we met, to document some of the idiosyncratic things that defined my experiences of both Kambia and Sierra Leone, and to convey some of the frankly bizarre situations in which we found ourselves…  The visit was an unforgettable one, and I am so thankful to have had such an opportunity to live and work with these wonderful people, even for just a short time.

Ferry
More beached than docked, the Lunghi-Kambia ferry is a 1967 Libyan rust bucket that Colonel Ghadafi shipped out to Sierra Leone years ago. Being among the first to clamber on, we perch ourselves on one of the shaded decks up top, taking our lead from Brad, an ex-pat American who works for the Embassy, whose girlfriend has endured the similarly tortuous trip from Gatwick with Clare and I. Behind us, all life pours on, and carries on pouring. A hundred cars or so roll up, mostly jeeps in all states of repair, and further behind comes an army unleashed – colourful, noisy foot passengers who appear to storm the vessel, well over a thousand I’d guess. Below on the car deck a preacher stands atop a bonnet, dressed like an extra from Harry Potter and drawing attention from all sides. Hawkers touting everything from Nice biscuits to sunglasses try their luck with us, as do a troop of comedians dressed as hippos with the help of woollen hats and white make-up. The crossing is relatively peaceful, beating the raw edge of the helicopter, the extravagance of the speed boat, or the hard-core option of crossing by local dug-out. As we near Freetown city, our false sense of security is smashed as we glide past a graveyard of ferry wrecks, the utter chaos of the Kissy Ferry Terminal stretching before us.

Choitrams
The Lebanese run virtually all of Freetown’s shops, these including Choitrams, a supermarket institution on Siaka Stevens Street. Choithams really does appear to have everything, from Marmite to Durex via Christmas puddings rather dubiously supplied by Asda. We stock up for the weeks ahead, with flatbread, nuts, pasta, cous cous, mozzarella and Laughing Cow, which James and Greg tell us is ubiquitous in Sierra Leone, plus some luxuries – a few Christmas decorations, an electric kettle and a flimsy juicer that appears to be made of tin. Town is busy as today is Christmas Eve and we slip outside into a heat and noise to which we are not yet accustomed, only to be gloriously ripped off in the vegetable market perhaps unaware that, to all intents and purposes, this will be the last green food we will see in some while. Flagging somewhat, we brazenly create a picnic in-store as we face up to the endless wait for a cab back to Kissy, eventually regaining the energy to tackle the street outside, where women selling plates of fish heads jostle for space with children balancing towers of coal on their heads. Cabs appear to be in both short supply and dedicated to a god of some kind. FT bags whatever he can, and a heap of metal pulls up, the windscreen painted in honour of Allah: “We trust in the one and only God.”

Light pushing
Our dusty, white Toyota truck, a green livery giving it the look of a mobile pharmacy, offers the added value of audience participation in that it requires at least four people to cajole it, through pushing it downhill at 10 mph, into life… Yet we’re thankful for the small mercy of avoiding – so far – the need to jump aboard once it is up and running, in the manner of Little Miss Sunshine. We break down once on the way to Kambia, as the sun is setting behind us. I walk along the line at the side of the road and the sound of the bush steals up on me for the first time – one of those rare moments that will burn brightly for a lifetime.

Murray
Our wonderful driver, hen-pecked by two wives, devoted to his four children, turns around and, eyes animated, utters his trademark “sor-ry” as we fall foul of another beyond-belief pothole at speed. At Port Loko, the paved road becomes an eight-lane wide dust track that goes by the name of the West African Highway. “That was Africa, this is Sierra Leone” chorus our crew, Clare and I slightly freaked by the fact that James and Greg are joining in.

Checkpoint
We reach Kambia ‘checkpoint’ well beyond 10pm. Under the cover of darkness, the dust hangs heavily in the cool air, illuminated by the occasional beam of a car light. There are hints of life, a scattering of paraffin lamps set back from the road, the odd candle, people huddled, hushed. There are flashes of colour – signs, banners, shapes, trees overhanging, a sense of the temporary. We don’t stop, and as we pull away it feels apocalyptic.

Chickens
I step out of the door to be greeted by the smallest chicken in the world, the colour of a textbook chuck and engineered with feathers only where needed, less to pluck perhaps. With a lazy inquisitiveness, it pecks at the dust and a second, larger bird appears to follow it. I find a coop just around the corner, and our goat appears to be in there too. The spot is marked by a bush from which a single red pineapple is growing. I have no idea why I thought pineapples grew like coconuts, as clearly they don’t.

Isatu I
Isatu is one of our two guard dogs. She seems to be magnetically drawn to the floor, sprawled in the dust, with a mission to lick and bite anyone who comes near her. She’s young, but the bright amber rings of her eyes make her seem older beyond her years. Winston lags not far behind her. He has a sense of the gent about him, with the saddest Cremaster-like ears – which are in full working order, as both dogs bark at the sound of the slightest unexpected thing, although in Winston’s case it’s something of an effort these days. I don’t know what kind of dogs they are.

St Augustine’s
We arrive late, albeit perfectly late as the Christmas morning congregation is in the full throes of an à capella version of Joy to the World, led by FT’s wife Laura, dressed for the occasion in a pink head-dress, hymn book in hand. The church is just as my imagination has painted it – a small, white-painted building with a corrugated, gabled ceiling, all functional windows and fluorescent lighting. The room is dominated by an African Last Supper fresco, a black Christ sitting amongst his disciples, every character picked out in the very brightest of every hue. Paintings of Mary and Joseph frame the central mural, each protected by an African shadow, and a wonky crucifix, too high up to straighten, provides the closest link to the churches of home. The pews are packed on either side, a community in all its finery, every colour, every age, so very honest. Many more arrive after we do, tumbling out of the Nave door onto the terrace outside. Father Franco presides over this flock, a godfather-like figure who hails from Venice, surrounded by pairs of altar boys and girls. He cruises through the service like the pro he is, producing a sermon that touches on everything and the kitchen sink – a masterclass of sorts.

Mariam
She is perched in the pew behind me, next to Clare. She’s quiet, almost as a mouse, but very aware that she’s the centre of our attention. During the service she poses for James’ camera, Clare’s wrap-around sunglasses encouraging the natural show-off in her. Dress and bracelet are expertly matched, and her perfectly-formed ringlets of black and honey brown are clearly a labour of love for someone. Mariam loves every minute of our spotlight, and so do we. As we leave the Church compound, the four of us are greeted by a partially deaf girl with equally exquisite braids and a dress that is whiter that white. Her voice rings out as she recognises James from a previous visit and, some moments later as I glance back from the road, she waves still, as we slowly disappear from view.

Handshakes
It comes in three parts, with an appendix: a standard shake, a twist of the thumbs, and then back to first base, all this followed by a fist or palm to the chest – muslims the former, Christians the latter. All this should be the wetter the better, both limp and sweaty – choice.

Toukhal
Who knows how you spell it? Ours sits at the centre of the base, circular and about ten feet wide, two feet high walls, with open sides and a conical roof made of grass and palms. Underneath, there is luxury in the form of a couple of foam-and-wicker-combo sofas, plus a scattering of furniture decorated with the hand-painted logos of Médécins sans Frontières (MSF). Rolled-up tarps hang from the bottom rim of the roof, a reminder that there is a time when it rains here, and part of the ceiling itself is falling in, the hole appearing to be the base secret hiding place for just about anything. The toukhal has light when the jenny is on and all manner of bugs dart around it, passing on the four of us in the process. Remarkably, the dogs don’t come in. We’ve decorated the toukhal with some dayglo foil decorations we bought in Freetown, the kind that used to awe us as kids, plus balloons from Norma and a tiny little Christmas tree that Clare’s parents slipped into her luggage.

Flutes
We’d been listening to the distant sound of a flute for most of the day, thinking nothing of it. Late in the afternoon, with toukhal madness setting in, we decide to break out of the base, and so it’s suggested that we walk to Skandia House, a burnt-out colonial mansion that sits on the banks of the river nearby. Ibrahim, the son of a local furniture maker, is charged with accompanying us. Within yards of taking a path that trails off the road outside the base, we hear the flute again and, in turning a corner, we find the player. Behind him is a large rabble moving quickly towards us, swarming around another boy covered entirely in a cloak made of palm stems. It doesn’t take long for us to realise that this crowd is not banking on running into four camera-wielding westerners in their woods, and when we are told to leave, pronto, by increasing numbers of them, Ibrahim quickly takes a side path and quickens our pace – although, with the gang following, we do appear to be in something of a chase. One cries above all the others, “This is African Culture, leave us!”, and our panic levels rise exponentially, hearts pounding, stumbling underfoot, and a clear concern on the part of our guide. But, as suddenly as it kicked off, the group slip off the path behind us into a grass enclosure, and within seconds the tension disappears. We find the river within minutes, where we discover that we’ve just had an encounter with one of Kambia’s secret societies. In the days that follow we attempt to unlock the ‘secret’ nature of these groups, but few will talk. Some shrug off our questions with talk of partying and dancing. Another hints at an initiation ceremony involving cuts to the skin and live burial for a couple of days.

Kolenten River
Skandia House sits on the Kolenten, Kambia’s fast flowing and broad river. Two MSF doctors lived here, and there are hints of life past – the burnt out shell, victim to the RUF retreat in the dying months of the civil war, revealing terraces and balconies, and a ruined satellite dish. And, defying such destruction, a mass of plant-life, having long broken out of its well-tended borders and now splashing this ruin with new life. Beside is a ghat-like platform that almost reaches the river, its cement crumbling into the current, a local haunt for washing clothes and bodies. A wooden jetty also juts out into the river, opening up unrivalled views of the Chinese bridge to Guinea to the north, with mist-shrouded islands mid-flow, and rapids to the south. Cicadas buzz and the heat bears down. It is almost enough to ignore the tiny black flies, and their promise of the endearingly-named river blindness.

Christmas dinner
Dirty nuts, rum and coke, white china, roast potatoes, stuffing, green beans and carrots, gravy, Gatwick Sauvignon Blanc, Christmas pud and custard – genius.

Pizza Hut
The green, red and white balloons with which we have festooned the gate house give it the look of a branch of a neopolitan pizza joint. This is where Said and Alajie live. Tall and slightly hunched, with the highest of cheekbones, and older than most, Said sports the thickest of fleeces first thing each morning. Patterned with reindeer, somewhat innocuous in these parts, it is intriguing to think that it is possible to consider even the worst of morning temperatures here as cool. So far I’ve only met Alajie when we first arrived, his wellies standing out above all else – James and Greg tell us he is surgically attached to them.

6am
The alarm on the first day of filming comes as a shock. I stumble through the darkness to the bathroom outside, crashing quickly to life with a malevolently cold shower. It’s too dark to see what else might be lurking in there, a denial that is strangely compelling. Back inside, I walk into a hive of activity, worker ants illuminated by surgical headtorches making headway in squeezing oranges and slicing bread for breakfast, and preparing whatever we can for lunch. A growing pile of equipment takes shape – cameras, boom, boom-pole, boxed props, contracts, logs, money. Cursing that we did not ask Abass to make an early morning fire, and so starved of a caffeine fix, we open the door just before seven, walking out into a breaking light and an air filled with the smoky waft of paraffin lamps. Isatu waits for us, and there is movement around the truck. Disappearing into a mist of P20, deet and footspray – is this really worth it? – I hold on to the thought that, with luck, I’ll be sleeping again within minutes.

Minglets
Little morsels of congealed porridge, wrapped in cassava leaves and speared with a toothpick – it seems like such a good idea at the time.

Barmoi
We arrive on foot, ‘light pushing’ having failed to do the trick a mile or so outside of the village in which we are due to film. We are clearly expected, as a small crowd has amassed outside the clinic staff quarters. Over the day the number grows, largely a gaggle of children who watch and follow our every move. By the afternoon, we’re all gaining in confidence, playing clapping games over lunch and singing ‘We wish you a merry Christmas’. Two boys in dirty red tops venture to hold my hands as we walk to this afternoon’s set. Despite ragged clothes – hints of Spiderman and Scooby Doo – dry scalps and running noses, all are quite wonderful. It’s in their eyes. A quiet contentment, a knowing beyond their years, these kids are perfectly at ease with one another. There’s a beautiful but silent boy with a chaos of dreadlocks who fixes you with a stare that cannot let you go.

Scousers
Clare assures us this is the name for them, a frankly peculiar skirt-trouser combo that our lead man wears for our first story. This pair are caked in dust – as are we after a full day on the Barmoi set – and I find it hard to get my head around this item seemedly appearing to be the height of Kambian fashion. I didn’t expect to find Dorothy Perkins c1989 alive and well in West Africa.

Opoto
It means ‘white skin’, the shout that accompanies us wherever we go. Except Barmoi, strangely enough. It is the soundtrack to our drive-by waving – the langour of a hot afternoon fleetingly disturbed by four westerners in a truck speeding through the village, too irresistible to pass on the momentary excitement in running out towards us to see what’s going on, shouting, waving, the occasional stumble and cry. Sometimes a teenager uses the word, subverting it to be aggressive and pointed.

Night
Last night was party night up at the Tigo Toukhal, sitting at a road junction that is no more than 200 metres away from our base. The sound system cranked up at about nine, and the beat grew steadily louder through the small hours. Curiously, it’s rather soothing – sure, heavy dance beats, but there’s something about the African vocals that lulls you towards sleep, in marked constrast with Saturday Night Manchester. Luckily the dogs behaved as dawn approached – Isatu and Winston, like good guard dogs, can go off like a siren at the slightest hint of a gecko behind one of the huts, and James has been heard to reprimand them from the terrace in the middle of the night – before the mosque kicked off at 5.30am. I’ve grown to love the mosque, a perfectly balanced, lyrical questioning, a surreal soundtrack to the coldest of morning showers.

Abass
Abass is Moses’ adopted son and he looks after the base house when there are visitors in residence. Luckily for us, our visit falls over the Christmas school holidays and he seems keen to find ways of being distracted from his revision. Abass knows how to make a fire, a skill which makes him indispensable to us – Clare and James attempted to light one behind his back a couple of days ago, only to be quietly castigated by the fire-maker when he happened to wander past mid-exercise. We try not to ruin his life too much, as he has a financial accounting exam on the first day back after the vacation, and we certainly don’t wish him to fail on our account. And so we’re being as self-sufficient as we can be food-wise, and – to the amazement of everybody at the base – we are doing our own washing! Abass rises to make fire for our pre-sunrise coffee each morning, and he haunts the base until mid-morning, still half-asleep, in a red hoodie to keep out the relative cold. He finds our English ways “very interesting”, which I think is his way of saying “cuckoo”, and he’s proving invaluable in watching our edited footage each night, commenting on the content and final dialogue. His face comes alive when he smiles, and he loves to mimic the sounds of our voices as he walks off beyond a conversation. At first, he was rather shy and I think the four of us together proved to be rather too much for him – but this afternoon he comes with us to Hassan’s for a drink (well, a coke). He talks of his plans to study business at Freetown University beyond the end of High School next year. He doesn’t say as much, but I have the strong impression that he yearns to travel a long way away from here.

Harmattan
This cool wind has arrived within the last few days from the Sahara and will be a constant dusty presence over the next two months or so. It’s hot by day, although the breeze can fool you into thinking it is merely warm when it is blowing strong. By evening it cools down, and I seem to reach for the blanket I borrowed from Astreas by the time the mosque calls me to life at dawn each morning.

Graham
Graham stands out from the Barmoi junior crowd. There’s a special light in his eyes as he crouches down, all gangly in his oversize polo shirt and dirty shorts. He chooses not to talk and watches us intently. I make a breakthrough in winking to him, as he returns my gesture – a very serious wink, eeked out as is if every micro-second matters. At lunch I see him playing with the hollow remains of an old torch, and so I put it to his eye like a telescope. He looks and feels like a camera man, a mini-Greg. He smiles, and we all melt.

Amedu
Israel picks them out of the crowd, and they turn out to be brothers – Amedu, Aruina, Saidu and Fodey. All four have been watching our last couple of days’ filming and so they know the score. Being older they are well-dressed and have some English. Amedu, the eldest, acts up as the leader, spelling out their names for our credits and asking me questions, something of a rarity here. He asks me what we are doing and why we are doing it. He too has an energy in his eyes, but I can’t work out whether it wants to carry him away from here, or just the opposite. Later, he asks me to take his picture on my phone, and he goes very quiet when I show him. He thanks me, again quite the exception here.

Devil
We run into traditional culture again today, albeit from the relative safety of the truck as we approach Kambia town on the way back from Barmoi. We join the tail-end of a parade that centres on a good devil, conjured to celebrate the Christmas season. Covered from head to toe in wicker, splashes of patterned material, strands of greenery and garlands of flowers, at first we can make out little more than the terrifying horns of an antelope through the cloying dust, crowning a traditional head mask. Against our collective judgement, Murray edges the truck through the mob, quickly immersing us in the chanting, the dancing, and the heavy, bass-drenched afro-beats coming from a huge sound system. There is dust everywhere. Again, there is clear anger at our cameras, and FT slips a few Leones to ease our passage through the encounter. Even from the relative safety of our Toyota, we cannot help but feel vulnerable.

Final Cut Pro
Each evening Greg and I glue ourselves to his swanky Apple laptop, and the miracle that it Final Cut Pro knocks the day’s footage into shape. On set, I log each and every shot that Greg shoots, and in the process I am amassing a list of acronyms and jargon that would make the RNCM proud. On our return, we transfer only the shots from which we hope to create our edit, these forming the basis of the material that Greg works with a speed and vision that is astounding. Meanwhile, Clare and James negotiate the fire with Abass, planning menu after menu, and bribing us with alcohol in an attempt to speed everything up – something that, more often than not, works. Before we finish, we run the day’s footage by Abass, something he usually finds “very interesting”, the predictability of which we find very interesting.

Armageddon
Why am I so revolted to discover that chickens eat cockroaches? I worry that Clare and I have pressed the nuclear roach button by fly-spraying the netty, this our throne-like cement loo seat that graces the toilet pit on the edge of the compound. Now all life that had been perfectly content ‘down there’ can no longer breath, and so whole armies of roaches are coming up for air. Thank the lord they appear to have developed cockroach asthma by the time they escape and once they are rolling on their backs the chickens do the rest. Note to self: pass on the poultry.

Alajie
He emerges from the bushes with a dish the size of a small washing-up bowl balanced between his towelled legs. Our natural reaction is that he is having a laugh at our expense, but a rumour quickly does the rounds that the bowl is medical, and so in a stereotypically middle-class way we tiptoe around it, filming the scene with Alajie as our healer, dish in tow. When we are wrapped, he whips the bowl out, the assembled crowd in stitches. Later, Greg and I edit his extenuated manhood from the day’s footage. Greg feels particularly vindicated, given the old man earlier made a play for Clare to join his collection of wives.

Ambulance chase
Our formal filming is completed soon after lunch today, and this being our last day in Barmoi we decide to do something with the faithful flock of children who have been following our every move these last four days. And so, with Greg trussed up in the open back door of the Toyota, we film Mr Advice in the Lifesaver Ambulance, waving like a loony and chased by all our Barmoi friends. Somewhat more indulgently, we then set up our very own Little Miss Sunshine as a perfect moment to close the film. Afterwards, Clare finds herself in the closest we come to war as she attempts to pay the crowd with sherbert sweets. Graham bags two – and we conclude that this boy will go far.

Peak
There’s no bread this morning and so we resort to cereal mixed with Peak, a UHT-like dried milk powder that, on adding cold water, promises a “rich and creamy, delicious and highly nutritious mix”. Curiously, I rather like it but Clare suspects it to be evil in a tin.

Lorry
As we creep up the hill towards Kambia checkpoint, Murray clocks the palms in the centre of the track, and recognises there’s trouble ahead. Rounding a corner, we come face to face with the wreck of a lorry that overturned in the middle of the night, cargo from its split side tumbling down the hillside in front of us. There’s not the faintest sign of any human casualty, leaving the entangled mass of baskets, blankets and food parcels as fair game, teeming with people protecting their interests and rummaging through anything unclaimed.

Luma
By day, checkpoint errs more towards shanty town than doomsday township. The luma (or market) is relatively quiet this morning, still a swirling mass of colour, smell and sound, gloopy buckets of red palm oil, towers of grey soap, platters of fish heads, precarious stacks of eggs, mounds of chilli, the cutest aubergines, robust onions, fragile tomatoes, flip flops, sunglasses, tie-dye. Laden with fruit and veg, spare car parts, bottled water and soft drinks, we fry on the main road as we wait for FT to complete a sweep of the market to secure the best-priced oranges in the district.

Catfish Well
Off down a track to the left beyond the bridge to Guinea, and we are finally there – at catfish well, the closest thing to a tourist attraction that the Kambia District has to offer. At the foot of a short pathway, two wells sit in a clearing where local women wash and chatter in a sun that is approaching the oppressive. FT prises off the concrete lid from the larger tank and, almost immediately, the legendary four foot long specimen swims up to the surface. James gorges it on a mouldy bagette, beyond which it decides that its hunger has been sated, steadfastly refusing to play any further. The catfish is in the well in order to keep the water clean, and we learn that it goes by the name ‘Stop The War’, which I conclude would not need so much of an explanation in the Book of 1001 Catfish Names. We leave both strangely satisfied to have seen it, and curious to know whether an even larger one lurks further down in the murk of the well’s cool waters.

Payroll
Very few people here are officially paid. More hospital staff than not are, in effect, working as volunteers, surviving through the generosity of the community they choose to serve. This spirit is commonplace – the Masselleh community, for instance, can see the value in the Lifesaver Ambulances that we are here to promote and so every household contributes a small sum (500 Leones, or the equivalent of 8p) to pay for their ongoing maintenance. Those staff lucky enough to contemplate joining a payroll quite often have to pay for such privilege – unofficially, of course. Currently, the wider population has to pay to access the limited health care on offer. Save the Children and the World Health Organisation are locked in a bitter dispute as to whether or not this is fair, and the figures speak for themselves – the numbers in Kambia District accessing healthcare since MSF’s unceremonious withdrawal have dropped to 20% of what they were before the pull-out.

Hassan
Hassan runs a small, basic outdoor bar on Hospital Road. The king of the African handshake, all roads seem to lead to Hassan’s, and as a result he seems to know everyone who comes through the town. With no children of his own, he’s nonetheless surrounded by the offspring of many others, including a livewire called Isatu and a couple of cheeky boys by the names of Mohamed and Malachi. We quickly feel at home at Hassan’s, clearly a Kambian institution.

Isatu II
Hassan’s Isatu is immaculately turned out, perhaps because we tend to drop by after she proudly emerges from her late afternoon shower. She sits on Clare’s lap, fidgeting in the most adorable way, poking, proding, and pinching her white skin to check it’s for real. She understands every word we say, but lets on that she doesn’t, rarely saying anything herself. She’s equally fascinated with Clare’s nose stud, and makes upside-down glasses with her fingers in response to these goonish opotos who stop by at this time each day. She lives her young life on hot coals, and some day she’ll find her place in the world somewhere far away from here.

Green-green
With no filming today, and therefore free from editing, Greg and I take up the equal challenge of preparing dinner. Diced potato, onion and okra make for a perfect tortilla, given the eggs we found at the checkpoint market earlier. Abass despairs at my attempts to prepare what he calls green-green, as we sit on stools beside the fire. Able to stand it no longer, he swipes the stalks from me, bunches them in his fist and uses a knife to create quite the most finely chopped pile, which we boil and then fry to the point that there is virtually nothing left to show for the bags of the stuff with which we started. We plate up, and declare it Nouvelle West African Cuisine.

Different POV, in the style of a shot-log…
1/1 WS – Greg chopping potatoes, onions and okra
2/1 CU – Onions make Greg cry
3/1 CU/PU – Glowing charcoals on the fire
4/1 MS – Toby fanning fire
4/2 MS/Dutch – Toby fanning fire at jaunty angle
5/1 WS – Abass reprimands Toby for inability to prepare green-green, taking over
6/1 CU – knife, embers
7/1 MS – Toby and Greg juggle tortilla and plates
8/1 CU/from above – tortilla slice and small-but-beautiful portion of green-green on china plate
9/1 WS – Four kind-of impressed but rather hungry faces in the toukhal

Mr Yillah
We’re now accustomed to a steady stream of uninvited guests in the toukhal. Tonight Moses brings down Mr Yillah, who takes forty minutes to get to his point about the ongoing political situation at the hospital. We think he says that he has recently resigned from his position on the District Council due to ill health. Or rather an unfortunate number of motorcycle accidents in succession – we cannot make out which, really. Happy New Year’s Eve.

Shith Ead
Clare introduces us to the card game known as Shithead tonight, which we promptly give a celtic twist in renaming it Shith Ead, lest we offend others around us. With a set of rules that seem to change with every round, as neither Clare nor Greg can really remember what is what, we play into the small hours, so getting NYE back on some kind of track.

Hawker
The first up, I stumble into the toukhal with a cup of tea this morning. No sooner than I’ve sat down am I joined by a hawker. Claiming to be Mr Yillah’s brother, he says he is a carver from Kambia, and he proceeds to produce an entire wooden nativity set by way of an introduction to a vast box-load of other carvings, an array that I worry has no discernable end. “And here’s another one…” Clare and Greg stay in bed throughout, none the wiser, and although he sneaks back later to catch them, he rather bizarrely fails to recognise Clare.

Fatmata’s elbows
Today is a bad car day. Our first breakdown is not so far from Kambia’s limits, and our second vehicle comes to the rescue. Forty minutes further on, in the middle of virtually nowhere, the gear-box of the replacement truck goes, and after an uninvited yet remarkably hospitable hour spent with a bemused family who live at the very edge of the a nearby village that goes by the name of No 13, we walk a couple of miles to a market in the nearest town. Here we spend several hours until the first vehicle makes it out this far to rescue us. We trundle back to town, pinched and poked by our new actress, Fatmata, whose elbows seem to find their way into the small of your back with unimaginable ease.

Kidnap
To all intents and purposes, we kidnapped a baby today. Our truck pulls up on the corner of Electricity Road, and Israel produces a baby from nowhere. Within seconds we are speeding along with it, mother fast fading from sight. We pull up at the afternoon’s set within a few minutes and, just as fast as a second baby comes to light, the first is whisked back to its probably-flummoxed mother. FT pays her 5,000 Leones, which goes down very well. We, however, are predictably traumatised.

Bench
We decide that Daniel can’t wear his favourite Mickey Owens t-shirt for the second story. Who would have thought that the Bench sale would end up costuming our film? I wouldn’t have worn it tucked in myself, nor with one trouser leg neatly rolled up, and when I question him about this he retorts: “It is my style.” As were the scousers, I guess.

Party Ambulance
Another day, another breakdown, this time at the top of Kolenten Hill next to a railway girder on which, in the absence of anything more enlightened, we preen and prance for the enjoyment of the locals. Back to base, Moses negotiates with both the hospital and the police to secure a vehicle that we can be sure will reach Masselleh, a clinic that is much more remote from Kambia than Barmoi. After what feels like hours of waiting around, our ambulance arrives, complete with a sweet and stuttering driver with a penchant for loud afro-beats – and so we whisk through the bush to the pumping sounds of Sierra Leone’s Emmerson, our very own Party Ambulance. I wish I’d been brave enough to flick on the siren for added effect.

Father Franco and the garlic bread
Back on Christmas Day, Father Franco disappeared at the end of the service, leaving us with the parmesan cheese we had brought for him. Today we concluded that we were unlikely to catch up with him now, and so instead we decided to eat it! Spaghetti in tomato sauce and fresh parmesan, plus garlic bread… even Abass rather liked it, so we must be getting used to this cooking-on-fire malarkly.

Isatu III
I first met Isatu back in Kambia, a vision in peach robes and gold sequins, and a head dress that defied gravity. She has a face of complete serenity, a quiet and an ease that stands her apart from the majority. She is also about six months’ pregnant and, so immaculately presented do we always find her, we have a theory that she moves from place to place by way of magic. In Masselleh, we see her both at work and at home, the archetypal matriarch. She heads up the clinic, calling a packed room to easy attention with a firm call for silence in the presence of us as her guests. No one doubts or challenges her authority, rather they seem to love her all the more for it. Her records are meticulous, a model for the Appeal. There is a particularly strong Traditional Birth Attendant (TBA) association here, and Isatu appears to have achieved a delicate balance between traditional and western concerns. She lives on site, in a pink-themed room that is adorned with High School Musical posters. She asks me what I make of Masselleh, and every word of my answer is clearly important to her. She remembers our names, and makes a point of using them as often as possible. She is quickly at ease with our camera, and we film her scene in quite the most golden light I’ve seen since we arrived in this country.

Masselleh
Masselleh is different to Barmoi. The clinic seems larger, and on first reckoning far less equipped – but there is a pride at work here that I can’t recall at Barmoi. The clinic doubles as a community centre, a focus for value and love. Isatu shows us the Lifesaver Ambulance log, and we are encouraged to learn that only yesterday was a patient transferred from a remote village some 12 miles away. Much stands on ceremony here – speeches, finery, singing and the exchanging of gifts. The area has a reputation for education, and it is surprising how much harder our work seems – we are surrounded by would-be directors. We feel pressured for the first time and, as the afternoon wears on, hot, then burnt, and left with the feeling of time slipping away.

Lucky and Unlucky
Lucky is the goat that Dr Mike Till gave to us on his leaving Kambia for the UK back in October. Lucky is a cute, dusty white, and whiles away his days tethered to a post in the base scrub, growing fat on a diet of cassava leaves and living the life of riley with four crazy westerners going coo-y over him. Unlucky was another goat presented to us by the people of Masselleh. He lived happily alongside Lucky for 24 hours or so, making a temporarily successful break for freedom, and resorting to a plaintive bleating early this morning before he was taken away, as if he knew what was coming his way. By this evening, Unlucky will be curry.

Map
I drew a map of the town today, given that one doesn’t seem to exist. That’s a good enough reason in my book, but that didn’t stop some of the others thinking I was rocking mad. Greg particularly liked my representation of the infamous catfish.

Israel
We slip off Hospital Road to check out the football ground this afternoon, finding a match in full swing, Kambia 1 (this the original town, in the midst of which is our base) taking on Kambia 2 (in effect, Checkpoint). Israel, the narrator of our film in the guise of ‘Mr Advice’, is at the pitch-side, and for just a second we watch him in the company of his friends, before he notices us. He holds their court, with hyperactive jokes, silly voices, and impromptu dancing designed to dominate and impress. All of a sudden he looks like a mere boy, and suddenly the flighty, petulance of the guy we’ve been trying to fathom makes more sense to me. For all the challenges we’ve faced together, Israel has delivered just what we need him to – and his changeable moods fade into stark relief when knocked into context by his occasional reflections on the war. The fighting claimed his sister, and we guess his experiences of the capital at that terrible time are vivid and angry. He says he is home in Kambia now, and in recent years the Evangelical Christian Church has provided his rock. We cannot imagine his journey, we really can’t.

Storm in a teacup
Hospital politics have been rumbling throughout our visit, fuelled by an ongoing rumour that Dr Kandeh, the District Chief Medical Officer and the only qualified doctor for a population of over 285,000, will not be returning after the Christmas break. Worse still, people are speculating that several senior staff intend to follow his lead, and already the Hospital is virtually empty of long-term patients. A meeting of all eight of Kambia District’s Paramount Chiefs has been convened since we began our work here and they, at the behest of the Deputy Leader of the District Council, in turn egged on by a small band allied to the APC Party, have written to the Ministry of Health and Sanitation in Freetown to express a lack of confidence in the skills of non-native Kambians working at the Hospital. In a country that suffers a severe shortage of even the most basic qualified medical staff, this is nothing short of devastating and there is a real danger of the district rapidly gaining a national reputation for intolerance and intimidation. Every day the story develops further, positively, negatively, rationally, irrationally. Everybody cares, nobody can afford to be ambivalent. Yet, nothing stays the same for long and, even after such a short time here, it seems that the best policy is to run everything by the storm-in-a-teacup rule. In most cases it is proven true, and some.

Football
A couple of days back I caught a few of the Barmoi boys playing footie with a remarkably sturdy orange. So, when we return today I choose one of them – a gifted chap who a just a few days ago demonstrated utter ingenuity in making an ambulance and mobile phone out of nothing other than cane and a razor blade – as the keeper of the football in need of a good home that my brother packed into my rucksack. The usual chaos ensues, and heaven knows whether the concept of it being for everybody hits home. Minutes later we drive off, and as I turn back to wave, the ball is already being put through its paces. I’m not holding out any hope that James will ever see it on any of his future trips, nor that there will be an influx of Barmoi boys in the national squad any time soon.

FT
FT is a pillar of the Kambia community. He’s offered himself to us, our fixer, someone for whom no challenge is insurmountable. On the outbreak of the war and on the advice of a relative, he moved to Freetown with his wife Laura, where he was lucky enough to secure a room in an abandoned hotel. Offering protection to several orphaned children proved to be the catalyst for what has since grown into an extended family of ten children, these including Mariam, an equal handful in Mohamed-Junior, Francis and Paul from the Catholic Choir, and Mohamed-Senior, the eldest and one who already appears to be weighed down with the premature responsibilities of adulthood. FT often speaks of our ‘sacrifice’, or our risk in coming to work in this country, something that we have difficulty in comprehending. Each day for a family here is fraught with more challenges that we’ll face in a lifetime, and what an honour it is to spend even just a short time with such a true man.

Première
Our film is complete, and has a title: Call Di Lifesaver! Today we screen it four times. Beyond our cast this morning, we take full advantage of a long-overdue dash of luck in our transport arrangements, and so make both Barmoi and Marsellah in a single day! In both villages, groups of 100 or so gather to watch the film in which they have each in some way played a part, huddled around a small television and DVD player powered by strategically-placed jenny. It is moving to see just how united these communities are – smiling together and laughing together, sometimes at each other when the screen début of a local character lights up the small screen. And the silence that is also shared at the more serious sequences in our stories. In Masselleh an untrained TBA leaves the screening, unhappy at the negative way in which she feels her craft has been portrayed. And this nods towards a concern, a consideration as to how the traditional culture that promotes healers and witchdoctors can be respected, yet clarified in health message terms. We conclude that discussion must go hand in hand with future screenings, as this is the only way that a balance can be struck that is both sensitive to local custom and yet true to the rationale behind investing in the film in the first place. This evening we finish the run of screenings with the Toukhal Première, for the cast once again, the base staff, and a number of staff from the Kambia Hospital. It is the praise and feedback that this last group offer us that leaves us feeling that the job we’ve done will yet prove to be both a valuable and valued one.

Spider
We had been stranded at the Africana Village Hotel on Kambia’s outskirts for a couple of hours, a peculiar world of concrete beds and eternally-looped Westlife hits. Clare’s scream was relatively muted, considering. Leaving her trembling outside the toilet, I ventured into the cubicle and peered as slowly as I could down into the bowl. It was huge, quite a lot bigger than I had expected, one of its eight legs perilously close to the seat as it made a final play to escape. I cannot imagine what it must have been like when she first saw it there on her own.

Broken
The ridiculous and faintly criminal situation at the Hospital seems to mirror vividly the interconnecting hopelessness of the infrastructure that blights Sierra Leone’s immediate development. Five years after the cease fire, Freetown remains without any reliable electricity provision, something that rest of the country is years away from enjoying (again). The roads are beyond description, water supply is irregular and sewers non-existent (any more). The economy beyond the capital goes round in circles – people buy stuff to resell, buy and sell again, and so the circles continues. How do you break this, and so dare to edge forwards? The country is swamped with NGOs, but there is precious little evidence of initiatives that join up, and our experience of MSF’s pull-out from Kambia is less than positive. And yet, it is said that the population pins much faith in the new government to improve the general lot.

Lakka Beach
We stick a pin on a map of the coast and blindly blaze a trail – and so the finding of this crescent of gold, with its quiet perfection and waters so warm they feel vaguely illicit, proves to be wonderful surprise for all of us. After enjoying some freshly-grilled fish at a perfectly ramshackle shack atop a rocky outcrop that juts out into the ocean, we walk and swim, FT sporting his beach-wear. A blissful afternoon.

Koroma
A particularly surreal couple of minutes today. Enduring what appears to be one of the worst stretches of road in the country, we pull over in the midst of a busy suburb at the sound of a police car up ahead. Within seconds we spy a modest motorcade ahead, a blacked-out 4-wheel drive following on from three or so police bikes and cars. Several outside the car say it is the President, and so James lurches out of his window to wave… only for the car to slow, the electric window ease downwards, revealing President Koroma leaning towards us with a cheesy wave worthy of a Main Street Parade. And then he is gone. The utter lack of security is remarkable – and how refreshing, this a man who has a clear confidence in his position and his people’s mandate.

Bintumani breakfast
The plastic flowers sellotaped to the walls of an otherwise empty room are the first obvious sign that Freetown’s top breakfast table is not going to deliver. A monosyllabic “no” answers questions about fresh fruit, or juice, or pretty much anything really. Another of the army of staff walks momentarily away from a toaster, which promptly catches fire. Keenly missing Abass, Greg is the first up, moving quickly to avoid disaster. I’m taken with the chairs, which are kiddie size – which may have something to do with my being unable to shift the feeling that we are in some kind of detention.

Fourth World
Can we really consider this to be the Third World? The Developing World, with investment and strategy that improves the lives and aspirations of its people, through an infrastructure that embraces education, health, connection and culture? I struggle to see how the fractures in this fragile place can be addressed by a population that is denied the kind of smart resources necessary to forge real development that makes a difference for the majority. At the moment, Sierra Leone is barely standing still. At worst, it slips further and further out of kilter, a Fourth World perhaps.

Crown Bakery
The Crown is a Freetown institution, somewhere that all opotos pass through at some point during their stay in the capital. The food is undeniably good and most welcome, but beyond this it’s a challenging experience. Lightly air-conned, table after table of expats crowd the Crown. Two 40-something women and a younger man from Save the Children sit next to us, a meeting of a Chinese NGO nearby, and an English ex-pat couple chatting with the owner behind us. Meanwhile, a crowd of black drivers wait patiently on the bench seating within the doorway. Murray doesn’t feel he can leave our truck, but we forge ahead with FT and Moses anyway, given this will be our last meal together. With a menu that must appear sanitised beyond any taste to our new friends, and priced into obscenity, it is an experience that doesn’t stop so far short of tortuous.

Cab to helipad
“…Episode 86: Mary and Joseph travel to Bethlehem for the census of Augustus Caesar. At the decree of the Roman Emperor, every citizen travelled to his birthplace for the census, and so Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem. The journey was slow, and by the time they arrived at the town every room had been taken. All Joseph could find was a stable at the back of a house, with a roof made of straw and cattle at rest. But this was the night that God intended his son to be born of Mary, and so this place became the home of the baby, named Jesus. Can you imagine how the stable was on that cold night? Mary and Joseph were overjoyed with the birth of Jehovah’s son. Can you think how overjoyed everybody was? Let us together imagine what it was like in the stable in Bethlehem [long pause] …
“…Episode 87: The Heavenly Host sings of the birth of Jesus. And all of a sudden the skies were ablaze with a host of Angels, singing together with the joyful news the birth of the baby, Jesus. Can you imagine what the sound was like? Can you imagine just how happy they were?…”
Surreal.

Helicopter
Generally not being one to work myself into a state of anxiety when it comes to air travel, the Freetown to Lunghi helicopter proves to be a clear exception to my rule. Despite the assurances of both Greg and James that the service we are enjoying is a clear notch up from their arrival trip, I size up the diameter of the open porthole and elect to avoid the seat belt, betting this to be quicker in the event of the hawk going down… And off we take… Hemmed against each side, facing a vast pile of our rope-netted luggage in the middle of the chopper, night falls as we scuttle across the estuary. And there’s the noise – all encompassing, and a perfectly nasty soundtrack to the tangible collective sense of foreboding that these 24 suddenly-frail human beings are capable of whipping up for 420 of the very longest seconds.

Airport
I guess it is utterly predictable that Freetown airport subscribes to a system all of its own. We arrive to join a long and snaking queue that funnels all travellers, wherever their ultimate destination, through a single manned ticket check. Next a couple of security guards, then another manned desk where leaving cards are presented and passports stamped. Then another couple of security guards, another queue to check in baggage, this manned by Lebanese staff who also issue identical boarding cards. Next up, a tout offering ‘upgrades’ for a starting price of US$60, which comes down to £15 with a little effortless bartering. Passing on the offer in any case, then a table manned by a little old man with his glamorous young female assistant, who between them assign seat numbers by peeling stickers from a sheet of labels. Beyond, yet another couple of security guards, and then we make it to the departure lounge, with its virtually barren duty-free shop and a souvenir stand selling little more than bags of skittles. Finally, when the flight is called, a further security check before the bus that shuttles us out to the planes marooned out on the tarmac. Hand baggage is searched and passengers frisked for a last time, and it dawns on us that x-ray machines have yet to feature here.

21 days later
It’s been three weeks since we left Kambia and even though I have escaped malaria, it feels as if I’ve been bitten by something nonetheless – so unsettled I feel, waiting on the latest developments from Kambia, to learn more about what’s happening to the people we’ve started to get to know over our brief visit to Sierra Leone. Of course, the first days back were the hardest – bitter January cold, and the complete chamber works of Mozart at work, for which I never really found my listening ears – but since then even some everyday tasks are more challenging: negotiating the Arndale at the weekend, in all its rapacious, blinged-out glory seems particularly obscene. And some things I’ve enjoyed: the bliss of green vegetables, regular exercise and spending time with friends over dinner. I’ve cried at Greg’s video diary, watched Call Di Lifesaver! more times than is perhaps healthy, and have been encouraged at the number of stories about Sierra Leone that have made our news – even David Beckham visited Makeni last week, although the topless photos of his football game with local kids was perhaps a missed opportunity. We hear rumours that the Ministry of Health and Sanitation has informed the Kambia District that Dr Kandeh is soon to return to the Hospital, and tomorrow there is to be a meeting on site to discuss the basic issues at the heart of the dispute – and so we go into a new week with the hope that it is just a storm that rages in that particular teacup, and more stable times lie ahead for the warm and bright people of the place we know as Kambia.