Sierra Leone: Day 1 The arival

In November 2010 The Charity Service decided to take two young people to Sierra Leone. Michael Colin and Nigle Green invited my cousin Hannah and I to meet them and offered to take us both to Sierra Leone for 10 days. Now the condition of us coming were as follows: we were to keep a diary of our experiances of the visit with us. That's it! They didn't even want us to promise to raise some money, although we did in the end.

Pictures taken by Hannah 

Pictures taken by me 

Day 1: We arrive at the airport at around 11.00 pm local time. John Bangura met us at the airport where somebody asks for money for moving our suitcase about 12 feet. John told us not to. 

We later lerned that in Sierra Leone people can earn large ammounts (relativly speaking) by being in proximity with westerners. Waiters earn more than doctors because of this. What's that I hear you cry? "You heartless barstard Edward! why not give money to this person? he is very poor after all". My answer is that this person had done nothing, he should not expect money for moving a suitcase across a room. If he had been begging in the street that would have been a different matter, if he wants to be paid he needs to do something. There are businessmen in Sierra Leone. It is important that their work (which actually adds value to the economy and creates goods and services people actually want) is not undermined by freeloaders.

2 hours later Michael and Nigel's flight arrived and we set off on our journey in John's 4x4. We were'nt going stright to our destiniation though, we had to visit Bo first:

View Larger Map

For those of you who have not visited the developing world: the roads are often terrible. Craters everywhere, no tarmac and an average speed around 25mph until we found some tarmac. And John didn't actually know which way he was going.

We arrived at the Wusum hotel at around 05.00 the next day.

Thanks for reading my first post on visiting Sierra Leone. feedback is appreciated!

Political compass

As both my readers will notice I have added my left/right, authoritarian/libertarian stance according to political compass. This is an interesting little site where you can take a test to tell you what your political position is.

Why we shouldn't change the rules on royal succession.

Jonathan Isaby Has suggested we should change the rules of royal succession to allow the eldest child to inherit the throne regardless of sex.

This is a silly idea.

Not because the current discrimination against women is a good thing (it's not), but because it doesn't make any sense.

Consider the reason why we would apply this rule: to make the system fair to both sons and daughters of the monarch. But this ignores the elephant in the room, the monarchy itself.

Any application of logic and reason would inevitably result in the abolition of the monarchy altogether! Surely its existence is an offence to democracy just as much as it is to women. Surely any reasonable person would want an elected head of state rather than a head determined at random.

However, I do not wish to abolish the monarchy, indeed I do not see a problem with the current situation. We all know it is a product of history, we are not creating society from scratch as some would like to believe. Leave it alone, as soon as we start tinkering with it to suit our current views its value as a historic part of our nation will be significantly diminished.

what to do.....?

Maybe I should write about my work. (In a care home.)

Really, many would be shocked (both my readers) and the only reason I haven't already is due to the legal pitfalls around confidentiality.

The Blog Begins!

And so today I start blogging! So far the only suggestion has been from Ross although I'm not sure if a cooking blog is quite what I am aiming for.

From here it can only get better!