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.
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:
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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!
