The old saying goes that all’s well that ends well.  While it is certainly too early to say that about my sabbatical aboard Amistad, at least I can say it about my trip to join the ship, which has been challenging, to say the least. Due to logistical problems, I wasn’t able to leave on December 26, as had been planned, but ended up leaving on the evening of December 27, with a redeye flight out of Newark.  Upon arrival at London’s Gatwick airport, I rushed through immigration and customs so I could retrieve my baggage and then had to check my luggage back in with Astraeus Airline for the flight to Freetown, which was scheduled to leave at 13:00.
    13:00 came and went and the airline announced that the plane was having problems.
Every hour, there was another announcement that the problem was being worked on and around 17:00, we got five pounds from the airline so we could buy snacks.  For the record, five pounds doesn’t buy a whole lot of snacks in an airport.  Time passed and passed and passed and the passengers got increasingly irritable, but I was extremely fortunate to find myself with a few new friends. One was Sandy, whose father had been a Sierra Leonian government official back in the 1960s and had evacuated his family when the civil war began.  Later, Sandy and I met folks that I’ve been asked to refer (at least publicly) as Colonel and Mrs. X.
No kidding.  Col. X. is a British military officer who is serving in Sierra Leonian uniform as the Director of Military Intelligence for the Sierra Leonian military.
He and his wife are delightful folks and they, Sandy and I ended up having dinner together before Astraeus finally decided at 21:00 that our flight was simply not going to leave that night.  The airline sent us to a hotel, but it took until 01:00 before we finally got to the airport.  I believe I may have been asleep before my head hit the pillow.
    This morning, we were picked up by a bus and taken back to the airport, where we ended up waiting until noon before we finally got to board the plane.  The flight, itself was uneventful, but it was beautiful to be able to look out and see the hills of Portugal as we flew over them.  The Mediterranean was beautiful.  I could see Casablanca as we flew just to the west of it.  Flying over Saharan Africa was amazing.  From 35,000 feet, it is hard to imagine people actually living in such a forbidding environment, but there were small clusters of buildings every so often.
    After arrival in Freetown, it was time to go through immigration and pick up luggage, then on to customs.  Once in the country, officially, it was time to wait for four hours to take a helicopter flight from the airport to Freetown proper, which is on the other side of a major river, with no bridge for many miles.  The helicopters are old Soviet MIL-8s, but are kept in good condition and are flown by Russian pilots.  Sandy and I rode together and we both enjoyed the experience very much. No sooner had I gotten off the helicopter than I was met by Donald George, a Sierra Leonian who works with Amistad.  On the way to the ship, we drove through downtown Freetown and I was amazed to see that the electrical grid here is so deficient that most of the nightclubs are lit by candles and oil lamps.  We made a stop at one of Donald’s friends’ wedding reception, and I had the chance to meet a few people before arriving at the ship, which is anchored in the middle of Freetown Harbor. So here I am, enjoying a cool breeze after the heat of the day, using the ship’s wireless Internet connection to check my email.  I’m looking forward to seeing Freetown by day.  It is nearly 02:00 and my body clock is a bit off, but it is time to go to bed.  Morning will be here very soon.

    Today passed quietly enough.  There’s an Anglican cathedral that we can see from the ship, but I’ve got watch today and wasn’t able to go.  I’m hoping to go to worship next week.
    Like usual, today had 92 degree heat, but with a constant breeze Beaufort force 1 or 2, so it was tolerable enough.  I spent the day well-coated with sunscreen and working with my watch-mate Johnny Kamara, a native of Freetown who has been with Amistad for a couple years now.  Our major task was to make sail covers from some tarps so that the sun wouldn’t damage the sails unnecessarily.  We also rigged awnings to cover the majority of the deck.
    Our life aboard is almost entirely on deck, as there is little air circulation below decks.  We’ve moved all of the mattresses from the bunks to the deck and we all sleep on deck with no fear of mosquitoes, since we’re anchored far enough offshore and since the wind is so steady.
    Tomorrow, after lunch, Johnny and I will get to go ashore for the rest of the day and will then have all of the following day for our selves, since we work 24 hours on watch, followed by a duty day of ship work that runs until 5:00pm, officially, but usually finishes up at lunch.  I hope to have some good photos from that time of seeing Freetown.
 

    Today’s main attraction has been the number of small boats that have been out and about in Freetown harbor.  Small boats here are all locally built and have distinctively different lines than the boats that I’m used to seeing.  They’re all working boats, open and with high bows that must help keep everyone dry when there’s a sea running  While the bigger boats run with outboard motors, many of the smaller ones are paddled with leaf-shaped paddles or are propelled by sails often made up of bedsheets or random bits of cloth stitched together and looking like a patchwork quilt.  A spritsail rig seems to be very popular.  What is particularly interesting is how highly decorated they are.  Not only are they brightly painted, often in the colors of the Sierra Leonean flag, but they also usually have, in large letters, names like “BELIEVE IN GOD” painted on them.  This is a very different world from all of the white fiberglass boats with names like “Millionaire’s Toy” that I’m used to seeing.
    I took a shower this morning, after deck wash:  the first one I’ve been able to take since arriving in Africa.  It is definitely low-tech here, as our drinking water is delivered in five-gallon water-cooler jugs that we pour into the ship’s water tank.  Less potable water for washing and other tasks is brought out from the navy base and we keep a barrel of it on deck.  Showers happen by way of a five-gallon bucket hoisted into the rigging with a siphon hose and a clamp.  It felt great to be clean after yesterday’s grubby work, but a new layer of sunscreen immediately had me feeling grubby again.
    This afternoon, Barry, the Engineer, and I took the zodiac to the navy base to pick up drinking water for the ship.  On the way back, I learned how to run the outboard motor, thus filling in one of my major nautical knowledge deficiencies.  Now, all I’ve got to do is to get some practice time in, but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem, since we’ve got several trips every day to pick up or drop off our security guards or to ferry crew members who have the day off.

    The new year arrived in Freetown with a huge celebration on shore, complete with VERY loud music that carried out to the ship and made it almost impossible to sleep.  At the stroke of midnight, several vessels in the harbor fired off signal flares that were soon followed by fireworks from several spots in town.  Once morning arrived, the whole city was in a festive mood, with all of the major businesses closed and people celebrating in the streets.
    Johnny Kamara and I went into the city after lunch and met several of his friends there.  Together, the six of us walked through the city, looking in several market stalls, visiting the Freedom Steps, where Sengbe Pieh and the other Amistad captives first returned to Africa, but which had been used as the point of departure for slaves sold from the Cotton Tree slave market for centuries previously.  The Cotton Tree, which is over 400 years old, still stands in the center of Sierra Leone, where is it dominates the central square and is home to a colony of fruit bats.  It is a bit disconcerting to be a white man in Sierra Leone because the assumption is that I am extremely wealthy which, by comparison to the general population, I certainly am, since I had about $40 worth of Leones in my pocket, which is what the average worker here earns in two months’ time. Did you know that it is illegal to take pictures of government buildings in Sierra Leone?  I didn’t until an officer of the Sierra Leone Police took my camera away from me and told me to follow him.  Sometimes, it seems, ignorance really IS a defense and after about 10 minutes of fairly friendly questioning, they let me and my camera go after they watched me delete all of the pictures of Government House, which is the residence of the Sierra Leonean President.  You’ll just have to imagine what it looks like or, maybe, you could Google a picture of it.
    After making several threats to kill Johnny Kamara for not mentioning my potential legal problems until it was too late, he and I headed off to visit members of his family in Murraytown, one of the suburbs of Freetown.  When we arrived by van (only 1,000 Leones each, which is about 30 cents!) Johnny proceeded to introduce me to what seemed like every person who lived in Murraytown.  We spent the next couple hours visiting in the homes of several of his relatives, where we were offered a dish of dried fish and cassava leaf stew over rice and one of Jolof Rice, which is a spicy beef stew over rice.  I was concerned about this for two reasons.  First, Johnny and I were served food, but nobody else ate, which was very strange to my Western sensibilities.  Secondly, cassava leaves are notoriously hard to clean (which is why Heather, our ship’s cook won’t serve them) and pose just a smidgen of a health risk.  Still, I felt that I was expected to accept my host’s hospitality and Johnny and I ate the food that was served to us.  It was quite good, nice and spicy and the cassava leaf stew had a flavor sort of like spinach, but with a strong bay-leaf type flavor.  So far, no ill health effects.
    After visiting in Murraytown, Johnny’s uncle drove us to Lumley Beach in Aberdeen, which is one of the hot spots for New Year’s partying.  The beach was jammed with families walking around, swimming and playing soccer.  As Johnny and I walked along the beach, at least forty people came up to him, calling him by name and introducing themselves to me.  It was really interesting to meet so many people and to talk with them about life here in Sierra Leone, especially since my connection with Johnny and Amistad gave us points of connection even though our lives are so completely different. In my spare time, I’ve been reading A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah, which is the memoir of a child soldier who served in Sierra Leone’s army during the civil war that ended five years ago.  It is forthrightly written and, as such, is a harrowing, though very human narrative.  The atrocities of that war were brought home to me first-hand in Freetown as we passed by several amputees whose fingers, toes, hands or feet had been hacked off by the rebels.  It is fair to say, though, that the government forces didn’t exactly follow the Geneva Convention in the way they carried out their war, either, slaughtering entire villages and killing POWs.  On this New Year’s Day, my hope is that the new year will bring further healing to this nation that has been through so much savagery and that the people and the government of this extremely poor but beautiful nation will continue to move forward in peace.
 

    It is dark as I sit here on deck, periodically checking the level of water in the bilges and making sure that the anchor doesn’t drag.  Tonight’s security guard, Brima, is asleep on the aft cabin top.  The smell of garbage fires has been strong all night, as the wind has been coming from the land, so I keep hoping for a change in wind direction.
    Freetown harbor is far from the cleanest place in the world.  Like most harbors in the world, it has its share of water-borne debris: plastic bags, oranges and melons, a dead dog and a whole lot of other junk have floated by, but the worst part is the air, which leaves the white paintwork grimy and in need of cleaning almost every day.
    (later in the day)Every day can't just be work, work, work.  Today, after coming off watch and finishing up tasks on the boat, Drew, Gina and I went ashore and met with Samuel, a SL native who has been helping Amistad's crew and serving as a guide for us.  We all went to lunch at a little shack of a place called NIX NAX and had African food, including Jolof Rice, cassava leaf stew and groundnut soup (which, for those of you who know peanut soup as it is served in Virginia, is very similar except that it also has meat, which kind of makes it worth eating, though I still think it tastes like hot peanutbutter...).  All four of us ate until we were ready to pop and the meal only cost us about 25,000 Leones (about $8.50 US).
    After lunch, we all visited the Sierra Leone National Museum, which featured a large exhibit on the Amistad event of 1839 and also several photos and paintings of various historically important people and a section of artifacts that would be right at home in the Smithsonian or the American Museum of Natural History.  I pointed out a kora (a West African harp-type instrument) to Samuel and asked him about the traditional music of Sierra Leone and if it might be possible to find some musicians performing somewhere while we're in port.  He seemed fairly confident that we might be able to work that out.
    After visiting the museum, Gina went off to do her own thing in town and Drew, Samuel and I took a mini-bus to the Aqua Club, which used to be THE PLACE for swimming, sunning and sailing in Freetown.  During the civil war, it was closed down and has only recently been reopened by the nephew of the woman who originally ran the place.  After paying the admission for Samuel ($1.60 US) and being told that Amistad crew members were welcome as guests of the establishment, we swam in the saltwater pool, sat in the shade, read, played rummy and enjoyed several beers (for less than $1.00 US each) before catching a taxi back to the navy base. I didn’t get any photos of the place, but will do so next time I go.  I am very hopeful that the Aqua Club and other such places here in Sierra Leone will be able to make tourism a viable industry here in Sierra Leone.  With prices here being so low, I expect that families in Europe will be able to travel here and stay for their vacations more inexpensively than they could go to Mediterranean resorts.
    Tomorrow, I’m scheduled to meet Samuel, whose uncle is a Methodist District Superintendent (or some similar title) and visit some churches.  Having visited churches in Hong Kong and in Mainland China during my travels in 2001, I’m looking forward to adding experiences of African churches to my understanding of global Christianity.
 

     Yesterday, Samuel and I set out on an epic trek to visit the half of Sierra Leone that I hadn’t met while traveling with Johnny Kamara on New Year’s Day.  At 10:00, we set off from the Navy Dock and caught a poda-poda, out to Waterloo, a suburb to the north (I think) of Freetown.  The ride up was characteristically crowded, with people crammed into the minibus.  After arriving, we stopped to visit Samuel’s parents in their home for a few minutes before going off in search of an ocada (motorcycle taxi – hop on the back and hold on!) to take us the rest of the way to the Mount Mizer church where his aunt and uncle are pastors.  It was a bit of an awkward situation for me, though, because Samuel’s sister was topless as we walked in.
    After a high-speed ride on the back of the ocada (Helmets? We don’t need no stinking helmets.) over red-clay and rock roads, we arrived at the compound where Leonard and Fatmata Davies are lay pastors running a small church and a primary school that serves 300 students.  Mr. Davies wasn’t there when we arrived, so Fatmata, showed Samuel and me around the compound, pointing out the space that they had within the compound where they hoped to build additional classroom buildings and a larger church.  They also have plans of converting the existing church building into a clinic that will be able to serve the community.  A doctor (wearing a black suit and white gloves!) from Freetown also happened to be in the compound on unrelated business and we all discussed the need to establish community clinics in partnership with churches and schools so that children’s health can be monitored on an ongoing basis.
    When Mr. Davies arrived, we  at on benches under a tree in front of the main house, surrounded by children who kept coming up and beaming at me and reaching out to touch my white skin, something many of them had never seen before.  Never before – not even during my travels in China in 2001 –  have I felt so conspicuous as I did during my travels with Samuel.  Not only did children keep coming up to me, but adults would greet me with a perfectly straight face, saying “Hello, white man.”
At one point, while we were walking down a road, Samuel started laughing when he heard someone inside one of the buildings call out to someone else “There’s a white man passing by.”  At a later stop, one of the small children just started crying whenever she looked at me. After leaving Mt. Mizer Church, we took another ocada and another poda-poda to go off in search of another one of Samuel’s uncles (the one who is the Methodist superintendent).  When we arrived at his house, he, too, was out so we visited briefly with Samuel’s aunt and promised to try and come back another day.  We then walked a half mile or so to go and visit another one of Samuel’s relatives that was also – you guessed it – not there.
    We then caught another poda-poda and came back to Freetown, where we spent an hour or so walking through the central market district, which made New York’s Chinatown seem spacious and uncluttered.  Traffic was snarled by pedestrians who had to walk in the street because the sidewalks were completely filled with people selling every imaginable item.  There were even people sitting underneath parked 18-wheeler trucks, selling things to people walking down the street.
    By the time we were ready to head back to the Navy Dock, Samuel and I were starving, so we went in search of something to eat.  Ever since we had been sitting at Mt. Mizer Church, my stomach had been rumbling, but I hadn’t been able to find anything other than a few groundnuts to eat that didn’t set my danger sensors jangling.  To make matters even worse, mealtimes, as we know them in the US, mean little to Africans, who tend to eat when they’re hungry, not at set times and in group settings.  As such, Samuel had also gotten hungry but hadn’t mentioned it, since I hadn’t mentioned that I was hungry.  By the time we were back in a place where we could get something to eat, my blood sugar had tanked and I had a pounding headache, due partly to the 90something degree heat and partly to hunger.  Rule number one when traveling in Africa:  take more food and water with you than you think you’ll need.  You’ll need it.
    After getting back to the ship, I took some ibuprofen and went to bed right after dinner. Today has been a watch day for me and I managed to get laundry done.  This is, of course, hand-washing in 5 gallon buckets on deck.  The water we’re using for washing is from the Navy base and is a bit iffy, so we’ve got it stored in barrels on deck, with bleach added to kill whatever nasties might be living in it.  Washing clothes in water with bleach isn’t such a big deal, but using bleach-water for rinsing doesn’t work nearly as well as one might hope, as the bleach leaves a slippery film on the fabric and, since we don’t have other water that we can use for laundry, we just have to make the best of it.
    Due to the unrest in Kenya, the entire African banking system seems to have shut down.  This is because Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya form – at least metaphorically speaking – the three legs of the African Financial Stool and, whenever one of them has a problem, it causes the entire stool to collapse.  On Amistad, this has meant that the usual funding channels for the ship have also ceased to function.  Since we’re paying to have bottled water delivered to the ship for cooking and drinking, this has meant that we were unable to be resupplied until we could come up with enough cash to pay our water bill.  After several phone calls back and forth to Amistad’s office in New Haven, we received a big stack of bills this afternoon.  I had never held such a huge pile of cash in my hands before, but some of the thrill went away when I thought about how little value such a large stack of Leones actually represents.
    I had a couple surprise visitors this afternoon when Sandy Jumu, whom I had met in London, appeared on the dock and asked if he and one of his friends could come out to see the boat.  I’m pleased to be able to say that I didn’t embarrass myself in my handling of the small boat and that their hour aboard AMISTAD made them both very happy. Now, the crew is settling down for the night.  Once again, there’s loud music playing on shore, so I hope everyone’s got the earplugs in.  I’m on watch until 03:00, so I’ll try to get this sent out this evening, as the Internet connection is a little less slow during the wee hours.

    This morning, after cleaning the ship’s “soles and bowls,” Heather and I went to mass at the Anglican Cathedral in Freetown.  Today is the Feast of Epiphany, which celebrates the wise men bringing their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the infant Jesus and is the final day of the twelve days of the Christmas season.
    The cathedral, itself, is a beautiful building dating back to the British colonial period and is filled with plaques memorializing Britons whose lives were spent here in Sierra Leone.  The mass was a very impressive high-church affair, with incense, a huge processional and glorious music from the choir, which featured boy sopranos.  As a member of the United Church of Christ, much of the service was familiar to me, but with certain notable differences.  The congregation chanted at least a half dozen Psalms.  Many of the hymn texts were familiar but were sung to unfamiliar tunes.  The formal liturgy of the Anglican tradition was second-nature to Heather, whose father is an Episcopal priest, but I found that I was always just far enough out of my tradition that I had to pay very close attention to the flow of the service to keep from losing my place.
    The dean of the cathedral and his wife were celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary and they set aside time during the service to have the bishop officiate in a brief service where they renewed their wedding vows.  In his sermon, the bishop spoke of the gifts the magi brought to Jesus and how we also need to offer ourselves in service to God and the world in the new year.  There were numerous sung responses in the liturgy and the choir sang “And the Glory of the Lord Shall be Revealed” from Handel’s Messiah.  After the service, as Heather and I reflected on the service, we talked about how the service (which ran three hours) is reflected back in our US/Canadian cultures in a combination of the high-church Anglo-Catholic worship and the black church traditions that we have both experienced.  This morning’s worship was a very visible reminder that our shared faith bridges barriers of geography, race, culture and tradition.
    In the afternoon, Drew and I went into the city to do a little shopping.  Freetown is very quiet on Sundays and even the market stalls that are normally very busy are quiet.  It was a wonderful opportunity for us to wander the streets and get a better sense of the city’s geography without having to dodge traffic or fend off hawkers.  I’m becoming increasingly comfortable here and am looking forward to future expeditions and further chances to get to understand the people and the culture of Sierra Leone.

     I’ve been on watch since 03:00 and have done my boat checks, finding no cause for alarm. The rest of the crew is asleep, as are our Sierra Leonian extras. The wind is blowing from the shore carrying with it the sound of the muezzin, calling Muslims to prayer with the words, Allah akbar, God is great! As I have traveled through SL, I have seen churches and mosques practically side by side. The manager of the bar near our boat told me about his son, who has both a Christian name and a Muslim name because, here in Sierra Leone, the population is almost evenly mixed and Christians and Muslims travel in the same circles. The other day, Heather was telling me that, when she was traveling in Switzerland, the common greeting when meeting a stranger was “God is big.”  I can just imagine walking along a Swiss mountain path and seeing the vastness of God’s creation and being unable to contain the wonder of God’s majesty. Perhaps, since our Muslim sisters and brothers begin each new day with a celebration of God’s greatness and since we Christians also rejoice in the bigness of God, we may, one day, learn to live together in unity, rather than just in toleration. In our life on board Amistad, we have Protestants, Catholics, Jews, a Unitarian, and a couple of Muslims aboard. We work together for the sake of Amistad and her mission and find that the diversity of our faith enhances our life together. In a little while, I will need to do another boat check, then it will be sunrise and time to raise the flags: Sierra Leonean, Australian, Canadian, US, and UCC, celebrating everyone aboard.

Yesterday afternoon, Amistad was paid a visit by several descendants of Sengbe Pieh, the leader of the Africans who escaped from their chains aboard the original La Amistad in 1839.  Some of the Pieh family had been present for the keel laying ceremony at Mystic, CT, in 1998 when construction was begun and they just happened to be in Freetown, visiting relatives when they saw the ship in the harbor.  It was a real privilege to be able to share the boat that I love so much with people whose family has been so intimately connected with the story.
 
Later, I was invited to go to Lakka (la-CAH) beach for a party celebrating the 26th birthday of Eboi, one of the Sierra Leoneans who has become a good friend of Gina, one of our crewmembers.  Around 2:00, we went to Eboi’s house and sat around for a while, watching American movies that had been given Krio subtitles.  As Krio isn’t really a written language, all of the words in the subtitles were in English, which was really strange, since they didn’t necessarily match what was being said by the actors.
 
When it was finally time to go to the beach, 19 of us (plus the driver!!) climbed into a poda-poda for the hour-long trip, over the typically bad African roads.  There’s a joke in Kenya that goes, “What do you call a pair of ears sticking up out of a pothole?  A giraffe.”  Though there are no giraffes here in Sierra Leone, the sentiment still applies.
 
A flat tire and an hour and a half later, we finally reached the beach, which is one of the finest beaches I’ve ever seen, even in postcards, though I’m still not certain if it was really worth the bone-crushing ride.  We spent the afternoon playing volleyball, swimming, talking and eating, then loaded back on another poda-poda for the return trip, with the apprentice (the young man who collects the fares) riding on the back bumper.
 
Today was my day off and I slept in, then got up and breakfasted on coffee and pecan pie which Barry and Eve made yesterday while they were on watch.  Then, Barry, Eve and I went to spend the afternoon with the Pieh descendants who had visited us on the ship yesterday.  Fatmata really pulled out all stops and fed us royally with several traditional African dishes: boiled cassava root with a fish and beef soup, fufu (a rather sticky ball made of cassava flour) with egosi seed soup, and tula (too-LAH), a truly wonderful fish stew, served over rice.  All of the stews and sauces were quite spicy and were delicious.  Egosi seeds come from a melon that is grown solely for its seeds; the flesh of the melon is simply discarded.  The boiled cassava root provided a good base for the soup, but neither Eve nor I cared much for the fufu.  Still, when we brought leftovers back for the rest of the crew to eat, I gave the fufu a second chance.  (Mom always made my brother and me take two bites of anything on our plate…) Even on a second tasting, the best I can say is that I wouldn’t seek it out as a something to eat again.
 
These last two days of spending time on shore with Africans have been wonderful.  I have gotten a better sense of Sierra Leone’s recent history, as well as many more chances to see the country.  Tomorrow, I’ll be back on watch, so I don’t expect I’ll have much of note to report.  Soles and bowls, deck wash, set-up for meals, dishes, boat checks, ferrying our security guards back and forth, boat maintenance, etc…  It’ll be good when we finally get a chance to go sailing.

It is amazing how quickly time can pass when one is busy.  As predicted, being on watch wasn’t particularly noteworthy (either on the 11th or today)..  Saturday, January 12 and Sunday, January 13 were, however, quite nice.
 
On Saturday, we had three guests aboard Amistad for lunch: Susie Pratt, the Deputy Director of the US Mission in Sierra Leone, and two other embassy employees, Danna and Amy.  It was the first time that any of them had been out to see the ship, though Susie has been opening her home to crew members as a place where we are welcome to relax, watch TV, sleep in real beds and have hot showers (complete with water pressure).  As Susie, Danna and Amy were leaving, Susie invited the crew members who were available to her home that night for a party celebrating Amy’s arrival in Sierra Leone.
 
That night, Susie’s house was crammed full of wonderfully interesting people, most of whom were members of the international diplomatic community or Non-Governmental Agencies.  There must have been at least 20 nations represented on the guest list and the conversation was wonderful, ranging from the monitoring of elections in Africa to governmental corruption to the preservation of chimpanzees to low-power community radio stations.  After the party was over, Drew, Heather and I spent the night at Susie’s home, and I spent part of the morning watching cricket games on South African cable TV before retuning to the ship in the early afternoon.
 
After lunch, three Canadian officers (two Navy, one Army) who are attached to IMATT (the International Military Assistance Training Team) came to the ship to visit with Heather.  During their stay with us, we were all invited to join them in the IMATT compound to visit or to use their Internet connection.  I am really impressed at how welcoming everyone has been to the Amistad crew, inviting us into their homes, feeding us, offering to print our photographs for us, sending their drivers to pick us up and take us around. 
 
On Sunday evening, Susie sent her car and driver to take Barry, Eve and me to the Hillside Station Hotel, which is perched at the very top of one of the highest hills overlooking Freetown and Lumley Beach.  Barry, Eve and I were joined by Amy and Danna and we all had a really overpriced (by Sierra Leonean standards) dinner together before going our separate ways.
 
Today has been another watch day, the big events of which were re-hanging the tarp awnings to keep the sun off the deck, and the moving the oil drums that are stowed on deck so that we could clean underneath them and give the wood a chance to soak up some water.
 
In sailorly news, Drew Kerlee taught me how to make an eye-splice yesterday and I've been practicing every chance I can get.