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Yesterday was a work day for me, which means that the day began a little before 8:00 with setting up the main salon for the crew’s breakfast. After I finished up the dishes in the galley, all hands turned to for deck-wash on steroids. I climbed out on the bowsprit with a firehouse, spraying down anything I could reach with the water stream, and then Johnny took his turn with the hose, spraying down all of the standing and running rigging. It was like a monsoon as Sir Isaac Newton’s theory was proven once again and we were all glad that the tarps had been set up the day before. After everything that could be reached by the water had been hosed down, Barry, Johnny and I got into the small boat and continued the process, with me hosing down the side of the boat, from gunwales to waterline and Barry and Johnny scrubbing away with long-handled scrub-brushes. It was a tremendous effort, but was really necessary as the red-clay dust that is everywhere here in the harmattan season had completely covered everything.
After my work day was finished, Drew and I went ashore and went exploring. We went to Regent’s Village, which is up along the coast road beyond the IMATT Headquarters and the US Embassy, to visit one of the oldest stone churches in West Africa. When we arrived, we found a Brethren pastor who is working as a teacher at one of the government-run schools. He took us to the parsonage and introduced us to the pastor of the church. Both men then took Drew and me for a tour of the church, which has a lovely pipe organ that was built in the 1950s for a church in England and which was then transported here about five years ago. After the requisite clergy chat about the size of our churches and the number of people who actually attend, Drew and I continued on our way, inviting both pastors to come to see us aboard Amistad.
As we walked to the bottom of the hill, we came across a Sierra Leone Police officer who greeted us and asked if he could be of any help to us. Frankly, we didn’t need a thing as Drew and I have both become quite comfortable with getting around in Sierra Leone, but the police officer continued to chat us up and then insisted on taking us to the police station (which was only a few yards away) and introducing us to his commanding officer. As we walked up to the station, the first SLP officer’s commanding officer (a woman!) greeted us and asked us what our problem was. When we explained that we didn’t have any problem and had only come to the police station because the other officer had wanted to be social, she asked us again what we needed. Again, we explained that we didn’t need anything and that life couldn’t be better, thanking her for her concern. Then, we slipped off to catch a taxi as the CO gave her subordinate a look that said, “What the heck were you thinking bringing those two opotos (Temne for "white men") here for no reason?”
Drew and I got another taxi and continued on to our ultimate destination, the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary (www.tacugama.com). A few nights ago, at the party at Susie Pratt’s home, I had met Bala, the organization’s founder, and he had invited me, along with the rest of the Amistad crew, to visit. As the taxi started to drive us up the side-road to Tacugama, the road very quickly deteriorated to a four-wheel-drive-only track and the taxi dropped us off to walk the last kilometer or so down a road that was cut right through the jungle. When Drew and I arrived, it was feeding time, so we got to see the chimps up-close and personal as they were fed their supper only a few feet away from where we were standing. It was a truly awesome experience.
When Bala and his wife founded Tacugama twenty years ago, it was common for Sierra Leoneans to purchase baby chimps as pets, but once the monkeys are 3-4 years old, they are too big and strong (not to mention independently-minded) to keep. Former pets were either locked in cages or turned loose to fend for themselves in the fringe jungle that once existed around Freetown. Now, thanks to Bala’s efforts, there are laws against keeping chimpanzees as pets, and Tacugama has become a home for nearly 90 chimps, who live in the managed habitat. Though there still remains a problem with poachers killing the chimps for bush meat, the Tacugama sanctuary has made real progress in improving the lives of chimpanzees in Sierra Leone and in all of Africa.
We spent last night at Susie’s home and Drew left very early this morning to go to Conakry, Guinea, where his girlfriend is scheduled to arrive tomorrow evening. The two of them will then return on Friday. I got up, puttered around the house for a while, enjoying the air conditioning, and then Susie’s driver took me to the US Embassy, where I spent a little time checking my emails and surfing the web before leaving to return to the ship.
Today, I learned a wonderful way to confuse the heck out of Sierra Leoneans. I chose to walk from the US Embassy to the ship, a distance of maybe four miles. While the local folks are used to seeing US Embassy and IMATT personnel driving past in land rovers, I got the impression that seeing a white person walking along the road, particularly in the middle part of the trip, was a real surprise to them. I had several taxis and poda-podas slam on their brakes so they could offer me a ride and a couple locals asked me if I needed them to help me get a taxi. Every time, it took a lot of explaining before people understood that I was walking because I actually wanted to walk, though I’m not actually convinced that they really believed me. It was a very enjoyable, though hot and dusty, journey and I had the chance to visit with many folks along the way. I was also able to take the time to enjoy and photograph the scenery that I had whizzed by so many times in taxis.
Thank you all for the emails you have been sending me. It is really nice to stay in touch with the folks back home. Unfortunately, our Internet connection is not very robust and tends to disconnect easily, which makes uploading even this blog a real chore, much less trying to respond to every email that I receive. Please know that I am really happy to hear about your lives, but that I am not really able to do much more than keep this blog going, given my technological options.
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