Sept. 3 - 4, 2011: Beach Weekend

Getting around in Sierra Leone (SL) is 89% of the battle.  Last weekend I went to River #2 beach - twice. I went on Saturday with a group of 6 girls.  It was nuts and hard, but we learned!  And then I went again on Sunday to redeem the experience.

In SL, there are a few types of public transportation: taxis, okadas (or motorcycles), poda podas (minivans that legally hold up to 16 passengers on 4 benches situated behind the driver), and buses (although I have no idea how those work).  For beach trip #1 on Saturday, me and five of my girlfriends walked out to the street where we thought the poda podas would come. They did come, but they were always packed at our 'stop'.  We stood there for awhile and then finally asked a policeman where to go.  He told us we had to walk down the street to where the hospital was to catch a semi-empty one.  Ah, good to know.  So, we walked down the street and caught one.  Success.  We rode for an hour in an air-condition-less van packed full with Africans. (It is less common to see non-Africans in poda podas.)  The 1 hr. ride to the town of Waterloo cost us $0.50 USD each - incredibly cheap. 

In Waterloo, we spotted taxis and poda podas in this 'parking lot' off the main road.  We walked up to a taxi or two and started negotiating price. They were all too high.  We realized very soon that the price one taxi gave us back in Freetown would have been the best way to go, but it was too late for that.  At one point, the 6 of us young women realized we were surrounded three deep by a lot of African men, shouting prices at us. We decided to get out of the circle and walk back to the road, where we could... think.  We ended up taking a taxi round trip for 140,000 leones.  The price we were quoted in Freetown was 200,000 round trip, which we prob. could have negotiated down. 

The six of us crammed into a standard sedan taxi that spewed exhaust-smelling air the whole way (2+ hours).  Some of the windows also didn't roll down. We drove on a smooth road quite fast, but then came to a bumpy road filled with large puddles from the previous rain.  We drove on this road very slowly.  We arrived at the beach with sore bottoms about ~3 hours after we left the ship. 

River #2 is a small, but gorgeous beach.  It costs 10,000 leones to enter for a car (5,000 per person if you walk in).  We swam in the warm ocean water, pretended the river that runs into the ocean was a lazy river (like those back home you use inner-tubes on) and laid out. Then we started discussing how to get home.  We had met up with a few other crew, and a Mercy Ships land rover that brought a different group also had spots that a few of our group took home. Two of our group took okadas back to the ship (riding on the back of a motorcycle on those bumpy roads for 2 hours seemed pretty crazy to me) and four of us girls took the taxi back to Waterloo.

On that drive, as we were coming out of one of the big puddles, the car bottom hit ground.  The driver got out to look under the car and I also got out to take a look.  Yep, we were losing oil at a constant rate.  Excellent.  The taxi driver waved to get back in the car and then he started driving a bit faster.  At the police check point 10 minutes later, we all got out of the car a little worried about what would happen if we kept driving ... none of us knew what happens to a car when it runs out of oil.  But we didn't really have a choice.  We were out in the middle of nowhere, with very few cars/motorcycles going by, so we all got back in the taxi, now with its oil light on (no other parts of the dash board worked), and we prayed! 

We had made it back to the smooth part of the road, so we were driving pretty fast.  We started to see homes and people after 10 miles or so, and then suddenly the taxi stopped off on the side of the road.  The driver got out and arranged another guy to drive us the rest of the way before we knew what had happened.  We paid our original driver, who paid his new driver and we got into a new car.  When we got to Waterloo, we were shuffled into poda poda and got back to the ship just before dark. 

In my mind, that day was not a beach day.  It was a traveling inefficiently day.  And I really did want a beach day, so when I found out other Mercy Shippers were taking the ship's land rovers and going again the next day, I jumped on board.  It's interesting because I loved riding in the poda poda.  I felt more like I was in Sierra Leone and I felt 'closer' to the people.  And when we ride around in the land rovers, I get a strange "I'm better than you, but I don't want to be" feeling.  While part of me doesn't want this feeling, it's just so much easier to drive in the land rover--that doesn't hit bottom when we go through puddles and that can handle the bad roads. 

The beach day on Sunday was so much better because it only took us 2 hours to get to the beach and it was so much less of a stressful ordeal.  (And we even got stuck coming back!) I'm glad Saturday taught us how poda podas work and that on our own, we got to the beach; but, I'm more thankful Sunday redeemed Saturday's craziness.