Field trip to Rotifunk

Rotifunk. Quite possibly the coolest name for a town I've ever heard. Had visions of a community of James Brown fans, but as it turns out they're more into Afropop, which frankly is still very funky. 

Today, Cathrin (Sierra Leone Country Director), Thomas (incoming Senior Manager who's visiting from his current job with AusAID in Papua New Guinea), Daniel (Youth Empowerment Programme Coordinator) and I left Freetown in the morning and headed east along possibly the bumpiest road I've ever been on, but the road was nothing compared to the bridge that we had to cross to get there. We all decided to walk it, leaving poor David (the driver) to brave taking the car across on his own.

The bridge to access Rotifunk

One of the better tracks

On the bridge to Rotifunk

We started the visit with a performance from the Youth Action Group who our Volunteer Peer Educators are supporting through their work with the community. I have never heard such strong, confident singing from a group of young people and found myself reminiscing about pathetic school assembly singing at home when I was at school. Pales in comparison. 

We then had a meeting with the Rotifunk Community Board, made up of key people like the school principal, church minister, district council reps, district and chiefdom youth council rep and community health officers. All spoke highly of the great work our Volunteer Peer Educators are doing, raising awareness about issues such as teenage pregnancy, STDs, drug and alcohol abuse and delivering training such as civic education and sexual and reproductive health education. We then went to see them in action at the community's Youth-Friendly Resource Centre. They were so passionate about the work they're doing and I was thoroughly impressed with their dedication and adaptability to work in a community completely different from their own (we place volunteers nationwide) that speaks a different language, eats different food and has different customs. It's the first time I've had a chance to see our volunteer programme in action since I joined Restless Development back in June last year, and it really brought everything to life which is massively motivating, and makes my internet/power/water frustrations seem really insignificant in contrast.

Youth Action Group in full voice

School principal opening the Community Board meeting

With Thomas (our new Senior Programme Manager) and the Volunteer Peer Educators

River Number Two

Went to a beautiful beach called River Number Two down the coast from Freetown today. Called River Number Two because of the river that flows into the sea there. Doesn't appear to be a River Number One though, which is a bit confusing. I'll let the photos speak for themselves...  

First full week!

I've just reached the end of my first full week in Freetown and despite continuing to struggle with the limited access to internet, power and water I'm starting to make some (albeit slow) progress at work.


This week I've facilitated three internal sessions on Civic Participation - an introductory session for the programmes team, a problem analysis session with the managing committee and a visioning session with everyone. The important thing with all these sessions is that the ideas are coming from our team in Sierra Leone and I'm just facilitating the process. After all, I'm only here for a short time and won't actually be implementing any of the programmes directly myself. The team here are really enthusiastic and came up with some great problem trees that analysed the causes and consequences of some of the most pressing issues for young people in Sierra Leone (many in relation to the upcoming elections). Later in the week, I ran a visioning workshop to get everyone to think about the change we want to see for young people in Sierra Leone in three years time. Being a hot Friday afternoon when everyone (including me) was starting to flag, I wanted to make it as fun as possible and really get some "blue sky thinking" going on to push the boundaries of our day in-day out programmes work. Everyone got really into it and came up with some great ideas that have given us a clearer picture of the changes we want to see in Sierra Leone in terms of Civic Participation. So the next step is to connect the dots from where we are now (problem analysis) to where we want to be (vision). It's a bit like having the bookends to an empty shelf of books which we now need to fill. 

Facilitating the Civic Participation workshops

David Bayo and Cathrin Daniel present their Civic Participation Visioning

Civic Participation Problem Tree Analysis - Cathrin, James and Jalloh

Also this week, I visited some of our drama peer educator volunteers in the middle of Freetown. I've never seen anything like it. They basically pick a really busy spot and draw attention to themselves by singing, dancing and drumming in order to get a crowd interested. They then perform drama skits to raise awareness around issues ranging from HIV/AIDS and drug and alcohol abuse to voter education. Really impressive stuff, especially in the midday heat.

The drama volunteer peer educators in action. Can you spot me and Hilda (new Programme Manager from The Netherlands)?! 

Chatting to the drama volunteers after their skit

Open Mic night at O'Casey's

Tonight I braved singing and playing my ukulele (which I've never done in public) at an Open Mic night at O'Casey's (the popular Irish bar in Freetown). There's a reggae band who play every week, and you can just get up and perform whatever you want. It's a really nice atmosphere and they serve cheap beer and the best burgers I've had in ages. Result.

Last minute chord check with Jem

Freetown ukulele debut (-;

Singing with Tom on guitar

Freetown Hash House Harriers

Last night Joe and I moved into the flat where we'll be staying for the rest of our time in Freetown. We live above our Lebanese landlord (and his family), who happens to be a founding member of the Freetown Hash House Harriers (an international running group I used to run with in Muscat). So today I managed to tag along and run with them in an area near Hamilton Beach (out of Freetown and down the west coast). 


It's hard to describe the Hash House Harriers without sounding like they're a bit of a cult! But I'll do my best... Made up of expats and locals, they get together once a week to go running, following a trail of flour along a route set up by a "hare" (one of the runners) earlier in the day. After the run, everyone stands around drinking beer, singing Hash songs and sometimes doing initiations of new members and forfeits based on events during the run. Everyone has a Hash name and refers to each other only by these names during runs. Just read that back and realised it definitely sounds like a cult. Oh well. It's still a great way to get to know people quickly, especially in the short time I'm in each country. At one point I found myself running next to the guy in charge of youth programming at UNDP, so (slightly breathlessly) managed to explain the focus of the work I'm doing with Restless Development and set up a meeting to talk about opportunities next week! 


After the run we stayed on at the beach for the rest of the afternoon and I got to know some of the other Hashers, many of whom belong to the large Lebanese community that lives in Freetown. According to my landlord (Mr Jabba), they came over from Lebanon at the turn of the century, intending to go to the USA to find their fortunes but the boat dropped them in Sierra Leone instead and they never left. He and his wife (also Lebanese) were both born in Sierra Leone and have never lived in Lebanon. Both their children attend the Lebanese International School, and there are Lebanese restaurants all over Freetown. I seem to be living off falafel wraps and tabbouleh (no complaints). I even ran into a Lebanese Danny Devito lookie-likie at Hamilton Beach. Very random, and not something I thought I'd be writing about in a blog about my time in Sierra Leone!

Post-run Hash circle

Initiation of new member - Hash naming 

With the Lebanese Danny Devito lookie-likie!

Hamilton Beach

Ow di bodi?

Di bodi fine. (How are you? I'm fine). That's about as far as my Krio has got at the end of my first week in our Freetown office. It's actually strangely easy to understand but when I try to speak it, I just sound like someone trying to do a (very bad) Jamaican accent. 


It's weird to think I started this week cycling into Westminster in the rain and am finishing it walking through the hot and dusty streets of Freetown. 


Joe and I were greeted by the whole office on Thursday morning, with singing and dancing in true Restless Development style and then spent the rest of the day getting to know everyone better. I'm going to be working particularly closely with Jalloh (the Youth Leadership and Advocacy Programme Manager) so it was really useful to spend time with him building up a clearer picture of the work we're currently doing in Sierra Leone around civic participation and policy/advocacy. 


The intermittent internet connection here is already proving to be a real challenge and it takes me ages to even open an email, let alone respond to it. (I'm writing this blog at a pricey internet cafe with the only wifi connection in Freetown, appropriately named "Bliss"). I've been trying to set up outlook so I can download emails and work on them offline, but even that doesn't appear to be working properly. So I'm getting to know Mahmoud, the IT guy, pretty well. Reckon he might start hiding from me soon! 


On a positive note I'm now a millionaire! I changed £250 and got 1.6 million Leones! The largest note here is 10,000 Leones (about £1.50) so you have to carry large wads of them, which is really weird when I'm so used to relying on debit cards and barely carry cash in the UK. I definitely feel like the "new kid on the block" and am sure I've got my 10,000 and 1000 notes confused on more than one occasion already. Lucky taxi drivers!

Joe and Mohammed looking out from the office balcony

Restless Development Freetown office

Off to Freetown by plane... and speedboat!

Leones. Well done Mr Bradt! So at least I know what the currency is now (even if I don't have any).

I met up with Joe (who's doing a 3 month volunteer placement with our finance team in Freetown) at Heathrow and had a really smooth flight to Freetown. BMI - you surprise me (in a good way).

Direct flight with BMI (-:

What was even more of a surprise was the speedboat ride from the airport in Lungi to Freetown itself. Very James Bond-esqe. But sure it will lose its novelty by the fourth time I do it!

Finally got to the guest house at around 10pm and experienced the first (of many) power and water cuts and the first (of many) washes in a bucket of cold water (by candle light)!

At the Lungi jetty, waiting for the speedboat to Freetown

About to brave the wobbly bridge to the boat

With Abdul on the crossing