The surreal life

I have less than three months left in Sierra Leone, a thought that, notwithstanding the legions of loved ones I miss, is rather terrifying. There are still so many things that I want to accomplish here, from my work at Kalleone, to freelancing, to simply seeing the country.

One lesson I've learned about life abroad is that it's remarkably easy to become complacent when you know you'll be somewhere for a while. Prior to this weekend, I haven't even left Freetown since my five-day excursion out east at the end of '08.

And once I did get out of the city, I felt a pang of regret about that. Sierra Leone really is an astonishingly beautiful country, and there are few places that more aptly recall that fact than our destination on Friday evening, River No. 2.

At the invite of our Canadian soldier friend Denis, Bryna, Patrick and I joined an excursion with the stated aim of simply chilling on sand for a night. I was feeling up to the task.

As has probably been evident from past posts, Denis is one of my favourite people in Sierra Leone. As we drove along the abysmal roads that lead to River No. 2, we discussed the training he's been doing with the RSLAF (Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces) as they prepare to send a peacekeeping delegation to Sudan, which in itself is a somewhat stupefying thought given the ragtag nature of the Salone forces.

Denis mentioned that he had actually hoped his current tour would be in Darfur had the Salone posting not come up first, but when I asked if he could go with the RSLAF contingent in some kind of training capacity, he seemed wary of entering such an unstable situation without a more proven force to watch his back. Since his last stop prior to SL was Afghanistan, I'm going to go ahead and assume this reasoning was more parts wisdom than cowardice.

Still, despite his reluctance to put his life in the RSLAF's hands, Denis was in no way unsympathetic to the obstacles they face. Citing Maslow's hierarchy of needs, he reasoned that Sierra Leonean soldiers are generally too busy focusing on the basics of survival to worry about self-actualization; they are going to Sudan because they need money to live, he said, not out of ideological support for the mission.

My cousin Jason will soon wrap up his third tour of duty in Afghanistan, a point of pride on my dad's side of the family. But I see him less than annually, and have never really spoken with him about the mission in Afghanistan. As such, Denis is the first soldier I've engaged in dialogue about much of anything, but certainly about the military.

If he is anything resembling the norm in the Canadian forces, then I am confident our ranks are not populated by the 'shoot first, ask questions later' cowboy types that soldiers are oft cast as in Hollywood, but rather an intelligent and noble lot who grasp far better than the average civilian the nuanced shades of gray that colour most modern conflict zones.

Our conversation also touched on the need to rework the UN power structure, removing the veto power from the permanent Security Council members, as well as an interesting psychological discussion that has inspired me to add Dave Grossman's On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society to my reading list.

But the night was by no means all intellectual debate. After we'd arrived at the beach and the tents were pitched, Denis whipped out a stereo and we began playing frisbee and even - gasp! - baseball along the white sands, Kanye West and Green Day forming the soundtrack for the surreal.

As night set in, our Sierra Leonean hosts served up a delicious dinner of fresh fish, and dug a bonfire pit at least three feet deep (making the fire in the photo at the start of this post look deceptively smaller than it actually was).

With the flowing of $1.50 imported beers and a $6 bottle of Canadian Gold whiskey, it wasn't long before Denis had the acoustic guitar unsheathed and I was joyously butchering versions of The Eagles' "Hotel California" and Tom Petty's "Learning to Fly" with a trio of twenty-something Brits and four fellow Canucks.

Outside Bryna, Patrick and Denis, the Canadian contingent was bolstered by a middle-aged foreign affairs official named Dave, who has seen all but seven countries on earth (North Korea and Somalia are among them, but I don't recall the other five).

Making the nigh unprecedented choice of coming to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone for strictly tourist motives, he invited suspicion, as both Bryna and British Joe confided to me almost immediately upon meeting him that they thought he was a spy. Admittedly, he would be the first person I've come across that was in the region for no reason other than vacationing, but he seemed like a solid guy to me and I spent a good deal of time chatting with my fellow Ontarian.

The expat life can have a pretty strange impact on one's social circle that way. In K-W, I probably wouldn't spend a Friday night talking to a war-tested father of three whose kids I don't know, or a possible spy that's set foot on almost every country on earth. And I probably wouldn't be shirtless on a beach at 2 in the morning in mid-February - at least not without getting some strange looks.

But I think it was as I stared back at my new friends encircling the fire pit, having wandered 20 metres down the beach, through military-issue night-vision goggles, that the absurdity of my current situation really set in.

I'm in Sierra Leone.

And while I'll be just another debt-laden university arts grad when I get off a plane at Pearson come June, right now, I'm the benefactor of some pretty cool opportunities simply by virtue of being a North American. For the remainder of my stay, I'm going to do my best to remember that simple truth and fully embrace the opportunities as they come.