Your belated Christmas gift to me

Disclaimer: The only tie this entry has to Sierra Leone is that I wrote it while in SL and the reality it reflects is a direct outcropping of personal ignorance that stems from my being in Sierra Leone. If you don't know me personally, you won't care about it at all - and even if you do, I make no promises.

Another Christmas has come and gone, and I can only assume your biggest regret is the knowledge that I've spent the last 2.5 months altruistically pummeling you with profound insights into a country you knew very little about, and you were left without recourse to show your appreciation. Well, never fear, my cherished readers - I got your back yet again.

Last year around this time, I was compulsively devouring music. In preparation for the wildly successful 2008 debut of The Victory Lap, the Radio Laurier show I co-hosted with Mr. Joseph Turcotte, I scoured best of '07 lists from myriad music sources with an eye to the albums that I thought could conceivably crack my own top 10, ultimately purchasing 33 of the year's best.

Combined with Joe's insights, we came up with a Top 20 of 2007 that made for a two-part show that ranked among my favourites from my foray into campus radio. But I still took greater pleasure in the process than the final product.

It was that process that helped me discover such artists as Brother Ali and Rilo Kiley, and made me see just how stellar albums like The White Stripes' Icky Thump and Kings of Leon's Because of the Times truly were. And it was a process that I vowed to myself I would repeat in coming years, a means of ensuring I remained connected to the latest and greatest in the world of modern music.

Well, life sometimes has a way of altering even the best laid plans, to say nothing of abstract promises to oneself. I'd like to think that, owing to a combination of my obsessive personality and the fact that I did spend much of 2008 on Canadian soil, I'm more well informed about the recent Western music scene than most of my Salone colleagues. But, at least by my own standards, my knowledge is nonetheless woefully insufficient.

That's where you come in. I'm not big on rigidity, so I won't hem you in with a format for suggestions - give me your top 10 lists, under-the-radar gems, or even critical flops ... all insights are welcome.

My cursory analysis of the year was that hip hop didn't bring its A-game in '08 and Canadian rock ratcheted things up a notch. The Stills, Matt Mays & El Torpedo, and Sam Roberts all put out excellent albums, though Kings of Leon again find themselves near the top of my list with Only By The Night.

And while I'm unaware of many of 2008's hip hop must-haves, a British dame with an attitude by the name of Estelle put forth a debut named Shine that did just that, instantly establishing her, at least in my mind, as one of the few good female hip hop artists out there, joining the illustrious ranks of ladies like Lauryn Hill and Jean Grae.

Still, I know one of my priorities upon my return home will be filling in gaps in my musical know-how and it is with that in mind that I turn to the scores of music aficionados I have the pleasure of calling friends to aid me in my quest.

After all, I was blunt from the very beginning that this blog's goals would be self-interested as often as they served the purpose of keeping my friends and family up-to-date on my experience abroad. We'll call this Exhibit A in the self-interest column.

Christmas in Salone

I think I can say without hyperbole that 2008 marks my most unique Christmas to date. And while it didn't especially feel like Christmas, it was still thoroughly enjoyable.

While I understand my friends and family in Canada enjoyed that much-coveted white Christmas, the only white aspect of my holiday was the plethora of pasty crackers that surrounded me at beautiful Lakka Beach. The temperature reached the mid-30s, probably eclipsing 40 degrees Celsius when the humidity was factored in.

Not exactly what I think of when I think Christmas.

On the morning of the 24th, after my brief efforts at sleep were generally thwarted by mile-a-minute considerations of the potential an unstable Guinea could have on the region, I rushed to meet Bremen and Leah, a pair of recent graduates of Rhode Island's Brown University, for our agreed-upon 11 a.m. departure for Lakka.

I was late - a lateness owing to a last-minute visit to the Guinean Embassy, where I managed to procure a travel Visa with remarkable ease. Unsure of what might happen to Salone's neighbour to the north during the next 48 hours and the impact it could have on my ability to get travel documents after Christmas, I wanted to leave my options open in case I decided to try to freelance about the situation.

Still, Bremen, Leah and I managed to arrive at Lakka Beach just after noon, and I spent a delightful afternoon in my tropic paradise catching up with Bremen, getting to know Leah (who lives in Kabala and I've only met once or twice), and interrogating a 29-year-old Peace Corps volunteer named Kimberly, who was vacationing from Guinea and said she'd quit her job if they didn't send her back.

She seemed confident Guinea did not possess the type of culture that would lead to a bloody civil war, but said even if it did, she would return to fulfill her recent promise to adopt the five-year-old daughter of a Guinean friend that died of cervical cancer. In other words, she was yet another expat with an interesting backstory.

Gorgeous beach notwithstanding, this was not helping me turn my attention from Guinea, as exemplified by this excerpt in my writings from two evenings ago:

Christmas is hours away and I can't get visions of Guinean soldiers out of my mind. I'm staying in a single-room beach house with four twenty-something American girls and I'm thinking about ... Guinean soldiers. Which some might say is enough to classify me as either a perversely dedicated journalist or a complete fucking idiot. Yet I can't shake this feeling that unless I board a plane to Conakry, my journalism credentials are fraudulent.

Conveniently - though completely coincidentally - three or four of the other places on the beach were occupied by other friends in the Salone expat scene, among them my JHR colleague, Craig, whose mind was equally adrift in visions of foreign correspondence.

As the only two guys in a group of 12-15 Canadians, Brits and Yanks, we escaped the alarmingly high estrogen levels for an exploration of the coastal shoreline, which included being wished "Season's greetings!" by a group of noticeably stoned, football-playing rastas who expressed their well wishes by throwing wet sand at us. Whether this is a local custom or a joke at our expense remains unclear.

We discussed the obvious allure of diving into a potentially volatile conflict zone and the subsequent cheesy pick-up attempts such journalistic machismo would lend itself to.

"You know, when something like this breaks, there's no time to think. You just go," Craig explained to his imaginary audience of fawning females.

"It's really the stories that get told in the first 72 hours of these conflicts that ultimately dictate public perception and the reaction of the international community," I pitched in, summoning the spirit of every self-aggrandizing egotist I've ever met, or seen portrayed in movies, to lend my mock tone just the right inflection.

When Craig brought up an obstacle in getting to Conakry, I provided a possible solution and, in a manner that befit Craig's personality perfectly, he jumped seamlessly 40 years into the future and began eulogizing the incident as emblematic of my proficiency as a highly-reputed journalist, presumably at my retirement party from The Globe and Mail.

"It's that kind of quick thinking and unwavering commitment to the story that has informed every decision Mike's made in his illustrious career," he lauded.

Meanwhile, back in reality, such smarmy rhetoric would likely do little to increase our odds with the women folk, but it provided a few laughs and a welcome outlet for our scheming minds.

Ultimately, Craig and I agree that we probably won't end up using our Guinean Visas, barring an unlikely confluence of circumstances that somehow guarantee us safe passage in and, more importantly, out of the country, as well as some trustworthy local fixers to work with. But we are hopeful that we might be able to freelance some work with a Sierra Leonean angle from the border regions in the coming week.

I've frequently asserted, to the approval of my Salone friends, that I have no interest in entering any situation that'll get me shot at - a statement that probably doesn't justly acknowledge the strong tug I've felt to follow in the footsteps of legions of adrenaline junkies who have gone before me, leaving battered minds and bodies as a sobering reminder of precisely why I'm suppressing such urges.

Returning to our stretch of the beach, I once again tried to put Guinea out of my mind, at least for the rest of the day. I ordered a couple of beers, drank some cheap Argentinian wine, and generally enjoyed a sublime view.

As I tried to wrap my head around the reality that this was Christmas Eve, I concluded that in addition to being unconventional, 2008 would go down as one of my less stressful festive seasons.

Thanks to a postal system with all the reliability of a crack-addled paranoid schizophrenic with ADD, any possibility of gift-giving with family was rendered null and void, effectively stalling my role in the family Christmas until May or June. But that unfortunate situation had the pleasant run-off effect of no stressful trips to jam-packed malls, and no fretting over whether people would like my gifts.

The only two people I gave Christmas gifts to were Shaka and Gabrilla, our two guards, and their toothy grins were exactly the reaction one hopes for with any present. Though it may seem impersonal, Kevin, Bryna, Patrick and I decided to just give them each Le 100,000 Christmas bonuses, realizing that any more 'thoughtful' or personal presents would likely be viewed as unnecessary extravagance that didn't meet their actual needs.

And admittedly, I did miss not partaking in the time-honoured tradition of Christmas morning gift-opening and a hearty family breakfast. But I found that it was the simple traditions that are unique to our family that I missed the most - from making my once-a-year homemade egg nog to watching a completely non-festive movie with my brother every Christmas Eve, a tradition that began with Death To Smoochy and has evolved to include such heartwarming holiday gems as Why We Fight and Prozac Nation.

All in all, though, missing one Christmas at home is easy to endure in the grand scheme of this amazing opportunity, and I left my beach bliss yesterday with a smile on my face. Before departing, I scribbled the following note in the leather-bound book given to me by Joe and Brandon on my last night in Canada:

I've now been at Lakka for 24 hours. I've dined on bonita (delicious fish), crab and lobster. I've watched a thoroughly entertaining dance and drum performance by the light of a monstrous, gin-fuelled bonfire. I've gone skinny-dipping in the Atlantic Ocean, floating serendipitously as I gazed upon a starry sky of unimagineable depth and beauty. I slept on a beach for the first time in my life, witnessed three shooting stars in the process, and seemingly (knock on wood) did so without getting a single bite from malarial mosquitoes. It wasn't a conventional Christmas, but it was definitely a good one.

Back in Freetown, I headed to my beloved Senegalese restaurant for Christmas dinner, which was unexpectedly served up with a side of drunken rage, as an alcohol-induced brawl broke out while I ate. Though I never quite managed to ascertain its impetus, the feud spilled into the street after one particularly belligerent patron shook loose three men, lifted a table over his head and smashed it down in a Hulk-like fury, partially splintering its wooden frame. He then promptly passed out.

Unaffected save for a slightly increased heart rate and having my drink spilled in the melee, I paid my bill, enjoyed a Beck's on the house, and returned home, where I received a few phone calls from Canada.

As I sat in bed at 1:30 a.m., reading a Chuck Klosterman essay that aptly skewered Morgan Spurlock's 2004 film, Super Size Me, my phone again rang, again from an international number. I'd already spoken briefly with my buddy Brandon and for upwards of an hour with my family. I expected no more calls.

But what a gross underestimate of my darling parents that was. They had set up and paid for a phone call with the two women, Jen and Trish, that I've alternately used as evidence that I'm not single when confronted with situations wherein Sierra Leonean women hope to marry into wealth by hooking up with me. I chatted with each for about 15 minutes and it was delightful to hear their voices.

But it occurs to me now that Trish asked a question that is probably on a lot of your minds, which I failed to answer on the phone and have thus far failed to address in this behemoth post: How does Christmas in Salone compare from a cultural point of view?

Since I imagine many people have already stopped reading due to the seemingly interminable nature of this entry, I'll outline the Salone Christmas culture, which is not unlike our own save for the climate differences, in point form:

1) Christmas is definitely a big deal in spite of the Muslim majority and, tragically, Christmas music is almost as prevalent as back home. It has plagued me at many a restaurant since Dec. 1, though without the commercial overtones that further poison the music back home.

2) Returning to family is just as commonplace here as in North America. The country sees a significant influx of Sierra Leoneans from the diaspora in the weeks leading up to Christmas, as many of those who have successfully established themselves abroad return to family and friends, and many Freetown folks migrate to the provinces of their origin.

3) Christmas celebrations tend to be a little more raucous than back home. When I went to bed at 4:30 a.m. last night, there was still loud music pumping from one of the nearby outdoor carnivals that seem to have been occuring almost daily in the last couple weeks. Whether this late-night partying in the streets is the logical extension of a more spirited culture or owing to a more forgiving climate I can't say for sure, though I suspect both factors are at work.

4) Like so many other communiques, Christmas wishes most commonly take the form of text messages, which are not viewed in the impersonal or unprofessional way they might be back home. Shortly after midnight on Christmas Eve, I received a steady diet of texts from my Salone friends, colleagues and my ardent admirer, Mariam, the ambitious young businesswoman from my street.

My favourite text, by far, came from Emeric, one of the new interns at Kalleone:

"I saw d angel of heart desire & i told him 2 give u dis gift. A bullet of death 4 ur enemies & several bullets of prosperity, peace, joy, good health & not 4geting ur heart desire as we enter 2009. Av a marvelous christmas & a wonderful new year. 4rom Emeric One luv."

I've always maintained there's nothing to get one into the spirit of the season like a good old-fashioned bullet of death. And here's hoping everyone back home received all the bullets of good fortune they were hoping for.

A neighbouring coup?

I awoke this morning to news that Lansana Conte, the aged and ailing Guinean president, was dead.

On the drive to work an hour later, a BBC news update came across the radio in my taxi stating that a military leader had proclaimed over state TV and radio that the Guinean government and constitution had been dissolved in an apparent coup d'etat.

My day from that point on has been largely occupied in trying to figure out what this would all mean, for both Guinea and Sierra Leone, Guinea's neighbour to the south. Stymied until quite recently by continual inaccess to the Internet, my curiosities were fed largely by the anecdotal updates of my friends here.

Our guard, Shaka, told me he saw reports on CNN yesterday that Conte had made two public appearances before dying at 5 a.m. Sheik, my Kalleone colleague, informed me, in direct opposition to Shaka's claims, that he heard about Conte's death yesterday. Despite residing in the neighbouring country, I couldn't help but think that my friends back home were probably having an easier time following the story.

Now, as the day winds to a close, I've been able to peruse a host of online updates courtesy of Reuters, AP, BBC, The New York Times, and The Globe and Mail. Here's what I've been able to piece together:

Mr. [Aboubacar] Sompare [President of the National Assembly] had announced Conte had died on Monday evening, and asked the country's Supreme Court to name him president in line with the constitution, in order to organize presidential elections within 60 days.

Conte seized power militarily in 1984, following the death of Ahmed Sekou Toure, Guinea's first president. Under international pressure for democratization, Conte formed a political party and won elections in 1993, 1998 and 2003, though none were regarded as free and fair by the international community.

His 24-year regime relied on military backing to quell dissent and generally invited accusations of corruption, while Guinean people were crippled by poverty. Recent months had seen incidences of violence in response to the country's issues:

Last month, frustrated youths took to the crumbling streets of Conakry for three successive days, throwing stones and setting tires on fire in escalating protests over high gas prices. Witnesses said at least one person was killed when government troops shot at demonstrators. (NY Times)

At the time of his death, Conte was thought to be about 74 years old, though sources differ on their willingness to report his age as fact or merely state that he was in his 70s. They also differ on how speculative they're willing to get on the cause of the death, this story from the BBC being the most specific:

The cause of his death is unknown, but Mr. Conte, 74, was a chain-smoker and diabetic who is also believed to have suffered from leukemia. Forty days of national mourning have been declared.

Just hours after Conte's death was announced, a military group identifying itself as the National Council for Democracy took to state-run TV and radio to announce its takeover of the country:

"The government is dissolved. The institutions of the republic are dissolved. ... From this moment on, the council is taking charge of the destiny of the Guinean people," said the coup leader, who identified himself as Capt. Moussa [Dadis] Camara. (The Globe and Mail)

However, as discussions were being held between soldiers and officers who supported a coup and those who wanted to remain loyal to constitutional procedure, Prime Minister Ahmed Tidiane Souare asserted that the government remained in power as they should, and Guinea's armed forces chief, General Diarra Camara, suggested that those who supported a military coup were in the minority. In addition ...

Prime Minister Ahmed Tidiane Souare called on the army to secure the nation's borders, while Mr. Sompare directed the country's courts to apply the law. The two announcements, coupled by the presence of the head of the army, appeared to be an effort to signal the government intended a peaceful transition.

Meanwhile, the United States have urged Guinea to pursue democratic rule, while the European Union, led by Guinea’s former French colonizers, have denounced any coup attempts.

The African Union, the continent’s largest representative body comprised of 53 members, has called for an urgent meeting to address the situation, to be held in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa as early as tomorrow morning. ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States) joined the chorus of coup denunciations.

Personally, I’m optimistic that Guinea can manage this transition without blood in the streets. The fact that the army’s highest ranking official is supporting the government is a good sign, and all reports indicate that Conakry, the Guinean capital, has remained calm.

That being said, I will be surprised if a free and fair election takes place and Guinea comes out of this as a stable democratic nation, at least in the next six months.

Earlier today, sitting in Bliss Patisserie with Bryna, Kevin and Patrick as we speculated wildly on the basis of a few sparse details, we all admitted that one of the first thoughts we’d had was whether we should start looking into ways to get into Guinea.

With the call for border closings mentioned above, I have serious doubts about whether we’d be able to get in. Still, I found our gut reactions amusingly emblematic of the journalistic drive to head into, rather than out of, potentially unstable situations.

Later in the day, Craig and I couldn’t help but discuss the potentially career-making stories that we could tell, depending on how the situation develops, if we grabbed a couple of local fixers (journalists to help with logistics and translation) and made our way to Conakry.

That said, I maintain my previous doubts about whether I would have what it takes to be a foreign correspondent, I have no intentions of going to Guinea at this point and, if I did, it would not be until we had reasonable assurance that the situation was stable.

Even so, I will retain an acute interest in watching how this situation develops, as it could have potentially enormous implications for Sierra Leone. One article I read cautioned about the worst-case scenario:

Guinea's neighbours - Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast - are enjoying relative stability after years of conflict and there are fears any unrest there [in Guinea] could spread and embroil the sub-region in fighting once more.

Frankly, I have great difficulty foreseeing the Guinea situation reigniting instability in Sierra Leone, but admit there could be some less ghastly ripple effects felt here depending how the coming days play out.

As partners in the Mano River Union, Guinea and Sierra Leone are closely linked states. They share a border and, if any substantial conflict were to arise in Guinea, a wave of refugees would likely attempt to cross the 652 km of border between the two countries – with potentially tragic implications for Sierra Leone, a country already woefully unable to provide for its own citizens.

In addition, there is the interesting circumstance of one of the provinces in the north of Sierra Leone, an area that has been disputed since Sierra Leone’s own civil conflict. I haven’t had a chance to check into his claims yet, but Sheik says that of the Guineans who poured over the border to help curb the violence during the civil war, some have never left what he classified as explicitly Sierra Leonean land.

All in all, the world will likely turn its attention away in a couple days when it becomes clear that nothing disastrous is going to happen. But in the meantime, it has sure given a few young journalists something to talk about.

Editor's note: Since this will be my last post for a couple days, let me take the opportunity to wish a very Merry Christmas to you and yours.

A day in the life

Most days, I awaken to a cacophany of the city's sounds, from the blaring radios of my neighbours to the blaring horns of aggravated taxi drivers. On Thursdays, Smartfarm's very own cross-dressing street actor adds his booming vibrato to the morning dissonance, and I drag myself to the washroom to down my daily dose of doxycycline and brush my teeth.

Depending on the day's events, I'm out the door between 7:30 and 10 a.m., often stopping for a brief chat with my friend Seray as he waxes philosophical on the country's faltering economy, lamenting that the business seen in recent days at his roadside booth is "small, small".

I usually disembark from my taxi at the corner of Siaka Stevens and Charlotte streets, politely turning down the group of young men who invariably motion to me saying, "My friend - foreign exchange?" It seems this corner is the hub of the city's unregulated commerce district, and no matter how many times I run the gamut of street bankers, no one seems to internalize the message that I have no foreign currency to my name.

After a handful of former JHR Sierra Leone interns went to the Toronto head office with claims of fraudulent activity from the Rokel Commercial Bank where most of us had been accessing our money using international Visa advances, I am now paid cash money, our country director handing over a couple million Leones from the coffers of the new country headquarters every month.

It seems my predeccessors' loss is my gain, as I no longer lose $50 in bank fees with every pay day. Still, the US$3 sitting on my dresser will be the only foreign currency in my possession for the rest of my stay, meaning five more months of disappointment for the young men that so ardently seek my business. Thankfully, they tend to be easygoing in their acceptance of my daily "no thanks".

I generally arrive in the office, the four-story building pictured below, which houses the entirety of the Kalleone group of companies, between 9:30 and 10 a.m.


I climb two flights to the radio offices and set to work on whatever tops the given day's agenda - be it preparing for a workshop, doing some training with the crop of five fresh-faced interns new to the station last week, or heading out with one of the reporters to chase a story.

On good days, I manage to slip away from work for a half-hour escape to Nix Nax Cafe (below), a quaint little restaurant five minutes from the office where I down my first meal of the day, and then it's back to work until 5, 6, sometimes 7.


Whenever I find myself wandering the streets during the day, dodging in and out of foot traffic that moves far too slow for my taste, I am beckoned by omnipresent clusters of unemployed young men, asserting that they want to be my best friend.

Surprisingly, they aren't often seeking money. In fact, I still don't really know what they want from me. In my first few weeks here, I often stopped to give these strangers an audience, and they generally seemed satisfied after a brief and thoroughly mundane exchange of pleasantries. We'd shake hands, agreeing that we were now somehow best friends, and I'd continue on my way.

These days, I generally limit myself to a quick hello or a wave, the routine having quickly grown tedious. But sometimes I still stop, recognizing that they seem to enjoy these exchanges that, ultimately, require little of me. Yesterday, for example, though I'm certain we'd never met before, I chatted briefly with a dreadlocked dude who admonished me for not having visited recently, obviously mistaking me for another white person.

On most days, however, the loss of anonymity associated with being a white person in Freetown can wear thin. Imagine walking down the streets of Toronto as every third person you pass attempts to sell you something, asks for money, or insists that they're meant to be your best friend.

This is my somewhat surreal reality.

When the work day ends, the trek home can range from a half hour on the rare occasions I am lucky enough to be picked up by Adnan, a kindly Lebanese businessman that manages to negotiate his way through the city's gridlock with awe-inspiring proficiency, to as long as two hours on especially busy days when the unmoving cabs resemble a noisy tableau, their horns launching a sustained assault on silence that brims with futility.

Weary, I arrive home, drop my laptop bag on a chair, and trade the long pants and collared shirt of professional decorum for a pair of basketball shorts. I flop unceremoniously onto the couch for a few minutes of blissful slothfulness and trade amusing anecdotes about the day with Bryna, Patrick and Kevin, who spends as much time at our place as his own and will hopefully make the upgrade from honourary to full-status roommate in the New Year.

In the two months I've been here, however, I've learned that I can be a surprisingly solitary person, given that many friends took to calling me "The Social Whore" just a couple years ago on account of my abiding passion for people.

Certainly, I still highly value opportunities to socialize and I'm thrilled for this weekend's very social agenda, which kicks off this evening with an international trivia night co-hosted by the US Embassy and British Consul, and will hopefully also include a visit to River No. 2 with Denis, the Canadian IMATT soldier Patrick and I met a couple weeks ago; an evening of pizza, beer and Canucks, hosted by a newly-arrived Canadian gentleman named Reg; and taking in the Liverpool-Arsenal match over a couple beers on Sunday afternoon.

Nonetheless, when I arrive home from work, mentally and physically drained, I often find myself thirsting for solitude. I grab dinner from one of the nearby restaurants and, depending on the power situation, find myself reading by the flashlight of my cell phone, or checking my email and browsing The Globe and Mail website to catch up on what's happening in the world.

As 2 or 3 a.m. rolls around, I crawl under my mosquito net to ruminate on another day in Freetown, and get ready to do it all again.


Editor's note: I hope you appreciate the photos, as they were not easy to get. In both cases, when I went take the shots, I met resistance until I explained that I merely wanted a photo of my favourite restaurant, a place where I eat 3-5 times a week, and the place I work.

Sierra Leoneans are understandably suspicious of Westerners with a camera; they're uninterested in becoming snapshots of poverty to be pitied by tourists and their affluent friends. Which is why I normally ask permission before I take any photos, but didn't think it was necessary in photos of buildings. Now I know.

In the shot of Kalleone, you can see Santos, the perpetually pleasant building guard and one of my favourite people here, coming over to check out (and mostly laugh at) the commotion I caused.

International Day of Persons With Disabilities

The beginning of December marks a slew of internationally observed days, where various causes, most of them relating to human rights, are trumpeted and then, all too often, tucked aside for another year, relegated out of sight and out of mind.

As such, I have a slightly conflicted relationship with these days of international observance, but it's hard not to recognize them if I want to be viewed within my newsroom as a journalist acutely concerned with human rights issues. Which, of course, is not to say I think there's anything wrong with recognizing such days; I've just tried to impart the notion to my Kalleone colleagues that these issues are patently newsworthy on the other 364 days of the year as well.

With that in mind, in late November, my colleague Princetta and I began work on a story for December 3, the International Day of Persons With Disabilities. We visited the house below, at 19 Walpole St. in downtown Freetown.


The house was home to 150 members of the United Disabled Organization, who had been squatting illegally in the place for about 11 months. The majority of them suffer from polio, though the residents also included war amputees and even able-bodied orphans who feel kinship with their disabled brethren, and who often push their wheelchairs for them when they beg in the streets.

Such feelings of acceptance can be hard to come by for marginalized populations throughout the developing world. Here in Sierra Leone, those with disabilities don't seem to top anyone's priority list. I don't think I've seen a single wheelchair ramp since arriving in the country.

And it's not as though disabled persons comprise an insignificant percentage of the population. Although I was hard-pressed to come across any authoritative statistics, to say that the percentage of the population with a disability in Sierra Leone is about as high as anywhere in the world is by no means a disputed claim.

Amputees abound, thanks to the sadistic actions of rebels that gave their victims the perverse choice of whether they wanted to have a "long- or short-sleeved shirt", essentially forcing victims to choose whether their arm would be severed at the wrist or elbow. Add to that a health care system that consistently ranks among the world's worst, and ailments that would be immunized against or quickly treated and neutralized in the Western world can instead cripple Sierra Leoneans for life.

The hour I spent talking to the residents of 19 Walpole St. was edifying to be sure. When I asked one of the polio victims when he contracted the disease, he stared back at me blankly. Trying to better explain my question, I said, "I'm just curious when and how you contracted polio."

"According to [local] history, it's witchcraft," he said. "I don't know."

I'll be perfectly honest. I didn't know much about polio until I started this story. But I was pretty sure witchcraft was not the scientifically accepted cause of the disease, and my research supported my gut instinct on that one. It is primarily contracted via the consumption of contaminated food or water.

The witchcraft theory, however, does explain the overwhelming stigma experienced by disabled persons, which can often include disassociation by their own family members. The Walpole group also made serious allegations of police brutality and political indifference.

When we were unable to confirm any of their claims, though, our story ended up taking a very different direction, focusing on the attempt of Sierra Leone's first disabled parliamentarian, whose mere election represents a glimmer of hope, to present a private member's bill regarding disability rights.

There were notable inconsistencies in the stories of the Walpole group, particularly when set against the information provided by the aforementioned disabled parliamentarian, Julius Cuffie, a vocal activist that made counter-allegations of his own. The truth, I'm sure, lies somewhere in between.

But ultimately, no matter what degree of truth they were espousing, I felt for these people, whose lives are undeniably difficult. I was taken aback by the suggestion of the group's spokesman that, faced with eviction on account of their squatting, they would welcome a move to Pademba Road, the country's main prison facility. It meant shelter and food, he reasoned.

As I packed my gear away and prepared to leave, an older man who had been asleep as Princetta and I conducted our interviews came up to me with a pleading look in his eyes and impelled me to take down his name. He explained to me that he'd been a mechanic until he fell into a sewage drain a little over a year ago, injuring his left foot so badly that his walking is severely hampered.

It's mind-boggling to think that a simple misstep (and with the ubiquity of open sewers, it would not take much, especially in the black of night) could so drastically alter your way of life. In all likelihood, the sordid state of his foot was merely the result of a bad break that received absolutely no medical attention.

It made me very glad that I lived in Canada, not Sierra Leone, when I decided it was a good idea to cut my fingers off with a radial arm saw, and I quickly shook off visions of how my life would be different - of how it would still be vastly preferable to the majority of the people I was interviewing and yet, in my mind, singular in its horror - were it not for free health care and the surgical expertise of Dr. Brian Evans.

As I listened to this man explaining his trade, I was struck by the earnestness in his voice. When he finished his story, he thanked me for listening, a glisten in the corner of his eye betraying the formation of a tear.

All I did was listen. That really shouldn't have meant so much to him. It shouldn't classify me as part of an overwhelming minority that is willing to hear what the disenfranchised have to say.

What it should do, and has done thus far, is strengthen my resolve to tell important stories, ideally better than we did under a rushed timeline with this one.

My Salone music initiation

In my first week in Freetown, I noticed banners throughout the city advertising a major musical competition entitled "Who is Who?". Back in mid-October, they didn't indicate a date, but ever since I eventually learned it would be held on December 12, it's been a night I've been anxiously awaiting.

Music's kind of a big deal to me, you see, and thus far I haven't felt any strong ties to it here. Sierra Leone isn't really known for its music tradition, particularly when compared to stronger nearby music cultures, such as Senegal. Partly as a result, my ear has yet to develop the honing mechanism to consistently differentiate between the various forms of West African music I hear.

When I do notice the music playing around me, it's often the more familiar strains of the North American tradition, led by the ubiquitous tunes of Chris Brown, Sean Kingston and Senegalese-born Akon. Save for the stuff I brought with me (Stars, K'NAAN, Amy Millan, The Stills, Sam Roberts, Shad, Matt Mays & El Torpedo), my tastes of the Canadian scene are limited to the unfortunately prevalent Shania Twain and Celine Dion, a sad indication of Canada's most famous exports.

But last night, Canadian music was the furthest thing from my mind as I hopped aboard a poda-poda with ABJ and his girlfriend, Jane, just before 9 p.m. After unsuccessful attempts to meet up with my Kalleone colleague, Sheik - complicated by the fact that ABJ told me to come fully prepared to be pick-pocketed and thus I didn't have my cell (or camera) with me - we walked through the darkness towards the entrance to National Stadium, the 45,000-capacity open air stadium that is home to the Leone Stars, the country's national football team.

We reached the ticket window and, after some discussion, opted for the covered stands, a compromise between the most expensive but safest Presidential stands and the cheapest but most authentic open stands.

As we proceeded through the security entrance, I came to learn that the surefire way to smuggle weapons into an event in Freetown was to give them to a white woman. Jane was waved through immediately, though she hesitated, wanting to know why ABJ wasn't being similarly urged on. He assured her it was fine, good-natured as he underwent a frisking.

Meanwhile, a grinning security guard pulled me aside and asked "You na got de nine?" while making a rapid stabbing motion with his left hand. As I laughed and assured him I was not carrying a knife, I was told I could go "take care of my woman", the guard erroneously assuming Jane was with me.

We walked into the stadium, the message that white people are harmless now internalized, and ABJ explained that they were expecting some fighting on this night. Frankly, I could understand why.

The event had been billed as a sort of East vs. West battle in the style of the East Coast-West Coast hip hop rivalry that took place in the U.S. in the early-mid '90s, largely fuelled by 2Pac Shakur. Battle lines were drawn. You were either for Kao Denero and the boys of Black Leo, or you backed Pupa Bajah and the Dry Yai Crew.

Denero, the self-proclaimed "King of Freetown", represented West and Central Freetown, while the Dry Yai posse had their roots in the city's less affluent East end. ABJ favoured Black Leo, saying that Dry Yai wasn't truly hip hop. Sheik supported Dry Yai, as a proud East ender who felt their message mattered (they released a song called "Ease di tension" in advance of the 2007 national elections encouraging peace at the polls, for example).

Of course, both groups are now based out of the States. They returned like so many members of the diaspora for the holidays and for this competition, the biggest music event of the year and one of the largest in Sierra Leone's history. And to be fair, animosities weren't nearly as sharp as the American rivalries they recalled, with Black Leo fans still cheering for Dry Yai songs and vice versa.

Still, I was not interested in testing the severity of their support. Shortly after our arrival, while ABJ and Jane were in the washroom, a young guy pointed at me from just beyond the barbed wire fence that separated us from the open stands (which, at $2/ticket, comprised the majority of the audience) and said, "You Black Leo?"

Already having gleaned that this segment of the audience was distinctly pro-Black Leo, I nodded and smiled, and by the end of the night, it would be a truthful statement, though it was Shine De God Son and not their leader, Denero, that galvanized my support.

At this point, music was still a long way off, however. The start time was listed as 8 p.m. Anyone that goes to concerts knows that you don't show up at the start time and, factoring in BMT, we arrived just before 10 p.m. - which would still be two hours before anyone took the stage.

Fortunately, the somewhat surreal antics of the crowd provided a distraction, at least for a little while. The energetic group of young men closest to our seats set off numerous "bangers", powerful firecrackers that are against the law outside of the festive season in December. They dropped them at their feet, jumping and whooping as they went off. It seemed like a somewhat dangerous means of amping oneself up for the performances to come, but I had to respect the passion.

Fire was also popular. Spread in a spotty fashion throughout the crowd were people using canisters of WD-40 to fashion impromptu blowtorches. Watching it all, I couldn't help but laugh at the notion that pretty much the entire audience would be kicked out of any show in Canada for their behaviour.

Around midnight, a steady stream of lesser-known artists, probably as many as 15 by night's end, took to the small stage to perform. As is the custom in Sierra Leone, these performances did not require live mics. SL is a nation of Milli Vanillis; at least 90% of the so-called live music is not only lip-synched, but lip-synched poorly.

J-One, whose hit song "Alphabet of Life" I've now seen performed twice, is one of my favourites to watch, as he makes no effort to delude the audience into thinking he's actually rapping. Often times, as the lyrics spit forth, he's not even holding the mic above his waist, let alone to his lips. This is by no means atypical.

The procession of artists continued for some time, most performing only one or two songs, many of which were underwhelming. We were mildly disturbed when an up-and-comer who couldn't have been more than 15 years old performed a song called "Ice Cream", a not-so-subtle euphemism with such profound lyrics as, "She wants to licky, licky. Come on now, give me, give me."

The first artist to truly grab my attention was the aforementioned Shine De God Son. When he took the stage, he spat a pretty solid freestyle and then made an explicit nod to the country's lip-synch culture, saying, "I'm going to actually do this one live." The diminutive rapper launched into an excellent song, made all the more entertaining by the approximately 12-year-old amputee (left arm) that accompanied him on stage with some of the best dancing I've ever seen.

I'm going to try to pick up his album, One Million Strong, as well as one from a pretty decent hip hop group from Bo, and the Dry Yai Crew's latest, as I couldn't really discern their lyrics at the show.

All in all, the concert sort of reminded me of the one headlined by Nas at the Centre in the Square last September. Though you had to sit through some awful acts and some of the advertised musicians never materialized, it was ultimately a fairly entertaining evening. Here, the non-starters included the Famous vs. Bubere (pronounced "boo-berry") duel that I would've liked to see since Bubere is one of the few musicians I've heard here, while back home both Snow and K'NAAN were absent from the CITS show.

Another similarity was the fact that it took many hours to get to the headliners. By the time Black Leo, who seemed to have the most fan support, completed their set and Dry Yai Crew came out, things were starting to deteriorate.

ABJ ushered Jane and I close to the Presidential stands just seconds before hundreds of urine-filled water bottles rained down onto the field, many passing over the space we had just been occupying.

Minutes later, a completely naked guy brushed by me, climbed over the guardrail, and dropped the 12 feet to the stadium ground. I wouldn't classify him as a streaker in the strictest sense, however, as he seemed uninterested in running away from police and security, instead heading directly towards them. By this point, the din of the crowd largely overshadowed the music.

After Dry Yai Crew finished their set around 5:45 in the morning, we took our leave before an announcement of a winner could be made, opting not to risk the threat of violence that could erupt if the crowd disagreed with the judges' selection. I still haven't heard who won.

As we made our way to the main road to grab a taxi home, crazed fans all around us screaming their preferred artists' names to the high heavens, I was left with a similar feeling to that Nas show: what I had just witnessed definitely wouldn't crack my top 10 concert experiences, but I was left with some interesting stories and a thoroughly unforgettable night. In the end, that's all I was hoping for.

Unsurprisingly, I don't have AIDS

December 1st was World AIDS Day.

In an effort to ensure we had a related story in the Kalleone paper that morning, I appropriated the suggestion of one of my JHR predecessors, Kevin, to visit one of the country's voluntary testing sites with a Kalleone colleague, to get an inside look at how the HIV testing machine in SL was working.

And so, on the Friday preceding the first of the month, I arrive at Connaught Hospital in downtown Freetown and await Sheik's arrival. He's late. The coordinator of the testing centre is later. I am unsurprised.

Sitting outside the testing centre as we await the coordinator's arrival, Sheik and I compile a list of questions to pose to the man in charge of a fairly extensive, country-wide Voluntary Confidential Counseling and Testing campaign. Once we've put pen to paper for a reasonable list of queries, I stare at the floor, waiting. I'm getting really good at waiting.

"What do you think about AIDS?" asks Sheik.

I launch into a meandering answer, noting that I think it's an absolutely terrible disease, but emphasize that I retain optimism that its reach can be brought largely under control with improved antiretroviral (ARV) drug distribution and well-run information campaigns.

"So you think it exists, then?" Sheik astutely gleans.

Oh. I see. Turns out that the very reporter I'm writing an informative article about HIV/AIDS with needs reassurance that a disease which has killed more than 25 million people since 1981, approximately the same length of time he's been on the planet, exists.

"I think poverty is a big part of the problem," he offers.

There we go. That I can work with. I agree that poverty plays a role to some extent; it can often be an obstacle to quality education, leaving poor people more ignorant of the causes of HIV and therefore more likely to engage in activities that leave them at risk for contracting the virus.

"Yeah," he agrees. "And because poor people can't afford to treat other diseases with medicine, they get HIV."

Hm. Not so much how it works, turns out. Unfazed, I explain how HIV is actually contracted, but Sheik doesn't seem especially convinced, laughing as I suggest that having unprotected sex with an infected partner is not worth the risk.

He says he never wears condoms. He was late today because he spent the night at his latest girlfriend's place, one of his four current "girlfriends". On the plus side, I know this article will be informative for at least one person, even if it is the man who writes it.

The coordinator has arrived. We conduct our interview and at the end I ask if we can talk to one of the nurse-counselors that administer the tests. He disappears for a minute, and then tells us there's one that will speak with us right away. Uncharacteristically easy, but I'm not one to question good fortune.

Sheik and I join the nurse, Mariama, in one of the confidential rooms and Sheik explains that we're journalists working on a story for World AIDS Day. I ask if it's possible for me to get tested. I was planning to do that anyway, so that we could really understand the process, but it seems especially necessary now that I know how badly my colleague needs to see this. My attempts to convince him to get tested as well are ineffective.

Admittedly, having the test administered is a substantially less courageous act when you know it'll come up negative, but I still hope my actions - answering all the nurse's deeply personal questions, without hesitation, in the company of a man I met a little over a month ago - will have some sort of impact on him, will somehow stir him to consent to a test of his own.

I can understand why getting tested would be a scary prospect, especially if you've just learned a lot about the disease and your lifestyle seems to indicate that you would be at risk. And especially given the stigma associated with HIV and the widespread perception that a positive test is a death sentence. Blissful ignorance may seem preferable to the misery of knowing.

There is international controversy over the move to criminalize the knowing transmission of HIV. Last year, Sierra Leone passed an act that did just that, meaning those who have tested positive but willfully continue to spread the virus are subject to up to seven years in prison. Some argue that by not getting tested, you avoid opening yourself up to the possibility of jail time.

Certainly, the issue is not an easy one to resolve. But these things only highlight for me the need to spread the message that ARV drugs can keep the virus largely at bay. And someone in this country is obviously trying. Large billboards throughout the city espouse the message of young people "living positively" with HIV.

Back at Connaught, Mariama has completed the questions. She takes a small pinprick of blood from my right ring finger, reminding me of the drop they use to test you for an iron deficiency before you're cleared to donate blood back home. In 15 minutes, I'm staring at my negative result and Mariama's throwing boxes of condoms at both Sheik and I as we proceed to our next interview.

The whole process serves as a strange juxtaposition with my colleague's lack of HIV knowledge. The nurse-counselor said all the right things and it's encouraging to think there are 348 more of these testing centres scattered throughout the Salone landscape.

But then I remember that only six years ago, there were no such testing centres or counselling available, and it will take time to see the results of this labour. The repercussions of today's work will be the success stories that my successors get to write about.

Still, Sierra Leone does not have an AIDS epidemic on the scale of southern African countries like Zimbabwe (20.1% adult prevalence rate), Botswana (24.1), South Africa (18.8), Namibia (19.6), and Swaziland (33.4). Not even close. Compared to those harrowing numbers (from 2005), Sierra Leone sat at 1.5% for the same reporting period - which, of course, is still high enough to be very disconcerting.

Sheik and I return to the office and put together this story. As we part ways at the end of the day, Sheik says he'll get tested on Monday.

He does not.

On Saturday morning hikes and food poisoning

Yesterday morning, I dragged myself out of bed at 7:30 to join Patrick on the weekly IMATT walk. IMATT - the International Military Assistance Training Team - is a mainly British force that has been working to train the RSLAF (Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces) since the end of the war, but there are also seven Canadians currently involved.

We chartered a taxi from Wilkinson Rd. to IMATT headquarters, a well-equipped compound atop Hill Station near the US Embassy's immense tract of land - which is nicknamed "Mordor" by locals and Embassy staff alike, and seems unnecessarily large to me given that there are only 25 Americans working there. It is pictured below, part of the IMATT compound in the foreground - though I'm technically not allowed to take pictures of the Embassy, so please disregard seeing this.


Amusingly, on our way up the hill, we passed a white girl on the side of the road, and Patrick, reasoning that any white person awake and about that early on a Saturday morning must be bound for the IMATT hike, leaned out the window to inquire. She was.

Once at IMATT, one of the first people we met was a Newfie who would be shipping back to Canada before month's end. Though he was as friendly as my trio of beloved Newfs back home (shout outs to Bill Dier, McNiven, and Dwyer), the fabled Newfie sense of humour seemed to have dissipated over his decades of military service.

Shortly after 9, a group of just under 20 of us began what ended up being a nearly four-hour hike that made me grateful that it happened to be the coolest day since I've been in the country, though the haze around the city did nothing to improve the quality of my photographs.


The IMATT hikers change their route every week, but on this particular morning we hiked out of town and up a relatively steep slope to the large resevoir pictured below.


The walk afforded yet another chance to engage with a thoroughly interesting expat community and I spent much of my time speaking with Juliane, a German student interning at the Campaign for Good Governance while she works on her Master's in Global Studies. This is her second stay in Africa, having worked in Botswana during her undergraduate days.

Patrick and I also spoke fairly extensively - both during the walk and back at IMATT headquarters, where we had lunch and took a dip in their pool - with Denis, a Quebec City native turned Ottawa resident who had been in SL for only a week.

A reservist with the Canadian armed forces, he's spent time in Cyprus and Germany, as well as most recently completing a tour of duty in Afghanistan. During his time here, Denis is teaching the RSLAF about jungle warfare, though I'm not exactly sure how a Canadian came to be an expert in that field.

Denis is one of the smartest people I've met in SL. A chiropractor by trade, he also owns two farms back home - a small hobby farm at his place in Ottawa, as well as a 300-acre heritage farm along the St. Lawrence that has been in his family since the seigneurial system days of the 1630s.

His place in Ottawa has been off the national power grid for six years, powered by wind and solar energy, and he's blunt in his appraisal that the only thing preventing such a lifestyle from widespread adoption in Canada is sheer laziness.

He hasn't drank milk for 14 years because he thinks it's "asinine" that humans are the only species alive that drink another species' milk well into adulthood. In short, he's the type of fascinating person that would make for a very interesting profile piece, though he seems unfortunately uninterested in such attention.

He did seem interested, however, to hear about my life here with JHR, and was shocked at how little ($1100/month) I was making to be here. (VSO volunteers, at $300/month plus a living allowance, are the only ones I've come across making less.)

Denis gets $10,000/month in disposable income, as both his housing and his IMATT-issued land rover are part of the package. He wouldn't be able to do this if it weren't for the enormous salary, he says, as he has to pay for someone to cover his chiropractic practice back home, as well as for the upkeep of both farms. But for soldiers with fewer Canadian ties, it makes for a pretty lucrative professional choice, he readily admits.

In a way, though, I do somewhat pity the soldiers, Embassy workers, and other lucratively paid people I've met in Freetown, as they don't seem to get to interact with the country very much at all.

IMATT personnel are not allowed to take their vehicles off the compound after 7 p.m. Embassy personnel are forbidden from attending certain bars. Neither group is allowed to even charter a taxi, much less ride a poda-poda - rules intended for their safety, but prohibitive in terms of their experience nonetheless.

They spend their days in little enclaves of wealth and privilege, always detached from the country's poverty by the panes of glass in the windows of their air-conditioned vehicles.

Nonetheless, it was a thoroughly interesting morning and I certainly hope to do more IMATT hikes, though the 9 a.m. start time is a rather strong deterrent. One thing I will not do again, however, is eat lunch at the IMATT restaurant.

Amusingly, though I've eaten at local hole-in-the-wall restaurants almost daily without so much as a stomach ache, the beef fried rice I had at IMATT gave me food poisoning. I found out too late that many soldiers had similar problems with the fried rice, which begs the question of why it's still on the menu.

Stubbornly refusing to allow a mild case of food poisoning to ruin my day, I still went out for Kevin's birthday at Atlantic, and attempted to drink the sharp stomach pains into submission. Foolish, you say? Yes, probably, but also not likely an action that surprises anyone who knows me well.

I took this nifty photo of the beach from our table at Atlantic, where we were treated to the open mic music of the awesomely-named Hank Slaughter.


Alas, my self-medicating approach did not work, and I was unable to get to bed until almost 5 a.m. last night. It felt kind of like I'd swallowed a dozen small razorblades and they were shredding my insides as they slowly worked their way through my system. I was also having cold sweats and threw on a sweater for the first time since my arrival.

I awoke feeling dehydrated and weak, my mild essential tremors acting up a little more than usual. Still, I think it is a relatively mild case and I've felt significantly better today.

More than anything, I was annoyed by the hit to my invincibility complex the virus brought with it. While my colleagues have been felled by illness all around me, my health had heretofore remained unblemished, leaving me eulogizing the wonders of youth.

A couple weeks ago, all three of the other people living at 19 Smartfarm went en masse to the doctor, to get tested for malaria, typhoid and, in Patrick's case, a strange infection caused by a Champion fly. I went to work, almost feeling guilty for not being sick myself. Though this has been a pretty mild case - at least according to my self-diagnosis - I no longer feel guilty.

Still, I made it almost two months without any illnesses. Not a bad run, all things considered.

The final half credit

Five years and 96 days ago, I moved into Willison Hall, onto floor B2, and began one of the most defining experiences of my life to date.

Thirty minutes ago, for all intents and purposes, I closed the book on that chapter. No. I slammed the book. And then I bound the book with leather straps, never to be opened again, and I hurled the book into an abyss from atop a high cliff.

Which is to say, I finished my 40th course, the final credit in my Honours English degree at Wilfrid Laurier University. All that now stands between me and my new status as a university graduate, barring unforeseen disaster, is the time leading up to my June convocation, and presumably a few ambiguously named administrative fees.

I feel as though an oppressive weight has been lifted. The last couple credits were a struggle of monumental proportions, it taking me from May 2007 until December 2008 - 20 freaking months - to get the last credit and a half.

Taking two courses last winter, while simultaneously working two jobs that kept me busy at least 60 hours a week, was not a particularly fun experience. But no course in my entire degree was more difficult to stick with than this final one.

Pounding out three (short) essays, five online discussions (even if I failed to do two of them), and an online exam was not only logistically difficult in a place like Freetown - living here was motivational manslaughter. I seriously considered dropping the course on three separate occasions to give me leave to more fully enjoy my time here, but couldn't face the prospect of my graduation being delayed yet another year.

As I worked away on the final essay yesterday, I found myself facing another roadblock, unable to access the Laurier library journals I needed to conduct my research due to an expired library card.

Too close to the finish line to be deterred, I changed my MSN name and Facebook status to reflect the bind I found myself in. Within minutes, though the clocks back home read 5:30 a.m., I was again marveling at the impact of technology as I browsed the library, thanks to fellow insomniacs Carlson and Ciesluk; my historical and cultural analysis of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland not only got done, but turned out pretty well.

And now, finally being done, I am left with a feeling of immense gratification. In the dark of an electricity-less Freetown Friday night, mine is a calm contentment, a quiet bliss. I will never have to write another essay in my entire life. Euphoria.

The only question that remains is whether or not I should attend convocation, which is scheduled to fall sometime between June 3rd and 5th. My contract here runs until May 11, but I am hoping to do some travelling afterwards. Though travel itineraries are bound to be made and remade many times over before then, the current incarnation of my imagined meanderings would have me visiting Hamlet in France or Bryn in Belgium around that time.

Is further immediate travel worth missing my only chance to participate in convocation? My gut says yes, but I leave it for you savvy folks, especially those that have already done the convocation thing, to discuss and determine my plan of action.

As for me, I've got five months of school-free Sierra Leone to enjoy, and right now I should get some sleep so that I'm well rested for tomorrow night's taxing obligations: a morning hike, eating dinner at my favourite restaurant and drinking on a beach for a buddy's birthday.

Fender benders and petty theft

I came to Sierra Leone fully expecting my time here to be a bit of a roller-coaster experience, with frustrating lows interspersed among euphoric highs. I was told to expect the first month to be a battle against culture shock, a difficult transition before what would no doubt be a great time on the whole.

Even when comparing travel resumes with my fellow JHR volunteers over beers during our first week, they expressed surprise at how limited mine was. I'd spent all of one day in my life outside the developed world, a day-trip to Havana to take a break from my all-inclusive resort.

"Well, everything else will seem pretty easy after this," surmised Patrick, my roommate who has lived a combined 2.5 years in Papau New Guinea and Zambia, among other international stays.

Needless to say, when the first month passed by with very little anxiety, the good days easily outnumbering the not so good, I was pretty stoked. Today, however, would mark one of the few brief dips in the line graph of awesomeness that has thus far charted my time in Freetown.

It likely didn't help that I started the day tired, having been up until 4 a.m. last night working on the distance ed. course that haunts me so. Nor were my spirits raised by the fact I didn't have enough free time to grab a meal until nearly 5 p.m.

But having co-produced two stories for the day, both falling directly within my human rights mandate, I was relatively pleased as I dragged my exhausted self from the office just before 7 p.m.

I wouldn't have time to make a stop at my place, but I should still be able to make it to Lumley Beach by 8 for dinner and drinks - a belated birthday celebration with Elvis, JHR's country director and SL renaissance man extraordinaire.

And yet I found myself calling one of my colleagues at 8:45 to inform them that, while I was still coming, it'd be at least another half hour before I got there. Dripping with the accrued sweat of a lengthy wait in yet another unmoving, overburdened poda-poda - though it fell well short of last week's 27-passenger load, the most I've been party to so far - I abandoned hope of catching a taxi from the Aberdeen junction and walked the 15 minutes to my house.

I changed into shorts and a t-shirt, gave myself a cursory cleaning and headed out again - weary, but very much looking forward to a drink with some friends. I was picked up by a poda-poda almost immediately, and even scored the rare luxury of the front seat - which provided a great view of the road rage that followed about 15 seconds later.

Our driver was cut off by a young punk in a taxi, and he didn't take especially kindly to the gesture, particularly when the offending cab promptly hammered on the brakes to pick up a young couple, obstructing the roadway in the process.

Naturally, our driver expressed his frustration eloquently and peacefully, his grill administering a love tap to the back of the taxi that sent it forward a few feet and brought its incensed owner out into Wilkinson Rd., a few choice words on his lips.

Three young men from our poda-poda promptly followed, one brandishing a metal weapon of some sort, to calmly explain just why our driver's action was justified. As angry drivers hung out of their windows to yell while they passed in the oncoming lane, I felt legitimately uneasy for the first time since arriving, though I was still pretty convinced what I was witnessing was nothing to be too concerned about.

Things blew over quickly, though the confrontation was long enough that one of the guys in the back of the poda-poda had time to hop up front with me. Turns out he should've been the cause of my unease.

I noted that he seemed to be sitting awfully close to me and suspicion crept in, causing me to lower my right arm to rest on my thigh, figuring that would send the message that my wallet was not to be fucked with. All the while, I felt a little foolish, given that every moment of suspicion I'd had to this point had been rendered completely baseless.

No longer the case. Though he never moved the arm closest to me, he deftly plucked at least one loose bill, maybe two, using his right hand before I put my hand directly into my pocket.

Reasoning to myself at the time that I wasn't 100% sure I'd seen him remove anything, I said nothing. I regret that now, as he definitely eased my monetary burden by about Le2000 and my silence cost me the chance to witness the meting out of the Sierra Leonean vigilante justice I've heard so much about.

Still, $0.60 is hardly the type of robbery to make a scene over, and I'd finally reached my destination, the Atlantic.

I strolled in to a beautiful beach side bar and restaurant. The ocean waves lapped against the shore less than 50 feet from the table I spotted my colleagues at. I smiled, told them I'd been robbed, and ordered a Beck's, which is quickly becoming my beer of choice.

To counteract the frustrations of the evening, I treated myself to my first steak since arriving here, and swapped stories of soul-sapping days with Bryna, both of us nonetheless smiling throughout. When dinner was over, I strolled onto the beach and watched a half dozen crabs scurrying about by the water's edge.

In what is becoming a common theme, the day's frustration was short-lived.

Decompressing amongst the expats

This weekend was supposed to be a very productive one. It wasn't. This weekend, I was supposed to get a lot of schoolwork done. I didn't. This weekend kind of reminds me of last weekend.

I often have grand plans for all that I'm going to accomplish on my weekends, and I invariably fall hopelessly short of achieving them. Yet I don't think there's anything particularly worrisome about that fact.

I'm coming to understand that my weekends are more about decompressing than anything else. I tend to read a lot on weekends. Maybe send some emails. And I spend a lot of time talking to my fellow expats, who are easily among the most fascinating people I've ever met.

Yesterday, I was hunkered down to tackle a children's literature essay at Bliss Patisserie, an aptly-named and oft-frequented refuge for the expat community living in the city's west end.

In an air-conditioned environment, they serve delicious pastries and have some of the only passable coffee in Freetown (or so I'm told). They also don't mind if you use their generator power to work on your laptop all day, as long as you buy something. Needless to say, the place is abuzz with activity and white faces every weekend.

Yesterday, my colleague Kari and a former colleague of hers from Voice of America named Nico stopped in, as they were crashing in our spare room for the night. Their arrival marked the end of my short-lived productivity, and I mean that as a compliment, not a complaint.

Nico Colombant is yet another example of the thoroughly interesting people that seem to spring from the expat mold. A French-American raised in D.C., he attended school at Concordia before working in West Africa for a few years.

A couple of months ago, he moved home, though he's already made two return trips to West Africa, a three-week visit to Cote d'Ivoire and this two-week stay in SL. He said he's been enjoying getting to know the region from a different point of view, removed from the stresses of work.

Along with Bryna and Patrick, we spent most of the day chatting, as the venue for our conversations shifted from Bliss to Smartfarm to Montana's (home of the best pizza in Freetown) to Paddy's (the country's most famous bar, though it was less happening than usual last night).

Nico's stories included getting punched in the face by a gun-toting Senegalese drug dealer for smart ass remarks made while refusing to give up his table at a Dakar club, as well as angering 50 recently released criminals in an airport check-in line, only to find out that he and Kari were about to share a flight with all 50 of them, and no one else.

Kari has told me similarly fascinating tales over the last six weeks, including finding herself trapped in a small town during the midst of an attack, lying still through the night as she listened to gunshots ring out around her. I'm hazy on the exact details and location, as she told me about it in the first couple days we were here.

The craziest thing about it, though, is not that these people are part of my (still fairly small) social circle in Sierra Leone; it's that they're not especially atypical members of it. Living in an environment like this, you rub shoulders with a very interesting assortment of people.

And, as Kevin pointed out to me, you have access to a much larger social range than you would at home. Lawyers for the Special Court for Sierra Leone and higher-ups with the UN and US Embassy frequently socialize with VSO volunteers living on $300/month and students doing field research.

We're tied by our outsider status, and we interact commonly in ways that would be viewed as extraordinary back home. Imagine the President of UW or the RIM CEOs grabbing a pint with a local truck driver or construction worker. And not for a photo op. Just because.

It is these types of exchanges that replenish my soul every weekend. Last Sunday, I spent four hours doing little other than eating at Bliss and chatting with Patrick and Kevin, both of whose experiences abroad dwarf my own.

None of us really knows what's in store for us on the other end of Freetown, and it is a question that looms especially large for Kevin, whose JHR contract ended when mine began. Development work in Somaliland. A return to Toronto. Reporting for Al-Jazeera, or a small broadcaster in Kamloops. Grad school in New York, or maybe the UK. Though he's since ruled out Somaliland, the possibilities remain many.

In our 20s and early 30s, we have almost no accrued possessions. We are not propertied. We have no families. Just a host of experiences.

We pontificate on when harsh reality will bring an end to our worldly dalliances, and more or less agree that the harsh reality will take the form of family. Once the perspective necessarily becomes about more than simply ourselves and our own livelihood, things get a lot more difficult. Accepting a job in the most consistently lawless place on earth over the last 20 years is no longer a feasible option to entertain.

Admittedly, it's the sort of selfish musing that has for a few years led me to associate fear with the notion of settling down. But it's interesting to take in. At 23 and single, when I shrug off the question of what I'm going to do come May, it's strangely so much more acceptable than when colleagues seven or eight years my senior do so.

Our conversation shifts to our decision to throw ourselves so far outside the familiar, a conversation that naturally invites comparison to our friends that don't.

Also from Kitchener, Kevin is blunt in his appraisal of life in K-W; even though it was a good enough place to grow up, he wanted out and made his escape at 18. I'm more forgiving to K-town. Life was great back home, in a community I love with a broad and amazing social circle of support. It would've been very easy to fall into a life there and wake up one day to realize I was 50.

And I don't really think there's anything wrong with that, at least not inherently. I'm sure some of my friends will never leave K-W and that doesn't have to prevent them from achieving their full potential. The problem comes when a person's only reason for not leaving is that staying is both safe and comfortable.

Admittedly, stepping beyond that safe bubble can be mildly terrifying. For me, though, never leaving, even if only for a short time, was more terrifying. As I've said before, throwing myself into an unfamiliar and challenging situation is the easiest way I know to test my mettle and broaden my comfort zone.

Ultimately, I don't really know what it's going to be like returning home. The general consensus is that re-assimilating into Canadian life can be difficult, even after a period as short as seven months. It's hard to imagine having any difficulty returning to a loving circle of family and friends, but I suppose accepting a more conventional job might be a little strange after this experience.

I really don't know what the return home next summer will be like and, to be honest, I'm not too concerned about it one way or another. All I know is that I'm going to be glad I decided to pursue this opportunity and I'll have undoubtedly learned more than I would've from another seven months in K-town.

Public relations, government and the media

Had someone asked me to compile a list of things I expected to miss while I was in Sierra Leone, it likely wouldn't have been an especially short one, with the names of loved ones and favourite restaurants probably taking up much of the space. New music, new movies, and the start of baseball season would surely have made the cut. But PR? That I never could have predicted.

My attitude has long been elitist when it comes to the whole industry of public relations. These departments were largely staffed, in my opinion, by sellouts that had lost their love of journalism's pure form, succumbing to the allure of a higher salary and selling their souls as spin-masters for companies with something to hide. There was a high-level conspiracy theorist malevolence about it all, and I prayed I'd never stray so far from my puritanical ideals.

Well, leave it to Sierra Leone to once again provide me a more nuanced perspective. The public relations mechanisms in this country are badly underdeveloped and, shockingly, I am actually lamenting that fact.

This past week, my colleague Sheik and I began working on a story about a UNESCO report regarding global progress in attaining the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education. Since Sheik is currently doing his internship for the Mass Communications program at Fourah Bay College with Kalleone, he seems to be the journalist I spend the most time with, since he's the most available.

Anyway, it was clear pretty quickly that this wouldn't be an easy story, as it involved a fair bit of a research to filter a complex, multi-faceted issue down to a single article. It's not the type of story that gets covered here often and we were the only media source I know of that reported on it, owing to the presence of my Cord email on a UNESCO mailing list that I didn't even know existed.

Owing to the less conventional nature of this story, it took a long time. But the most difficult part of it all was definitely securing interviews. The politicians here seem to have an inherent distrust of the media, which I suppose exists to some degree in most societies, but like many things with this experience, it's more intense in SL.

Though I wouldn't classify this as a remotely controversial story, we received an extensive run-around from leery secretaries in trying to get access to the sources we needed. In some ways, I can understand their misgivings. Based on the question and answer sessions I've witnessed, journalists can certainly be guilty of loaded questions; their opinionated beliefs rarely hide behind a mask of pretence when addressing those in the corridors of power.

In fact, loaded questions are generally the good ones, as they at least include a question. Frequently, journalists say something more like this:

"My question is ... well, actually, it's more of a contribution ... an observation, really ..."

When a question is asked, it is often prefaced by an extensive rant replete with grandiose language and pointed accusations, or at least the implications of accusations. In some ways, it reminds me of my time moderating the WLUSU Presidential Open Forum at Laurier, when so many of the supposed questioners were instead attempting to launch character attacks on the various candidates under the guise of having something to ask.

So, perhaps that's one reason it is so difficult to persuade anyone in a role of some importance to grant you an interview. But having an effective public relations system would definitely help.

Currently, journalists are forced to run around the city to try to set up interviews, as it is way too difficult to convince someone they should grant you an interview in the brief conversations afforded by the phone, and people completely ignore emails unless they somehow profit from answering. The assumption seems to be that no one will be persistent enough to follow up, and it's probably a fairly accurate one.

Of course, taxis around the city cost money, and the poverty that simmers just below the surface of so many of this country's problems - journalistic and otherwise - once again rises to a boil.

And so, journalists spend the brunt of their time attending press conferences because they know they'll at least get statements from ministers and other officials, even if they don't get to pose questions of them directly. Here, too, a functioning PR mechanism could save journalists an immense amount of time and effort.

Press mailing lists are used so sparingly that although I've only been added to two so far (UNICEF and the Special Court), I'm quite convinced that's more than any of my Kalleone colleagues. If Parliament and others would simply send out emails and mass texts with simple things like meeting agendas a day in advance, journalists could schedule their time with vastly increased efficiency rather than wasting it on so many fruitless conferences. Alas, no such culture exists.

Lastly, PR professionals, the good ones at least, can function as a type of interlocutor between the media and government officials that often seem to have a default setting of animosity; when Kevin Crowley arrived at WLU, I found it improved The Cord's relationship with administration because he understood and respected the role of the media more than his predeccesors, and he spoke to his colleagues about the need to give the media access to let us do our job effectively.

I have a feeling no one has ever spoken to most of the officials of the All People's Congress, the sitting government in Sierra Leone, in such terms. After a brief interview with a government official named B.I.S. Konneh, I handed him one of my business cards from JHR.

The part that read "human rights" may as well have been written in blood - it was the only thing he noticed. His face quickly turning to stone, he spat out, "What's your mandate?" I explained, focusing on things like capacity-building in the media and ensuring journalists understand the importance of balance and accuracy in their reporting.

"... But you're not an activist?" he asked, unconvinced.

"No. I'm a journalist."

His expression seemed to respond, "Okay ... I guess that's permissible." I still kind of wonder what would have happened had I said I was an activist, but I imagine the response would've begun with my prompt removal from the building and a subsequent blacklisting.

Instead, we went about laboriously securing more interviews and writing this story. As always, I think it could've been better, but know it was still well above average and I think I'm getting better at accepting that. (Oh, and since I've failed completely to address it, the photo that opens this post is simply the one that ran with the story - a shot of a primary school classroom at an all girl's school.)

Ultimately, my views of Canada's PR system have been moderated by this experience, though the North American incarnation is still a little too well oiled for me to fully trust. But it is starting to look preferable to the Sierra Leonean system, where the rust is only beginning to be chipped away after 15 years of neglect.