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.