Wok the Line

Slow down Joanna:

Lumley Beach reaches Cape Sierra at Aberdeen

The enthusiasm with which the ladies of the night greet me in Cape Sierra village ought to be embarrassing, but it makes me smile. I will pass over the telephone call that reached me in the Freetown City Council Chamber, where I was in earnest discussion with the members of the City Health Committee. I must impress on my young friend Mamood to be careful whose telephone he borrows to ring me.

I had arranged to meet Mamood at 6pm to run along the beach as usual, but he was nowhere to be found when I jogged into Cape Sierra village tonight. He does not have a watch. I waited outside the cafe, with the ladies and the little brown baby Frankie. We discuss the night’s work ahead, the bars and restaurants they will visit. "I don't envy your job", I offer, rather gallantly I hope. "We don't like it either," is the reply, "but life is very complicated." The proprietor keeps her eye on us. Somehow I imagine that she is my chaperone, her comfortably padded form guaranteeing my fidelity to Mrs M.

No sign of Mamood, so I jog off down the road to Aberdeen Circle, and onto Lumley Beach. It’s a good two miles from here along the gentle curve of the bay to the Atlantic Bar at Lumley. If the Atlantic's loudspeakers haven’t been fully wound up, you can relax in the big cushioned wicker chairs.

Otherwise, my preference is to use the plastic chairs on the beach where the staff get sand in their shoes to bring your Star Beer or Schweppes tonic water. I like to sit just above the high tide, somewhat smarter I fancy than Canute, watching the light fade into a thick humid sky, feeling the "fresh breeze", that everyone likes here. Between mouthfuls of tonic and free popcorn, I say “fresh breeze” over to myself. I try to copy the lovely soft Freetonian French “r”. It cools you just to say it.

photo by coolasas

It’s a run-walk-run session this evening. It takes me an age to get to the big “Africell” mobile phone advertisement billboard that marks the half way point to the Atlantic Bar. I think this must be the hottest and most humid time of the year. The rains are still just an occasional downpour, though we had strong winds last night, bringing down trees and advertising hoardings. We will have to wait till July before the gods open all the taps. Then everyone who has a house just has to sit inside till the rain stops, or till the house gets washed off the hill or into the sea.

There are empty coconut shells on the beach, but I have yet to locate someone who sells them, so settle for a coolish Fanta from one of the vendors outside the Atlantic. Nobody would mind if I pranced into the Atlantic in my “Stockport 10” running top, but, over the last 19 years, the 3Ms have instilled an iota of shame in me. The funny thing is that Mrs M has taken the opposite tack: once prone to raise a well-trained eyebrow at a misuse of the word “pardon”, she may yet dance naked in the garden beneath a full moon. It is better to travel hopefully, they say.

Wok Tok

Mamood intercepts me on the return journey to Aberdeen. He has been doing his laundry. He says he has not been to wok since I was last here. Between puffs of warm air I explore the significance of this wok. It seems that the Chinese frying pan in question refers to some form of paid employment on the beach, which he does when he is not in school.

I conclude that Mamood is keen to tell me that he has been going to school, and I share his pleasure in this. I don’t normally do this sort of thing, but for the price of two shrimp kebabs at the Barmoi Hotel, I was able to settle the unpaid portion of his school fee on my last visit. As I hope to be coming here for up to three years -  what joy for a freelancer is such a prospect! - I thought I’d at least be able to keep in touch with him, so we can see how it goes. I feel a bit sheepish about this, but my colleague Lance tells me he has four boys in Malawi, where he worked for many years. They are now all adults. He talks of them as fondly as of his grandchildren, and of his other favourite subjects, which include the opera and Premier League football, the latter more useful for small talk here than the first.

Mamood is studying twelve subjects, he tells me in the walking bits, but maths is difficult. Outside the oddly named bar, Family Kingdom, a motorcycle has left a convenient tyre track in the sand. I draw markers across it with my finger: a circle for Aberdeen Circle, a bottle for Atlantic, and the Africell Billboard in the middle. We put numbers underneath, and a zero under Africell. The ladies come past in a taxi, on their way to Roy’s, and stop to say hello.

Mamood and I play hopscotch along our number line. +2 -1. What’s that? +1-2. What’s that?

"I have never seen that thing," he marvels. "They have never taught me this." It is possible that he has realised that I am mad. I say that the number line is the greatest thing in mathematics, and the zero in the middle was invented by an Indian. I don’t know these things to be true, but they are good enough for now.

Mamood says he will come to bring me his maths homework. Not now I hope. It is past my bedtime. We leave early tomorrow for Port Loko.

A freelance is the happiest of men.

8 minutes to Aberdeen or Eternity

Freetown, Sierra Leone

Things aren’t what they were. They’ve put seats in the helicopter that ferries us from Lungi Airport over the Sierra Leone River to Aberdeen. And Aberdeen links Cape Sierra to the capital Freetown.

The way things were (thanks to roystonford)

In the old days, we squeezed around a mountain of luggage in the middle of the fuselage, and sat on a bank of ragged foam cushions against the sides. If we were lucky, the washing line strung across the tail carried a few grubby pairs of ear defenders. And sometimes we even received a security briefing from a young man in a singlet. “Don’t worry”, he'd say, “about the vibration as we come into land: these guys [the Russian pilots] are experts.”

It’s the same Soviet-era helicopter, and feels as though it has been recycled with a job-lot of old hardware from a former satellite republic. Neither the battered gunmetal door nor the safety record inspires confidence, but then neither does the hovercraft (it tends to sink), the ferry (bow doors stuck open) nor the road (5 hours in dry weather).

At least the helicopter flight is brief: eight minutes to Aberdeen or Eternity. And now we can go to the Maker in a proper seat facing a flat-screen video presentation of Sierra Leone’s gorgeous beaches.

There are even real windows to look out of, though it’s mostly blackness beyond Lungi airport perimeter, for Lungi village only has kerosene and candles. But as we draw closer to Freetown, the marvel of electricity illuminates a little more of Aberdeen than it did the last time a freelance contract wafted me this way.

Yes, anyone would think that things are looking up here in Sierra Leone, despite all that global misery that our would-be leaders can’t quite handle back in Blighty.

Aberdeen, Grafton, Murray Town, Regent Road. Mrs M will feel quite at home, if ever I earn enough airmiles to get her here. From Kissy in the East to Lumley in the West (I think), Freetown is a sort of crazy Monopoly board invented by a mad hatter. Its roads and settlements are scrawled over hillsides, ravines, swamps, riverbeds and bays, and as often than not the name of each has more than a hint of the old Mother Country.

I hear that IMATT, the International Military Assistance and Training Team, has continued the tradition of applying British names to this corner of Africa. The hub of their staff accommodation is called Leicester Square (£560 rent with a hotel if you land on it). Perhaps if you can’t pay, they send you to Coventry Street (£28 rent with no house).

Well, it’s fine by me, because everyone says that the British Army and IMATT have done a great job in helping bring about and hold onto a delicate peace here for nearly a decade. If things are looking up, or at least not looking as dreadful as they might, it must be, in most part, thanks to the maintenance of that peace.

It’s hard for a soft old freelancer not to get a bit emotional, and feel a tiny bit proud of our boys and girls.

Still we like not to overplay the fact that we are the old colonial power. So we leave the coat of arms at home, and work far too hard at everything till our short sleeved shirts and M&S chinos are drenched in sweat. This is a source of great amusement to our African counterparts who wear good quality suits or tailored Africana and shiny brogues in well air-conditioned offices.

There’s plenty to talk about after so long out of town. Who is in, who’s out, who’s been sacked for corruption, or got a job at the Bank? What’s happened to Macaulay? What of Gloucester? It’s enough to bring on a small rash of Shakespeare. The Thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now?

As I write, the date of my return to Marple Bridge and Mrs M at Mandall Mansions is a little uncertain, thanks to an Icelandic volcano.