Moyamba Mamba?

On a visit to our fellow volunteer Dale, who’s been marooned in Moyamba all year, we got a taste of small-town Sierra Leone, where life moves at an even more glacial pace than in Makeni. But that’s what made it great.

Dale’s house sits right on a river near a beautiful stick bridge that he helped build, with pumpkin patches and banana trees all around. I wanted to go tubing down the narrow river, but in the absence of tube-like objects, we decided to float and scoot our bodies downstream. Over the rocks and around the dam we went, and then I saw it. A snake reared its slimy head about 10 yards in front of us and zipped straight across the river with its head above water the whole way. It seemed to have popped up and surveyed the scene like a cartoon submarine (look left, look right), spied us and darted for cover. Smart snake. We did exactly the same, abandoning our simple river cruise in a heartbeat.

Me, Helen, Diya, Dale, James, and a bamboo backyard bench.

My best teenage reporter for Pikin News was jailed a couple weeks ago for stealing various things (including, oddly enough, a laminator) from his parents and selling them off to friends. A visit to a Sierra Leonean police station is a bit like walking into The Andy Griffith Show – minus the electricity. The boy slept a few nights in a cell at the back of the station. As I waited for the cop to bring him out and talk to me, I noticed the number of suspects in custody was written on a chalkboard. That number went up from 27 to 30 while I stood there. I imagined them fighting for the five beds and sitting around with nothing to say but, “So…what are you in for?” “Stole my mom's laminator again.”

My story about the lack of morphine in Sierra Leone aired on a public radio show called World Vision Report. Listen here.