Deep Thoughts...

Sierra Leone is the color of a baseball field. Betcha no one else has noticed that.

As it turns out, burning trash is a great way to pass the time.

If you are a radio station and you play the same 5-second sound bite more than twice in a row, I will not listen to you.

So you have two free hands, but you'd still rather carry that spiral notebook on your head. Really?

I don't care how many mosquitoes he may have eaten. Given the choice between helping a broken-winged bat and watching him die, I shall take the latter every time.

Everyone lives in a 'compound.' I thought that term was reserved for Branch Davidians and Mormon fundamentalists in Texas? At least that's what CNN told me.

Suddenly, corned beef in a can is delicious. What happened?

If I had a nickel for every time I woke up at 6:30 to the sound of sweeping...

It is sometimes more important to get that new phone with the hottest hip-hop ringtone than it is to eat.

I am white, so I must be James or Mike or Jim. Or Lebanese or Chinese. This must be how bald black men felt back in the day when white kids would gawk: "Look! Is that Michael Jordan?!"

If today you have not eaten rice, then today you have not eaten.

The Lone Tourists

People don't come to Sierra Leone for vacation. Except for my parents. On their arrival, we pushed and shoved our way through a crowd of taxi drivers fighting (literally) for our business outside the airport. By the time we reached the motel, it was 2 AM; we had waited three hours for the ferry to Freetown and traversed ultra-bumpy roads, my dad stepped into a hole in the sidewalk, and a man in nothing but a Speedo welcomed us to our room which had no towels and a missing bed. Ah, welcome to my life.

In 10 days of African adventure, my parents zipped around on the back of motorbikes (including once with luggage on the world's worst road), took ice-cold bucket baths, ate street meat of unknown origin, slept under mosquito nets on broken beds, climbed a 15-foot ladder to watch chimpanzees from a treehouse in the forest, nearly got swept out to sea by a strong current, drove through the middle of a political rally, got hassled at police checkpoints, and danced in church. They deserve a trophy. Sierra Leone: If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.

The kids of Makeni were thrilled with the white strangers. These are my little neighbors, sporting their patriotic visors and soccer ball courtesy of Mom and Dad.

Some kid stole my watch the other day at the river. Add it to my long list of lost luxuries: Mets hat (stolen while camping), watch (stolen while swimming), $50 (stolen while dancing), laptop (struck by lightning), boxers (stretched by laundry boy), flashlights (too many to remember), college t-shirt (forgotten at friend's house), cooking gas (now unavailable in town), water pump (broken), generator (always broken), towel (vanished in laundry), cell phone (soaked in river), and phone chargers (zapped by unstable power).

There was a huge drug seizure at the airport last weekend. A United Nations friend of ours was evacuated from Port Loko (near the airport) because he is the only white man in town and local residents suspected him of involvement. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in the Wild West...