Eating out in Makeni

The Waterfall at Bumbuna

Eating out in Makeni

I’ve now been here seven weeks. Time has passed so quickly. Now that we are into March it has got a lot hotter. The mornings have been lovely especially early on but as the day progresses it gets hotter and hotter. However yesterday and today it has got considerably hotter and even this morning at seven o’clock it was hot and humid. The temperature at 8am was 35 degrees and it felt as if it was over 43 degrees because of the humidity factor. This is the first day since I arrived here that the sky hasn’t been blue. It’s dull and cloudy. Reminds me of home without the heat!!!

Wild pig rummaging in the town of Bumbuna

This past week there have been a number of expats visiting and staying at the school. So last Sunday I took a complete day off. I did no work and all of us went out to a waterfall which is at a place called Bumbuna which is outside Makeni. Though it's not too far away it took us about an hour and a half. The road in parts wasn't good. However once we got there it was beautiful. Nearly as nice as Scotland!!!. We had a picnic at the waterfall which was lovely. Two of the younger members of our party went in for a swim. I refrained. There is river blindness here so I wasn't taking any chances. There is a huge dam there and that is where both Makeni and Freetown get their electricity from. We had intended to go for a drive round the dam but weren’t allowed to do so because there was a security issue. Apparently the workers at the dam have not been paid for over two months, so at the moment many of them are on strike.  It takes four days to walk around the dam!!!

Santos the Carver

Last weekend some VSO's visited the school and did Games, Drama and Art work with the children who are boarders. They had great fun. These VSOs are all very young about 18yrs old and they are here for six weeks to work with the Youth of Makeni. We also had a visit from a carver who is also one of the Amputees who lost his hand during the civil war. The rebels cut off his right hand and he had to learn to carve using the stump and his left hand. He brought us some of his carvings for us to look at. His work was very good. Towards the end of the Civil War, some Cluny nuns came across Santos. They found him sitting under a tree chipping away at a lump of wood and were very impressed with what he was producing. They helped him and he is now selling carvings to visitors. He had a big bag full of his carvings and as he was bringing them out to display to us something jumped out of the bag. It was a mouse!! Well I jumped and all of us screamed. However the mouse was like a bat out of hell and I think he must have kept running because thankfully we haven’t seen it since.

The VSO's working with the pupils of St. Joseph's Hearing Impaired School, Makeni

Picnic at Bumbuna

On Tuesday evening as there were only two of us at home we decided to go out for a meal. We had heard that there was a rooftop restaurant in the centre of town. Its amazing how your standards readjust!! I was sorry that I didn’t have my camera with me. We found the restaurant without too much difficulty. We went up an outside stairway reminiscent of my childhood in the Gorbals and entered the restaurant. All the tables were covered in oilskin table coverings and some had a vase with artificial flowers but it had a roof closing it in. So we looked for the rooftop and saw a narrow wooden staircase in the corner. I went over to it and started to go up it but as I approached the top all I could see out of the opening was a drop downwards so we turned back. A waitress then came out of a room at the back and we asked if they had a rooftop and she pointed to the stairway that I had just come down from. So once again up we went and when you went through the opening at the top there was a narrow ledge that you could walk along and then you turned the corner and it opened out onto a rooftop. Beside it was another rooftop a bit higher up which was the rooftop of the restaurant. So we climbed up onto that. The view was good and there was a breeze. The rooftop was all higgilty, piggillty with various levels. We were on the highest level beside the satellite dish. There was a clothes line with all the washing on it. They brought us up two chairs that we could sit on. I then went down and got two warm star beers for us to drink while they prepared the food. Its safer to get a beer and drink it from the bottle rather than getting a glass. I don’t know if they even had any glasses. While we were drinking our beers a woman then came up from the rooftop below us to take in the washing. As she took each item off the line she folded it and put it on top of her head until she had the whole pile of washing on top of her head then jumped back down onto the rooftop below and disappeared into a hovel erected on the roof. What a pity I didn’t have a camera with me. I ordered a Chicken Schewma which is a chicken wrap and Catherine, who was with me,  ordered fish and jollof rice. They brought the meal to us on a tray. I was a bit dubious of the chicken that was in my wrap. Catherine’s fish was lovely except that it came with its eyes winking up at you. The jollof rice was also lovely and spicy. So all in all my first jaunt into eating out in Makeni wasn’t too bad and it was certainly entertaining. It was certainly a far cry from Cordon Blu but then I didn't come to Sierra Leone expecting to find any restaurants here!!! Most of the expats are leaving this weekend and I’ll then be on my own. The other lady, Monica who was here when I arrived, left last week. However I’m sure it won’t be long until there are other people passing through the Host Accommodation at the school.