On The Road To Paradise

Tokeh Beach

With school out for the holidays, it was time for our big trip to one of the beaches on the Freetown Peninsula to greet the new year. We had not been out of Kenema in four months and felt it was good for our mental health to see something new.  Plus, the Peace Corps encourages each volunteer to travel and see more of the country ($24/month travel allowance).  We had booked six days at the Tokeh Sands Resort.  Given the difference between our budgeted money and the actual cost of travel and lodging, we used money from home to help us finance this get-away. At $140/night the price compared favorably with our Florida Keys lodging from just a year before.  We told ourselves that we were dropping out of the Peace Corps just for a week.  We hoped to return refreshed and eager to face the next school term. 

The only problem left to solve was to get there.  The best answer turned out to be taking the government bus (similar to Greyhound) from Kenema for a little under $4 a person.  Our friend Francis at the regional Peace Corps office suggested that we buy our tickets in advance, so the day before setting off, we ventured down to the plaza where the buses depart.  We were fortunate to run into Abdul, who works for the bus company and who was happy to procure our tickets for seats on the first bus leaving at 6:00 the following morning. He looked honest enough so we handed over our cash. Out of the blue he asked us if we were interested in buying honey.  He has hives in coffee and cocoa plantations and is looking for markets outside Salone. I told him that I was an amateur beekeeper myself.  We agreed to follow-up on the honey when we got back to Kenema. If it is good, maybe we can help him find a way to sell it in the USA.

As a kid growing up in Missouri I used to ride the bus frequently from Jefferson City to Springfield, but It has been over 25 years since I have been on a public bus.   In that last bus trip I remember the police stopping the bus to search for some fugitive who had locked himself in the toilet. In my mind so many things could have gone wrong on our trip.  I need not have worried because long distance bus transportation is one thing that Sierra Leone does rather well.  In general the busses are clean, safe, relatively uncrowded and leave on time. 

Our bus trip necessitated  getting up at 5:00 and walking with our bags to the station about a mile away.  Walking up Combema Street at that early hour was somewhat of a treat.  A few people were up and the calls to prayer lilted in the air as we walked the street blessedly free from the sound of the usual scores of motorcycles.  Abdul, bundled up in his winter coat and hat because it was probably 70 degrees at that time, escorted us to seats 4 and 5 up front in our awaiting bus and we departed Kenema in the dark.  Five additional passengers were riding in the well in front of us, but that is nothing compared to the passengers crowding the aisles of the private bus lines.  So far so good.

A Christian preacher on board felt it was his duty to shout his sermon to us as we drove through Kenema.  Since Ann and I were in the very front, we were fortunate to hear only a small part of his homily.  Luckily he departed after only a few blocks.  It took a while for the bus to negotiate the pot-holed roads of Kenema, but once we got to the two lane highway, it was smooth sailing.  Our first stop was Bo, where a few more people and one hobbled chicken got on.  However, another Christian preacher, this time a paying passenger, felt it was now his duty to give us more fire and brimstone and he walked up and down the aisle screaming the word of God.  This continued for an hour until our next stop at Moyamba Junction, the halfway point of our trip.  There the passengers could disembark for 15 minutes to stretch their legs.  The chicken was not allowed to get off. Consequently, it took a dump next to my seat. 

Snack Time

At every stop the bus was mobbed by vendors selling snacks.  Typical bus stop fare includes bananas, banana chips, oranges, peanuts, bread, hard-boiled eggs, energy drinks, and water.  At Moyamba Junction there were also skewers of grilled meat and all sorts of native vegetables to buy.  The chicken's deposit was promptly covered over by jettisoned wrappers, peanut shells, banana peels and other debris that the people here feel no qualms about discarding anywhere.  Two hours to go.

The bus driver cranked up the Jamaican-flavored African-Pop music for the next leg of the journey.  Our Christian preacher began singing hymns, I suppose to counteract the devil’s music, but he was drowned out.  In no time we were at the town called Mile 91, 145 kilometers from Freetown.  One hour later down the road we were at a major intersection, Masiaka, where travelers from Freetown have the choice of heading northeast to the mountain city of Kabala, or southeast towards Kenema.  In some ways the highway system of Sierra Leone resembles a giant river system in which all roads eventually feed into the one major highway from Masiaka to Freetown.  Several passengers helped us tell the bus driver where to let us off at Waterloo junction so that we could catch a taxi going south to the beaches.  It was a short walk downhill to get to the car park.  There we were accosted by a few taxi wranglers and bargained a ride to Tokeh for 40,000 Leones. 

In Salone a taxi driver is allowed to pick up extra riders unless a passenger purchases the whole taxi.  We got a reduced price because we said someone could sit up front while we, with all of our luggage, occupied the back seat.  Two guys squeezed together in the single seat in front, and we were off.  Each of the fellows was deposited after a short distance paying 1 or 2 K Leones for their rides.  Our driver, Jibbe, started to complain that the 40K fare we had promised was too low and we should pay double that. Fortunately we knew the going rate and could argue him down.  The road to Tokeh was good and about 30 minutes we were at our resort.  The driver got out and started dusting off his car (the last bit in Tokeh was on a dirt road) as if this were a great hardship on his vehicle.  He seemed pleased that we forked over an additional 10K for his extra effort.

The hotel staff greeted us warmly, but since we had arrived three hours before check-in time our room was not ready.  We were content to use the facilities (really not apparent at any of the stops we made) and look out at the waves gently crashing on the white sandy shore.  This is truly one version of paradise.  The beach made a slow arc to the north around a shallow bay.  To the south is The Place, a more expensive resort, and Tokeh, a small fishing village.  We were tired from getting up so early, so after eating eggs, bread, and cheese that we brought along, we longed to just pull up a beach chair and snooze.  Fortunately, our room was ready in half an hour.   

The room had no TV as advertised, but that was OK with us.  It was a large room with one giant queen sized firm mattress on the bed.  A corner room on the second story, it had two big windows  that looked out on the ocean.  No need for mosquito nets as the sea breeze minimized their number.  The AC unit high on the wall was not really necessary.  The shower room was also large with adequately dripping hot water.  We deposited our luggage and hit the beach.

Happy Happy Hour

The afternoon was spent sleeping, reading, doing a crossword puzzle and taking a dip in the warm ocean water. I found the salt water to be refreshingly buoyant. Happy hour found me with a Beck’s beer in hand enjoying the sunset.  We would never get to see the sun completely set, not because of clouds (this is the dry season after all) but because the Harmattan winds fill the air with Sahara sand.  We finally met Matt, the young, easy-going manager.  He had arrived in September and was running the resort for a friend. The Salone resort business is waiting for tourism to rebound after a terrible civil war and of course, Ebola.   We were only too happy to help Tokeh Sands get back on its feet.  We later dined on grilled fish and chicken shwarma, a Lebanese wrap.   We spent 260,000 Leones ($37) for food and drink that first evening and were prepared to spend up to 2 million Leones in the six days.  I felt like a multi-millionaire. That 2 million is our whole combined income from the Peace Corps for an entire month.  It also would pay for tuition for two students at Eastern Polytechnic for an entire year.  Being relatively rich in a poverty-stricken country we were finding is not that easy.  More about this in the next post about our week in paradise.