Bureh Beach

Looking north from Maroon View

Bureh Beach at the southern tip of the Freetown peninsula is known as the most beautiful beach in Sierra Leone. It has been adopted by the Peace Corps volunteers because the accommodations are affordable, the ocean waves surfable, and the food is tasty.  Most of the PCVs rent a tent ($10/night) at one of three places: Maroon View (owned by a French woman and a Rasta man), Nathaniel’s (run by a Sierra Leonean who serves the largest potion dinners), and Australeone (owned by an absentee Australian and a Sierra Leonean named Prince).  Ann and I had heard good things about the Maroon View, so we rented a small ocean view cabin at ($30/night) ten yards from the high tide mark.  The very basic shared shower/toilet facilities were 30 feet behind.  We knew  it would be difficult to return to steamy Kenema once we experienced the cool gentle breezes of the Atlantic Ocean.

The trip getting the beach was similar to our Tokeh adventure in December.  Get up at 4:15 in the morning to get to the ticket window at the bus station by 5:15. The government bus left an hour later.  Again we were treated to sermons by preachers, taking advantage of their captive audiences, but this time it was equal opportunity, one Christian, one Muslim.  At our third stop a medicine peddler boarded for the rest of the ride to Freetown.  Surprisingly to me, he did a brisk business selling diarrhea pills, energy capsules, cold tablets and skin rash cream.  After five hours on the bus we were left at Tombo Junction for a short taxi ride to Bureh.  The advantage of our early departure was that we were on the beach before noon.

Bureh Beach

From a distance the beach at Bureh is the picture of paradise.  The bay has a gentle curve of about a mile in length, and like Tokeh Beach is protected from the east by hills.  As we looked north from our bungalow, we could see golden sands gently arching toward a point about a half a mile away.  At low tide there is a sizable sand bar between the ocean proper and a small river that flows into the bay from the north.  In the river the current tugs at your feet, but the water is safe for the non-swimmer as it stays about knee depth.  At high tide the waves are rougher, the sand bar disappears and the surfers come out.  We saw quite a few accomplished Sierra Leonean boarders.

Maroon Island

The beach extends to the south another half mile, but his part is largely ignored.  A few fishing boats were moored there.  Banana Island, the departure point of many a slave ship could be seen clearly in the distance.  Tiny Maroon Island is within swimming distance.  Big black basalt boulders dotted parts of the shore, evidence of volcanic activity long, long, ago.  The locals call these “man rocks” because of their durability and strength.  Ann and I pictured elephants, whales, and seals as the rocks changed appearances with the tide.

Spot with his eye on the prize.

The beach loses some of its luster up close.  Trash inevitably floats in, but not to the extent that we witnessed in Freetown.  Some of the resort owners make an attempt to clear the shore directly in front of their businesses, but there is no team effort to do the same for the collective beach.  It would be a chore, but manageable by a group of ten trash pickers working for an hour or two each morning, to clear the beach of debris.  We found  a few interesting shells, but they were scarce.  Almost every time we went for a walk we were accompanied by 4 or 5 dogs.  As everywhere in Salone, dogs are mostly ownerless and have free reign.  At Bureh they seem to deeply crave human interaction lying under our beach chairs and hanging around to be scratched on the head.  After a while we began to see them as a bit of a nuisance.  We also made friends with a striped cat, incongruously named Spot.  I suspect the friendship grew from our tendency to feed it bits of fish and cheese from our meals.

At Bureh there were seven PCVs still hanging around since Easter and Sean and Rob, fellow Response volunteers  to share experiences with.  Everyone is trying to find things to do with the month off between second and third terms (one volunteer is bicycling all over the country).  The conversation invariably veered toward three topics: maladies that the volunteers had suffered (typhoid, malaria, dental problems), transportation challenges (how to get from the more rural areas without taking a motorcycle taxi, which is forbidden by the Peace Corps), and the improprieties of many teachers in the Sierra Leone schools.  

Flogging (beating with a small cane) is a typical form of punishment here and it is used liberally.  However, the main concern of the volunteers is that many teachers will extort money from students by making them come to classes after school for which they have to pay extra or organizing events like a soccer match between teachers which the students have to attend (and pay) or else get flogged.  One justification for this behavior is that many of the teachers are not officially paid by the government.  They must get by on community contributions and additional fees that they can collect from the students.  The “volunteer” teachers are necessary as the school system is overloaded with children while Sierra Leone continues its program to ramp up “free” education for everyone through eighth grade.  Of course, this is why the Peace Corps is helping out in this area.  Indeed, up to 50 new volunteers will be arriving in July to join the 15 that came over for this academic year. On the positive side the volunteers told us about a handful of their students who are currently attending a leadership conference in the US sponsored by the embassy here.  The PCVs had a hand in nominating candidates from their schools for what must be a life-changing experience for these future leaders.  At that moment the students were flying from Washington DC where the conference began to Dallas.  They would continue on to Chicago.  Students from all over Africa were invited. 

Our bungalow.

Our daily routine: eat a leisurely breakfast, stroll the beach shell-hunting while it was still cool, read a little, do a crossword, snack on peanut butter and crackers, take a dip in the ocean then hide from the sun until 4 o’clock to come out for another swim.  On the weekend, especially on Sunday, Sierra Leoneans descend on the beach for fun in the rough waves. In the evening we ate delicious fresh fish  and watched the sun set.  The Maroon View turned on its generator when it got dark and ran it way past our bedtime.    The first night the PCVs taught the game Mafia to Rob and me.  It is a game that requires a fair amount of deceit and outright lying.  It turns out that I am not too good at it, but it was fun see the young volunteers enjoying each other’s company as the beer flowed freely.

Another benefit to our travels is meeting interesting people. A German couple, Volkmar and Gerta, were staying in the bungalow next to ours.  They, like us, were retired and had lived in Africa before.  Volkmar is an engineer with a specialty in bridge building.  They had spent five years in Burundi and some time in Burkina Faso.  This time around Volkmar was helping to build three bridges south of Bo.  The last one will be three football fields long and cross the Mano River into Liberia.  This is all part of a European Union project to build a highway linking all of the West African countries.  France is supplying the bridge materials and most of the skilled workers come from Senegal.  We also spent a pleasant evening in conversation with Philippe, a French national who works for the EU and has been in SL for two years, but who has spent his career in many interesting countries.  He was most interested in the U.S. retirement system and health care costs.

We also got to meet the father, mother and sister of PCV Brittany who had  flown in from Rhode Island for a week in Salone.  After two days in Freetown, they were spending the night at Bureh.  Then it was off to Brittany’s village in southeastern Sierra Leone. Don, the father, seemed genuinely excited by the adventure of traveling in Salone. He confided to us that Louise, the mother, had felt the umbilical cord stretch too far.  The stretching was enough for her to overcome her hesitancy to “tough” it out traveling to West Africa to see that her "baby" was fine.  Brittany was making it as smooth as possible for them.  Their bungalow was equipped with indoor plumbing.  They, like we, thought Bureh a hidden treasure.

Ann and I decided to stay one additional night at Bureh.  We had the beach to ourselves as everyone had vacated Monday morning.  It was a welcome end to a restful and rejuvenating stay.  Our only problem was hop-scotching our way back to Kenama via public transportation.  We did not look forward to the trip which we knew would be longer than getting to Bureh.  As it turned out it was fairly easy getting home until the very end.  That turmoil will be discussed in next week’s blog.