Well who knew I was sleeping next to the local Mosque, at least in Freetown the prayers did not begin until 5:30 am…not here 4 am! I love it though you know you are not in Canada waking up to that haunting chant. I couldn’t get back top sleep so I did a little work out in my room, & walked around the streets here. The people are so firendly, the local pita baker grabbed me by the arm, pulled me into his shop, sat me down & fed me hot fresh baked pita. They barely speak English but their hostpitality is so incredible. In Sierra Leone (beside the Kamara’s) people were also very friendly however there always seemed to be the unbderlying feeling that they wanted something & as you know more often than not the pitch was soon to follow. The need was legitimate there however so is this need. here. what they need here is freedom how do you attain freedom? I think back to the Oka crisis in Canada in the 1990’s & the people surrounding area were ready to kill the natives because they had to drive an hour more to get to there destination. Here there is no leaving. Any man under the age of 45 for instance is not allowed into Jerusalem which is in the West Bank & is supposed to be under Palestinian Authority In Africa they need food, clothes,clean water etc. But at least you can dig for a well, pay to get water in etc. but here what they require is freedom how do you get that? The debate we had this morning is do you go about the peaceful means & turn the other cheek or do you fight back against a far superior force? Depending on the source there are roughly the same amount of Jews & Arabs here (although some sources have the Israeli population as larger by a million) or so people & is rising faster than that of the Palestinians. There is great care taken when crossing the checkpoints that as Westeners we have nothing Arabic or remotely indicating sympathy towards the Palestenians. I will let you knowif the worry was warranted. What is ironic about the apparteid...
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HERE WE GO again nearly 4 hours of writing to you gone! I’m sure I’ve smoked the equivalent of a package of cigarettes with all the second hand smoke in here! I could almost cry, not sure if I’ll be able to remember all I wrote but I will try, so here we go with a wildly abridged version… Where to start? Well after all the worry the Ben Guiron airport, which is an absolutely beautiful airport, was an absolute breeze. As a matter of fact it was one of the easier entrances into a country I’ve ever had. I kept waiting for the Israeli police to pull me aside but it never happened. A few questions from a couple young Israeli security girls & that was about it. I had to wait a couple hours for my ride. Leaving Tel Aviv I was struck with how much the landscape reminded me of the Okanagan. There were many more trees & a lot more forests than I was expecting. We were quite lucky going through the checkpoint here we were just waved through. I nearly blew our treat when I asked the driver if I could take a picture, ‘No no no’ he whispered he did not want to ruin our good fortune of being waved through. before we pulled up in his broken English he told me to get my story straight ‘You go to the church (of the Nativity)’. Upon entering the West Bank besides the massive apartheid wall & rows of barbed wire it is dirtier and there is a marked difference in the conditions of that in Israel They have much more here as compared to Africa. They have electricity of course, Karama even has Internet however it was down so I came to this local Internet cafe, they have running water, A toilet, shower, no hot water but the cool shower was quite refreshing after my sweating stuffy sleep. They have propane bottles next to their stoves so they are not cooking over fire like in Thunderhill. They have pens, paper, food, small shops, clothes, the streets are paved etc. The problems here are generally of the severe repression that they suffer as opposed to at Rhema where it...
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Rhema (on my very last day!) is up & fully functional on the internet!!!!! After my last internet cafe experience I came home to find that we’re up & running 100% perfectly!! The Komora’s got a computer that works for the school! Rhema is now in touch with the world!!!! I had my last bath, I’m packed up & off on my long adventure home. I couldn’t have asked for a nicer family than the Komora’s, I am so grateful to them for...
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I am at an internet cafe downtown.Ray & his new deputy Chief just dropped me off at the Special Court & I took a taxi downtown (taxi’s here are quite different from home a taxi will fit as many people as he can in his car, dropping off & picking people up along the way. It was raining when I first got up 6:30 or so, it is beautiful right now though. Well I leave today!!!!!!!!!! I am so excited to get home! My stomach feels OKMy wait out at Lungi will be a long one, but I am so excited to come home. I’ll go home after this, I have to ‘go’ the bathrooms have no paper here, part of the...
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I have been treated to a night at Ray’s for my last night in Freetown & do I ever appreciate it! It is so nice over here, a real breath of fresh air. we’ll definitely have to treat Ray for our BBQ, he has been a godsend. I made my was over, I have been thinking on how to tell someone what to expect if they volunteered at Rhema. I would say camp at the Cloverbar landfill for a week or so & that’ll give you an idea. On the way if I thought Thunderhill was bad, some of the places down town still leave me in awe & are beyond anything I could ever imagine. The conditions that these people live in I wouldn’t have thought existed. I was lying in bed this morning & I thought of one of the amputees, who’s translation in Krio was he wanted to go back to McKinney where his family was from since he has no one here to take care of him. This particular fellow has no legs or hands. I thought ‘I can do that’ (25 000 Leones, about 7-8 dollars). So out I went back to Grafton. I found him & he is not in good shape at all. He has gotten quite sick, I also brought him that biege sweater as he asked for something to keep himself warm, as he sleeps on the ground in what can only be described as a lean to covered in a tarp, they cook inside when it rains here so it can get quite smoky. Anyway, you know when you see someone who is so frail & sick you get the feeling that they won’t be with us much longer, well that was the case here. It turns out he is too sick to make the trip to Makeni, there he was no legs no hands on a dirt floor, I gave him the sweater & 20 000 Leones, which is not a lot for us but goes a really long way here. I know that with so much human suffering here, it sounds so trivial, but seeing these dogs get kicked & so many in such horrible condition has been so hard on me....
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Kono was a conflict area in 2000 the war has ended nearly 8 years ago. The entire town (Mohammed says it’s population is 7000, I would be surprised if it is bigger than Grand Cache) is based on the diamond trade. I perfer it here as I am not swimming in the filth, sewage , garbage & people here. It is much more laid back & the country side with its lush hills (extinct volcanoes) & rice patties is quite beautiful. Diamond moning is a legitimate industry here, the bigger operations look basically like a gravel pit. I did not get a pict yesterday as my card was full. I had to delete some photos to make room for the ones that I hop capture the feel on Kono best. If Rachell, or Wendy want some best let me know ASAP, its 10 a.m here, it is such a small place with many bombed out buildings still standing in with vegetation beginning to grow through, (one house the RUF burned 52 people alive in) poor Mohammed has been a great host, but you can only drive up & down the few streets so many times after he showed me the operations yesterday. I am sick today. My stomach is fine, I must have caught some sort of flu. Every inch of my body aches. I am seeing the sights best that I can. To tell you the truth I was really enjoying the comfort & solitude of my room at Uncle Bens. I was thinking of hiring a car to take me back later today or tonight.I have a little diarreah that is probably because all I ate yesterday was crackers. How I am looking forward to fresh vegetables when I get home! Watermelon, nectarines, and yes I am even looking forward to juicing when I return! For some reason I’ve been craving the hutterites beets here too! And oh to eat a nice fresh salmon!!!! Can you tell that I have been living on nothing but startch??? The ride yesterday was not pleasant, and I stank!!!! Poor Africans were probably thinking what a smelly white man! The shower this morning was ice cold, at first with my aching body I thought I wanted...
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