Christmas Don Com, Hallelujah!

How beautiful is Sierra Leone?

It's hard to imagine that there was ever a war in this country. The people are friendly and generous, loud but not aggressive. The scars are not immediately evident, not the emotional or physical ones. The kids are hilarious; a couple came barrelling up to wrap themselves around my legs. Sure beats repeated calls of "Obruni!" Freetown is a charming city set in a bowl of rolling hills and valleys -- so many that the airport is a few kilometres away, across a wide river, so most visitors to the city end up taking a helicopter to the city proper.

We had a lovely time at the beach, bobbing in the gentle sway of the ocean, feeding on fresh fish and shrimp, reading a slew of books sent by Orla's friends and sleeping whenever the urge struck. We played a lot of RummyCube and drank a lot of beer and generally chilled out.

All of which left me with a much more positive outlook for the next week, which involved a 12-hour journey "up country" to the town of Kono, in the diamond mining region near the Liberian/Guinean borders. I arrived in the dark and was promptly bundled up onto a motorcycle -- my favourite! -- and sent off to a guest house. I ended up at a hotel across from a cinema where they were showing an Arabic film at a deafening volume. Not to be outdone, the boys at the guesthouse put a Nigerian film in the VCD player and cranked up the volume. I kept hearing them repeat the phrase "But we have a guest!" as they fought over their choice of film, figuring it was good hospitality to show me a movie, but I mostly wanted to escape the noise.

There is no electricity and no running water in Kono, so when night falls and the generators go quiet, it is well and truly quiet. Around 3 a.m., I came thudding out of sleep to the sound of a sheep bleating.

Sheep: "mmmmmmmaaaaaaaaaa!"
Sheep: "bbbbbbbbaaaaaaaaaaa!"
Me: "Shut up! Shut up!" Echoing out into the hallway and into the rooms of the other guests, who surely applauded my attempts at animal control.

I had to get out of bed to kick the guard in the shin and tell him to shut the animal up -- right now! -- or I was going to shut it up for him. Apparently this sheep's mate died after eating a bit of plastic. Sounds like a horrible way to go, a bit of plastic tying up your intestines until you go all septic and die, but I was thinking I might hand feed the other sheep a little shopping bag or something.

I woke up in the morning with a lump the size of a golf ball in my throat. Kono is an exceptionally dusty town and the Harmattan had left an extra haze of grit and dust over the town. Diamond dealers line Kono's main drag, but otherwise, there is *no* sign that there are diamonds in the area. There are "mines," pits of mud and piles of dirt, but there is such rampant poverty. So many young men just sitting around with nothing to do.

It was the same in Kenema, about five hours away. I lucked out and caught a ride two-thirds of the way there with a couple guys from the Integrated Diamond Management Program. They had a Land Cruiser and a familiarity with the road, which swerved in and out of rock beds and up and down the valleys. The landscape was just stunning -- mile after mile of lush hills and mammoth cottonwood trees. It was really breathtaking, among some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever come across on the continent.

At Tongo Diamond Fields, I got out of the car and onto another motorbike. With the caution to go slow-slow and careful, we set out on what was a 40 mile journey. Let's do the math there, shall we? An hour later, after I began whimpering in agony, after my bag had slammed into my thumb about fifty times, after my backpack had managed to do permanent damage to my spine, I finally hobbled off the bike in front of a guest house. I could barely walk up the stairs to my room. That was enough to keep me away from bikes for at least a week or two.

At Kenema, there were no sheep. There were mosques. Thirteen mosques. With loudspeakers. And, unfortunately, electricity. The one nearest my hotel had a tape from Saudi, which they played, starting at 4.39 a.m. and running until 5.43 a.m. I woke up ready for a holy war.

I spent the morning running a few errands, like sending a postcard and changing some money. The post office looked like it hadn't seen a postcard in a long, long time. The money changing place caught on fire while I was there. It was the weirdest thing. One minute it was pure pandemonium (some people support lining up for service, others try to subvert the line. And yet everyone is willing to fight about who is in line and who's not) and then it was a different kind of pandemonium. Suddenly there was no line, just a dash for the stairs. Me and an old guy sitting on the bench *in line* just blinked at each other. The uppity Lebanese guy who was changing the money and dolling out attitude came running back in, barefoot, to tell us to run. Or whatever he said, I couldn't understand a thing. I just decided to follow the crowd.

Kenema has running water, so I figured they'd sort themselves out and I went to find someone else to change my American dollars into leones. That's when I met Ali Hassan, a diamond dealer/building supplier who invited me to lunch. Normally I beg off invitations from old men, but a girl lets her guard down every now and again. We were served jollof rice in the back room and when Ali asked if I was married, I nearly shouted, "I knew it!" So imagine my surprise when he laughed at my "um, no" and said, "Yeah, you journalists never want to get married." And so commenced a really enjoyable lunch. Seriously.

Back in Freetown (the most unusual thing happened: I took a bus ride without incident, that both left on time and arrived on time and even though I was sitting with my bag on my lap, I was actually comfortable) I met up with an Australian lawyer, Andrew, who keeps a genuinely interesting blog at http://fleeingthejurisdiction.wordpress.com/. We had such a nice conversation that I managed to talk myself hoarse. Or rather, mute. This is my third silent day. Talk about agony!

(The title of this post, by the way, is from a Sierra Leonean song. The second line goes something like: "Happy New Year! We thank God we no die! Happy New Year!" It's actually pretty catchy.)