An amazing day, involving a river crossing, a fight, a waterfall, a couple of village chiefs, some chimps, a funeral, sampling local delicacies, foreign students and almost night on the town…
Meeting & MarketFirst of all, we went to see the Bumbuna Chief, because my father needed to discuss the progress of the dam project with him; the dam and power station can only be a success and be protected from pillaging in the chiefdom with his support. Luckily, the ex-geography teacher is both impatient to get ‘light’ for his village, and is fully behind all the environmental and social measures involved in the preservation of this newly protected area of rain forest. As he my dad chatted, I admired the Chief’s carved wooden throne and nice leather sandals.
Next we visited Bumbuna’s daily market; lots of stalls selling dried fish, vegetables (aubergines, cucumber, chillies) and spice mixes. I bought some deep-fried things of assorted shapes and hues, thinking they’d all be different flavours. But they were all very similar in taste, being mainly made of bland, fried dough.
We also bumped into the smiling, friendly woman who runs the U & Me Pub, and her mother. It was good to see a local we vaguely knew and say 'hi'.
Waterfall & KerfuffleOff we went to the end of the village, and parked next to the river, as excited children collected around us, running from every direction, and all keen to act as our guides. They knew why we were there; the only reason strangers go down that way is to see Bumbuna falls.
The rainy season meant that the river we needed to cross was swollen and fast flowing, but I managed to wade to the other side with the help of three small but strong children! Once we got to the far bank, we walked through the forest, pied-piper stylee, until we got close to the Bumbuna falls (which sound like they are drumming BOOM... BOO-NA). The thundering falls were gushing violently over boulders, as we made our way along the water’s edge, over rocks and tree roots, to get as close as we could. It was an exhilarating sight.
Then everyone turned around and started the walk back down the path, avoiding a troupe of army ants, to the river crossing and then the car. The kids wanted cash. We should have brought food or sweets, or at least some small change, and certainly should not have given them the two largish notes which we did give them. This is where the fight broke out. Tears, shouting, grabbing and upset, all caused by our evil money, after a happy morning with excitable children. At least I still had the fried dough balls, which disappeared in a similar way to a leg in a tank of piranhas.
For the rest of the trip I carried groundnuts, which I handed out instead of cash, and told my dad he should bring sweets everywhere with him next time. The people I gave the nuts to - who beg for cash but rarely get anything - were often surprised but always pleased. One grateful nutter started ecstatically shouting in the street about how "food give life!"
Jungle SafariBack to the camp for an Italian lunch - more of the same; meat, rice, salads, cheeses, fruit. We were joined at our table by some foreign exchange engineering students, who were working in Freetown, but had come up to visit the dam for the day.
Then we were off on a trek through the jungle to Kasasi, a village that until weeks before our visit was only accessible on foot. There is now a rough track, but we walked there anyway, through forest, past rice fields, palms and far-off waving figures which appeared from thatched huts and fire shelters on the hills around us. The track was often more like a stream, and we had to dodge the deepest water whilst occasionally sheltering from the warm rain under our umbrellas.
We met some women on the path, and asked how much further it was to their village. They told us not far, and shook my hand, saying "my sister".
When we entered this beautiful village, the trusting people were pleased to see us, and we sat in their central meeting building to talk to them. This was where we met the second chief of the day, Kasasi Village Chief.
It was so peaceful there. The buildings looked like they had grown out of the earth – which they kinda had! There were two tiny tots, toddling between everyone’s legs, and looking like the epitome of health. Plump, with shining eyes and smiles, the rice-and-fish diet and close community was obviously working its magic, and the kids positively glowed. I suppose that’s how all children are supposed to grow up. Unfortunately, my camera frightened them and them made cry, so I couldn't get a shot of these gorgeous little cherubs.
My father was pleased to see that a woman he had previously met, who had been in a terrible way after a spitting cobra poisoned her eyes in a rice field, was fully recovered. Also, he had helped a boy that had had a badly broken leg to get hospital treatment, and was given the news that the boy was also now fine.
After a short visit, we headed back off up the path. Some villagers and the Chief appeared to be accompanying us, but after a while they dipped off down a steep path into the forest.
A while later, soaked through and almost back to the car, we were brought to a sudden halt, by the most incredible sound; real, live, wild chimps! They were very close by, but we couldn’t get nearer, because there was a rice meadow between us and the bit of forest where the calls were coming from. We stood for ages listening, and attempting to decipher their language. It seemed like one female sounding seriously pissed off, an aggressive male, and finally another male calming the situation. We couldn’t see any chimps or even movement in the trees, but the fact that we had heard them was amazing in itself; there are thought to be about four chimps in that family group, who roam in their own territory of hundreds of km2.
It’s hard to describe the emotions evoked by hearing wild chimps, so human-like in behaviour and communication, totally wild, doing their own thing, keeping to themselves but living in harmony with nearby humans. Unless the humans hunt them. Again, I felt like I was in a situation that was too like the movies, just too African to be real, and couldn’t shake the comparison with a fake safari park, blaring chimp noises over loud speakers.
Finally, we gave up looking for trees shaking, and called our goodbyes to the chimps. After a few minutes, we were back at the car, where most of Kasasi was waiting for us! They had beaten us back to the car, and wanted a lift into town. All the women clambered into the back wagon section, crouching on the metal floor, while the chief and his male friend sat on the back seat.
Maltina & Palm WineWe bumped along, my dad trying to minimize the jolting for the women on the hard floor. They asked to be dropped at a house just outside Bumbuna, and as they all piled out and greeted the household, they started to wail and hold their hands up. A passer-by explained that someone at the house had died and they had come for the funeral.
As we were almost in town, we decided it was time to try Mabinti’s bar again. This time, the door was open so we called hellos to Mabinti. She was washing, but would be out in a second. Mabinti appeared, wrapped in towels, apologizing for not being dressed. We were welcomed and asked to make ourselves at home on the terrace while she got some clothes on.
Then she served us our drinks; I got to try Maltina, which was a bit sweet for my taste, but the intense malt flavour was delicious. Pa had Star. Mabinti sat down with us to talk. Unbeknown to us, someone had already been sent to get us palm wine, and a child had gone to buy peanuts. The nuts arrived and the fire lighting and cooking process started. Then the palm wine turned up, and Mabinti sampled it for us, to ensure it hadn’t been watered down, which people sometimes do in rainy season, and which could make foreigners ill. She declared the wine safe to drink, so we each had big enamel mugs of the stuff, which was rather sour, and tasted like a mixture between white wine and retsina - an acquired taste, but I quite enjoyed it after the sweet Maltina. I was later told that palm wine is often a lot sweeter and more palatable. It didn’t seem to be very alcoholic, but I guess that varies too.
In the end the penny dropped, and we realized that the bush telegraph had spread the news from the U & Me Pub that we liked groundnuts and wanted to try palm wine, which is why Mabinti had sorted everything without needing to ask what we wanted!
We had long chats over the palm wine. Mabinti told us that starting from about the age of ten, she was a nanny for an English family. She had become a part of the family, but lost touch with them when they moved to the UK. When she’d heard the previous day that some English people were looking for her, she hoped it might be her English family. She also told us how her guesthouse was destroyed by rebels in the war, and that the rebels murdered her husband.
We were invited back any time as Mabinti’s dinner guests. After meeting her two tame monkeys, some local kids and a sty full of pigs and piglets, we left with a massive bag of groundnuts, a load of limes from Mabiniti’s beautiful tree, and a couple of grapefruit.
On the way back, we passed by the funeral house, where the Kasasi Chief and his villagers waved as we passed.
Almost A Night on the TownIt was almost time for supper, but we made it back to the camp with a few minutes in which to shower and change out of our still walk-sodden clothes. During dinner, we sat with my father’s colleagues, as usual, plus the foreign students, who had decided to stay for the night after all. Following the filling food, we all retired to the bar for beer and grappa – helps with the digestion, you know.
A couple of grappas later, Michaelo, one of the Italian workers, came in, all fired up, wanting to take us all to Bumbuna for dancing and drinking, with his wife, Angela. Angela was a beautiful, fiery Sierra Leonean, with cornflower blue eyes. My dad went to bed, but the rest of us piled into Michaelo’s car, and went for a drink and boiled peanuts outside a house on the main square. I so wanted to go dancing, but all the discos were closed, because there weren’t many dam workers around anymore, which meant that no-one had any money to go out.
So, following a mad drive around the tiny mud-and-tin town, we headed up a steep track to the local radio station, in search of a party. The poor DJ was on his own, and totally bewildered by a load of white people suddenly bundling into the studio. I think he was probably a bit intimidated, too, so I was glad to leave him to it after a few minutes, and we headed back off to the camp.
After a soft drink outside Angela and Michaelo’s bungalow, I was given a lift the few hundred metres back to my apartment. They absolutely would not let me walk, because the rain meant frogs, which meant that cobras would be out hunting, and would be easy to tread on in the dark.
Chimps are still hunted for meat in rural parts of Sierra Leone, and their babies sold as pets to rich people in Freetown. Numbers are estimated to have fallen from 20,000 in the 1970s, to less than 3000 now. Both the hunting and the keeping as pets are illegal, but it’s not always easy to educate people about that fact.
Hung around in Lumley, where the hotel was, and walked on the beach, while my dad went to work. I got approached quite a lot by young men, who were mainly friendly and wanted to offer their services as ‘THE main beach boy’, who could help with arranging… well, anything touristy, really; trips, barbecues, drumming shows. I also got some minor hassle from guys who wanted to chat. Individually they were no problem, leaving me alone as soon as I said I wanted to walk on my own. But it was a little tiresome just because of the numbers of people I had to tell to go away, which I don’t like doing, and I did have to be firm with a couple of them, who argued the point of wanting to be my friend – “You no want to be my friend? Why you no like me?” 
Anyway, after being thrown around on this stretch of mud, ponds and rocks, we finally got to Lakka, where I was going to stay in a beach shack for the weekend. ‘Pierre’s Resort’ used to be the classy, French-frequented Cotton Club, but its collapsed clubhouse and collection of wooden cabins are now slowly mouldering into the beach. It is still charming, though, and the scruffy paintwork in amongst palm trees and overgrown paths, has an appeal that would be wiped out by maintenance, a refit, redecoration and – in the case of fallen-in roofs – a rebuild. My shack was full of colonial styling, which had clearly once been gorgeous and quite luxurious. Salty sea air, torrential rainy seasons and neglect have eaten away at the fixtures and fittings, the paint and the furnishings. But there’s the possibility of outside investors taking over the management and revitalization of the old Cotton Club, so if you want to experience this magical place as it is, you’ll have to visit soon.
There was no time to hang out in my home for the weekend; we had a reservation at Paul’s place, a couple of hundred metres’ walk down the beach. A call that morning had assured that a large lobster was caught and kept alive in the sea, ready for our evening meal. Paul doesn’t have customers very often (rainy season, effects of war, lack of road), and we were the only ones eating that night, so I was able to watch the meal’s preparation.
