Sarah:
Having said goodbye to Planting Promise School, we set off on the 'holiday' part of our trip. (Yeah, ok, so it's all a holiday really...but this bit is more holiday than the other). We headed down the Peninsula to check out the beaches that run all the way along the coast south of Freetown, which are some of the most beautiful and deserted in the world. Turns out that having mountains so close to the coast also means that the Peninsula is the rainiest part of the country, and Sierra Leone is one rainy country. Childhood summer holidays in Cornwall (2 weeks of drizzle) have nothing on this baby...
The factfile continues:
Number of days- 5
Number of beaches- 4
Average hours of rain per day- 20
Other white people- 3
Least rainproof accommodation- raffia and palm-tree-leaf hut at Tokeh beach. We paid 20 quid a night to get dripped on when the torrential downpour finally made it through the tarpaulin lining on the roof. Still, we had it better than the German boys next door, whose bed got so wet on one side they ended up in each other's arms on the other side. Attempts by the caretaker to improve it the next day involved some complex fluid dynamics and one plastic bag, rearranging the drip next to, rather than on to, the bed.
Cups of sugary tea/ coffee/ cocoa drunk in someone's front room in a tiny fishing village whilst sheltering from the rain- 4. Jessie's long-time admiration for thermos flasks, our acclimatisation to powdered milk and the endless enthusiasm of local children for 'snappa' (photographs) made this a foolproof morning's entertainment.
xxx
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