Goodbye Jordan

Tuesday June 21st 2011

The other day I talked about how the government is holding this country back – I can give you an example of this through what I saw today. While visiting these hospitals, I’ve been making notes about the type of access women have to care. That includes how long it takes them to get to the hospitals, how much they have to pay and whether or not the hospital is too far for them to be able to frequently attend Ante-natal sessions. Most of these hospitals have ambulances but these ambulances are jeeps that have been donated in which the back has been cleared of seats to make room for a stretcher. The most painful thing however, is watching an ambulance get stuck in traffic- people either don’t respect them the way they do in The States or physically can’t move out of the way because the roads are too small. Often times this can lead to severe complications on the part of the mother and child which in turn results in maternal death and neonatal death.

On Tuesday however, on the way to drop Jordan at the airport the presidential car and his cabinet were driving home, in the opposite direction. I couldn’t believe it when both sides of the road stopped and pulled over into curbs and into dirt ditches – not only for the president’s car but for every single cabinet car, bodyguard car, and family car that was following. It’s simple things like that which undermine efforts of hospitals in the country from doing their job; indeed community barriers is one of the key contributors to maternal death in Sierra Leone. 

Dropping off Jordan also sucked – she’s been a great at gathering data and an even better friend. It’s always good to have somebody you know when you’re visiting another country and I can already tell that the work is going to be much harder without her here to help me. HOWEVER, since she was leaving I couldn’t pass on the opportunity to do some things that she wouldn’t while in Salone. First being: ride an Ocada. (A little background information first though)

 As I mentioned before, the Sierra Leonean airport is actually on an island which requires the use of a ferry in order to access it. The hardest part isn’t using the ferry however, it’s getting a car to drive you 10 miles from the ferry stop to the airport. With almost 300 people riding the ferry each turn, it’s almost impossible to get a taxi once you land so you have to secure it before you go over. With the help of a homeless guy named Ali (his go to line was “I’m your man!”) we managed to meet up with a driver named Abas who promised to take us to the airport for a reasonable price. Another thing I’ve learned is that nothing is free in Salone. People want money for helping you with your bags, giving you a lift, opening doors – even when you don’t ask them to do it. People will wash your car while you’re out and expect you to pay them when you get back. Ridiculous. After we got to the other side, we drove to the airport in Abas’ car. I’m not exaggerating when I say that this was one of the most fearful rides of my life. The road didn’t have lights and apparently didn’t have a speed limit. People must’ve been going 70 – 80mph, passing each other on the left and right sides and cussing each other if people happened to drive slowly.  (i.e. anything less than 60mph)

Getting to the airport at 9pm we waited until Jordan checked in her bags at 11 while Abas went to sleep at the guest house. I had planned on staying in the airport till 7am so that I could catch the 8 o’clock ferry however when Jordan left and I felt like the mosquitoes biting me were sufficiently full, I decided to go to the guest house and catch a couple of hours of rest since I wanted to leave for Bo in the morning. I asked an old man where the guest house was and he gave me directions…only to run up to me 10 yards into the walk and offer to show me where it was. It was a nice gesture as his directions would have had me in a ditch but when we got to the guest house I realized that the nice gesture actually cost 6000Le. Nothing is free haha

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Now Abas had told me that he was going to leave the guest house at 7am so I explained to him that I would call him at 6:45am so that he could take me to the ferry… or so I thought. When I called him I got the reply of “Man, you betta get here quick. The boat go soon lef”. I’m not going to lie, I panicked. I gathered my things, paid for my stay and ran (I’m talking about the ‘08 Nigel sprint) to the road to hail a taxi. However, the first thing that stopped for me was an ocada, or motorcycle taxi. I’ve never ridden a motorcycle, always wanted to, this was an emergency, Jordan wasn’t here, and there were plenty of other reasons I used to rationalize my use of the ocada. After covering a 20 minute trip in half the time, I met up with Abas and rode the ferry over to the over side. Waiting for Mohamed to meet me I was excited to start on my trip to Bo.