April 19 - Until Next Time

We decided that we had to leave and continue to the next country so we headed back to Freetown where we stayed with an old friend of mine who now works here. Passover started yesterday and I was actually able to find a Sedar which was being run by 2 Lubovitch Jews from Brooklyn. It was pretty impressive – they brought all the kosher wine, food and even matzah from the US. 23 people attended – Jews from the states, England, Russia and Israel  - and I got to meet some pretty interesting people, mostly in the mining industry here in Sierra Leone.    

Today we decided to make arrangements to leave and I made the assumption that getting out of Sierra Leone would be simple…big mistake. First of all, achieving anything here usually takes a full day, mostly due to traffic but also because in general, shit just doesn’t work. We were able to find a travel agent who found a flight for us leaving the next day but when we tried to pay, of course they didn’t take visa (nor did any of the other travel agents we visited or the airline itself). So now we needed to find a bank but getting money here is not so easy. ATM’s will not accept our cards so we needed to find a certain bank that would let us take a cash advance on our Visa. We spent the day being told to go from one bank to the next until the banks eventually closed but we did find an ATM that would accept our Visa card. The maximum amount we can take out is 200,000 Leones ($50) meaning we would need to make 20 withdrawals at a fee of $5 a piece provided Visa doesn’t freeze the card for suspicious transactions. So we were forced to continue this the next morning.     

We went back to the same bank but the teller would only give us money in the local currency so we needed to withdraw about 4 million Leones and with the highest denomination being 10,000 ($2.25 US), we needed to bring a backpack to carry all the cash from the bank to the travel agent. By the time we got to the travel Agent, our flight had been cancelled so our departure was delayed for another few days.

We caught the local ferry back to the airport which was certainly an interesting experience and after some haggling with taxi drivers and porters, a long wait in the heat and a small bribe to the customs officers to let me go without having my bag ripped apart in a “random search”, we were on the plane.

We both really fell in love with this country and I think Lungi actually wants to live here - not because she likes it so much but because everything seems to be called Lungi. Just kidding she loves the place. Off to Ghana...



Our great host - Jill



Counting my millions 

The ferry

Lungi getting to Lungi

Lungi shrimp!

The Lungi network

Some random pictures:

 

 

The new (and improved) Baywatch

Lungi's first purchase for our future baby (NO SHE IS NOT PREGNANT!)