Sweating it out in Kenema

Monday, April 23, 2018

We departed Freetown at 9 AM and found many improvements along the way.  We were so surprised to see how many more roads were paved since our last visit; the Chinese even made a toll road and we kept getting to these checkpoints to pay the fee as we went along.  The roads were so much better that it made our usual 5 hour trip to Kenema into 4 hours.

                                                                                           

 Fancy toll roads by the Chinese!  So many more paved roads in Sierra Leone!

As I said, we were going to try another hotel, the Paloma.  It is actually right across the street from one of our Church buildings.  It looked pretty good to us, but the rooms were a bit small and it was making me feel claustrophobic.  Also, it seemed the air conditioners didn’t work so well.  But we said we would take the room (the ‘closet’ was a few pegs with hangers on the wall).  We turned on the air and finally it seemed to be working okay; in the meantime we found a slightly larger room down the hall in the outdoor corridor, and changed to that one.  It actually had a couple of shelves and a cubby hole to put the suitcases in.  Then we tried the air conditioner and it just didn’t work very well.  By this time we’re getting a little embarrassed.  The owner took us to a nice room downstairs and we tried the air and it seemed to work just fine.  It had more room and so we moved our suitcases for the third time!

A typical ‘closet’ in the rooms in this hotel.  Our fancier room was similar except that they had a fancier piece of wood that had a shelf on top holding the pegs.  The management was very accommodating.

We went to dinner and visited with the Cobinah’s and Mohamed, the guy from SALWACO that always goes with us on well projects.  He helps pick communities where the District Water and Sanitation people want wells to be.  We also have criteria though, so Jim and the guys will go looking at half of them tomorrow.  We have a couple of days to look at 15 sites.  These people will also be expected to give 10% of the cost of the project.  We keep requiring more because it is the only thing that makes them sustainable. 

We bought a few things at the dollar store for Cobinah children—a jump rope, a few coloring and activities books and crayons.  For mom and dad we brought them a couple of card games that we had.  Amarachi will be again doing the hygiene training and community development with her team, and Jonathan will be the Assistant Project Manager for the 15 wells.  In Freetown, Brother Thomas, who has been watching the completion of the spring box projects, will be managing the about 4 springs we’ll be developing there.  A couple will be coming in June, probably just before the project will be approved.

The outside of the hotel was nicer than the rooms.  This is the upper dining room.  The food was really quite good & reasonable.

After we went back to our room we realized that every time the power went off so did the air conditioner and so it was hot in our room again.  We turned it back on and noticed that it really was struggling.  When the city power was on it worked, but when the generator was on it kept struggling to power up.  I suggested that they bring a fan in, which they did and that worked very well.  I was still so hot though after my shower that I couldn’t bear blowing my hair dry, so I didn’t.  My hair droops ugly awfully fast anyway even when I do fix it properly—the humidity is not kind to my hair. 

Taking a shower was really quite the experience.  I turned on the hot water and it got hot fairly soon, so I added the cold water, but then it got too cold.  It went back and forth this way (too hot, then too cold, then too hot, etc.) until I realized I could just fill up the big bucket that was in the shower instead.  Obviously, that was going to work best of all and the showerhead spurted a few thin lines of water out of it because of the low pressure anyway.  In order to flush our toilet we have to take the lid off and pull up on the thing inside—the handle, which is supposed to be on the top of the toilet lid, is missing.

The good thing is that they have a nice variety of food and it is cheap and good.  Also, the Internet surprisingly works very well here too.  Still, I can hardly wait till we go back to the New Brookfield’s Hotel…

John Conteh, our driver. 

                                                                               

The Cobinah family visiting us in the open air dining room.  

                                                             

The jump rope was for Alberta, but Jim and Amarachi also gave it a try.

Painted on the wall of the hotel.