The Cold North

New Years was spent in Kabala, in the North of Sierra Leone. Everyone was telling me that it was cold there. I didn’t believe them. How wrong I was! It was absolutely freezing at night and in the morning, I needed a blanket to sleep in and also long sleeves!!

We spent our New Years Eve in a nightclub with some friends, and let the new year in at 12 midnight on our watches. Five minutes later we let the new year in again when the DJ realised that he’s missed midnight, or maybe we were just on BMT. We danced round a bonfire and had a lot of fun!

The next day, as is tradition in Kabala, we climbed the hill next to the town. We took the long, easy way up, but in the midday heat, Diya and I still needed a rest at the top (and a few on the way!). As more people arrived, there must have been around two thousand people on the mountain top and it was a fantastic atmosphere. The view was awesome. The climb down later that afternoon was the ‘difficult’ route and I must have fallen at least 3 times! I have something of a reputation for always being dirty out here (it’s very dusty and I’m very white so the dirt shows up more on me…) but the state of my legs and arms was unbelievable! I would post a picture here, but I’m too embarrassed…

So, our holiday ended although I spent a couple more days in Makeni as I still had some days off work. It has been an amazing couple of weeks and really made me realise how much I love being in Sierra Leone. I’ve missed my three travelling companions in the last few days, especially Diya, whom I seem never to run out of things to talk about with!

I’m really excited to explore more of the country and of the West Africa too, and hopefully some of the other trips we are planning will come off, Liberia, Guinea and Senegal are top of the list at the moment, but we will see what happens…