The Africa Mercy from the neighbourhood:
Potato greens for sale outside the port - hmmm!
Freetown architecture - including many old beautiful colonial buildings - and Freetown traffic:
More mental traffic. It takes hours to get anywhere in the city with regular gridlocks and people yelling at each other:
An old British post box:
(I've also seen an old British phone box, a London Taxi, and loads of ex-UK right hand drive cars, mini-buses and trucks).
Below: the local beach. We will not be playing here. Many of the out-houses discharge straight onto the beach.
So, in summary: imagine Cape Town. Then double the temperature and humidity. Increase the population ten fold. Shut off all running water, electricity and sewerage. Stop garbage removal. Remove all pavements to leave open gutters. Arrange for a couple of wars. Encourage thousands of market traders to block up the streets, and bombard the already overcrowded streets with more cars than they can cope with. Build everywhere. And you've got Freetown! This is the first city I have been to in West Africa where I have absolutely no intention of driving anywhere. Fortunately I have a handy reserve of local drivers at my finger-tips. Olly
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