The South

It's still Matt.

After Kabala, it takes a whole day of travelling to head to the second largest city, Bo, located in the Southern district.  One poda poda to Makeni, and another to Bo.  The second leg of the trip is rough.  The back half of the vehicle had the benches removed and was packed full of a dozen goats, the front half, a dozen humans.  Instead of taking the highway, our driver wants to save on fuel and takes a shortcut.  This road, not on the map, is more direct, but turns a would-be 4-hour drive into a 7-hour one, with significantly more bone-rattling bumps.  Our bums are sore afterwards.

Bo is the second largest city in Sierra Leone, after Freetown.  Though not nearly as expansive as Freetown, it's a nice, if brief, change from the more rural areas.  Paved roads and air conditioning aren't so bad, really.  We don't stay long.  The next morning, we do some internet: Alex works on employment stuff while I find out that the patriots did not win the superbowl.  In fact, they were not even invited.  Then we enjoy a cushy share-taxi for the brief trip to Kenema in the east.

Kenema is the base for the shady WWOOF program in Sierra Leone.  The town is vibrant with plenty of shops, diamond dealers, quiet side street neighborhoods,  and a man walking around (following us?) with a wheelbarrow full of the most delicious fresh coconuts.  African coconut sellers are supremely confident with their machetes, holding the coconut in their hand as they chip the top off for drinking, and then splitting afterward to spoon out the flesh.

On the left you will find a variety of posters, typical of those found anywhere in Sierra Leone. Note that Avril Lavine is there...some other interesting ones are of Barack Obama.

 On the right is a market with stalls lining the walkway. This is also typical of any city in Sierra Leone.

 The bread is delicious and the bread sellers are all lined up next to each other, so whenever there is a customer, they all try to show you how soft their bread is by squeezing it to get your business. Needless to say, trying to communicate that we didn't want them to touch our bread was an adventure in and of itself.

 There are several modern buildings and structures in the cities in Sierra Leone. In Kenema, the banks were by far the most modern looking buildings, but in Freetown there are a variety of buildings that look similar. We thought we should make sure to include this photo as we usually were not taking pictures of the modern buildings, but wanted to make sure that there was at least one photo documenting them.