Sierra Leone - First Days

I arrived at my final destination Makeni, Sierra Leone some 30 hours after my journey began. Freezing rain delayed my flight from Chicago three hours and I did entertain the thought, "What if I miss my connecting flight?" There are only two flights a week into Freetown so missing my connecting flight would mean quite a delay in my arrival (four days!). Well, we were able to make up some time on the flight to Brussels where I met up with the small team of women that I'd be working with and we boarded the plane shortly after making introductions.

Now we were half way there but we weren't going anywhere... We sat on the plane for nearly three hours as they worked on fixing some unknown part. Passengers began to get restless and at one point I was wondering if we were going to have revolt as protests began to escalate. Finally, we got the plane fixed and we were on our way. We arrived in Freetown to be greeted by pure bedlam. Our two elderly members of the team were escorted directly to the customs agent, while the other two members found themselves in the line for diplomats and officials. I however, waited patiently in the throng of people pushing there way through to customs and to pick up their luggage.

Once we passed through the mass of transport drivers and porters (the guys who try to snatch your bags out of your hands to carry them 50 yards to your bus) we were warmly welcomes by Ottama, a blind woman who is the projects facilitator with Women of Hope International and a member of the city council. She took great care of us as we passed through dozens of check points where military guards asked for, "toll fees" none of which we paid.

One highlight of the trip was the ferry ride across the bay from the airport to Freetown. It was a welcomed respite as we were able to enjoy the cool night breeze as we walked around on the deck stretching our legs and getting the kinks out after sitting for 26 hours.

We finally arrived in Makeni, Sierra Leone's third largest city (and the hottest!) around 3am. We greeted our wonderful hosts, dragged in all of our bags and fell headlong into our beds until well into the morning.

The question our host posed after day one here in one of the poorest countries in the world was, "What is poverty?" I would pose this question to you. What is poverty and where do you see it most?