I am on the home stretch now in terms of finishing here. Although it is only slightly less that two months ... I have five weeks of training to squeeze in and most of that is up-country where internet is not. So some stray thoughts...
- Taxis in Freetown are old suspension-less sedans held together with house paint and fencing wire (well actually I cannot vouch of the fencing wire). They never, ever, have window winders: it is as if aliens came and took every window winder from every car. So... when the wondows are up you fry, when they are down you get wet (well this is the wet season). Every driver has a spanner or maybe (in a luxury vehicle) one window winder to open and close all the windows.
- In spite of the house paint and general decrepit state of the vehicles (plastic on the seats to protect - well, you really, from the wet seat that happens because of the leaking roof and the heavy duty floor mats that do floor duty) every car is wiped clean whenever the driver has stopped for a while. With the same rag (it seems) with which they wipe their sweaty faces.
- In spite of all that, every car has a working radio - it doesn't necessarily work well but it works and no matter how much static and fading in and out of the reception; the radio is on and the knobs are twiddled with incessently.
I conducted a baseline survery for this work I am doing and one of the questions was about pollution: circle the causes of pollution - and one possible response was 'allowing old and badly maintained vehicles on the road'. Not surprisingly, hardly anybody circles that one (or the one about dumping garbage in the sea) - how can it be pollution if everybody does it?
The roadside hawkers sell an amazing variety of things (not just here but in all developing countries). But my favourite things are:
- the face washers/flannels and hand towels - presumably for wiping sweaty faces and then cleaning your car
- the CDs and DVDs that are so obviously pirated but for which you are told very ewrnestly that this is the 'real thing'
- hawkers who offer me spanner sets and home goods in spite of the fact that I am all too obviously a foreigner
- hawkers who offer me sunglasses in spite of hte fact that I am wearing some.
Salones are incredibly polite and helpful (generally speaking) to outsiders but aggressive and rude to each other. The research for this work has shown that 92% of children between 2 - 14 have experience physical and/or psychological punishment in thel ast month (from when the suurvey was done). 22% of these kids experienced severe punishment - i.e. enough to send you to hospital (always assuming that there is a hospital). 85% of women felt that beating women for burning the food or neglecting the children was justified. And this is a country with the recent history or one of the most brutal civil wars in a history of particularly brutal wars. And we are working on changing behaviour so that it is rights-based (i.e. treating people using the principles of respect, equality and dignity). It is an uphill battle.
