First few days

Freetown airport is in a tiny town called Lungi which is the other side of the bay to Freetown like this:

There is therefore a magical descent over the rainforest and the river basin as per the main photo on this post.  As you land you can see the lights of Freetown sparkling in the distance.  Then you have to collect your luggage (6 bags in my case; there are numerous porters to help) and catch a boat across the bay to Freetown itself.  In a very similar manner to the connections between the trains and the boats to the Isle of Wight, they don’t bother matching the boat schedule to the flight schedule, so there’s an enforced period of relaxation by the boat terminal sitting in the warm dark waiting for it to arrive.

My flat is huuuuuge – much bigger than the London flat with 2 spare double bedrooms and a spare bathroom.  I’ve got a veranda which I’m sitting on to type this – with a Star beer exactly as threatened:

I’ve had a completely crazy couple of days as my TBI induction started yesterday morning at 9am – unbeknownst to me as my driver didn’t pass on a message.  Following a certain amount of confusion I met my boss at a cafe down the road and then started a series of meetings which lasted until this evening.

So far – apart from meetings – I’ve been to the supermarket, seen the famous Cotton Tree, changed some money (the leone is about 7.5k to the dollar and the largest note is 10k leones.  Omelette and a cup of tea is about 57k leones so what happens is you change your dollars into laptop-in-Pulp-Fiction bricks of currency  – albeit that they come in a black plastic bag), been out for pizza (surprisingly excellent) and beers on Lumley Beach, been caught in a downpour and learnt that everyone deals with everything by WhatsApp here.

So far nothing has gone wrong except that yesterday morning I had no running water and today I had no gas for the cooker.  But all is fixed now and tomorrow I am off to the beach.  Stand by for sickening pics.