Blog

  • Musings: Animals on the road

    Throughout Africa I have been dodging wild and domestic animals wandering on the road.

    Each of these animals has a different character and needs to be approached and passed accordingly.

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  • Day 68: A great day but a worrying one

    Why great? Well just look at the pictures of the road and scenery. New tarmac one minute, jungle tracks the next, then dirt roads. All through some of the most stunning unspolit mountain jungle.
    Why worrying? Because…

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  • Day 67: A wonderful place to ride a bike

    I have spent the day riding on some of the best biking roads in the world (if you forget about the pot holes).
    The Guinea mountains are stuning amd mostly unspoilt.

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  • Day 66: On my way home

    Yesterdays visit to the Sierra Leone Scouts was the last meeting I had planned for this trip. I will spend the next 3-4 weeks travelling home.

    I had a slightly later start this morning and after a half hour fighting through traffic amd markets I was back into the countryside. By mid day and after having my temperature taken at every town’s Ebola checkpoint, I was at the Guinea border.

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  • Day 65: Sierra Leone Scouts

    My plan was to leave Makeni early to get to Freetown by midday. I had been told about a great camping spot on the beach. Just as I was about to leave the heavens opened and it was pouring with rain.

    It eased after a while so I headed out thinking it was not going to last. It last.. and lasted… and lasted. It did stop raining… Just as I arrived in Freetown. By this time I was soaked so I decided to head straight for a hotel.

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  • Day 64: After Ebola

    My third day of visiting Street Child projects was to a village south of Makeni. I have done a seperate blog for that.

    In the evening Rashinda, Alfred (both work for Street Child) and I went out for a meal with some people who work for the International Medical Corps.

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  • Pate-Bana Marank Village

    A pregnant lady came to the village of Pate -Bana Marank and fell ill. The baby aborted and the woman died. The villagers were sad but in a rural area such as this it was not uncommon.

    Then the women who had attended the sick lady also became sick. So their families cared for them, wiped sweat from their brow, until all these women also died. Their carers also became sick and died. Can you imagine how frightening this must be for the villagers? They had not even heard of Ebola at this stage.

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  • Day 63: More Street Child Projects

    I went out with Sheku, another social worker today. We started in Yelisander village where he asked the teacher at the school to send the Ebola orphans down to the community hall to meet me. I started walking down the road with about 4 children. Another joined us, then another. By the time we reached the community hall there was about 20 children in the group.

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  • Dora’s Story

    Dora is a grandmother who is believed to be 102 years old. She looks after her four grandchildren aged 5, 11, 12 and 14 because their parents died from Ebola.

    She is at a time of her life when her children should be caring for her,  instead she has suffered the loss of her own child and the hardship and hard work involved with bringing up 4 small children.

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  • Benjamin’s Story

    Benjamin is a normal 8 year old boy who lives in Sierra Leone, Africa. What makes Benjamin special is that he is the single survivor of a family of 14.

    Since Sepember 2014 Ebola has claimed his mum, his dad, his sister, aunts, uncles and cousins. It is impossible to imagine how he must feel.

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