Out and about

It was a fun weekend (my first in Freetown).  

On Saturday, we spent the morning sorting out the apartment then ventured into town for a little shopping excursion. It was my first trip downtown, and it was thrilling to dive right into the semi-chaos of the city streets. We found a couple of good stores, including this one. Obviously, I went on a total shopping spree.

Later that day, we went over to our neighbors’ place and picked up a couple of very cute new additions to our household. Thing 1 and Thing 2 (they have yet to be named) are adorable little rascals. It’ll be fun to have them around. 

On Sunday, we woke up to rain – lots of rain. Undeterred, we stuck to our plans to head out for a day around the Western Peninsula. It’s the rainy season, here, after all – if you let a little wet stop you, you’ll never get anywhere.

First stop was Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, a little jungle hideaway 30 minutes outside Freetown where dozens of abandoned or rescued chimps are being slowly reintroduced into the wild. We watched them play around on their big jungle gym – swinging on ropes, hooting at each other, and generally running amok. It all seemed incredibly human-like...

From there, we drove a big loop around the peninsula, stopping off at couple of beaches along the way. Before the war, several people told us, those beaches would crawl with Western tourists during the dry season. These days, very few people visit; most of the beachside resorts have been completely abandoned. On Sunday, amid all of that rain, we had the place to ourselves.

Bumping along on the rutted road to Freetown at the end of the day, I realized that this was my first time to “come back home” to the city. It was a good feeling.