typical Freetown day

So this is my typical day in Freetown:
Get up around 7:30 (because it’s really hot in my room then as the sun comes in). Do ½ hour of yoga. Take a cold bucket shower (actually feels really good). Get dressed and pack my bag for the day. I leave for the college at about 9:15, 9:30. Getting to college consists of walking up the road to King Tom Bridge (I’m living in King Tom district, which is just west of central Freetown) where I get in a taxi headed for Circular Road. There are usually 3 other people in the taxi, or we pick people up on the way. You don’t tell the taxi where you want to go; you find a taxi that’s going where you’re headed. Then I get off at Model (pronounced Moe-del, even though it’s actually at the model school) where I catch a taxi up the hill to Fourah Bay College. The taxis up the hill usually cram 5 people in – 4 in the back, one up front – and then speed up this clearly very dangerous road up the mountain. Keep me in your prayers…

The archives open around 10, when Abu lets me in and I get to work photographing all the relevant material we found in the storage room on the first day. I listen to BBC World Service while I work and then at lunch time, Abu brings me a soda. I work until about 2 or 2:30.
At which point I’m free to run errands in town (have to take another taxi down the mountain) or go to Diaspora (a really nice cafe/wireless/library place) and get some coffee and use the toilet, since I’ve been drinking water and soda all day and there’s no working toilet at the building I’m in at the college. If I’m doing errands in town, I walk down the Circular Road from Model into town past Victoria Park (c. 1897) and along Siaka Stevens Street and catch a taxi back into King Tom or to Diaspora from the Cotton Tree. I really want to take pictures of downtown. It’s there that the closeness of the possibility of redevelopment stands out because the war damage isn't sooo bad there – parks, schools, nice roads, stop signs, street lights, air conditioned office buildings – just with a few too many people with no jobs…

After Diaspora, I come home around 5:30 and sit on the verandah with a coke or fanta and watch the sun set behind the mountains directly in front of me while the kids from Edwards and Prince of Wales secondary schools walk home. Then it’s dinner and then I escape to work in my room. Work means my article, reading theory, or copying pictures to my computer/recharging camera batteries/etc for the next day. And then I go to bed by 10. Not terribly exciting, but slightly more exciting than the British Library! I get to go to the beach, too, which is a major bonus!