We finally got our baggage! It only required a four hour drive, a two hour ferry, and a half hour taxi ride. Oh, plus an hour wait at the airport until the correct official could be found and the appropriate posturing could be completed. We were waved over by the police on the taxi ride back to the ferry for a so-called search because we didn't have the correct chalk mark on our luggage from Customs. Apparently 100% of the police here are corrupt, but once they heard we were volunteers they said 'lovely, lovely' and let us through with all of our cavities intact. We have seen the police carrying anything from an AK47 to an Uzi to grenade launchers - so it seems best not to cross them.
Did I mention how EXCRUCIATINGLY painful the ferry ride is? It is impossible to adequately convey how agonizing it is. On the plus side it's only about $0.70 (as an alternative you can get from the airport to Freetown by helicopter for $85). On the downside you are packed in like sardines smelling other people's armpits. Everywhere around people are selling peanuts, SIM cards, suspect looking candy, shirts, hats, (cold) hotdogs, frozen bags of white juice. Ide bought a t-shirt for 25,000L ($8) and was quite pleased with himself when he heard the same vendor selling it to some other tourists for twice the price (although no doubt our price was twice what the locals were paying). A Muslim stood up and started passionately preaching the Koran, stopping briefly to recharge his cell phone (another of the many services offered on the ferry). He urged all and sundry to buy a holy calendar (a photocopied piece of A4 paper) to save oneself from eternal damnation. As he sat down a Christian man began his own spiel over the loudspeaker - stressing the importance of a donation in order to avoid the infinite fires of hell. Some people forked out for both - covering their bases I assume.
In addition to getting our luggage, today was also joyous because we are now millionaires. We swapped $300USD at one of the many shady looking money changers that loiter the streets and got $1,200,000L in return! First order of business was to visit the only supermarket in Freetown and buy chocolate biscuits. Spending 18,000 on cookies killed me until Ide told me to stop being silly, and that it was only $6. Some things are very, very expensive here, as they are imported. For example, a small block of cheese costs $15. Gas is $7 a gallon. On the other hand fruit is quite cheap and fresh, and a sachet of water (they sell it in plastic bags here) is about $0.03.
Millionaires:
Next update - our trip to the beach.
