Water and Traffic

Some of you may be wondering the results of the water situation- so let me tell you then I'll tell you about another woe of living in Freetown:)

On Tuesday afternoon, there was an announcement that the water situation is no longer critical and that we could proceed to do laundry. That being said I RANNNN up to the laundry room to sign up for a lundry slot- beat most people and got my 9pm slot- I reallly needed to get my work clothes washed before I started work the next day.. I had nothing else work-friendly to wear, and wouldn't be caught dead in those stinky galley clothes.

For those still wondering- and I'm pretty sure I never said this- what ended up happening to cause all of this is we use the local water in our region and pump it in 3 times a week- monday, wednesday, and friday. The government controls the water supply and only allows the water to flow during certain times on these 3 days. So, what happened was water was not flowing to our region on Monday....or Wednesday... so.. we ran out. Just imagine what ended up happening for the families in our region who must've run out of water... Not good. We did get it on Friday, but it certainly wasn't enough to supply us for long ,so we got another source coming in, got re-filled again on Monday, and treated all of the water, which went really well, meaning we got water! So happy. It wasn't until yesterday, however, that I actually got a hot shower. Still a 2 minute ship shower, but that's the 'norm' so warm water was so great. I actually got my hair cut the other day and there was no warm water.. .so... my hair was washed in FREEZING COLD water.. it was... awesome... not;)

Now for my new story...

Yesterday I was invited over to the Team House, where the people who work off-ship live(about 15 or so of them I think). My friend lives there and invited us over becuase one of my roommates is leaving on May 1, and she wanted to have us over for a party. We got there in no time at all because it was 'National Cleaning Day', which they've been doing almost weekly now, which entails people barricading parts of the road, while the towns people use shovels and their hands and such to scoop the sludge out of the gutters and put it in the road for the government trash trucks to come pick up. They've been doing this weekly because soon the 50th Anniversary of Sierra Leone's independence is coming up next weekend, so they're trying to get it all ready... it's amazing how much trash can accumulate in 1 week...

Cleaning Day- the trash

On the Way to the Team House.. no one on the road...

So, we got to the team house in probably about a 1/2 hour. My friend who was driving- Becca- was amazed that she was actually going reasonably fast on this road- speed is not common here at alll.... which we were harshly reminded on the way home.

My friends Becca and Gregory made us some food only to realize others were making food, so we all joined together to form a great feast!

Becca and Greg cleaning the fish

The Amazing food!

After a great hugee meal of pretty much all African food and some swimming and time with friends, we made our way back to the ship so that we could have some dinner, get cleaned up and ready for the Variety Show that evening.

My 'red' velvet cupcakes... we were out of red...

We left around 4:30 and didn't get home until close to 6:15.... we were miserable.... here are some of the sights we saw.....

2 Parades...

Prime Time to Sell:)

You can see the traffic jam all the way down- mixed with people traffic...

This was one of the worst parts of the trip minus the parades... plus I also thought it's funny that there was an 'Obama' truck there.. hm...:)

We did this almost daily on Field Service, but I'm not so sure I"ll ever get used to it... definetly not going to learn how to drive one of the ship's vehicles(stick) in this country...