A Wrong Turn

A Wrong Turn.

Allan had drawn me a map; Bailor had approved it. And now I was
there, at the clock tower, one of the main landmarks in Freetown. The
best word I can think of to describe Freetown is "thrown-together",
and that's really two words. Allan has used noisy, dirty, crowded, and
hot, when he's feeling favourably towards the place. But he doesn't
like big cities anywhere (save London, England), because those are
pretty common characteristics of big cities.
The clock tower circle was thick with people. There were fruit
stands, bread stands, piles of crackers and cookies on shelves, on
wheelbarrows, on heads. Cell phone minutes, boiled eggs, roasting
meat, and bags of water, all on top of each other. Everything was
being sold at every height from head height to the ground. The market
chaos was creeping out into the road, getting as close to the traffic
as possible, and there was no room for the pedestrians in between. Of
course, there were piles of pedestrians, four or five across, circling
the clock like a whirlpool.
Five streets come together at the clock tower. I plunged down the first one.
I had to watch my feet, and my hands were glued to my pockets. This
street was much narrower, and there were people everywhere. Women and
men of all sizes and ages were all squished together in a giant
claustrophobic mess, wearing traditional African clothes, or
secondhand North American t-shirts, or both. Some people told me off
in Krio, others stuck with "Wan' to be you friend!" but overall
everyone left me alone. Somehow, in the calm but sweaty crowd, I was
more anonymous than I've been in days.
The road narrowed and immediately curved to the right. The ground was
dirt, not paved, and smelled vaguely of sewage in places. I tried not
to step on anything wet. At this point I'd become a bit numb to the
kaleidoscope of sellers and salesmen. But then I noticed the
poda-podas.
Poda-podas look like old Volkswagon "hippy vans." They are usually
painted in bizarre colors with equally bizarre slogans – everything
from "Man suffer" to "Believe in God" to "Honor thy sister." They are
also all packed with people, sometimes on the outside as well as the
inside. Although you probably have some idea of the size of the
poda-poda, you also need to know that they were exactly as wide as the
road. So we all hustled over to the sides, fitting in around the
boiled eggs and flipflops like the last clothes in a suitcase. A
couple of poda-podas went past. They left a terrific cloud of exhaust
that went nowhere in the humid Freetown dusk.
As I walked, there were more and more poda-poda, and also the odd
industrial truck. Sometimes I had to take my backpack and put it over
my head to squeeze between poda-podas and trucks, and I was lost. So I
turned around. People were crushed together, being carried through
tiny and exhaust-filled gaps around poda-podas. Then,
"White man! White man!" There were more people shouting for me than
usual. Wait... I noticed that everyone had stopped. And there was
music. Orchestral music, playing from cheap speakers. So I stopped.
Some people laughed. Everyone stood still. There was space on the
street, and I looked around. Religion? What was this? National anthem?
The music stopped with a crackly cadence, and all the open space
filled with movement and sound. There was mud and sweat and exhaust
everywhere. But I couldn't see the speakers!

After a few more steps, I was back at the clock tower and not lost. It seemed like it had taken far longer to wind my way down the market streets then to find my way back. From the clock tower intersection, I found the right road - it was paved, and less crowded.

It turns out that every day at 6am and 6pm, the national anthem of Sierra Leone is played in the streets of Freetown. That corresponds to the raising and lowering of the flag for the day.