SL 5: The villages in Bo

We woke up Thursday morning before sunrise and were back to off-roading out into the bush.  It is amazing how different most of Sierra Leone is from the couple of main cities.        As we drove along these dirt roads you pass a village about every mile or so... mainly houses with  mud bases with thatched roofs and the occasional concrete building likely built by an NGO.  The roads are very narrow and it quickly became clear that pedestrians do NOT have the right of way.  These narrow muddy/rocky roads are peppered with natives walking between villages or even making the 10, 20, 30 mile treck into the next main town.  They are almost al carrying things on their heads... lots of clothes to wash in the rivers, sometimes food, we even saw a guy with a generator on his head.  

So anyway, as we are barreling down this crazy road the driver is honking constantly...as he comes around corners, as he drive up a hill, around any blind spots and whenever he sees people.  That is their cue to jump into the 6-foot bushes that line the sides of the road... and when I say jump in I mean it.  They literally disappear into the bushes because the cars are swerving all over the narrow roads trying to avoid the biggest pot holes.  And it’s not just the people... it’s little kids, the dogs and even the goats... it like it’s instinctual... when they hear a horn they step into the bushes.  

So on our way deep into the bush to visit our World Vision sponsored children we must have passed 30 or 40 other villages...  And as we drive through each village children run out of the houses waving and screaming “Padee” meaning friend, or “white man” or they just scream with the biggest smiles you have ever seen.  And we wave like we’re in a parade and snap photos... and they cheer...  It's an experience that can not properly be put into words... the joy on their faces simply seeing us drive by.  

In one village along the way a group of people ran out and stopped our cars... we couldn’t really tell what was going on at first but then Caludius explained.  A child from the village was sick and had been convulsing.  The mother was getting ready to walk the 10 miles to the nearest clinic when they saw us driving through.  Needless to say World Vision picked them up an gave them a ride... but Claudius said it was unlikely the child would survive.

You see, in the bush the clinic’s are so far away that they usually try to cure illnesses with old herbal remedies and things of that nature.  It’s not until conditions get dire that they rush to the clinics (the nearest ones built by World Vision) but by that time rushing means a day’s walk and the child usually dies along the way.  This is one of the main reasons many children (28%) don’t make it past the age of 5 ... and they have one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world.