Road Trip, part two

It's been many weeks since my last post due to a drought in the internet supply and another road trip in the provinces. I returned to Freetown this week after finally (yes!) making it to the Southern and Eastern Provinces and their attendant, headlining highway towns. My first stop was Bo - the "second city", or LA to Freetown's New York, although the size makes it a bit more like, oh I don't know, Bellingham before it had suburbs and sprawl? Driving on the brand spanking new road from Masiaka to Bo was glorious in itself, and were it not so conducive to driving smoothly and efficiently without braking I would have stopped to take a few pictures. Until my next trip, a description will have to suffice.

The highway is a real two-lane work of art. Sparkling black tar. Banked on all the right curves. Lined, striped and dotted with bold yellow and white paint. Occassional road signs - new and relevant to boot - warn of sharp bends. And the coup de grace to ensure the fine work doesn't wash out in one rainy season, steep gutters and embankments for run-off. The drawback to this drainage solution is that there is not much in the way of a shoulder. In fact, there's none but two feet or so the whole length of the highway. This seems to be a problem afflicting the entire country and is in my inexpert opinion the number one culprit for the heavy number of road fatalities. (The runner-up would be bad-plus-overzealous drivers.) Without a shoulder to pull onto and with all major arteries in the country two-narrow lanes at best, trucks, lorries, passenger vehicles, tractors, etc. all break down in the middle of the road and generally only on curves and hills, where visibility is worst.

Dear Government of Sierra Leone,
Please consider adding a (hard or soft) shoulder to your existing road construction projects: So that vehicles can break down where God wills them to, and not just in the village pull-outs (where He inevitably does not will them to). So that vehicles can swerve to safety when death defying maniacs overtake into oncoming traffic, rather than having to plunge into steep gullies, gutters, swamps, and forested ditches. So that when people repair breakdowns, they don't need to leave clods of dirt-and-grass strewn along the newly smoothed road to act as flares.
Faithfully yours,
Cautious driver

I suppose the upside is that, without much in the way of a towing service, the skeletons of broken cars along the side of the road act as a macabre reminder of road safety and deterrent to speeding. Although, sadly, I'm not sure the speeding drivers of the luxury SUVs and 'road giants' (Toyota LandCruisers, driven by NGOs and NGO-funded government ministries and which make up roughly 40% of the vehicles on the roads in Sierra Leone, inching toward 100% in distant Kailahun District) are driving slowly enough to see them.

After my solo cruise, powered by the fine road and some fine tunes, terminated in Bo, I commenced a few days of networking and interviewing, then moved on to Kenema. From Kenema I made an epic day trip to Tongo Field, and an epic over-night trip to Kailahun, before returning back to Kenema, back to Bo, and once again to Freetown. I will try to post a few photos here and there, though it's not too encouraging that my first post on my previous road trip was also the last one. It appears we have a much-predicted backlog.

Lots of love.
xoxo