 Monday, January 14, 2013 (Day 5)
John Obey - Waterloo - Lunsar Waterloo is chaotic and frantic. Unfortunately, the fuel crisis still has a grip over the country and all the petrol stations are without fuel and closed. This is rather problematic as we are travelling up-country today to Makeni, where Jayne, Kate and I will be based. The official price of petrol is 4500 a litre (roughly 66 pence). The government subsidizes this and rumours are that this fuel shortage has been artificially manufactured by the state so that when new price increases kick in the locals will just be happy to have any fuel at all and accept the higher rate without too many protests or problems. The thing is though that you can always buy a litre of fuel, here and there, at the side of the road from business-minded hoarders. Fuel shortages are a way of life and some people make a living by selling on petrol at hugely inflated prices when the shortages kick in. Dorset Alex buys a couple of litres for 6000 apiece in Waterloo so we can continue on our way. At the armed vehicle checkpoint, on the road east, the police take a look inside the car and point to a can next to the gear stick. "You are drink driving!" "Yes, but it is Coca Cola" "Yes, but I don't know what is inside the can" Alex smiles and shrugs. "Okay, Okay. Have a nice day," The policeman concedes, dropping the rope to the road so that we can continue on. This is apparently as close as Dorset Alex ever gets to paying a bribe: a vague suggestion that he has broken the law that is made more in doubtful hope than as a genuine threat. "It is one of the policies of the Collective that we never ever pay a bribe to anyone." Alex emphasises as we reach a hill pass that was once a key strategic stronghold of the notorious West Side Boys during the civil war. Up-country it is immediately noticeably hotter; the lush green vegetation rapidly turning more of a brown as it is zapped day by day by plus thirty degree temperatures. As well as rising temperatures we are also having to contend with rising fuel prices. 'Eight thousand'; 'Twelve thousand' are the latest quotes for single bottles of roadside petrol as the petrol gauge flashes a disturbingly red colour. If you'd told me one day I would be sat in the back of a car in Sierra Leone about to run out of petrol in the middle of nowhere, you would have scared the living daylights out of me. In all honesty though I don't feel much more bothered by it than I would do at home. I am only reflecting on the possible inconvenience rather than any threat to our personal security. I am just thinking to myself that an awful lot of fields near Lunsar have been slashed and burned when Dorset Alex pipes up: "Right you lot, I think it is time you all started visualising lots of fuel for seven thousand in the next town or we might be calling it a night there. We are almost out of fuel." And so it came to pass. Ten litres back-of-the-netted at 7000 per bottle.
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 Thursday, January 10, 2013 (Day 1) Freetown, Sierra Leone Safely inside the terminal of Freetown International Airport it is still Christmas here with multi-coloured decorations hanging everywhere and fairy lights flashing green and red. It appears that our arrival was a complete surprise as none of the passport posts are manned by immigration officers. A few minutes later the doors burst open and in come the missing uniformed men (most of whom are smiling), rushing to their respective kiosks. I feared it might be chaos inside the arrivals terminal but, actually, it isn’t even remotely intimidating. In fact, I would say the UK, with its gun-toting uniformed officers patrolling its airports and wall to wall signs saying WARNING! ('Warning! You cannot bring 'blah blah' into the country'; 'Warning slippy floors!'; 'Warning! Warning signs ahead'), is far more intimidating and de-humanising. I find my rucksack without too many problems (I've only brought 12 of my allotted 34 kilos) and sidestep an array of men who want to help me carry it to the car park outside in return for a few Leone. Ben Bomford - 'a friend' I have never actually physcially met before - is waiting for me outside the terminal doors. Him and Alex from the Collective shared a double-mattress in a flea-bitten hotel somewhere close by last night so that they could pick us up early this morning. The lads are waiting for the three of us who have arrived today to begin volunteering for the Collective. My two new companions are Daniela from Dresden and Kate from Northumberland. The five of us squash our over-sized baggage into the back of the lads’ jeep and, after refusing to back down over not paying some imaginery parking charges, we set off to try and grab a place on the car ferry that leaves at 11. Freetown International Airport is located on an island, cut off from the capital on the opposite shore. There are, I believe, four options available if you want to get into Freetown from here: you can make the five-hour nightmare of a drive, take the expensive fast boat, jump on the slow ferry, or buy a seven-minute ride on the Ukrainian-built former military helicopter, which transports the rich and connected (and will evenutally no doubt send some of them to early graves). And so, just one hour after arriving in Sierra Leone, I find myself with four new friends inside the top deck of a dilapidated-looking ferry sailing from the airport to the Sierra Leone capital. Reggae music booms out; Africel and Airtel mobile telephone reps sell us sim cards and I drink my first Star Beer, which tastes like it is six months past its sell-by-date. Alex helps me to change twenty pounds sterling with a money changer, which gets me 134,000 Leones. I feel like a rich man. Freetown and the forested mountains that surround it loom large on the horizon as I snap a couple of photos and our ferry completes its journey. There is currently a fuel crisis in Sierra Leone. Most fuel stations appear to be out of petrol and the one station we spot that is open has a queue of cars, motorbikes and dust-caked lorries stretching back a kilometre, with dozens more men queing with jerry cans. Apparently it took Charlie three hours of patient queueing up from 6am yesterday morning to fill up the jeep so that Alex and Ben could come and pick us up today. 
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More Than a Game joined The Collective and the Craig Bellamy Foundation in Sierra Leone for a seven-week voluntary placement in January 2013. Archives
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