We have just had an amazing weeks holiday, we climbed to the highest point between Morocco and Cameroon, Mt Bintunami, in the Loma Mountains, and spent a few days relaxing on the Banana Islands.
Climbing the mountain was my birthday treat, and I couldn’t have asked for a better trip! We spent a day travelling from Kambia to Kabala, (6 of us plus the driver and all our bags and camping gear in a standard hatchback car, intermittently scraping the bottom of the bumpy road). In Kabala we met Mr Ture, a nurse who’s number had made it into our guide book, who helped us arrange a 4x4 to Sinekoro, a small village where we could start walking from. Foray, Mr Ture’s nephew, accompanied us for the entire trip, and helped us negotiate payments to the chiefs of various villages, and also arrange guides and porters and be generally very helpful.
Getting to Sinekoro in itself felt like an achievement, 4-5 hours in a 4x4 pickup, traveling along what looked more like a footpath than a road, through rivers, over boulders and up cliffs, my brother would love to drive it in his truck! It got pretty terrifying towards the end when it also started raining so add in slipping and sliding to the above, as we were getting more tired, squashed and hungry. Mary and her friend Ben were sitting in the back of the pick up at this point, so they were also cold and wet…Sensations we have yet to feel in Kambia!
We continued up the mountain the next morning, leaving our tents with Abu. The views across the Loma Mountain range were spectacular, (could almost have been in Scotland or the lake district!). We spotted what looked like the highest peak in the distance and were a bit disappointed we weren’t going up it, until a dark shape suddenly loomed out of the clouds ahead of us, and for a while looked unclimbable! What?!
But we kept following TK, and a path emerged and before too long we were on the
summit! The rocks near the top were just like Stac Pollaidh in the highlands, amazing. So good to be in the mountains again! It was also Forays first time to the top, he was really happy to have made it, and the others were also really excited for him too, which was lovely to see.
After a long walk down and the bumpy journey along the ‘road’ from Sinekoro we made it back to Kabala that night, exhausted!
The next day was spent in a car, poda poda (minibus), another poda poda and a small boat to the Banana Islands, where we spent the rest of the week. We stayed in an amazing guesthouse with a restaurant built using palm trees (live and growing…) as pillars onto which the roof was attached (I will attach a photo). Very impressive construction, and the perfect place to relax, swim, and eat fresh fish.
Unfortunately I spent a day in bed not very well, but it wasn’t a bad place to be sick – I could see the sea out of my bed and had a lovely sea breeze, and only lasted a day. Lorraine and Hannah had a trip to the health centre on the island, the nurse gave them a rapid test for malaria (a test for malaria from a finger prick of blood), so it was reassuring to know I didn’t have malaria! I’m looking forward to getting back to the paeds ward. I was touched when some of the volunteer nurses and Patricia the staff nurse called me to wish me a happy birthday last week. Hopefully making some friends. We also have two new recruits, Hannah and Noemi, who arrived just before our holiday. Hannah a GP from Cumbria, and Noemi a nurse and midwife from London. We’ve just had a meeting planning our line of attack over the next few months…lots of ideas and enthusiasm which is really exciting. I will keep you informed.
Lastly, I have received some letters, thank you so much! Post does arrive! Takes about 6 weeks. So if you feel compelled to write to me, feel free. My address is Kambia Government Hospital, Old MSF Base, Kambia 1, Kambia. Sierra Leone. I promise I’ll write back
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