Tie-Dye Heaven

Photo from Flickr

Yesterday began with a wonderfully lazy lie-in and breakfast on the balcony of fried eggs, sausage and plantain, which is like ibitoke banana but smaller, extremely sweet, and caramelised when fried in butter. Very yummy.

Then Alhaji, one of the drivers, drove us into town to find a hairdresser as Hirut wanted to get hers braided. We dropped her mum off at her friend's guesthouse for lunch on the way, and I got to see where Hirut spent time playing when she was a kid.

Whilst she was getting her hair done, I asked Alhaji to show me around. We went and got a cold drink (it was swelteringly hot and humid - I'm suffering heat rash on my neck), then we took a walk up the street and back. There was a large street market, lots of tinsel and people, and things for sale. Vibrant. Many more cars than Kigali too - and dogs. The UN shot all the dogs in Rwanda when they cleared up after the genocide, so there aren't many there, but in SL there's tons of them wandering about. Hirut said the bond between man and dog had been broken since the war, though. Now they don't even bother to get out the way for cars, they just lie there sunning themselves and blocking the road ;)

Alhaji also helped me to change my $s into Leones with the street vendors. £s go a long way in SL, too. Around 5,000 Leones to the £. Alhaji was extremely protective of me, holding my hand with traffic and making sure I carried my bag in front of me. It was honestly like having a bodyguard! A little over-protective with grown women, but he certainly had the arm muscles to ward off danger. In fact, you don't see bods like that in Rwanda! Men in SL are rather fit.

After that, Hirut took me up to the cloth market. The choice of cloth was extremely varied. Far more like Kampala than Kigali. We bought lots of pretty things, and Sierra Leonean tie-dye, which they're famed for making traditionally from herbal dyes, but now more commonly from synthetics. 

I bought two tie-dye: one yellow and red stripped, the other purple, and some red sequined cloth. We went back to the house for food (fish curry and rice again) and to start designing our clothes. It's a lot of fun to have material and decide what you want to turn it into.

That evening, there was a party at a bar down the road that Hirut's mum and dad were going to with lots of their friends, so we went too. We were fed a lovely Christmas meal and drinks, the music was excellent - a blend of general West African and really old-school reggae from the days before Bob Marley!

I met Llyal, one of Hirut's friends she grew up with, who is now living in America but has come back for the holidays to be with her fiancé who was also there. Many Sierra Leoneans live in America and Britain, they left during the war but still come back regularly to see family.

There was a stand-up comedian too, but I found it really hard to understand him as he was speaking Krio, which is a form of English that's evolved in SL over the centuries. Although everyone speaks English, they also speak Krio day-to-day. Although it sounds extremely familiar, because so much of it is English, it's still very hard to understand to begin with. Examples from Wiki:

Kushe - Hello
Kushe-o - Hello
Wetin na yu nem? - What is your name?
Mi nem Jemz - My name is James
Usai yu kɔmɔt? - Where do you come from?
A kɔmɔt Estinz - I come from Hastings.
Us wok yu de du - What work do you do?
Mi na ticha - I am a teacher
Na us skul yu de tich? - At what school do you teach?
I de tich na Prins ɔv Welz - I teach at Prince of Wales
Mi gladi fɔ mit yu - I am happy to meet you
Misɛf gladi fɔ mit yu - I myself am happy to meet you
OK, a de go naw - OK, I am going now
Ɔrayt, wi go tok bak - Alright, we will talk again

Krio is also the label given to people who descend from returned slaves. SL was a colony founded by freed slaves and Krio distinguishes that tribe of people from the natives such as the Mende. The Krio have always been well educated as Sierra Leone traditionally had a very good education system linked to Oxbridge and other leading institutes in the UK, which is why you find a lot of Krio in the UN and working overseas, but there are fears after the war that the education system is now in steep decline.

Another interesting fact I learned today was that, like Hotel Rwanda was filmed in South Africa, Blood Diamond was also largely filmed in South Africa. They just sent the actors to SL for a month to 'get a feel for the place'.

Walking around town you do see quite a few amputees and people in wheelchairs, reminded me of Rwanda before they all suddenly disappeared (think a law was passed about begging or something).

This morning's breakfast was totally wonderful: oyster curry on bread. Delicious, really spicy. We're off to visit the tailor today to get our designs made up :)

[NB 2013: Regarding the SL education system, further research suggests it was linked to Durham University as an awarding body.]