Sierra Leone, Finally

We have finally arrived at the Kamakwie Wesleyan Hospital in Sierra Leone. The trip here took quite a while, though.

Yesterday, we left Ghana on schedule with no baggage issues (Praise the Lord!). The flight to Freetown, Sierra Leone, was completely full. The airport for Freetown is located on an island, so after landing, you need to take a Water Taxi ($40.00), which is a 35-45 minute ride. So, after going through Customs, we located the taxi that we were told to use. We were loaded onto a bus, which was also completely full for a 15-20 minute ride to the water. The water taxi ride across to Freetown is very choppy, as the ocean waves were definitely in the 12" range. There were several people on the boat that were very seasick, but they were able to hold on until we landed in Freetown. Once we met our driver from the hospital, he took us through Freetown to the Companero Hotel. The traffic in Freetown is extreme, to say the least! Apparently the population of Freetown is approximately 35% of the entire population of Sierra Leone. It is mass chaos, to say the least. I would liken it to driving in Phnom Penh, except that most of the traffic there is motorcycles and pedestrians, whereas Freetown is narrow streets, cars, trucks, buses, and pedestrians! It is not a place for novices to drive, so we were glad our driver, Steven, knows his way around town!

After being served a large portion of food at the Companero Hotel, we retired for the night and Steven spent the night elsewhere. We got up around 6 AM, had breakfast on the balcony area near our rooms, and then Steven met us to drive us up to Kamakwie. We left Freetown at 8:00 AM and we arrived at Kamakwie around 2:30 PM. We stopped several times along the way, including the town of Makeni where the Wesleyan Church Office is located.

Once we got to Kamakwie, we met up with Drs. Tom and Karen Asher. After having a brief lunch with them, Tom proceeded to take the three of us on a tour of the hospital. The power needs are great here. A generator runs for 2 hours in the mornings and two hours each evening. The rest of the day, there is not power to any buildings. The Asher residence has a very good battery / inverter setup that allows them to have lights and some power most of the time. In addition, there is a solar setup at the hospital that powers lights in some of the wards and operating rooms. These lights are very limited, but it seems to be a good setup. We have been told there are some issues with some of the circuits and we will check those circuits in the next few days to see if there is anything that can be done presently to fix the situation until we are able to upgrade the power to the hospital. The staff living quarters are not very adequate, and the desire is to provide them with some better amenities, like the ability to have refrigerators, etc. We are looking toward the possibility of providing a large solar installation here, similar to what we are planning to propose at Ouagadougou. We look forward to the next few days of investigating, and appreciate your prayers on our behalf.

Internet access here is very slow and limited, so pictures of the time here in Sierra Leone will probably not be able to be posted until we begin our trip home. Please be patient and keep checking in. We sent out a SPOT message today, that some of you should have gotten.