The distance by road from Freetown to Kabala is about 300 km. The drive took more than 5 hours. Some of the road is good, with nothing impeding the flow of traffic other than the occasional speedbump and random army checkpoint. But the farther north you go, the more potholes you have to navigate. It’s as if someone, somewhere, doesn’t really want to you get there.
At times we averaged about 35 km/hr, no more, just the right pace to take in the scenery, like the incredible Camel Mountain.
We stopped briefly at Lunsar, to check out the famous cooking stoves, known locally as wonder stoves. Swap any ideas you might have of us popping into the West African equivalent of a Home Depot with factory-made offers with roadside stalls selling handmade stoves.
The metal casings are fashioned from buckets, car parts, and sheets of old metal, and the red insides are made of local red clay. Had I room in my luggage, I’d have been tempted to bring one home. Fed with wood, they last up to 18 months of daily use and are thought to be the cat’s pyjamas when it comes to safer cooking.
Next up was Makeni, the largest city in the Northern Province and the fifth largest in the country. Famous for its Gara tie-dying, it’s a bustling market town with lots going on. We stopped here for lunch.
At the table next to us, three lads home for the holidays from Hamburg, chatted to us, happy that we were enjoying their country. I ordered more food than I needed but after reading the sign on the wall I felt compelled to finish it all.
It was onwards then to Kabala, at the base of the WaraWara Mountains. We were booked into the Kabala Hill View Guesthouse, a labour of love and a testament to one couple’s vision.
It’s been a work in progress for many years, starting in 2012 with a bar, terrace, and restroom. Then came the addition of two bedrooms for those who didn’t quite have the wherewithal to find their way home. Now, with several beautifully kept buildings, they have 22 rooms in all.
The showers, we were told, had been turned off. Earlier that month, an idiot guest had had one beer too many and left his shower running all night, flooding his room and the houses below wasting some 5000 litres of valuable water in the process. Considering digital access is higher than access to safe water in Salone that was a catastrophe. Our car crawled up the hill. Having a water truck come up is both difficult and expensive. So, what water was left, post-idiocy, was being rationed.
Instead, we had a large bin of water and a jug – something I first met in India and now call an Indian shower. Sometimes we had electricity. Other times we didn’t. But we were used to that by now. You get used to everything. And quickly.
Whatever the guesthouse lacked in amenities, it made up for with the view, the service, and the food.
It’s been a while since I’ve been so well looked after and felt so at home in a commercial setting.
Naomi, our host, has her finger on the pulse of all that is happening locally. Hers is a vision for a future where local skills and talents benefit from tourism. A native of Freetown and a nutritionist by trade, she moved to Kabala some years ago to build and manage the couple’s hospitality project.
From the myriad people working on the property, she provides much-needed jobs and by offering guided hikes in the nearby WaraWara Mountains, she has introduced guiding as an occupation.
She buys all her produce locally and everything that makes it to the table is organic. Organic is the default here. There are no chemicals or pesticides because farmers can’t afford them. How wonderfully ironic is that?
We’d heard of a local woman who weaves country cloth and were keen to see her in action. Naomi arranged a visit for us in the nearby Amputee Camp, a settlement built by the Norwegian government to house displaced amputees and war-wounded after the war. They also trained people in various crafts – weaving, tie-dying, mechanics, soap making – so that they could earn a living.
There, we met Mammy Sara, a weaver who wove her kids through college. Her son, a doctor, sadly died several years ago but her daughter, a social worker and tie-dyer, is back in Kabala helping with her sisters and the business.
Tie-dying is a fading art though as the polos are getting too expensive – it’s a process that uses ink, soda, and powder and is beautifully done. Sunkarie was wearing a shirt she’d dyed herself, one I secretly coveted.
Talking to Mammy Sara was one of the highlights of my whole trip. I’ll tell you more about our conversation over on Unpacking.
We ate groundnut soup for the first time that night, served with a side of country chicken. And once again I marvelled at how good the rice was.
Completely knackered from a long day in the car, we hit the hay early expecting a sound night’s sleep so far from Freetown, the country’s capital.
But no.
Sunday night is not a school night in Salone. I doubt any night is a school night in the sense that I know it. The party in the town below was hopping; it was so loud I felt I could have reached out and turned down the volume without moving from my bed.
It finally quit about 2 am.
And then, at 5 am, the calls to prayer kicked off, the tinny sounds from the loudspeakers on the minarets bouncing off the valley’s walls. The town’s canine cohort joined in for good measure and the goats in the goatpen behind us took the prayers as their cue to join the cacophony.
We were scheduled to start our hike at 8 am. Alie, our guide, arrived as arranged. We thought we were starting from the guesthouse but instead, we took ocadas (motorbike taxis) to Senekedugu Village, a farming village at the base of Senekedugu, the peak we were going to climb.
In the village, we met with the Chief and paid our dues. He wished us well. It’s a lovely village, exceptionally neat and well-kept. Donor signs are evident and the school seemed particularly well attended.
This, in a country where you must have a school uniform to attend school and only recently were pregnant girls allowed to continue their education. Free education, while much touted as a thing, is far from free. Pens, pencils, books, and paper all cost money many families can’t afford. Teachers are paid so little (if at all) that many in Freetown have effectively stopped teaching during the day and earn their living by giving supplementary grinds in the evening. If you can’t pay for the grinds then you don’t graduate. It’s a vicious circle, one that is spilling into tertiary education – definitely not a good thing.
Alie had assured me that it was an easy hike and in fairness, he didn’t break a sweat. I, on the other hand, was struggling almost from the start. A trio of school-aged girls waltzed by me carrying loads of firewood on their heads, no doubt laughing to themselves at the tubabu, the white person, labouring up the hill. Come to think of it, though, the Kuranko are too nice a people to laugh at anyone.
We walked up and up and up through soft red soil, passing garden after garden laden with lush green cabbages, lettuces, potatoes, onions, carrots – all lovingly tended to by hand. Sadly, the slash-and-burn technique is still used to prepare soil for planting. But no pesticides – that’s something.
We went on and on and on until I heard my back click a second time. I knew it was time for me to stop.
I parked myself by a rock in the middle of nowhere, forgetting that my phone wasn’t working, and sent the others on ahead.
Pick me up on the way back, I said, nonchalantly. I’ll be grand.
Twenty minutes later, after leaning on my forearms on a large rock and experiencing a stinging sensation like millions of tiny needles pricking my skin, I began to doubt the wisdom of being so eager to be left alone.
I was in the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t find my way back if I tried – it’s not as if we were following a path-path. I had no phone and just enough water to last a couple of hours.
Rather than give in to out-and-out panic, I sat myself down and said my rosary.
It turns out that I was in no great danger. I’d touched a rock that was sitting under a tree that himself’s plant app said was a Cow Itch tree but I can find no record of it growing in Salone. Whatever it was, the sap was damned irritating.
Further along, when the climb became almost vertical, himself stopped and sent the others on. This is not a country to take risks in.
The youngest and nimblest of our party, WJ, was the only one of our trio to summit Senekedugu and by all accounts, the views are spectacular.
She came back down filthy from scrambling up the sides; Alie, by contrast, looked like he’d just stepped off the cover of GQ West Africa, or would have if the magazine published here.
Later that afternoon, we wandered the markets in the town. I gave in to my weakness for material, wishing on more than one occasion that mam were still alive. She’d have loved some of what was on offer.
Material is sold by lappa (2 yards of material worn by men and women wrapped around the waist). I lost the run of myself and wonder now if I’ll ever get dresses made from what I brought home or will the lappas languish in the bottom of a drawer full of unfulfilled intentions?
We had a couple of beers in a local pub and then headed back to the hills for a dinner of potato leaves (with rice and a side of country chicken). Who knew they’d make such a tasty dish?
That night, Monday night, the party quickly ramped up and in the morning, the mosques kicked off again, accompanied by the dogs and goats. So much for getting away from the noise of the city. I am sure though, that given time, I’d soon be sleeping through it all.
It was a wonderful few days in the mountains. We’d hired a driver well-versed in navigating the checkpoints and the potholes. I’d not have been comfortable driving myself. Local knowledge is invaluable.
I’d highly recommend Kabala Hill View Guesthouse – the food is excellent, as is the coffee (something that can’t be said for Freetown or anywhere else we’d been). But more than anything, it’s the homeliness of the place and the pride that Naomi takes in introducing her country to relative strangers that makes it so special.
I remember from my time in South Africa being mega impressed by the matter-of-factness of the African woman, her seeming ability to take everything in her stride, and her tongue-in-cheek sense of humour. Naomi embodies all that.
And more.
She is more than willing to engage in conversation and more than happy to answer questions, be they serious or trivial.
When I marvelled at her perseverance over the last 12 years in building what she has today, she said she’d realised early on that she had to love what she did to be able to do it. There was a time she didn’t love it and it didn’t go anywhere.
Loving it was a conscious decision, she said.
I could relate to that.
There were six months when I couldn’t set foot in #155. I didn’t just not love it, I hated it.
I, too, had to make a conscious choice.
We live words apart, Naomi and I. We live different lives entirely, but there’s a sameness there, a connection. It’s not often I can relate to that cosmic idea of a sisterhood, but in Kabala, for a few days, I could.
It is a truly special place.
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One Response
I loved the photo intro: Welcome to Kabala, the land of powerful mixtures. Yes!!
I also want to read and see follow-ups on the fabrics you got.