25 hours later

“I am a Muslim, and I’m a Chelsea fan.”  These were among the first pieces of information I garnered from my cab driver this evening in Freetown.

25 hours ago, I took a cab from my house to the airport in DC.  Two long flights and one ferry ride later, here I am at my hotel in Freetown.  It’s 1am but the staff party is tonight and the music is deafening (even in my room).  I’ll probably go crash for a while (if you can’t beat ’em…).

I’ve got the literary preparation for the trip: yesterday I finished Ishmael Beah’s Memoirs of a Boy Soldier and this evening I started Aminata Forna’s memoir The Devil That Danced on the Water, both of which take place here during Sierra Leone’s long civil war.

I would write more, but the beat is pushing out any and all thought.