After a long and exhausting
BUT fun week of teaching and performing, a day of rest and relaxation was
exactly what we needed. It all kicked off at 9.30am where a handful of us
made our way to a local church service which Maggie, the principle of Ballanta
attended regularly. From what we all heard, Sierra Leone is big on its church services and gospel singing, which we got plenty of. The pace of the
service slowly increased until the appearance of the preacher. Through
the cries of 'praise Jesus' and 'I feel the lord' our preacher dictated a
subtle narrative concerning the debasement of Jewish culture in Israel
concluding with his vision of America, France and China instigating the
apocalypse with their nuclear fire. The proof of this lies in the 'red moon',
he claimed. Needless to say we all donated generously to the collection pot. It
was definitely an experience we will never forget.
After saying bye to Maggie, we
left the church at 11 o'clock and made our way back to the comfort zone where
we all had a chill before heading out kitty's private beach! It was a long and
bumpy bus ride but it was worth it in the end where we were greeted by a
glorious long stretch of sand and clear blue sea.
The moment we got off the bus, everyone stripped off to their bikinis and swim shorts and ran towards the sea... except for few people who wanted to take as many 'beach selfies' as possible.
Spending the whole afternoon on the beach and having a beach bbq was
absolutely amazing and everyone enjoyed it until the storm came. Most people
ran for cover (whimps!) but a few 'hard nuts' stayed in the sea and experienced
the storm head on where it was actually warmer to stay swimming rather than on
land! After storm swimming, we all went into Kitty's beach house where we tried
to dry off and had some entertainment from the students at Ballanta playing
music with buckets and singing the alphabet. After a lovely afternoon at the
beach, we headed back to the comfort zone where we had our usually routine of
dinner and relaxing.
Darcey and Charlie.
