on sierra leone, from kenya

i'm actually writing this post from nairobi, where i arrived yesterday at 4:45am, after flying through the night from freetown via accra. nairobi is an amazing change from freetown, much more developed than i expected.

nairobi skyline

i've been trying to come up with an adjective to describe sierra leone, and all i can come up with is REAL. sierra leone ranks 180 out of 187 on the UNDP's Human Development Index (HDI), making it the poorest country i have visited to date. the most important thing to keep in mind about these numbers, though, is that they are an average of the total population, meaning there are inevitably people who are much wealthier and much poorer than the average indicates. what this means is that the poverty affecting sierra leoneans also affects subsets of populations in other countries. i've seen this poverty elsewhere, just not with the same frequency.

freetown, like many other major cities in africa, is struggling to manage the influx of people from the countryside, who continue to pour in with the hopes of earning more money. a few people told me the population of freetown is approaching 2 million. the city is a winding network of single lane roads, meaning getting from one side of town to the other can take more than 2 hours. hundreds of people stream by, weaving in and out of traffic, as cars inch forward slowly enough that people often just turn them off in the street.

i was in sierra leone to meet with two nonprofits: door of hope (doh.seeyourimpact.org) and village bicycle project (vbp.seeyourimpact.org). these organizations are doing incredible work with very limited resources.

doh is run by a man named joshua handy who was discovered by our us 501(c)(3) partner, develop africa about two years ago. doh started when joshua began to use much of the salary he earned as a teacher ($100/month) to buy school supplies for the children in his community. with help from develop africa and seeyourimpact, joshua's program has grown to include a daily after school program for over 300 children taught by 8 volunteer teachers, a mosquito net distribution program (1000 mosquito nets distributed), and a tailoring school with almost 20 female students.

after school program

unexpected thank you/dance party from DOH's director, joshua sandy

meeting with the board of the FAWE girls school, a partner of DOH

vbp is an organization with an established presence in ghana (almost 50,000 bikes distributed), that is just getting started in sierra leone. i was able to be there for the second shipment of bicycles they have received (each shipment contains between 400-600 bikes). the process vbp uses to remain sustainable is fascinating. they sell more than half of each shipment on the local market to help pay for the approximately $11,000 it costs to ship the bikes from where they are donated and get them through customs. the remaining bikes are distributed in rural communities at half the market price. the founder of village bicycle project, dave, and i spent all day in the town of lunsar (80 miles east of freetown) and a few surrounding villages. it was amazing to see how many of the bikes his team distributed from the first shipment that are still in use and running well.

checking up on bikes from the previous distribution - the man on the right is the local bike mechanic, kareem

with dave and jack, a program coordinator, in the village of mofuke

i'll be in nairobi until monday, when i fly to kisumu, a town in western kenya. i'll spend four days there with two different organizations, humanity for children (hfc.seeyourimpact.org) and innovations for poverty action (poverty-action.org). i'm enjoying having a quiet weekend, catching up on email and sleep. last night i met a few rainer arnolds fellows working in social enterprise in nairobi. it was a great glimpse into the expat nonprofit life here!

freetown hotel view

and so it begins!

stella to prepare for my 3 hour layover in paris -- cartoons because i like cartoons

hey team,

it has been almost three years since my last post on this blog... last week, one of my mba applications asked me to 'describe a life experience that has shaped you.' perhaps not surprisingly, i wrote about my bike trip, and in the process, i had a blast rereading the posts on this blog.

tomorrow i leave for africa, and i hope to write a few posts while i'm on the road. my rough trip itinerary is:

• sierra leone - 10/30 - 11/3
• kenya - 11/4 - 11/12
• uganda - 11/13 - 11/21

check back for the occasional story!

b

3750 km (ho chi minh city).

the end!

i've gotten a little lazy with photos in the last few weeks, but here are some highlights from vietnam:

before coming to the mekong delta, i spent five days on the island of phu quoc.

sunset from my phu quoc bungalow.

while in cantho, i visited some floating markets. it was, unfortunately, a very overcast day.

this was how you could tell what people were selling.

much of the cycling i did in the mekong delta was on roads like this.

i almost got engaged on this ferry. clifford watched.

ho chi minh traffic! there are 4 million motos in hcmc. it was kind of a thrill to bike in.

ho chi minh rush hour.

well, this is the last post on hifromhk. thanks so much to all of you who've followed my adventures. tomorrow morning (very early) i'm flying to hong kong, where i'll spend four days before returning to the us on november 24th, just in time for thanksgiving. i can't wait to see many of you in the weeks to come! have a safe, warm and wonderful holidays. love, b.

3665 km (ben tre).

have you ever read mezzanine by nicholas baker? if i ever become a writer (ha) i'd be happy if my writing could be only half as scattered and rambling as his.

it seems to be a thing in vietnam to customize the ringtone your motorcycle plays when put in reverse. i've heard everything from beethoven's 'für elise' to 'santa clause is coming to town.'

yesterday was one of those days (i've had maybe a dozen of them on this trip - examples include meeting buela in the middle of nowhere southern laos or getting help from a handful of different people in northern cambodian who positioned clifford (and me and my bags) on the back of a moto in ways i never thought possible) when it feels like particular people were placed along my path for the sole purpose of completely altering and greatly improving my day's plan. since that sounds super egocentric, let me try again. perhaps i'm just finding myself in awe of how again and again, i head out in the morning having only a vague idea of how to get to the next big town, oblivious to the events of the day ahead, and somehow i always end up, in an admitedly roundabout but totally unexpected way, at my intended destination.

yesterday's chance encounter was chin, a vietnamese sign designer in his mid 50s who pulled up beside me on his moto about 40 km outside of cantho. he asked if he could practice his english with me, and i said yes. over lunch and coffee (which he insisted on buying despite my repeated attempts to pay, because in vietnam he said, the person who invites must pay) chin and i talked about life in vietnam. his english was pretty limited, but we managed to cover a lot of ground. after lunch, chin told me that the route i'd intended to take was dumb (he said too long), and that there was a much better way. soon i was following him on a bumpy road to an unknown destination. about five kilometers out of town, a ferry appeared, and after handing me his business card (write me a letter!) with directions written on the back in vietnamese, he told me to get on. then i got on the ferry, amid giggles and taigaoles.

at this point, i knew i was in the mekong delta, but that was about it. i got off the ferry, gave the business card to a teenage boy who then pointed straight ahead and drove off. then a man stole my oranges. then i biked the wrong way (on a thin path through beautiful countryside!) for five kilometers before showing the business card to someone else who told me to turn around. after retracing my pedals, i found another ferry, which i soon learned was the one i wanted. then i got on the ferry (third of four). on the ferry two men, using sign language, communicated that they would like to arrange a marriage for me and the woman sitting to my left. i smiled awkwardly at the woman sitting to my left, who didn't seem to know any of us, and said (in sign language) that i didn't think that was such a good idea. after parting ways with my ferry companions, i soon rejoined the larger highway i'd left with chin (his shortcut saved me maybe 40 km), and made my way to ben tre.

clifford and i are separating for good in two days. we've been fighting more than usual, but i just think it's our natural way of creating distance to ease the heartache. whenever we're not fighting (not often these days...), we talk about how much fun we've had together, how much we've both changed. and besides, i'm leaving him in good hands. i'm just hoping the next owner can tighten his spokes as well as i did.

3545 km (cantho).

i'm in the mekong delta!

this afternoon while i was biking along at my usual 80 km/h, a bee hit my handle bar and literally shattered to pieces. as if that wasn't surprising enough, i then watched (in slow motion) as the stinger (sans bee) spiraled up my sleeve and stung me on the chest. it hurt.

more to come from ho chi minh, including photos and a map update, when i have internet that is actually useful.