Escape From Freetown

I’m writing this post from inside a high speed train on my way from Frankfurt to the Black Forest in Germany.  I left Freetown on Friday night to start a two week vacation, which will be my last before I finish my contract in August.

Leaving Freetown on Friday was typical.  Although my flight left at 5 am, I needed to catch the boat to cross the bay at 1:00 AM, so I needed to be there by 12:30 and needed a car to pick me up at 12:00.  I spoke with our fleet manager to arrange to have the car there at 12:00.  This, of course, didn’t happen.  I ended up getting a driver who wasn’t on duty to take me to the boat and paid him out of pocket.  Then I waited for the boat to leave for 30 minutes, had a 45-50 minute trip across the bay, another 20 minutes or so from the boat to the airport, 10 minutes getting through the first security check, 20 for the next, and then an hour standing in line to check in.  I didn’t realize this, but at Freetown airport there are actually no computers so you’re supposed to print out your ticket, which I didn’t do.  In any case, they worked it out.  15 or 20 minutes to make it through immigration and security and then and hour or so waiting for the plane to take off.  Typical Freetown life.

After a layover in Casablanca for a few hours, I finally arrived to Frankfurt.  I was really anxious about arriving to a place that was completely new to me, where I didn’t speak the language, and trying to figure out how to get to the place I was staying.  My fears, however, were completely unfounded.  After a few missteps, I found myself at my destination.  Frankfurt has an amazing public transit system that would put even DC to shame.  It’s hard to explain how liberating it feels to be able to decide where I want to go and what I want to do without having to deal with calling multiple drivers, dealing with other people calling and wanting the car at the same time, and knowing that everyone knows exactly what I’m doing all the time.  Despite its name, Freetown is the place where I’ve felt less free than ever before in my life.

I don’t want to make you all think that I hate living in Freetown, because that definitely isn’t true.  There are absolutely great things about it like my friends, without whom I would have had a nervous breakdown long, long ago.  And to be honest it’s definitely one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever lived.  But it’s not easy.  Although I guess it’s not supposed to be.

Although life in Salone can be hard, the time that I’ve spent there has flown by.  When I get back from my vacation on the 27^th of this month, I’ll only have a little over a month left before I come back to the US.  The overwhelming feeling I’ve been having at work these days is that there just won’t  be enough time to accomplish everything I wanted to before I leave.  When I started in my new job as the Freetown Health Manager, I took on the management of a huge project with a team of 21 people and a gigantic budget.  My job was to get it restarted and get it all organized.  I’ve made a lot of headway, but there are still miles to go until I could say that my job is done.  The hard truth is that in the end, I’ll probably have to just do my best to control my inner perfectionist/control freak and accept that someone else can pick up where I left off and it simply will not be the end of the world.