I get most of my news second- or third-hand from guests where I’m volunteering in Sierra Leone. I’ve seen a television set once in my four months here (the headline on the screen was ‘Trump Victory’), and heard the comforting sounds of the BBC World Service just twice, from other… Continue reading
The cotton tree (nothing to do with cotton I don’t think but it is at least a tree) seems to like the sort of sandy ground that exists between Sierra Leone’s beaches and its loamy earth and on its busy city centre roundabouts. The cotton tree in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s… Continue reading
A week may be a long time in politics, but sometimes a day of Banana Island politics can feel like more than a lifetime’s worth. At times it is as if Dublin village, just five minutes from the guesthouse I am volunteering in, is enacting a modern day version of… Continue reading
Not many people head to Freetown to relax. Africa’s capitals, its cities even, and those of West Africa in particular perhaps, have a reputation as big, dirty and chaotic masses of humanity. And they are. In the same way that London or New York could be so defined. And yet… Continue reading
I have become a father. Only not really. Genetically, the offspring will not be mine; genetically they are not even the same species. By being vaguely kindly towards it (by not beating it), I have accidentally adopted one of the stray dogs that roam between Dublin village and the guesthouse… Continue reading
When the phone isn’t ringing or the guests are on the beach or in the jungle and I have a spare few minutes, I find myself making lists: things I need to do on my next day off, places I want to visit, emails I want to send, animals I… Continue reading
A few days ago one of our boats sank. Anchored on the water on a busy Sunday, the stern took on water from a freak swell which tipped the balance between buoyancy and submersion. Without anyone aboard to grab a bailer, it overturned and slipped beneath the surface, stern and… Continue reading
If you travel due south of York, Sussex, or Hastings, or roughly south-west from Kent, and cross the water, you reach Dublin. If you miss it, your next landfall will be somewhere around Venezuela. There are no cars in Dublin. There are no bicycles either. In fact, there aren’t even… Continue reading
As I headed for the Algeria-Tunisia frontier my path began to diverge from that of my great uncle more than the 75 years that separated our two journeys. A number of reasons for this existed, some more prosaic than others, for the most part coming down to the practicalities of… Continue reading
I would imagine my great uncle had mixed feelings over leaving Algeria for Tunisia to the east, in an ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’ sort of a way, even if his last recorded whereabouts in the country was in a small town called Duvivier (modern-day Bouchegouf)… Continue reading
