Customs

5 days, 3 ferry crossings, 24 hours in a truck, 7 dimples, 1 very seedy nightclub and a bucketload of sweat later, we arrived in Kenema. Despite all our best efforts to do everything above board, use appropriate channels and help from James (from the Lassa Fever unit in Kenema), customs were not expecting our arrival with 6 big boxes of donations. After our initial attempt to get them through on Friday afternoon (everyone had gone home) we returned to the customs office bright-eyed on Monday morning at 9am. We were met with a very adept paper-shuffling lady who had no record of our documents. So we trotted to the other side of town to the government building to get the documents re-printed. Returning to customs, the paper-shuffling lady (miraculously) found our documents in front of her….but the relevant man who could stamp these was now in a meeting with the IMF.

Fortunately, across the road we bumped into our supervisor Dr Khan (having a pedicure, yes he’s male) who made an energetic phone call for all the salon to hear. Bureaucracy in progress, we became concerned about ferry crossing timings. Freetown’s international airport (the location of our goods) is situated across a massive estuary from the main city. To drive around takes 6 hours, so the only way to get there is across the water. There are several boat related options but as the FCO says ‘none is without risk’. However, general local consensus is that the big car ferries are the least risky of all options, even if they do sink and don’t have life jackets. The ferries leave from the airport in time with the flights so there are only a few a day; our plan was to take the 2pm ferry across, leaving Dr Khan sorting things out at the mainland end, by the time we had arrived at the airport, a phone call would have been made and we would return with our booty on the 5.30pm ferry. It was optimistic.

We arrived at the airport to find that a phone call is not enough, in fact we needed the document in all its glory, with stamps. Dr Khan (who had the letter now with stamp on the mainland) had a plan. He managed to find a local lad who would take our letter to the airport via a fast (but more risky) route of a ‘speedboat’. So we raced back to the ferry terminal with Mohammed our rebel-escapee super-driver to meet this lad off the boat. Stamped document in hand, 4.15pm on the clock, we were smiling. Proudly presenting the prized document to the officials at the airport, the big cheese in the chair said ‘I will see to action this very quickly’, put the paper to one side and continued paper-shuffling. After some frustrated looks, the man granted us our special boxes and at 5.35pm we again raced back to the ferry terminal in the hope that it was late (which considering African time, was a valid hope). Sadly when we got to the gate the guard simply said ‘9 o’clock’.

In true British style we had decided it was very much beer o’clock while we waited 3 hours to board the last ferry of the day. Monsoon rains hit just as we needed to walk down the ramp, but we were in high spirits as we had our boxes and a 6 hour car journey with 7 people in 5 seats to look forward to. Mohammed valiantly drove through the night so that we could finally sleep at our Mama’s house in Kenema. After a big welcome from the whole family (and tea) we went to bed.