Donald Hugh O'Keefe

WE were appointed as missionaries to Sierra Leone, West Africa, in 1974. Our stay in Liberia was to be brief and to serve as an orientation to West Africa. Liberia was considered the best place to apply for resident visas for Sierra Leone. In our efforts to get these visas I made five trips into Sierra Leone, going through a bureaucratic maze that would have been hilarious if it had not been so frustrating. Reasons given to me for long delays were as follows: "The vice president is out of the country and nothing can be done until he returns." Visiting dignitaries are with the head of state, so you must wait." "The principal immigration officer is on vacation." "We have had holidays." "We cannot find your application."

My first trip into Sierra Leone was especially memorable. Denzil Bolton, a missionary appointed to Liberia, a young Liberian church member named David Momoh, and I flew to Sierra Leone's international airport, Lungi. The airport building was little more than a shack alongside the runway. From the airport we caught a bus to Freetown, the capital city.

Between the airport and Freetown is the mouth of a large river that must be crossed on a ferry boat. The river is about five miles wide at this point and the trip across usually takes about forty-five minutes.

Unfortunately, the ferries are old and unreliable, and the trip schedules don't mean much. It is common to wait hours for a ferry to show. Although the airport is only twenty-five miles from Freetown, a trip there and back usually takes a whole day.

The ferry was big enough to carry thirty to forty cars plus hundreds of people afoot. Most of the pedestrian passengers were carrying heavy loads of produce or dried fish to the markets in Freetown. Walking up and down on the ferry were people selling gum, candy, cookies, and even pieces of roasted meat on a skewer.

On the upper deck a pleasant breeze gave relief from the constant heat, and the view in all directions was beautiful. Looking toward the dock on the far shore, we could see Freetown. It seemed to be stretched out in a long line made necessary by the terrain. On the north and west, the Sierra Leone River and the Atlantic Ocean formed the city limits, but on the south, serving as a backdrop to the city, were the mountains that gave the country its name: Sierra Leone. The name is Portuguese, and it means "Lion Mountain" or "Mountain of the Lion." They were beautiful, yet steep and rugged. They were true mountains, not just high hills, but their spectacular rise and ruggedness seemed softened by the blanket of jungle foliage that covered them from the base to peak.

Mountain of the Lion. The name was descriptive and proved to be prophetic.

As the ferry drew near land to dock, the market mamas, as many of them were called, were the first people on or off, often walking through shallow water before the ferry was fully docked.

Our bus took us into Freetown to the Paramount Hotel, a no-star facility with four-star prices. But the hotel was well situated in the center of town and convenient for our purposes.

Early the next morning we made our way to the Department of Immigration to apply for resident visas for my family and me. We filled out all the forms and gave photos and other requested documents along with our passports. We were told to return in a few days to check on the progress of our applications.

We had time on our hands, so we wandered around familiarizing ourselves with the people and the layout of the town.

Although Sierra Leone borders Liberia and some of the tribes indigenous to Sierra Leone are also indigenous to Liberia, the two countries are markedly different in many ways. Whereas Liberia was influenced by America during the colonial period, Sierra Leone was a British colony until 1961, when it gained its independence. The British culture has left its imprint on its former colonies, at least in a superficial way.

Only ten percent of the Sierra Leoneans speak English, but those who do, speak it with a British accent. The laws follow the British judicial system for the most part, and the government makes a pretense of following a parliamentary system. The architecture of the homes in the city is decidedly that of the British during the colonial period. These homes are small two-story wooden structures that suffer the ravages of an equatorial climate and the onslaughts of the most voraciously active termite population in the world. They are built very close together, and the wood is as dry as dust. Consequently, when fires do break out, it is common for four or five homes to burn before the fire can be brought under control.

The people of Sierra Leone speak twenty different languages, the most prominent of which are Mende, Temne, Limba, Lokko, Kroo, Sherbro, Fulla, Mandingo, Susu, Vai, Gola, Gissie, Koronko, Kono, Creole, and English. The lingua is Creole; in most places people speak it in addition to their tribal dialect. Although this Creole has an English base, it is totally incomprehensible to an untrained American ear. And being alone in a place where everyone else speaks a foreign language leaves a person feeling isolated, dependent, and vulnerable.

Local taxis are designated by a yellow license plate. They have no meters, so fares must be agreed upon before you enter. The fare rises and falls according to the weather, time of day, current price of gasoline, age of vehicle, attitude of the driver, appearance and attitude of the passenger, and so on.

When a person does get a taxi, he does not have exclusive rights to it. The driver will continue to pick up as many other people going in the same direction as the car can hold. That means at least four in the back seat and three or four in the front seat of a little Mazda or Nissan.

Anyway, we caught a taxi to cruise around in. The streets were narrow and filled with potholes. In some places the gutters were deep ditches with a vertical dropoff immediately next to the driving lane and with no curbs to keep to keep cars from falling into them. Kiosks lined the streets everywhere. The smell of the markets was that of rotting vegetation and fermentation. We labeled it "Lily of the Alley."

Traffic was heavy, and even the main street of town, Siaka Stevens Street, was only a two-lane road. People parked anywhere and everywhere—the sidewalk, in the road, on the wrong side of the road—anywhere.

A couple days later we went back to check on our visa applications. There was no progress! They had not done a thing! They now told me that I would have to apply in a different manner at another location to different people at another time. One of the first things that you learn in West Africa is to exercise considerable patience in dealing with the bureaucracy. I thanked them for their kindness and asked them to advise me of the correct way to proceed. I was told that I would have to apply to the office of the national vice president but that he was out of the country and would not be back for a number of days. I could not apply at this time. I would have to return to Liberia, get another visitor's visa, and then return to Sierra Leone at a future date to apply again for residence permits.

Inasmuch as our visitor's visas would expire before the vice president's return, and inasmuch as I could not leave our passports there for our applications to be processed in our absence, I picked them up to travel back to Liberia. Anyway, the next day was Christmas Eve, and we all wanted to get back to our families by then.

We spent the night at the Paramount Hotel and left early the next morning for the bus stop. You have never been to a bus stop like this. Always there are many more people to ride on the bus than there are seats. The lines form before sunup, hours before the buses come.

When the buses showed up at 8:00 a.m., the lines disintegrated. Total chaos ensued. There was pushing, cursing, and fist fights. It was just short of a riot. I still don't understand how, but we got on that bus. God must have been with us. We weren't even hurt.

The bus ride was the best part of our trip back to Liberia. The bus stayed on paved roads for 150 miles and then let us off at the second-largest town in the country, Bo.

From Bo it was all downhill as far as comfort was concerned. We haggled to get a ride on what is known as a poda-poda, which is like a van with benches in it. The poda-poda took us to Kenema, another well-known town about forty miles from Bo.

In Kenema, we found a man with an open station wagon who would drive us and several other people to the border for a fee. It was dirt road all the way. Every window of the vehicle stayed open all the way to the border in spite of the clouds of dust being sucked through the windows. This leg of the journey lasted about five and a half hours. We arrived at the border about 8:00 p.m.

The border is the Mano River. We knew we were late to make a crossing, so the driver drove to the bank of the river and began flashing his headlights while the rest of us yelled across the river for the canoes to come for us. They had just been leaving for the night. Thankfully the canoes came back. We slid down the muddy bank to the river with our luggage in hand. While carrying one of the suitcases, the driver slipped and fell flat on his back. The suitcase broke open, scattering clothes in the mud. Quickly we stuffed everything back in the suitcase and loaded our things and ourselves into the canoes, thankful that we would not have to spend the night on the river bank.

On the other side of the river, a little Japanese pickup truck with benches in its bed was waiting for us. It took us to the Liberian customs station, where the customs agent was playing a game of checkers.

As our group of fifteen wayfarers approached him with our travel documents, he ignored us. He was playing checkers, and we would have to wait until the game was finished.

When his game was over he looked up and acknowledged our existence. Then he looked at his watch and said, "It is after eight o'clock. Customs is closed. You will have to spend the night here." We were exhausted and there was no place to sleep but the ground or the wooden porch.

The people pleaded with him. They said, "You must let us pass." This offended the agent. He said, "I don't have to do anything," got up, and walked off into the night. Immediately, the travelers followed him begging him to forgive them for saying that he "must" do anything. They begged him to let them pass and began to give him money. When he was sufficiently mollified, he returned and processed our papers and we were on our way once again.

We boarded the little pickup again. It passed through terrain that had no right to be called a road with bushes scraping both sides of the truck. We passed through ditches and holes so deep that it seemed that we might turn over. We had to hang on strongly lest one of the jarring bumps toss us completely out of the truck. When we finally reached Brewaville, where the families had gathered for Christmas Eve, it was midnight. Everybody had waited up for us, and there was a very happy reunion. They were glad we were back and we were glad to be back. I was so exhausted that I felt sick, and we were so filthy that it was a wonder our families could recognize us. The dirt was so thick on us that they could hardly tell who were the black passengers and who were the white ones. Anyway, we had made it home for Christmas.

We made four more trips into Sierra Leone before we succeeded in getting our resident visas. Finally, after five months of pleading, cajoling, encouraging, and pushing, the resident visas were in my hand.