Tuesday, May 29, 2007

May 26 – Ex-Pat Day. Conor and Tina meet the ‘crew’

One of the ladies at work, Anna, is an ex-pat from Essex working in SLE for a few months. This gal is definitely in to experiencing the pure culture of the area and has the best Krio accent (from british to krio is impressive). She’s savy and we certainly lucky she’s here.

We met Anna in the pouring rain at 9:30 on Saturday morning to go and watch the ex-pat football team play a team from the British military training unit (IMATT – International Military Army Training Team I think). Once the rain stopped and we started to dry things became much more enjoyable. We went to the game with Anna, Laura (who works at the British High Commission and is from London) and Kate (who is an Aussie and works at the Special Court (note to self…write about the Special Court sometime this week) who were a hoot. Even the British High Commissioner was there to open the match and present the trophy. Met some of the fellas on the team and I think they convinced Conor to join!

After the game a bunch of us headed for lunch including Abdul (who works with Anna at Plan) and two dutch girls – Quirine (an intern at UNDP) and Emma (who was on vacation from Liberia, yes…people apparently vacation here, who works for Right to Play) We ate on a patio by the bay and chatted for hours.

The afternoon was napping and a quick workout before getting ready to hit the post-game party at IMATT. The party was great. The ‘Africa bar’ was full of players and their friends. There was a pig roast and buffet and they replayed the game on the big screen. After the party, Nana picked a few of us up and we headed to Paddy’s.

Paddy’s is a legendary bar in Freetown and much drinking and dancing was had. I won’t go into details but let’s just say we didn’t get home until 4:30 am and I didn’t even really notice the time.

(sorry no photos. I'll steal some from Conor and post in this post later)

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