Our Weekend Away

It was time for another trip away from Makeni on the weekend so we decided to go to Freetown on Friday then head to the beach Saturday and finally end up in Tombo the location for the CBF academy.

We left Makeni to start our 3 hour drive in a comfortable 7 seater car which we had all to ourselves. This was honestly quite a luxury for us as we are usually all crammed together. The driver was quite entertaining and spent practically the whole journey with his hazard lights on and wearing a builders hard hat as some sort of helmet. I wondered why he even bothered with this safety precaution as he wasn’t too fussed about wearing his seat belt. Anyway he did get us safely to our hotel after ramming his car through the crowds of people. Freetown is pretty crazy. It’s full of people, orcado’s and cars all travelling in different directions and getting on with their daily routines. Our hotel rooms felt like heaven as we were greeted with a blast of cold air from the air con and 24/7 electricity. We had dinner then made our way to a bar to meet Charlie from The Collective and Pete who works at CBF as well as a few of their friends. Freetown is much more westernised than Makeni so it was nice to be able to go to a proper bar and club again. We enjoyed having a few drinks at the club which was right on the beach then headed home at about 3:30am in search for some food. We came across a man selling omelette and bread which is as good as a Subway at that sort of time and headed back to the hotel. The next morning we met with Charlie to go over work and then had a look round the market for some Sierra Leone football shirts. We left a couple of hours later and headed to Burah Beach.

Burah is yet another beautiful beach here and when we arrived there were crowds of people dancing to music and playing in the sea. We arranged to stay in a wooden cabin and tent for the night and then headed straight for the sea. The waves were pretty big and went right over our heads so we spent quite a while trying to catch them and getting knocked off our feet. It was amazing swimming in the sea with music blaring out and mountains surrounding us. We spent the rest of the evening chilling out and having yet another nice dinner of freshly caught fish and rice with groundnut sauce. Perfect. The next day we headed back to the sea and Ben and Adam did a bit of surfing. We relaxed and then went off to the Craig Bellamy Academy in Tombo. 

The idea of CBF academy is that the boys who play in the leagues throughout the country can get scouted and selected to attend the academy where they will live and get schooled at free of charge. They also play football every day and have matches and eventually it is hoped that they will either become footballers or have occupations like doctors or lawyers. Two of the boys have already had the chance to go to America to play which is a great achievement. The academy is funded through the footballer Craig Bellamy himself and it is a great idea which is expanding further. We had the chance to have a look around the buildings and see the only grass pitch in Sierra Leone. We met some of the boys and were introduced to some of the people we are doing work for before making our way back to Makeni. Hopefully the next time we go up to Tombo we will get the chance to play against the boys.

We had a great weekend away and now its straight back to work. Ben leaves this Sunday so we’re hoping to get to all do something together before he goes.