Above the water...

It's our second day here in Sierra Leone and we have the day off. We had an unfortunate mishap upon arrival here... we had eleven pieces of luggage on the flight from Dakar. Only 9 made it here. Can you guess which ones were missing? I bet you can... yep, the piano and the bass. Luckily our embassy contact here was able to locate replacement instruments at the last minute. We did the master-class and concert yesterday on borrowed equipment. I played on an electric bass-guitar and Andrew played on a very short electric keyboard. If you were wondering, yes, they did locate our instruments. Unfortunately though, they won't get here until Sunday night... after we leave for Bo. We'll be in Bo for two days, then we come back to Freetown. That means one more master-class and a concert on electric bass... ugh! Anyway, back to Sierra Leone. I said in Dakar that it was a tropical climate... well, this climate blows that one away. It's very tropical here and about 100 percent humidity. Right now we're sitting about ten feet above the water having some drinks. We spent the first half of the day at the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary... it's a place that takes chimpanzees from illegal captivity and re-trains them to live in the wild. They currently have eighty-plus chimpanzees and plan to let them all into the wild at one time. It was pretty cool to see them up close... they sure do have personalities.
Yesterday's concert was interesting... we had our sound-check and then we went to dinner where we had the slowest ever service. Our show was supposed to start at eight... we got there at 8:15. On top of that, it's the dry season here... ironically, it had been raining buckets for about 3 hours prior to the concert. There were about twenty people there plus the Sierra Leone Military Brass Band. The military band wanted to play, but they had to leave early, so we let them play before us. Wow!!... At least they were having fun, I'll give them props for that.
It's very different here from Senegal. There's virtually no infrastructure here. They just got through a civil war, where Senegal has been in peace for almost 50 years. The poverty is much more pronounced here... it makes me think of the Great Depression in the US. The town is mostly constructed of tin sheds that people sell things out of and I assume many live in as well. There's not much market for tourism here and the merchants are not pushy at all. I believe it will be a much more "real" experience here in Sierra Leone.
We leave for Bo tomorrow and I doubt there will be internet there, so I'll be back in touch on Tuesday... see you then.