Seasonal Festivities
For Alice and Peter's Weblog, see http://alicepeter.blogspot.com
1st January 2005
On the evening of Christmas Day the district medical team and
the local MSF Office threw a party on the veranda of the
hospital's Under Five Clinic. There was a long programme of events
which started off with various speeches from local dignitaries,
MSF and to our surprise, us. 'Chelte'ham', as they prefer to call
it, was thanked for the support given over the years and the
toastmaster instructed us to tell the people of 'Chelte'ham' that
Kambia was now safe and that they should not to be afraid to come
here.
These were followed by plays performed by local people. The
highlight of the evening was a skit by hospital staff portraying
daily life in the hospital. By far the most enthusiastic were the
guards who transformed themselves into slapstick comedians and had
the room crying with laughter as they cavorted around the floor.
Later on in the evening there was, of course, dancing to very
loud West African music through enormous speakers with the bass
turned up high. We felt pretty shabby in our T-shirts and jeans
when compared with the fancy outfits worn by the other guests, as
seen in this photo of midwife Alice Batty at the party taken by
her seven year old niece Aminatta.
New Year celebrations were rather more subdued. We had planned
to have a quiet dinner of canned hot-dogs, saved from our last
trip from Freetown, washed down with Sierra Leonean Star beer. But
in the end one of the nurses sent us round pots of rice with spicy
fish-sauce which seemed a worthy alternative and saved us the
hassle of cooking!
After the generator was turned off at 10 pm and we'd had enough
of sitting around in the dark, we headed down the road to a
raucous party at one of the bars in town where midnight was
celebrated by waving candles, turning the music up and a lot of
pumping and grinding on the sweaty dance floor.
As BBC World-Service addicts, we heard about the Tsunami in
Southern Asia on Boxing Day and were shocked to hear the of the
scale of destruction and tragic number of dead. We are thinking a
lot about our friends living in affected areas at this time and
those who have lost friends and relatives.
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