Peter Maybarduk

Anticipating Freetown
July 6, 2008

Unusual anticipation keeps my oxygen-deprived brain working while waiting to depart the Heathrow tarmac. This trip is already 15 hours old, and it’s too many days since I had a decent night’s sleep. Our destination is Lungi Airport, Sierra Leone.

Traveling far and frequently has, over the years, generally diminished my excitement at each additional trip, but this is different. I’ve not been back to Sierra Leone in 17 years. It’s a pivotal place in my mind; a land of dreams formed when I was a child, a place that framed my values, a home, and an experience that set me apart on my return to the United States. How will I feel if, for example, I am no longer comfortable there? Will people want our help, as our host and allies claim?

The vast North African desert now stretches out below; endless, timeless; not a settlement, an oasis, or even a minor deviation from its uniform pattern of folds and brushstrokes anywhere in sight. And despite our speed, approaching 500 miles per hour, the desert remains constant, unbroken for most of the afternoon.

The purpose of our journey, and the raw, intimidating earth below, clash, unsettlingly, with the comfortable environment inside our plane’s cabin. A Cuba Gooding Jr. film, which accepts the lives of middle-class Americans as ordinary, plays. Every passenger on the plane has money, and appears more European than African in dress. I wonder if we are doomed to be distant; too distant in custom, appearance and history, to be of use in Freetown.

But our plane’s passengers speak Krio; a welcome chorus. And I cannot wait to take a long run along Lumley Beach. To see Spur Road, visit my old home and school, see the Cotton Tree. This is a pilgrimage, I think. And I am certain, one way or another, it will be deeply rewarding.