Gone To Africa. Notes from a volunteer's experience of the Sierra Leone Marathon.

Now there's a post-it note title!  I started my volunteer experience by contributing a couple of days a week in the Street Child London office in my spare time. I was scarcely prepared for what awaited. 

On the way...

I don't know what to expect from this trip as I have never been to Africa, especially so far in to the deep end. A previously war torn country still feeling the effects of years of civil war (to paraphrase) and a third world economy. Clearly somewhere very far removed from anything I might have experienced so far.  I'm acutely aware of this fact and my senses heighten as a result. On the tube i can smell the girl opposite me eating her lunch, and the man stood above me chewing his peppermint gum. Which is odd because I have a terrifically awful sense of smell. This tube-line is a commute for millions every day, myself included, but today it's different. Today it's a bit special because the end of the commute for me will be Sierra Leone.  It occurs to me that I am excited, scared, overwhelmed already, feeling cautious, in my element on the brink of a new adventure and also totally out of my comfort zone. 

We help to get boxes of t-shirts on the plane, which I'm told will be a logistical nightmare and an opportunity for thievery and extortion when we get off the other end. It's good to meet people who've been there before and gain more of an understanding of the place and the event. 

Coming in to land- I had some sleep, still pretty tired. It's only 4am and still 

Dark outside. It wont get light for a couple of hours and being so close to the equator it'll be dark again in another fifteen hours. Lights started appearing on the coast and I get a sense of how low we are. We really are here.