Freetown

I just got back from a short trip to Freetown, Sierra Leone for a prebid meeting on an upcoming construction project. Here are some basic stats:

- Country Population: 5.6 million

- Freetown Population: 1.2 million

- Country Size: Slightly smaller than South Carolina

- National Language: primary is English, secondary is honking

- Brookfields National Soccer Stadium Capacity: 45,000

The countryside around Lungi (Freetown's airport) looked beautiful from the air: lush green vegetation, many winding rivers, and palm trees. Of course, not a lot of development.

As soon as we left the airport in a shuttle bus, we experienced the poor road conditions that justify most African posts recommending 4WD vehicles for employees. Even with a skilled driver, crazy traffic and/or pedestrians can align a tire with a nasty sinkhole (or whatever is worse than a "pothole", these holes were ridiculous). Not even Jeep Wranglers could escape major damage from the terrible roads: I saw one by the side of the road with its rear axle gone and its drive shaft hanging down in pitiful submission.

The prebid meetings went well: a lot of work came out of the trip to clarify the scope of work, which will improve the accuracy of the construction bids as well as lower them. The contractors engaged with good questions, Post's help and insights were invaluable, the local government officials we met with were helpful: all the pieces I'd experienced in non-federal prebids...except for the foreign country issues.

While we drove around town, I got some interesting photos like this one: check out the local scaffolding. It's scary because it clearly works, but I somehow doubt there are any injury statistics.

Safety violation: the guy sitting in the middle isn't wearing a hard hat.

I also managed to get this partial picture of the soccer stadium. Soccer is huge, not surprisingly. People were playing in fields, roads, all over every time we drove in the day.

We were told not to drink the tap water, so we bought bottled water. The predominant bottled water brands were produced locally, and my favorite label was this one - I'm not sure if I agree with their choice of image for their motto "The Sweet Taste of Purity":



I had a good experience with their claim that it was "bottled under strict hygenic conditions"

On the trip back, I ended up with a 6-hour layover in Brussels, so I wandered down to the Grand Place and nearby sights. I found this awesome Manneken Pis souvenir that would be a great white elephant party gift:

It was a good trip. The tropical heat and humidity made me appreciate the DC weather when I got home.  Now that we're back in DC, we'll focus on responding to the questions - I think we'll be busy in the next couple weeks.

(This post written while listening to John Hiatt Perfectly Good Guitar)