The Purple Culture Guide to Sierra Leone

Chapter 1: First Impressions

What do you actually picture when you hear Sierra Leone? If you're honest, probably a few things: white sand beaches, maybe some headlines from the past, possibly a mention of blood diamonds. You might have a vague sense that it's somewhere in West Africa, that it's hot, and that life there might be, well, difficult. What you don't have is a picture of the smell in the air, the sound of the street, or the weight of the humidity the second you step out of the airport. That's what this chapter is about – what you can't Google. It's about the first few hours and days, and the strangest feeling that comes over most visitors: the slow dismantling of every assumption you arrived with.

The first thing that hits you is almost always the physicality of the place. The heat is not a gentle suggestion. It’s a dense, wet blanket that wraps around you, and you become acutely aware of your own skin. It demands immediate respect, and your carefully planned 'exploring' will quickly be revised to a more sensible plan of finding shade. And the light – it’s so bright, so intense after the plane's cabin that the world seems rendered in high definition. The greens are impossibly vivid, the red of the dirt roads is like rust, and the colors of the clothes people wear are a bright, defiant splash against the muted tones of the buildings. That’s the first tiny clue that this