the variegated means of waking.
July 9, 2010
Adam Linnard

Dogs are patrolling in angry gangs looking for mates, and then turning viciously on one another when they find one. All night this goes on and I wake periodically to threatening growls, querulous barks and defeated whimpers.

There’s a small, white, concrete mosque across the street from our house, built by Bangladeshi Peace Keepers in 2002. I heard rumours that the Imam who was there last time I was here turned out to be secretly Christian and had to leave. He had the deepest voice I’ve ever heard, which made the call to prayer in the morning sound a little like Nick Cave singing Hindi-pop. There seems to be a rotation there now. They’ve got their ace, whose got a nice, meditative melody and who only uses the megaphone at 4 in the morning when it’s necessary to rouse the worshipers from their slumber.  Sometimes they bring in a young kid, whose soft, almost feminine voice continues to surprise me whenever I hear it. And most recently they have introduced a morning wild card with a booming voice, way louder than the others, who doesn’t much waste his energy on intonation. He’s my least favourite. He’s my Empire Burlesque.

I’m thinking about this because I’m in Freetown right now, and it’s Friday. The mosque down the road has been singing for a couple hours now, and it is decidedly pleasant. I’m in the Big Hazy to meet with a woman from the Big Smoke, who’s here for Street Kids to talk about the possibility of working on a pilot project to improve financial literacy and access for youth. While I’m here I will continue brainstorming a future peace building project with the CAUSE Sierra Leone Peace Project Coordinator, Daniel N’bompa-Turay. It’s intended to be a progression from the Peace Building Project that ended with the conference in May.

I am taking advantage of this opportunity to continue my residency at the National Stadium Hostel, where the dogs are complacent and there is no nearby mosque, but where the bed is so sunken I feel like I’m sleeping in a hammock.

Here’s a photo from Kamakwie, during a meeting we had about expanding our program there. It may be unrelated to the rest of my blog, but it’s a more interesting photo than the one of my hostel room. Be thankful for my willing irrelevance. 

I have a pretty standardized system for signing off letters but am unaware of any such formalities for blogs. That’s all.