Wednesday, 20 July 2011

PodaPoda bartering.

So if you want to go somewhere in Sierra Leone and you don't have your own transport you need to allow at least 2 hours if not more to give time to barter for a PodaPoda (taxi). We set off on Saturday morning at 12 up BadBoy lane (road to the dock,don't worry apparently its an old name) to aquire the services of a PodaPoda. Little did we expect it would take us so long...

You need to have a price in mind and be willing to move up or down about 20,000 SLL at a time. So if you start at 100,000 and get a PodaPoda for 120,00 (17 pounds) then that's not too bad. Bearing in mind we are still paying at least twice what an African group would pay. However, the price we were offered was no less than 600,000 SLL. (85 pounds). Someone from the ship had paid this price before so it was expected and word was on the street that the white people from Mercy Ship pay big money! (10,000 is about 1.40 pounds) White skin triples or quadruples the price!

We proceeded to barter which is a custom and must be done in Sierra Leone. Everyone barters!Its expected of you. So, the big group of white girls managed to gather a nice little group of maybe 20 + people who all got involved in the bartering or they just stood and started at us until it wasn't clear who the driver was and who we were supposed to be bartering with!TIA- This is Africa! After at least 3 bartering attempts, each of which lasted at least 20 minutes each, we managed to find a PodaPoda for 100,000 just like we wanted in the beginning! Unfortunately we had become so exhausted with the whole 'arguing' process that we ended up taking a PodaPoda that seats 8 and we had 11 in our group! Finally we set off at about 14:00 that afternoon!
We become quite close that weekend!lol!We piled in, rucksacks and all including a random guy which added to our number making it even cosier!

We had a great time at the beach again and made some little friends with some beach kids who had lots of fun in the sea and showing off doing cartwheels.

We did all get food poisoned or had some bad water or something so have been suffering for the past few days and i have had two days sick off work and i finally managed to have a proper meal today but i suppose that's what you get for eating off the ship!Wont be doing that again in a hurry!But the beach was amazing and i had an awesome weekend! Bring on the third week on Mercy Ship! :0)

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