This evening's view of the sea from our porch
At about dusk this evening, three wooden fishing boats disappeared into darker side of the sea on the horizon. This happens routinely. Although, the really little wooden dugout canoes don't go completely out of site. We have a good view of these fishermen's commute from our porch. We also get the big container ships cruising past every now and then, like big floating buildings. Overshadowing the fishermen in their wooden boats. The Grimaldi lines ship features often. Freetown has one of the deepest natural harbours in the world apparently, but there isn't a whole lot of action happening at the docks. The action that does happen, is dominated by Lebanese importers. The Lebanese have a strangely powerful place in West Africa's trade economy.
Here's a view of one of the ships that pass by. The dugouts have a rough time with the wake of these ships when they pass by right next to them, although the guys paddling those things are amazing. I tried one awhile ago, and it's like paddling a round bottomed bath tub. Made of wet wood. But the guys in those things manage fishing in the rollers quite well, using their leaf-shaped wooden paddles. I'd really like to go fishing with one of those guys sometime, although the dugouts usually take a one man crew in Freetown. Two max. Maybe if I make a good friend with one of them I could manage a short trip. I tried doing that on the Turtle Islands once. I woke up at 4am and everything, but then the guy that I had talked to the night before decided that that morning wasn't the right time to go out to sea... He had a dugout way bigger than the ones in Freetown, I think it was a five man. Made from a cotton tree apparently.
For now, I'm just playing around on Stata, cleaning data.
The beginnings of the Stata ".do file" that I need to write. The one that is going to solve the world's problems and clean the data that we collected in the Marketing Survey.
