By Robert “Bert” Alaban Jr. (Batch ’79)

This piece was originally published in the July-August 2010 issue of “KUSHEO-O,” a newsletter for VSO Volunteers and Staff in Sierra Leone. Bert is the newsletter editor; he also serves as the Water Management Adviser at MADAM, Kabala.

I LIVE FOR WEEKENDS, AS I THINK MANY of us do. Weekdays are for jobs, for the money, so that life can be lived … essentially, substantially, on weekends.

Back home my weekends well-spent are simple joys— occasional “malling” which is short for “burning money in shopping malls” (eat/movies/shop; burn rate faster if kids are in tow). Maybe a day at the beach, which is not in short supply, what with our 7,107 islands, more or less, depending on the tide (only Indonesia has more), with sand hue ranging from jet black, grey-black, tan, tan background 2 darker 50%, to powder-fine white that does not heat up even under intense solar ray bombardment (important for mid-day barefoot beachcombing). Then there are my “hang ten” weekends whose ingredients are: lounge chair and foot stool, a book, a tall glass of juice. The stool is for putting up the feet on, hence the term “hang ten” (toes, that is). Did I mention what the British call a “dirty weekend”? – but then that is an altogether different story.

The Kids
A PLUNGE POOL (above) pulls the kids into its watery realm; but beware: toward the center the gorge is more than man-height in depth. Below, the sorcery of the place morphed me into a hydrophilic kid again for one fleeting hour.
Bert by the pool

While this last one is a quixotic proposition in this placement, hang ten weekends are easy in Kabala. Also called do-nothing days, I closely guard them to the point of inviolability, with the mantra “Sorry, I don’t work on weekends.” Typical venue: VSO House veranda. Book: currently “The Best American Travel Writing” by Frances Mayes, which is up for review for the September-October issue of Kushe-o. Juice: Lime, a.k.a. Lem.

Perhaps the only better alternative is exploring the rural recesses of Sierra Leone. And so one balmy August weekend, with Friend in tow—or in VSO parlance, “pillion” — I did exactly that. Destination: an ephemeral waterfall east of somewhere (for some reason I can’t disclose the exact location). It only exists during the rainy season, and this is the best time to see it.

Friend and I slept out Saturday in the sanctuary of two holy men a few miles from the spot, like Camp 1 prior to the final assent to the summit, but with a lot more style. This camp was a fenced, gated piece of Salone real estate with a guest house with squeaky-clean rooms, firm mattresses that VSO volunteers yearn for, electricity (solar and stand by diesel gen-set), running water with shower, and WI-FI internet. Dinner was corkscrew pasta in tunaooonion onion sauce, and oven-crisp bread. Drinks — a choice of Star or Calsberg (incongruous as it is for the holy men to have in their well-stocked fridge, but it was not a time for moralizing), Segares red wine, and old reliables Coke, Sprite, Fanta. The post-prandial talking lasted longer than the eating, but we were still able to hit the sack before midnight.

We headed out for the waterfall at around 11 the following day, and the two holy men were gracious enough to lend us one of their 4WDs, with driver, named Medu, who was also to be our guide. The destination was not really far off from the tarred national highway, 2 milesaccording to a sign, and in no time at all we were rolling along a dirt track fringed left and right by groundnut-corn-rice patches, woodlands, and elephant grass.

After a sharp left turn the Hi-lux crunched to a halt. Once out of the vehicle we immediately espied from a few hundred meters away a white vein of water disgorging from a flat area between two solid rock hills, so dense for roots to penetrate that the only thing green growing on their surfaces was grass, I think from the looks of it, which looked like moss from a distance.

From this high point to the undulating farmland below the water could be falling through a total height of a 50 meters, and from the terrain of the land, not in one fell swoosh but cascading over a series of rock steps or stages.

Medu promptly confirmed my suspicion that there is a plateau between the hills, which acts like a catch basin of water coming from higher ground. There is even a Fullah village at the top he said. Fullahs raise cattle and the thought that cattle pee and poo and everything in between could actually be flowing down diluted with the water crossed my mind and gave me second thoughts about swimming. But whadda fu…llah, the thing really looks — and the crashing water sounds — inviting.

Deep gorges, or plunge pools, commonly form under a waterfall– the force of water kicks up and out everything but the toughest of rock. In the first stage this was not so; water drops right into a large, solid, flat piece of rock and thins out like a slippery liquid carpet. So we clambered up several meters more and reached a tree-shaded pool about 10 meters in diameter presided over by gushing water falling about 2 meters on a rock incline that breaks the water up into a thinner sheet that flows into the gorge. Quickly we stripped into swimming mode, then gingerly stepped over to the water’s edge, knelt and splashed ourselves to prep our bodies for a cold immersion.

For the next hour we swam, dived, climbed, slipped, and showered right under torrents of Absolut-clear water breaking loudly that shouting is breath wasted, and whose hammering force, if one turns or leans at a correct angle, makes for a relaxing massage— of the back, the legs, the shins. We paused, and made time for conversation while sunning ourselves on a slanting rock surface — three vari-colored souls drawn together by the mesmerizing charm of the place even for just one carefree half-day, see photo. By now a number of local kids have started milling around — one even named Robert, my tocayo (namesake) — shyly staring at first then eventually claiming their fair share of the fun.

Surprisingly, Medu said that people in the surrounding villages hardly go to this place for what we normally term as picnics — you know, bring in food and family for a day of wet fun. Is it because the waterfall has always been there, save during the dry season when the water runs out, so the place hardly has magic anymore, or it’s just that the villagers simply have no “picnic culture”? “Both.” Lest we miss lunch at the holy men’s sanctuary, we made one last cavort in the water, dried ourselves then put our clothes back on. As we drive back I asked Friend, wouldn’t it be nice to take our friends here?

“No. This is just our spot,” she purred. Swiit ☺.

I agreed. In my head I can hear Terminator utter, “We’ll be baak.” And so for now, if you ask me usay di watafol de? Secret . . .

Last Updated on October 12, 2016 by Tudla_Admin