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 While
the road wasn't as easy a ride as the paved road, it was as or more beautiful.
As the road got more remote it became less traveled and less well maintained.
For long stretches, except for the occasional
walkers that we would come upon as we neared villages, we pretty much had the
space to ourselves. Usually the answer to the questions, "Did you walk
your bike?" is, "Only up the hills." But on some sections out of Mondema
the descents
were steep enough and rocky enough or rutted enough that it was more relaxing
and practical to
walk the bicycle down hill as well. Overnight rain helped to keep the
puddles, ponds and lakes on the flat section road full, as well. To try to keep the drive train
more operational we had to dismount any number of times and make short portages
with the bikes. The optimistic spin on this cycle-cross activity was it
provided cross training for upper
body strength.
 This
sign probably gets a snicker from most readers of this post, but it speaks
volumes to initiative in public health and environmental health in many place in
Africa. Over the years and decades there have been great strides made in
providing a health and safe environments. Besides campaigns on the proper
disposal of human waste and improved sanitation, safe drinking water is much
more widely available, safe food preparation procedures are much more broadly
understood and more people are sleeping under bed nets to reduce the occurrence
of malaria. In many places we could get water from safe pumps where the
water could be drunk without extra filtering or treating. These strides are reflected in a couple of statistics:
In 1990 the age one to five mortality was 115. By 2008 this had drop to
71. Life expectancy at birth in 1990 was 40 years. By 2008 this had
climbed to 48 years.
 I
may not have always pick out or photographed new crops when they first
appeared on the route, but I usually did both when they were present in
large concentrations. Along this section of road we started see cocoa
(chocolate) trees. While the tree originated in Central America, Ghana
and Ivory Coast are now the biggest producers in the world. While Sierra
Leone lags far behind these export giants, some of its cocoa is certified as
'fair trade,' which should help them get into specialty markets.
 Watching
a goat or sheep get washed never ceases to be amusing. The
animals never act like the 'spa day' was their choosing. They may have
an inclination that a fresh appearance is not in their best interest. I assume that
the clean-up of this sheep is in preparation for going to market.
We were at the riverside because the road took a break at the Sewa River.
We took a break as well as we waiting for the ferry to come from the other side
of the river. It seemed that the ferry crew as taking a break as well
because this required quite a bit of hollering from our side of the river to
achieve.
After the river the road followed flatter terrain. It was relatively
sparsely populated, without towns or particularly big villages. The views
continued to be a pleasing mosaic of farms, forest and villages.
These are some old rubber trees that don't appear to be actively tapped.
We passed more seemingly abandoned estates than we saw groves actively being tapped
or new latex operations being developed. The absence of
any sighting or whiffs from latex processing factories would also suggest
that the industry is not very active in this area at this time.
Just as a reminder, if nothing else, they ride was just plain beautiful.
 The
Sewa River is one of Sierra Leone's diamond rivers. A lot of the
mining is done by dredging. During the rainy season the river is too
high to mine so we weren't able to see any actual mining being done, but
occasionally we could spot some dredging equipment. We did meet a few
diamond miners and heard their stories. We were invited back in the
dry season to watch the mining. As an alternative you can search
YouTube for 'Sierra Leone diamond mining' or something similar and a get a
list of videos to watch that cover dredging, washing and sorting diamonds.
Diamond mining doesn't use poisonous substances like gold mining, but it
still isn't environmentally benign.
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