We landed at 4:30 AM in Freetown and met Khanjan in the parking lot. We got into the World Hope vehicles that were waiting for us there (Muz and Will in the front of the big truck, and David in the bus with the other 30 people) and drove 3 hours to Makeni, taking in our first glimpses of the Sierra Leonean landscape along the way. Our first stop was Home Affairs restaurant (formerly [and still casually]) known as Mabinti’s after the proprietress. We gorged ourselves on bread, butter, and hard-boiled eggs and had some coffee to revive ourselves a little before arriving at our hotel. At Mabinti’s we had our first meeting with Jawara, our local partner for the initial mushroom farming business and a longtime friend and collaborator of Khanjan’s. We spoke with him only briefly but then had to get moving. We arrived at the hotel, and after unloading our luggage from the truck, gathered in the main room in order to discuss housing logistics and phone communications, and then were released to our respective rooms for the afternoon to get settled and get some rest.
Once settled, we had an initial conversation with Jawara in which we touched base about our respective goals and plans for both the venture and the fieldwork period. We were not needed for the translator interviews that occurred in the afternoon, so after unpacking we crashed in our beds for at least an hour.
By 4 we were ready again and went to the main room to see whether Jawara, who was assisting with translator hiring, was ready to show us his property. Interviews were still ongoing. Eventually, we went to dinner.