It’s a bit like shopping – but it’s so much harder…

I guess in many ways the honey moon period is coming to an end now. The real world is starting to encroach. Routines have been formed and have even had time to settle. I’m no longer a visitor in a new and astonishing city - I’m an immigrant trying to find some way of feeling like something close to a resident. Things that were once extraordinary now pass completely unremarked, (though I doubt there are enough months left for any of this to become mundane).

You cannot be a passing observer for ever – you must commit or move on. And if proof of our commitment were needed, it is this: last week we finished stocking up the house. In one final big effort we bought a washing board, a drainer, a clothes hanger, a washing basket, more pegs, more soap, more brushes, more mops, more everything. All things you don’t buy when you’re still trying to find your feet, but all things that become absolute essentials when you’ve found your feet and realised that if you’re going to keep them clean, you’re going to need far more support than the battered and worn out tools you’ve been given by VSO.

The six week delay in shopping activities also stems from the fact that it’s taken us this long to work out where to buy everything. In our first few weeks we were constantly asking people where the best place to buy various items was. The answer we were always given was ‘PZ’. Unfortunately, although everyone was able to tell us that we needed to go to PZ, people seemed far less able to explain exactly where (or indeed what) PZ was.

Between us we have several maps of Freetown of varying quality – none of which shows anything remotely similar to a place called PZ. (To make life slightly more complicated, our best and most beautiful map fell victim to a flood in our first week, and amusingly our two remaining maps have slightly different road layouts and in many cases entirely different road names.) So for the first few weeks PZ assumed a near mystical status in our lives – it seemed to be the answer to all our problems, but remained entirely and bafflingly unreachable.

It was probably about week three that Banke managed to persuade someone to actually take her to PZ. She came back with two umbrellas, the most remarkable portable lamp you’ve ever set your eyes on, and stories of a crowded land full of street sellers, shop owners, black market currency traders, and pretty much everything you could ever need but weren’t sure how to get hold of.

It wasn’t until week five that we had finally worked out a plan for getting to PZ, getting everything we needed, and getting it back to the house. Unfortunately the plan involved two essential ingredients that we just didn’t have - a car and a reliable and patient guide. By the end of week six we had found both through our friend Natalie. Natalie is doing what most sensible people seem to do, and is escaping the country for the worst month of the rainy season. Before she left she lent us her car, and introduced us to her house keeper – the fantastically named Messy.

Messy is brilliant. A very likeable, and extremely humours young woman with a steely determination and a powerful brand of sarcasm that I had been led to believe could only be found at home. She agreed to accompany us to PZ to ensure we bought what we needed and at a price that wasn’t ridiculously inflated. And so, last Thursday, after a long day at work, Messy, Jo, Banke and myself all piled into Natalie’s Land Rover Defender (aka Brutus the Beast), and headed into the land of PZ.

PZ is like every film set you haven’t quite believed. Walking around you feel as if you’ve stumbled into the latest Hollywood blockbuster, and they’ve laid it on a bit too thick with all the ‘Crowded African City Scene’ clichés. It’s truly insane. Every inch of floor space is covered with stalls selling second hand or imported goods. Those traders who don’t have a ‘stall’ have just laid a sheet on the floor and spread out their wares; others have a basket full of goods and have just set it down in the middle of the road. Literally thousands of people are crammed into narrow streets, made narrower still by the traders lining the edge. Occasionally cars, podas and even large lorries try and force their way through the crowd, who have to squeeze together even tighter or jump across the large open ditches that line the roads and allow the rainy season downpours to bypass the stalls.

The noise is incredible. Thousands of people trying to make themselves heard above thousands more. Sound systems and megaphones attached to radios blare out music and evangelical preaching at a speed and volume that makes it more or less unfathomable and very close to unbearable. Despite the chaos it’s all surprisingly well ordered: This street is all electrical, the next just sells plastic goods, the street that links them only has shoes, the one over there is where you can by food, the one next door has all the toiletries. It feels like an endless labyrinth but Messy navigates us through expertly. She has happily accepted the role of chief negotiator and drives a hard bargain. The theatrics of the haggle are fascinating to watch but almost impossible to copy.

Up ahead there’s a sudden commotion. “It’s a clearance.” Messy explains. “What? Like a clearance sale?” I ask naively, thinking that cheap goods going even cheaper might well explain the sudden rush of people. “No – a street clearance. The police are clearing the street.” Although PZ is a well established market, the vast majority of the stalls are illegal and the police sweep through randomly clearing stalls with no permission to trade. Life around the clearance carries on as if nothing is happening.

A few minutes later a boy bumps heavily into Jo. As he stumbles he expertly (although not that expertly because I saw him do it) unzips Jo’s bag with lightening speed and pushes his hand inside. Thankfully the outside pocket is empty and he comes away with nothing. It’s a horrible situation. Rough justice is a big problem in Sierra Leone and people tend to take the law into their own hands. I’m not sure how true it is, but we’ve been warned that if you accuse someone of stealing there’s a chance you’ll then have to watch them beaten to death in front of you. Jo and I look at each other and agree to say absolutely nothing.

We’re in PZ for less than an hour, but it feels like a lifetime. We emerge, hot and bothered but heavily laden with everything we went in for. As we leave the crowded streets behind us we agree that PZ is amazing, and definitely the best place to shop for things. We also agree that perhaps we should try to go there are little as possible.