A few weeks back I spent five days or so on Tokeh Beach (see gallery), a strip of now-deserted white sand beach dotted with the “ruins” of a 5-star French resort (with its own helipad in the sea) that went the way of most of the establishments that existed here before the war. Tokeh is magical, and is deserving of at least a blog of it’s own, if not a full spread in the New York Times travel section (which I’m fully prepared to write, NYTimes).
Every day I would walk with Henry, my 16-year-old companion who worked at the single hut/restaurant at which I camp, through the crumbling walls and down the red dirt path to the nearby fishing village.
As with most Sierra Leonean villages, I was a big hit. It’s not every day that a white girl strolls through a place like Tokeh Village: a maze of scattered abodes, pecking chickens, scabby dogs, old ladies smoking fish over fires, and assorted rag-tag children who make me their very own pied piper.
Though I try to dole out my attention equally to each and every one of these munchkins who hang onto my hands, my shirt, and my legs, let’s face it: I do have favorites. And I tend to fall in love the quickest and hardest with the little “natural Rasta’s”, as they’re called here.
The one pictured above followed me around the village for an hour, gripping my left pinky. I loved him just as much as he loved me.
A few days later I went back to the village and I bumped into a woman who looked familiar. She addressed me in a somewhat hostile tone, “what can’t you love a person?”
I was started and confused, so she repeated, “When a person loves somebody, why can’t you love them back?”
And I thought, “that is a very fucking good question lady. And really cuts me to the quick.” I was also thinking: if I knew the answer to that one I’d have plenty of babies by now.
Oh unrequited love. What a universal quandary it is. If we had clarity on this matter, there’d be no songs on the radio.
What I later found out she meant was: My son, the little Rasta, loved you so. How can you come walk around this village and not pay him a special visit?
I thought that was fair enough, so I went to his school to see him. He had no idea who I was, but after a while I’m pretty sure he was glad I was taking his picture.
