So much has happened in the past few months while I’ve been MIA blogwise, it’s hard to know where to start. The truth would be a modern-day Graham Greene novel, one that I intend to write beachside in the coming months.

To try and give the abridged version: I returned to Freetown from a month-long R&R stint in the States, had a decadent 30th birthday party involving 600 glow sticks I smuggled in, lost the job I came back to Sierra Leone for, had a month-long bout with low-grade malaria, experienced intense, boundary-less relationships with new friends that ended in psychological anguish, watched our country make incredibly bad decisions for the future, and unsurprisingly, I got depressed.

My state of being began to take the shape of the landscape: houses precariously perched on hills above a deep ocean, winding mountain roads with no guardrails. Streets boarded by deep open sewers and crevasses. Just one rumbling of the earth and it could all tumble down.

I think, as they say in all sorts of English speaking countries that are not the United States, that I lost the plot. I had forgotten why I was here and who I was. I hit rock bottom.

I had become as desperately dependent and needy as most of the people of this country. I relied too much on people around me. As a result, a few things happened: those people deeply disappointed me, possibly even took advantage of my weakness, and I entered into a state of existential freefall that I feared I might not come back from.

After a week in which I may have appeared normal and cognizant, but really was full of terror and in deathly fear of the world (and myself), I re-emerged. I came out on the other side. And a few good things have come about since.

I have started to run a beachside guesthouse just outside of Freetown. The natural beauty of the place is astounding. Here I will take all my knowledge of the world’s most beautiful places to think, talk, celebrate, and be with friends, and I will create a place of beauty and calm. The UN and aid workers will come here to revive themselves, to gain back the sense of hope they need to continue with their work. The guesthouse will pour money into the local community. And I will make a stab at creating a sustainable, eco-tourist network with which, one day, this country could be propped up. It’s something that many people here have been wanting and trying to do, but who haven’t figured out the way forward yet.

I can see the country’s future in the stretches of perfect, virgin beach offset by the jungle-mountains that jut up just behind. This country, the worst country on earth, as they say, could be turned around. It’s a matter of time, faith, and resolve.

Of course it’s not my life’s work, and I won’t be here forever. In my past week’s deep anguish I’ve thought a lot about my own future and made some decisions. But just what the future holds for Vanessa Without Borders? That I will keep under wraps for now.

In the meantime, til at least the New Year, you should picture me here: a whitewashed house on a lagoon, blue skies, aqua water, green jungle, white sand and palm trees, a small ramshackle village down a ruddy dirt path. The sunset comes and sets the place a brilliant pink. The night comes and the Milky Way stretches out across a dark, dark sky. And me, at a bamboo table overlooking the cove, my little Mac at hand, recording it all.