I would say the hardest thing that I have tried to describe since coming to Sierra Leone would be the traffic and how we get around the city. I have been out in the city several times now, but just yesterday managed to get a few decent pictures. I can give you a brief description of road life here in town, but pictures do a better job. I hope to get make a video at some point because many things are just indescribable.
At the end you will notice an excerpt from Wikitravel, the travel site from Wikipedia.
There was a group of seven people going to the craft market that hadn't been there before so, I offered to guide their journey.
On the street there is traffic going both directions whenever possible, but many times it is blocked by people, carts, broken down cars, trucks unloading and/or huge pot holes from the rainy season.
To add to the mix of things going on, the sewage / storm water drainage is a ditch two to three feet deep on both sides of the road. Sometimes it is covered with cement pavers or wooden covers, but most often not.
Along several parts of the road it is just like an open market. People selling all the things that Americans rush to Walmart to get.
I suppose the main reason for traffic is just the purely huge amount of people here in the capital city.
From what I hear Freetown has the capacity of holding 500,000 people, but the population in 2008 was 1.2 million and an estimated 2 million now.
"The road network fell into disrepair during the civil war. However, recently, there has been a substantial reconstruction programme which means the main roads to regional cities such as Bo, Kenema and Makeni are in excellent condition. The road to Kabala mostly smooth tar, with a few terribly potholed patches. The road to Kono is for three quarters tar, but the remaining quart is in mostly poor condition. It means it takes as much time to cover 3/4 of the distance as it takes for the balance 1/4. Government has planned to upgrade the last stretch in 2011. The peninsular road is good from Eastern Freetown clockwise around the peninsular to Tokeh. Work has started on the remaining section to Lumley. The roads in Freetown are difficult to characterize. In the center of town, the main roads are mostly smooth and pothole-free, having been constructed from high-quality asphalt a long time ago. Side streets are often a mixture of dirt and gravel, sometimes with large protruding stones, deep crevasses, and other potential dangers. Most main feeder roads such as Wilkinson Road, Spur Road and Sir Samuel Lewis road in the Western part of Freetown are in atrocious condition, but work is under way to reconstruct them - expect traffic chaos until July 2011. When walking, always keep your eyes in front of you: most of the sidewalks in Freetown have "death traps," missing blocks of cement that could lead to a nasty fall into an open gutter. For this reason, most Freetown residents choose to walk in the street and avoid sidewalks, a major contributing factor to the city's congestion."
