Northern Sierra Leone

region | 2023-03-26

From Freetown Airport in Lungi, we drove north-east towards the city of Makeni and then towards the Loma Mountains. The scenery on the roads was very colourful and vibrant; every few metres there was a new story to tell and time flew by. It took us the better part of a day to get to Kabala and then another couple of hours to reach the trailhead at the village of Foria.

Frequent situation in front
Busy road, but most roads quite quiet
Makeni is a large city in Sierra Leone with a population of over 100,000 and is the capital of its district.
Mining is very important as it makes up a large part of their economy. They mine diamonds, rutile, bauxite, gold, iron and limonite.
Paved roads are mostly of fairly good quality
One of the many mobile operator offices
We stopped here and had a pretty good and spicy lunch
I’ll probably never stop marvelling at impressive head loads.
Gold panners on their way to the river
One of the many schools in the villages
Rice fields
Stack of banknotes enough to pay for dinner
Today LC dominates a road. “Typical situation in Africa”… Comment from a former LR dealer
Mosques and churches coexist in this country
Diamond mining is a core business in Sierra Leone