Hot on the heels of our weekend of rest and relaxation of Tacugama, we decided to do even more rest and relaxation with an overnight on Banana Island. The Banana Islands are off the coast (as many islands are), a couple miles to the southwest of Kent, a fishing village. Getting to Kent was a two-hour drive from Freetown (the way back was three hours with traffic) and once we got to Kent it took some directions from some friendly people along the side of the road to find the little port with a boat that would ferry us over to the resort. We were staying at Bafa Resort, which offers glamping stays on the island. And so we arrived around noon and settled in.

If there was not much to do at Tacugama there was even less to do at Bafa for most of the time. I mean this is what we were there for so it was perfect. After my harrowing experience on our last relaxing weekend of forgetting to bring a book, this time around I brought two, but didn’t manage to finish reading the one while we were still on the island. I should say you can do activities at the resort (snorkeling, fishing), we just didn’t really. For no extra cost you can go swimming though it was better at high tide and we didn’t get the timing right. You can also eat and drink and that was fantastic. The food there was really really good. We favored the seafood and the menu changed for every meal. We also had a few drinks while we were there, and one of the highlights was that after years of reading about palm wine I finally got to try some poyo. It was good! Faintly nutty flavor. It would be fun if I could find a more regular supply.

Anyways so we spent our time that afternoon hanging out overlooking the ocean and reading. An utterly perfect activity. The weather was beautiful, the company was great (my wife is super amazing), and admiring Sierra Leone from the sea was beautiful. It was cool to see the peaks of the Western Area disappearing into the mist as the continent rose from the ocean. Very cool. We also got to admire the stars and then eventually turned in for the night.

The highlight of the visit for me was the historic tour we did the next morning. We almost didn’t get to do it and I would have been crushed. Our boat was leaving at noon and though we had originally arranged to do the tour starting at 10 the resort didn’t tell the guide that so he didn’t show up until 11:15 or so and we had to do the whole thing speedily.

The history of Banana Island I have found to be frustratingly difficult to dig up. Maybe this is just because I now fancy myself as something of an expert on the history of a certain chunk of northern Zambia, and starting from scratch and not knowing where to look is simply frustrating. Most of the easily accessible histories of Sierra Leone I’ve found focus on Freetown and not so much the outlaying areas. Even if you go on the Heritage Commission website there’s not a whole lot about the only national monument on the island, the Firing Point. There is some conjecture and that’s really about it. Even in the book I found with a chapter on the Banana Islands is mostly just concerned about ownership status and doesn’t really dive into what happened on the islands. I have found reference to the islands in a few other sources (sometimes they are the Bananas and sometimes the Bananoes) but no nice comprehensive history. Maybe I’ll have to write a whole blog post about them or something.

But enough complaining, the historic tour was great mostly because it got us out of the little resort area. The town of Dublin on Banana Island is really cool. Apparently it is a very old town with streets laid out in a kinda regular grid with street signs and antique lampposts. There were fruit trees everywhere and like I always am I was mesmerized by everyone’s gardens and all the things they were growing. I saw cassava and bananas (obviously) and oranges and breadfruit and coconut and taro and chickens and goats but didn’t have time for a really in-depth look. Besides the Firing Point the other historic thing we saw was an old bell from the Anglican church. They had built a new church next to where the old one was, and since the bell tower had burned down (I think) the bell was hung from a tree. The bell was from 1881. I think the Anglican church must have been founded by the Church Missionary Society when they were invited in by one of the early governors of Sierra Leone in his attempt to establish townships for the former captives of slave ships the Royal Navy had brought into Freetown and condemned. But I’ll have to look into that further in my Banana Islands blog post.

After zooming through the tour (which included a plug for the resort on the island we weren’t staying at), we had to head back to our resort, settle the bill, jump on the boat, and head on home. It was a great time and I can easily imagine going on, if only to explore even more of the island this time around. There’s always so much more to see!