Our adventure to and from Kenema continues from last week…

The next morning I woke up early mostly to get back home, but while I was out and about early I cruised around the streets of Kenema devoid of most of the crowds. The most surprising thing I saw was a no joke blacksmith shop, annoyingly just past where I had walked the previous day. Annoying because taking a picture would have been more plausible on foot, but I saw that man standing there pounding on his anvil, phenomenal. After that I cruised on by Kenema’s most notable tourist attraction, the Palm Tree Park, and then through the outskirts of town and broad rice fields spilling out from either side of the road.

Having completed my early-morning tour, I left Kenema where the next stop was Bo so I could take a picture of that clocktower as well. Among the other sights I wrote down to mention were toilets cast of concrete instead of porcelain, and more strikingly a woman walking back from her bath at the stream, wrapped in a lappa as though she was returning from an onsen.

The next stop was a surprise. I had spotted an older bridge from the newer one passing by Taiama, and decided to see what was on the other side. I was very surprised to find a historical marker! It was right on the side of the road, but low down, and hopping out of the car to take a look it read “On this rock the American Missionaries Rev. L.A. McGrew & His Wife Clara McGrew were massacred May 9, 1898.” There are not, on the whole, a lot of historical markers in Sierra Leone, and this one didn’t really give an indication of who put it up. As I was standing there a nice man came up to discuss it, and told me that the rock where the missionaries had been killed was actually a different one he pointed at down the hill and slightly upstream.

Later investigation (just today) has provided more detail than the plaque did. This is mostly from Mission Work in Sierra Leone, West Africa by the Rev. J.S. Mills, but Rev. Lowery Allen McGrew and his wife Clara B. (née McCoy) landed in Sierra Leone in 1896. They were sent by the Woman’s Missionary Board, which as far as I can tell was a Methodist missionary organization. Both Lowery and Clara were from Ohio. They wound up settling in Taiama, which seems to have been a bit of an outpost from their organization’s main station at Rotifunk. Trouble came in 1898 during the Hut Tax War. The rebels against the recent British colonial imposition killed the McGrews along with most of the other missionaries in the Sierra Leone Protectorate, the local evangelists, and their followers. A few more details are here and here.

But I didn’t know that yet. Having taken some photos of the monument I head back to the car and kept on going back to Freetown. Knowing it was my last trip I tried to take as many pictures of the landscape as I felt reasonably appropriate. I am just such a sucker for a rice field, which is why I have mentioned it three times now, but there were also some entertaining signs, and the local traffic was always a hoot. Over glade and dale, through palm tree and elephant grass, across rivers and up hills eventually brought me back on home to Freetown. In the end driving to Kenema and back was a great weekend trip, for me, though do consult your guidebook before heading out to figure out where the waterfall hike starts.