I laugh, protesting that I have indeed been to the east side of town, but I agree that it would be a welcome change to meet them at the apartment on Mountain Cut Road where they are staying.

Wednesday evening I phone my driver, Sheriff, and ask him to pick me up at 8:00pm.  He picks me up just after 8, and I give him the apartment address.

"Now you're going to my neighborhood," he notes.  "You have friends on the east side!"

Mountain Cut Road is located off Kissy Road, one of the major commercial thoroughfares in eastern Freetown.  While much of the west side shines at night from the generator-produced light of expat and middle class Sierra Leonean homes and businesses, the east, in some ways, feels more alive.  Men, women, boys and girls teem from the shops, tiny bars and  homes that crowd and lean precariously against the edge of the road.  Some shops are fortunate to have a generator but most buildings and street stands are lit by flickering kerosene lamps. 

Eastern Freetown is the most densely populated part of town, and it is also the area most affected by the rebels' invasion in 1999.  Later that night, when I am driving home and most people have left the streets, I will feel like I am in a western ghost town--streets lined with shuttered general stores and second floor balconied apartments pockmarked with scars from the war and covered with dust from the seasonal harmattan wind.  For now, though, the streets are full and bustling with almost overwhelming activity.  Mountain Cut is so clogged with pedestrians that our vehicle can barely inch forward. 

As we drive down Mountain Cut Sheriff and I both lean forward, trying to spot number 15--the home of Dr. Mohammed Barrie, the Sierra Leonean doctor who runs the health NGO Dan started here.  Most of the buildings are unmarked and we end up back tracking several times and asking for directions.  At one point, Sheriff gets out of the car and my eyes follow him as he disappears into the crowd.  I feel very conspicuous--not only am I the only foreigner around but I am sitting in a bit white NGO-owned SUV.  Maybe I should have chartered a taxi, I think to myself.

Sheriff comes back with directions and we find a parking spot on a side street.  We climb out of the car, pick our way up the broken pavement to the main road and ask a group of young men on the corner if they know Dr. Barrie.  They point to a glowing store front a few buildings down, where we are met by a short, round man--Dr. Barrie.

"So you are Dan and Anne's friend," he says, shaking my hand.  As Sheriff excuses himself, Dr. Barrie leads me to the side entrance of the building and we climb the stairs.  The store generator lights the first two floors of the building, but as we rise the power goes out and we are enveloped in darkness.  We reach the apartment and the door is answered by a young female relative of Dr. Barrie's carrying a candle.  The apartment is dark but lovely with gracely arched entryways and a wide balcony. 

Dan and Anne come to greet me, and along with Dr. Barrie we carry chairs and cold beers from a bar below upstairs to the roof.  We begin to discuss our experiences in Sierra Leone and the health NGO that Dr. Barrie and Dan started one year ago.  Anne is in the country as a program intern until April as she applies to medical school.  The NGO, the Global Action Foundation, has two components.  The first is a clinic in Kono District near Guinea that provides free medical services to war amputees and their families.  Kono District is one of the most war-ravaged districts in the country, is a center of the country's mining industry and has one of the highest concentrations of war amputees in Sierra Leone.  The clinic opened on January 20, 2008, and receives funding from the U.S. embassy.  Prior to the opening of the center services were provided in a mobile clinic.  The clinic is open to all community members, and to date about 1,600 people have received services, including 500 amputees, war disabled and their dependents.

The second component is a child survival program, known as the "Severely Malnourished Project" based in Port Loko.  This district, just east of Freetown, has the highest prevalence of severaly malnourished children in the country.  With support from UNICEF, the program has provided therapeutic milk formula to the Port Loko hospital and has trained 480 local women as health promoters.  Dr. Barrie explained that the program initially trained a core group of women to conduct house visits to identify severaly malnourished children.  These women have, in turn, trained other women to perform the same tasks.  Once children are identified as potentially severely malnourished they are referred to the local Peripheral Health Unit (PHU), which conducts the height for weight assessment to determine the level of malnourishment.  Severely malnourished children are then referred from the PHU to the program's partners at the hospital for treatment.

While the child survival program has had many successes, it has run up against several challenges, Dr. Barrie explained.  The PHUs, for example, charge referred patients for services, and most Sierra Leoneans simply cannot afford to pay.  I have seen this problem before with other NGO projects; even when the NGO provides the PHU with money for drugs and supplies to prevent patients from being charged, they are still usually forced to pay.  Dr. Barrie also reported that it can be a challenge to make sure that equipment does not go missing from the PHUs, another problem I have repeatedly heard about. 

Overall, though, Dan, Anne and Dr. Barrie are upbeat about their work.  In addition to the new health center for war disabled, plans are underway to eventually bring on a senior nurse and six community-trained nurses in Port Loko to provide basic services to severely malnourished children.  Monitoring and evaluation is taking place to determine how to make the programs more effective.  

Sitting on that roof, watching the lights flicker out across the hills as the night wears on and exchanging ideas and information about this work, I feel suddenly energized and hopeful about the possibilities for creating real change for people in Sierra Leone.   It's about midnight, and Sheriff is back to pick me up.  I arrange to meet Anne and Dan once they are back from Kono the next week and assure them that I will be visiting their new health center soon.