Sierra Leone

January 19 - 29, 2020!!

This trip will leave from Dulles Airport in Washington DC

The cost of this trip is $3600 for Double and $4000 for Single

What is included:
Roundtrip airfare from Washington DC to Sierra Leone
Hotel Accommodations
Transportation in Sierra Leone
2 meals per day
Souvenir

What is not included:
Gratuity of $100 per person
Visa fee from the Embassy of Sierra Leone
Transportation to Washington DC
Travel Insurance
Vaccinations (Yellow Fever Vaccine is required to enter Sierra Leone)
Spending money
Camera fee for some attractions

A deposit of $500 is due at the time of registration. A payment of $1550 is due by July 1, 2019. The balance of $1550 is due by November 1, 2019. If using credit cards for payments (via Paypal or Square) there is a fee of 4% to use this service.

Payments can also be made with check or money order to Roots to Glory Tours P.O. Box 92, Stevenson, Maryland 21153.

Prices are not guaranteed after the final payment due date of November 1, 2019.

Payment Plan is available, please send us an email at roots@rootstoglory.com

Itinerary:

Day 1. Arrive, overnight in Freetown
Arrive to Freetown’s Lungi International Airport, which is one of the world’s most uniquely-situated airports, located on the northern coast of the Freetown Estuary. Transfer to hotel.

Day 2. Transfer to Karina, overnight there or in Makeni

(Karina is in Biriwa Chiefdom, Bombali District in northern Sierra Leone. It is 28 miles from Makeni the District Headquarter town. Karina is a predominantly Mandingo settlement, who’s inhabitants are mostly devout Muslims and farming is their main occupation.

Cultural experience at Karina: the visitors can take part in a Homecoming/Welcome ceremony. The Mandingos are known for their unique musical abilities and musicians, called Jelibas, can perform songs for the visitors. The elders of the town can engage the visitors in discussions about the history of their town, as well as the culture and traditions of the Mandingo people, followed by question and answer sessions. The visitors will have opportunity to purchase some arts and crafts items.) Participate in a Mandingo Naming Ceremony

Day 3. Transfer to Rogbonko

(For more info on Rogbonko as well as the cultural experience please visit www.rogbonkovillage.com) The most outstanding aspect of this experiences there will be the basket weaving and learning more about Temne cutlure. The basket woven at Rogbonko is closely similar to the sweetgrass basket woven by the Gullah/Geechee and this skill is widely believed to have been retained by enslaved Africans from West Africa but especially Sierra Leone.)

Day 4. Rogbonko

(The visitors can engage in the activities listed under Cultural Experience on the website for the Rogbonko Village Resort.)

Day 5. Senehun-Ngola, overnight in Bo

(Senehun Ngola is chosen for a special reason. Please Google ‘The Language You Cry In’ which documents the experiences of a Gullah Family who were able to trace their roots to Sierra Leone through a Five-Line Mende song believed to be the longest text in an African Language preserved by a black family in the United States. The Moran family of Harris Neck Georgia made a historic Homecoming to Sierra Leone in 1998 and visited Baindu Jabati, a Mende woman, in Sehehun Ngola whose family had likewise preserved a similar song in Sierra Leone.

Cultural Experience: Visitors can take part in a Naming and Robing Ceremony at a place where history has demonstrated that women were captured from and taken to Georgia who then took the Five-Line song with them. The song is a funeral song and it was re-enacted for the Moran Homecoming (this can be arranged if desired).

Day 6. Bo

(Bo is the second city in Sierra Leone, and home to the Mende, the largest Ethnic Group in Sierra Leone. It is quieter, more tranquil and hotter than Freetown. Bo has some hidden gems and activities that make it a place worth exploring whilst visiting Sierra Leone. You will visit the Bo National Stadium, visit the Bo School which was established in 1906 by the Sierra Leonean Government. The campus, located on a spacious and green plot of land, is not only a beautiful sight, but also contains a rich history which has large elements of Sierra Leone's colonial past. Traditionally, the Bo School was for sons of paramount chiefs, who wished for a high quality and elitist education for their sons. Now, the campus is open to all boys and our current president, Julius Maada Bio, was a former student of this school.)

(At Bo visitors can visit country cloth weavers, Sande Mask carvers as well as a rice farm. Visitors can also witness some Mende cultural performances.)

Day 7. Transfer from Bo to Tokeh (beach resort)
(Tokeh is a small coastal village settled on the Western Area Peninsula and has one of the most beautiful beaches Sierra Leone has to offer. The long, white-sand beach stretches all the way to River Number 2 and the seawater is calm, making it a popular and safe spot to swim. Tokeh beach has a backdrop of lush, green mountains and the old wooden pier that runs into the sea makes this place a visual spectacle.
Much of the village is still actively involved in fishing. Others make a living with woodcutting, coal burning, harvesting sea cucumber, driving taxis and selling vegetables and other foodstuffs.)

Day 8. Depart Tokeh in the afternoon for Freetown

Day 9. Bunce Island (Ruins of a former slave fort)

(This morning we go to Bunce Island with a private speedboat, viewing the city from the coast as you go by. Bunce Island is one of forty slave forts built by Europeans along the west coast of Africa. Though small in size it was the base for one of the largest British slave trading operations on the Rice Coast of West Africa. Founded around 1670, it exported tens of thousands of African captives to North America and the West Indies until the British Parliament finally abolished the slave trade in 1807 and it was closed down in 1808. Bunce Island has an authentic, raw - a painful history that is burying itself under layers of greenery. It is uninhabited and this gives the island an added air of abandonment – it has been called ‘The Place where History sleeps’.

Day 10. City Tour and Depart

(During the City Tour visitors will make a stop at Big Market to purchase gifts).

End of Tour

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