Public gatherings are generally to be avoided in times of Ebola, but it’s Sunday so I thought I’d make my first stab at finding a church (which came at the expense of a beach and lobster invite from my expat friends). Many readers probably don’t share my beliefs, but let me tell you it can be a hard challenge finding a good church in West Africa, though finding any old church isn’t too tough. There’s even one quite close to my new house, and on Fridays they seem to have all night sessions with the PA system on 11.

In the west, you can hit Google and go through church websites, maybe even downloading a sermon or two. Here, you’re in the dark. So I went through some old student Christian networks and got a contact here who invited me to his church this morning. I remember meeting a Lebanese guy in Brazzaville (Congo) who told me that when you’re Lebanese you can turn up in any city in the world, and when you find your community they are more or less obligated to give you a job. Perhaps there are similarities – my contact picks me up from home, takes me to his church, takes me to visit his family in the city centre and then takes me to lunch back at his place – even though we’ve never met and don’t have any direct mutual friends. And of course, we get on very well.

A word on the church. It was on the Pentecostal side, but I still appreciated it. The choir were all in robes, that carried influences of the US south. The message dwelt on the death of a young member of the congregation who had died suddenly in his sleep during the week leaving a wife and two children. It was quite touching.

It was great to be out and about on a Sunday morning – the streets of Freetown were thronging with people heading to church in their best. So good to see life outside the restricted confines of the office. I even spotted two work colleagues in the congregation, including a member of my team. I think a lot of people are staying at home during the week because I saw a lot more life than I do Monday-Saturday. But church attendance numbers are down sharply as people do what they can to avoid Ebola. The hand washing water had run out when we arrived at the main entrance, but the key Ebola messages of avoiding human contact, washing hands, going to health services when sick and avoiding dead bodies were given from the pulpit. At one point in the service, a woman fainted. People weren’t sure what to do and the ushers didn’t have their latex gloves. Finally she was carried out – turned out she had had stomach problems and hadn’t been eating properly, but initially Ebola was in people’s minds.

Afterwards we stopped by a relative’s house in one of the old districts of Freetown. A baby girl had been born 7 days earlier, and it was now time for the naming ceremony. The house was full of relatives, and people placed cash on the baby’s belly. I was honoured to have doors opened so easily for me to see inside people’s families and homes.

Yesterday, I mentioned my first invite to a friend’s place. Glad to say it was a huge amount of fun. My new friend actually only lives about 200m from my compound, in a huge family home overlooking the bay. Author Graham Greene reputedly stayed there back in the day – it was that sort of place. The host was hard at work in the kitchen putting together a shepherd’s pie. Starters was home-baked bread, with French brie hot off the plane from Dakar. The boast of the pantry was a head of broccoli (also from Dakar), which is treated as gold dust here (retail value 20 dollars). Another friend arrived to make a second dessert, and we munched, drank wine and GnTs, and tried not to talk about Ebola. There was even a guitar. The music was perfect – a mix of upbeat American pop and some jazz, with some old REM tracks thrown into the mix. We explored the house, played table tennis on the vast veranda, and set-up a regular rotation of card games, crazy dancing (just us five) and then table tennis.

It was a lot of fun. House parties are fun all over the world, so I don’t want to claim exclusive access to special evenings, but I do think there are levels of stress, exhaustion and tropical excitement here that lead to instant intimacy between people. Yes, in some ways it was one of those ‘expat in Africa’ nights. Even the simple pleasure of occasional human touches (innocent slamming hands on each either on the card deck etc) really met an amazing felt-need that particularly long-term people feel to touch again (ignoring the current Ebola advice).

The house was one of those special colonial residences you can find in Africa. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a (vast) book collection more closely alligned to my reading interests, and full of books I’d either read or listed as ‘to be read’. The house had the haunting aspect of being a much-loved family home, but without wife and kids who’d left back in July. It was full of memories and joy, and now the nostalgia of an amazing life on hold. Young children playing at hunting black mambas in the garden, long weekend nights with other families in the house followed by morning excursions to the beach. For those who knew the pre-Ebola days, it’s immensely sad. For those, like me, contemplating several years here, it’s a taste of what life could be like again soon.

I’ve heard it said that the older you get, the harder it is to make real friends. And that we also grow less tolerant of the patience you need to get to know people. Non-friend hobbies become relatively more attractive. We prefer a night on the sofa with a good book. As a friend of mine, Ulrich, reminded me recently in a blogpost, school days really were remarkable – seeing the same group of people Monday-Friday for years on end. People perhaps knew you better then than anyone does now. You didn’t have to find time to see your friends – you were together for hours every single day. You can’t beat that sort of interaction. But know we all live in separate houses and lives, probably for the worse.

Moving to Freetown I can definitely feel a hesitancy about forming new friendships. I’m putting my efforts into setting up life and routines, and then hopefully friendships will follow. It’s true that this is not like the summer in Bangui – this is not a temporary posting where I just need to work hard and it will soon be over. This will be home for several years of my life. But having good friends elsewhere means there’s less pressure. And I also want to find the right people – I don’t fit in perfectly with the ex-pat crowd, though I do find time with them stimulating. But sometimes the know-it-all liberalism is a bit too much. But with West Africans there can be a barrier as well – such different life experiences and priorities.

I know there are people I’ll fit in with well who are just waiting to be discovered. I get on well with most people, and friendships will develop. However, when my family arrive I won’t have so much time for outside friends, so I don’t want to develop friendships now that then aren’t sustainable later. But tonight I have my first invite out to a colleague’s house for pizza and table tennis, and I’m very much looking forward to it.