New website for 2008

We have created a new website to report on our time in Sierra Leone, with loads of great photos, stories and information. Visit us at www.generocitysl.org Read more

[M&S Diary] Photos from Moyamba

Hurrah! Camera is up and running again, so we can now entertain you with a few pics of our new homestead, Moyamba, a small jungle town about 3 hours south of the capital.

First up: well, you can see it's a bit different from the concrete smog of the city. Quiet, dusty roads, and about 1 percent of the people, so it's a lot easier to get to know them.






















Below you can see a typical Moyamba farm. Every year a new patch of ground gets burnt out in the jungle and cleared for the rice to be planted. For 2 weeks the ash was blowing in across the town and falling into our soup in the local cafe. When we first asked the staff what it was, not knowing too much Mende (a language peculiar to the South), we thought they said it was coming from a cremation nearby. Decided to skip desert.















Doesn't matter when you've got so many mango trees around! This is a photo of Maro, the ultimate mango fiend, in our kitchen, and you can see behind her our own mango tree. Meanwhile, Albert, who looks after the house we are staying in, is weeding out the garden to plant cassava, onions, etc. This is common practice here. It's far short of subsistence farming, but people grab whatever bit of arable land they can outside their homes to plant on. Any vegetables they can produce make a decent supplement to the usual diet of rice 3 times a day.






















Ok. So Maro's not the only one eating mangos. But 5 a day? It's takes me about 2 hours to get the stringy bits out of my teeth from just one!

The trouble is, apart from these, fresh food is non-existent here. Fish, where you can get it, is dried. Vegetables means "garden egg" (a kind of aubergine) and onions. Tomatos, no. Pepper, no. Salad, except in Maro's dreams, no. A routine result of the IMF/World Bank's insistence that no direct support be given to farmers (like the subsidies we give our own in the UK and US) by the Sierra Leone government. Sustainable livelihoods and decent levels of nutrition? It just wouldn't make economic sense!

(Go on, make better sense of itbbbbbwww.pressureworks.org)






















Still, people here get on with things. 'Dis na Africa! Yu get for manage!' This means coming together. And people do - at every opportunity in a place like Moyamba. In the street, washing clothes, cooking. It means life to people, literally, and it makes them - by and large - accountable to each other. I often wonder what would happen if I brought someone from Moyamba to a street like ours in London. They'd probably panic.

'Where is everybody? What are they hiding from? Is there a war going on?'

I'm not sure they'd believe me if I told them we were locked away in our houses watching TV. 'Where's the humanity in that?' they'd wonder. Perhaps I'd explain that actually, yes, there is a war going on in England. Being waged in the streets of London. It's called 'The dominion of Competetive Economy'. Everyone against everyone. Which means 'Don't trust people. You have a million needs. Get stuff, and worry about protecting it. Seek invulnerability. Hide.'

Hmmm...

Life may be short in Sierra Leone (37 years life expectancy, with 30% not reaching 5). It's no surprise that any major cultural event looks like a children's party. But damn, they know how to dance! This is Moyamba's Easter "outing", by the river.

Well, that's it for now. I'm sending this message from Freetown, and on Wednesday am back in Moyamba and away from internet access. If you want to send any messages to Maro (holding the fort) get them in today or tomorrow and I'll take them with me.

I'll leave you with this: the rains have just started again here. Maro phoned yesterday to say an almighty thunderstorm had kept her up most of the night. This is a picture of the river we look out on from our veranda. You can see the fishing trap made from sticks which has just been put in by our neighbours, so maybe we'll have some fresh fish before long! The streams running into the river are coming from our roof. Soon it will swell and the locals will come and build a proper bridge here, I'm told.

Maybe you are on the other side...


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We're still here!

Just in case you were wondering. We haven't died. We're just well out of range of anything resembling an internet facility. I am back in Freetown for a few days to push buttons as election day begins to draw near. Mostly money buttons. Big buttons. Difficult to push. Meanwhile, Maro is enjoying mango season back in Moyamba. We have our own tree. She is also busy trying to put a system in place for the District Council there (her new employer) to spend the HIV/AIDS budget they have just been given. So you see? We continue to exist. Read more

[Maro] Welcome to Moyamba

A few weeks in and life in the small town of Moyamba is treating me well. I have had tea and eaten Bombay mix with the Indian nuns at St Joseph’s convent, been taken on a walk down an ancient trail to a secret lake deep in the jungle, watched dust devils dance, absorbed the beats of Steady Bongo, battled with huge spiders in our new house and been introduced to more new faces than I can remember...

People are enormously friendly and very curious about what has brought us here. The 10 minute walk from our house to the district council office where I am working usually takes at least half an hour as people stop me in the street to ask my name, shake my hand and find out what has brought me to Moyamba. My favourite neighbour so far is Amma Kamara. A very small and wiry old lady who runs down the path from her house whenever she sees me to greet me with a beaming toothless smile and flurry of chatter. Yesterday she told me that since Simon has gone to Freetown and I am alone I must consider her my mother and come and find her if I’m lonely or have any problems. Having a decent grasp of Krio has been a big help and has made it much easier to settle in and make friends. The new challenge is to learn some Mende – the language spoken by the tribe who dominate the southern part of the country.

Our new home is a house rented by the district council. It is rather big by Sierra Leonean standards – since the arrival of more volunteers is anticipated over the coming years –and people find it hilarious that me and Simon are alone there for now. The place is slowly starting to feel like home; I’ve got my charcoal stove up and running, have bought some furniture, have more on order and am slowly chasing out the mice and spiders! There is no running water or electricity – but we are used to that from Freetown – and it’s amazing how easy it is to adapt to living without either. I have to say that a real blessing of this year has been the ways in which it has made me think about and question our consumption habits in the UK.

There is not much food available in Moyamba – and certainly nothing imported - so my Sierra Leonean cooking skills are now being truly tested. Plassas – greens cooked in palm oil – or groundnut stew is about as much variation as there gets. At the back of our house is a stream surrounded by small vegetable gardens where people grow cassava, yams, potatoes, okra, sorrel and corn. The patch outside our house is much neglected and I’m hoping that Albert – who lives in the back part of the house and helps us fetch water from the well – is going to help me revive it. But the most exciting thing of all is that both across the stream and right outside our kitchen window are several huge mango trees – and mango season is nearly upon us! Read more

A different story: life and death in Sierra Leone

In January I went to the funeral of the father of my close friend and colleague Flora. The next day I wrote a piece that was swallowed up by one of Freetown’s frequent power cuts. So I am sitting down again now to try and pull together some of the thoughts I had then...



The funeral was held at the Methodist church which looks out onto the dusty red square which serves as a football pitch in Wilberforce Village. Wilberforce is an area of Freetown located high up on one of the hills that overlook the rest of the city. As a result it catches more of the cool Atlantic breeze and has a somewhat calmer and more tranquil feel than the teaming streets below. It was a traditional service and lasted about three hours; many hymns were sung, tributes paid and afterwards the congregation walked round to the cemetery behind the church for the burial. The afternoon ended with bottles of soft drink being served in the parish hall.

As I walked home, I reflected on a conversation Simon and I had with Christian Aid’s programme manager for Sierra Leone a few weeks before we left the UK. We met her for a coffee in a small café on Lower Marsh behind Waterloo and she shared her experiences of living and working in Freetown with us. One of the last things she said was that whenever she traveled to Freetown she was struck by just how often people die Sierra Leone; it was inevitable that between visits friends, colleagues or their relatives would disappear. I found it difficult to get my head around this observation at the time, but it has come back to me frequently since our arrival last August. There is no escaping the fact that people die in Sierra Leone – a lot.

When I first sat down to write this piece – at the end of January – I counted the number of people I knew who had died since Christmas. They included Flora’s father, her step-mother, my colleague Bernard’s uncle, my friend Maddiana’s grandmother and father-in-law, the one-year-old son of Philip, who runs the small shop outside our house in Freetown, the baby nephew of another colleague, a relatively young man who worked at a VSO partner organization, the best friend of my workmate Bobson and one of the women who used to come to the SWAASL day centre – she lay down and died on the office door step. All those deaths occurred in less than a month. In addition, the seven year old nephew of our housemate Mattea had to have his leg amputated on New Year’s Eve after he developed gangrene. That is the reality of living in country with one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world and where the average life expectancy is 36.

If you broach the topic with a Sierra Leonean they might say something about how under-developed their country is or they might simply shrug and tell you “dis na Salone. Life no easy’o. We get for manage.” I was struck the other day when a friend of mine who is studying development asked me if people die as much in the UK as they do here. I told her they did not. She thought for a minute and then concluded that it was because they have such a problem with witchcraft in Sierra Leone. People’s faith – whether Muslim or Christian – is also of tremendous importance. I want to be able to reflect more deeply on these observations and the conversations I have had with people around them but the complexities of the ways in which a culture manages death and grief are so huge that I do not yet feel in a position to do so. All I do know is that our access to clean water, a rich diet, high quality medical care and ultimately good health is perhaps the greatest privilege so-called “development” has afforded us - and something I hope I will remember to continue to be grateful for when I return home. Read more

[M&S Diary] New life

My nephew Elias has a new sister today, the as yet unnamed 7lb pink thing you can see here. Congratulations to the people involved. It's strange, receiving this kind of news out here, feeling so far from it all. But 'baby' is going to grow up in a more globalised world than we can imagine right now. So in some ways it feels like we're surveying things for her (and one day, for our own children), to see what opportunities and pitfalls are out there. Thinking this makes me feel a bit less distant. Read more

[M&S Diary] Billboards

My billboards are finally going up across the country. A massive victory for me - it's been like getting blood from a stone. This was the first, at Lumley beach, Freetown. Another 40 are being pasted the length and breadth of Sierra Leone. Hope you enjoy seeing the photos as much as I saw them rolling off the press. Click "Read more" below to see more pics...

Maro and I are off to the countryside now - a web free zone. So this blog will be getting less attention, but we'll do our best to keep you up to date periodically. If you want to stay in touch, texting is your only hope now: me (00 232 76 516 115) maro (00 232 76 516 109).

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Posters are going up

My posters for the National Electoral Commission are starting to appear around the country at last. Haven't got great hopes to see other materials (billboards, banners, etc.) actually happen, because there's no money (see Guardian, Saturday). But this offers some satisfaction, especially as people seem to like the disability and women's posters a lot, so for the first time these groups are really being brought into focus as important players in the consciousness of the wider population. Let's hope people now turn out to register! Read more

[M&S Diary] Monkey business

What am I describing? My daily pains with the United Nations over here or the fun Maro and I had visiting a lovely chimpanzee sanctuary up in the hills behind Freetown?

Let's focus on the latter. The picture to the left is of Jimmy, one of the 99 chimps rescued from captivity in Sierra Leone and released in this beautiful preserve.

They are fenced in, but (outside qurantine) it's a 50 acre, man-free zone. However, I think they found Maro highly entertaining, so they came right out to see us, screaming their hellos.

Here is a video of our day for your amusement.

And that UN business? In end-of-tether despair (and because it's not entirely their fault), this letter found it's way into the Guardian at the weekend.
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From here to...

Well folks, our time in Freetown is drawing to a close. In February, Maro and I are leaving the mad, fuggy rush of the city and heading about 100km south to a small town called Moyamba. It looks a little less like this:

and a little more like this:

Apparently there are only 2 other white people there (giving us a break from the NGO swamp that exists in Freetown), but also an Indian convent where they sell great curry! Beyond bizzarre for small-town Sierra Leone, but it swung it for me!

Maro is going to be working for the District Council there, to help give them some direction for how to spend a newly aquired HIV/AIDs budget. She's also hoping to work with a VSO agricultural partner to help them incorporate some HIV training in their programmes.

And me? Not quite so worked out yet, but hopefully a little less media mayhem and a little more face time, coordinating the education work around elections in a more hands-on, local way.

In any case we are thoruoughly looking forward to getting to know more Sierra Leoneans in deeper ways that aren't too easy in the city. This will mean we'll be offline, but hope to pick up emails on occassional returns to the capital. But we'll still be textable, and continue to appreciate all your little messages of encouragement, gossip and connection.
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Elections website

This is now up and running, a simple site (visit it here) mostly for Sierra Leonean expats and local NGOs here, coz less than 1% of the population has internet access. However, in a country with limited roads its a good way to get info to organisations working out in the back of beyond. Also, the UN have finally stumped up the cash for a number of posters to be printed, which are now rolling of the press and beginning to find their way to various walls across the country. It's my first real design job (be necessity, I hasten to add - we had no money to pay anyone), but I'm pretty pleased with how things are turning out. Like 'em? Suggestions on a postcard...

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[M&S Diary] Hannah visits...

Maro and Hannah land on the near-uninhabited island of Tiwai, in the South East of Sierra Leone

Hannah flew over to visit us and mark the half-way point on our journey out here. We set off towards Tiwai Island, a natural haven in the south of the country rich with primates, rivers and pigmy hippos. Camped out, then returned via Sussex beach to Freetown. At some point I'm gonna pull together the best pics from these amazing experiences and do some direct marketing to you guys. This is a fabulous country. Poor, depressing at times, but full of potential, natural beauty, friendly people, amazing wildlife, great economic, social and cultural resources - and all unspoilt as yet.

In case that email never arrives, but you are interested in discovering a wonderful slice of Africa, completely safe, but well off the beaten track, check out IPC travel. To see a few more pictures, click 'Read more' below



Maro talks with Momodou, our guide to Tiwai. All visitor fees are ploughed back into the 8 villages that surround the island.



A black and white collobos monkey, watching us from the trees. Probably the loudest primate on the planet.


Hannah relaxing in her hotel room at Sussex beach.
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More power to who? Corruption

I had my first real taste of what some people would call corruption yesterday. The Electoral Commission has to award large contracts to some companies to assist with our marketing. I'm talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. I went to visit a few of them, all internationally run. As they showed me what they could do, I was variously offered: free use of speed boats; free accomodation in a luxury, private beach getaway; a large number of DVDs (including all the series of '24'); use of private swimming pool in Freetown; and numerous other offers of "hospitality".

It's small scale stuff, of course, compared to the kind of money that passes hands on daily basis for multi-million dollar contracts. You know what I mean; it gets reported about often enough. Africa = corruption, right? Or is our equation quite correct...

My own experience yesterday is nothing, I'm certain, compared to what goes on in Westminster, the City of London, and each of our local councils every day. Cars, holidays, lunches, the odd shares gift (or tip-off) here and there. We call it customer care, but how many public contracts are awarded to bad companies (the nightmare of our NHS springs to mind), because someone enjoyed too many nights in a luxury apartment in Hampstead, or Spain?

And what else doesn't get reported? For a start, that it's - yes - international companies and Western governments who control where the money goes in Africa, who exploit weak state infrastructures to weaken national interests and steal monopolies on essential resources like water and electricity. But of course we never hear this. Even the bravest politicians in Africa know that highlighting Western corruption on their shores will almost immediately lead to reduced international aid.

But just before Christmas, one African country, Lesotho, took the risk to tell us (you and me, concerned and conscious citizens whose reponsibility it is to hold our government and British registered businesses to account) about about one such incident.

But what did we do about it? When I mentioned the story to a friend, his first reaction was "Well it takes 2 to tango". I don't find this an acceptable position, for this simple reason: British civil society, governance infrastructure, political consciousness, etc. is hugely resourced by people who have the luxury of being able to spend time addressing these issues. Yet when good organisations and independent media turn up injustice and corruption, we're far too busy using unethical British companies, services and goods to do anything about it.

But what is invested in African civil society? What resources do people who live on less than a dollar a day have to commit to holding their and our own governments to account? Zero. And when countries get frustrated and turn to violence, it only deepens our "unfortunate conviction" that Africans are (dare we say it) something less than human, and Africa a lost cause.

Care to disagree?

1) Come to terms with the fact that Africa is corrupt because we corrupt it. The many ordinary people Maro and I have met in Sierra Leone, for example, have large extended families and a deeper sense of justice and responsbility than you or I could ever fathom. It takes powerful Western forces (we have named a few of them on this blog before) to disfigure that.

2) Be conscious of how the companies that you support are invested in Africa. Africa desperately needs British investment, but the LAST thing it needs is another decade of British exploitation. Do some research on the internet one night. Visit sites like www.wdm.org.uk, or www.pressureworks.org, enjoy understanding your power as a consumer, and support positive investors or organisations like Tradecraft. Why not subscribe to Ethical Consumer magazine and put it in your toilet for you and your guests? It'll cost you £21. And if you haven't got time for any of this, the biggest single thing you can do is to switch your bank account to the Co-op, who also run Smile (the online bank), or, if you know of any, another ethical investor.

3) And then, if you're really forward thinking, why not support African civil society movements to campaign against corruption, to lobby their governments to be courageous in development, and to resist Western pressure to sell out. Most UK charities are pretty poor at investing in anything sustainable like this, but the Christian Aid campaigns team are taking important steps towards supporting movements originating in Southern countries. Give them money to do it. You can find out more here. Or if you don't like the "Christian" label, phone WDM, Oxfam, ActionAid, etc. to ask for a chunk of your money to be directed at supporting their southern partners to campaign directly against poverty. This is something that these charities are increasingly aware of, so your call will have an impact.

4) Be inventive - and share what you find out with us and others

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Happy New Year from Sierra Leone

Happy new year everybody! We send you all our best wishes and hopes for a peaceful and generous year in 2007.

We had a lovely time over Christmas staying at a lovely resort on the beach. We were practically by ourselves, with a beautiful view from our balcony (just behind the trees in the first picture) over the quiet estuary. Long days lazing in the water, eating fish and reading our books.











Then for new year we headed north to the cool hills of Kabala, a small mountain town not so far from the Guinean border. Lots of lovely walking countryside, small villages, friendly people and good food.












On the 31st we went to a bizarre all-night dance-off kareoke thing, watching from the roof of a van in a school field, and awaiting Sierra Leone's answer to Ronan Keating to show up, who didn't until after we had decided it was our bed time.









Then on the first we climbed the Wara wara mountain with all the young folk of the town. We had heard this was a very traditional activity until we got to the top and realised it was basically a nervous teenage disco. But since this is exactly the kind of thing we can ogle at for hours, remembering with fascination our own teenage years up mountains in West Africa (or in bad clubs, anyway), we still had fun, and stuffed ourselves on oranges.



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[M&S Diary: M] Trip to the tailor

I had my first trip to the tailor last week – a regular activity for many Freetown women; indeed I am amazed by just how many outfits my friends and colleagues have. I don’t think I have ever seen Marie – my boss at SWAASL – wear the same thing twice. The same goes for hair. Every Monday morning sees a new array of plaits, extensions, styles and colours. I feel like a right scruff in comparison. I think in an attempt to smarten me up, Auntie Pat brought several metres of yellow-gold fabric back from a trip to the Gambia a few months ago. I was instructed that this was to be made into an African style skirt and top for me and a matching shirt for Simon. My mission was to find a tailor since Pat didn’t know any, having only returned to Salone recently after a decade away...


This should have been an easy task given that you can’t walk a hundred yards in Freetown without passing a small shack in which one or two sewing machines are whirring against a backdrop of brightly outfits. The problem is that everyone recommends someone different. In the end I let my most glamorous colleague, Linda – the vivacious secretary at VSO – take me to a tailor she uses round the corner from the office. There I was presented with a pile of posters each of which showed dozens of subtle variations on the classic skirt and top design worn by African women all over the continent. After much discussion and deliberation I picked a picture. The tailor then measured me and we agreed a price.

Needless to say the outfit I picked up on Monday bore no resemblance to the design had so carefully selected. But I like it anyway. My next challenge is to get Simon to go and get fitted for a matching shirt! Read more

[Elections] Long lost blogging

Hello people. It's been a few weeks since we've posted coz we've been very very very busy. For myself, the uphill struggle is practically vertical now. Very much looking forward to Christmas away in the cool hills of Kabala. I will harass Maro into writing something soon, but to keep you entertained, here's a poster for the elections.















x
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We are 3

M took me on a surprise roadtrip down the peninsula this weekend to celebrate our 3rd anniversary. She commandeered a government vehicle and we headed over the mountains, via an old colonial village and a bustling fishing port to an amazing beach at Boureh Town.
We spent the afternoon there lolling in the thermal water, literally as warm as bath; watching the birds fly in and out of the coastline; picnicking and generally forgetting the mad rush of Freetown. Then we went on to another beach called Tokey, a beautiful and deserted 2 km stretch where M had arranged for us to be fed, heated and accomodated under canopy on the beach. Very romantic, although M changed her mind at about 3 in the morning when she found herself chasing the crabs away from the foot of her bed. In the morning, we walked along the beach, took a boat across a little river to River Number 2 beach, enjoyed a drink and hitched a ride back to town in one of our old family Pergauts. A lovely, lovely weekend.

Oh, and I gave her the complete episodes of Dawson's Creek on DVD.

For those of you wanting to invest in beautiful tropical land just 6 hours from London, here are the photos. Read more