In Africa, people are happier

With just four weeks to go in Sierra Leone, we’re rapidly getting through our delivery schedule to make sure we either getting projects delivered before we depart, or ensuring that they are at a good enough stage to hand over to the second cohort of volunteers.  We’ve also been planning our last weekends in detail to ensure we get maximum exposure to Salone.  We’re just back from a weekend visit to Black Johnston beach which is equally beautiful and unspoiled - we were the only people there and the food, drink and entertainment (mainly beach football) was excellent.  Next weekend we’re in Freetown, Bo and Kenema, delivering classes to the CBF managers in those regions on some of the projects we’ve implemented in Makeni.  Our second last weekend we’ll spend in Makeni and we’ll have a bit of a party as well as a rematch of our football game against the coaches on the artificial turf in Wusum Field.  Hopefully my fitness will have improved by then.  We’re going back to the beaches for the last weekend…if you’d seen them, you too would find them irresistible! 

But while Salone’s natural beauty is undisputed, it’s not why we’ll all be sad to leave.  In the last few weeks I’ve found myself comparing the cultures of what I’ve seen of sub-Sahara Africa and home.  The reason we’ll miss this part of the world is because it has been such a fresh air in terms of the people we’ve encountered and the cultural norms we’ve observed.  Below, I’ve outlined four ways in which I believe the local culture is superior to that in the West.  Clearly Africa has lots of problems, but that’s not to say that it’s unambiguously a worse place to live in.  Apologies in advance for the overuse of stereotypes. 

Africans are more religiously tolerant

There is a lot that the rest of the world could learn from religious tolerance in Salone.  With the population split roughly three quarters Muslim and one quarter Christian, you could be forgiven for thinking that religious tensions were either a factor in the civil war or a source of on-going tension here.  Neither is the case.  Islam and Christianity exist in a very peaceful and complementary way in Sierra Leone.  Christians and Muslims intermarry freely here.  Apparently at a wedding with a mixed couple, the celebrants say all prayers, follow both customs and no one is put out by compromise.  Also, every public meeting starts with a prayer, and everyone takes a moment to say a prayer in their own religion.  I was at a CBF education session on the perils teenage marriage this week and the speaker started without suggesting that everyone take a moment to pray.  A Muslim boy, no more than 13, interrupted, and said he’d like to pray before the meeting started.  The speaker apologised and the boy led a short prayer session and everyone joined in, praising Allah.  At that point, I had just assumed it was a fully Muslim class as everyone responded to his prayers.  But then the speaker asked for someone to lead a Christian prayer, and a girl down the back volunteered and started a verse of Our Father – which everyone also joined in for!  This kind of behaviour is way above tolerance; it is full-on embracement of each other’s religious affiliations.  Which also neutralises any feelings of threat and removes the “us versus them” mentality that dominates religious debate between the West and the East.

We were recently invited to the New London Mosque by the local Imam.  It's just a short walk from our house and it was such a warm invitation it seemed rude to turn down.  We began, as all Muslim's do before prayer, with ablution.  We carefully cleansed our bodies (and our souls!) just as the Prophet did: Right hand three times, left hand three times, right arm three times, left arm three times, face three times, head three times, nose three times, ears three times, feet three times.  Each time right side before left side.  Islam has rules for everything which are based on how Mohammed lived his life and for this short period, we were following them to the letter.  After reciting a short prayer, we entered the Mosque, a peaceful and cool environment, mentally a long way from the intense heat and street life outside.  We sat in a circle and listened to one of the elders read verses from the Quran in Krio and English.  When finished about a dozen readings we were offered food and drink, in accordance with the Islamic tradition of treating your visitors better than your family.  We then discussed the Deen (which I was already familiar with), which is a Muslim’s way of life and its three pillars: Imam (faith), Islam (self-surrender to the will of Allah) and Ihsan (spiritual excellence).  It was a warm and enlightening experience, but one done without any expectation that we would “convert” or start going to prayer readings.  They just wanted to inform us on what they do and share a little of their time explaining Islam to Westerners.  I awoke the next morning as usual to the call to prayer but unusually it was accompanied by harmonious bells from the local Christian church.  Both religions singing in harmony to mark the beginning of a new day in Salone.  I haven’t come across this anywhere before.

The only religious perspective not embraced seems to be atheists / agnostics, which is the category that the Makeni Four fall into.  But there’s a pretty simple message here - the next time you hear about the “good work” religions are doing in the developing world, remember that non-believers are here too.  Just because we don’t have an umbrella organisation with the resources of Rome doesn’t mean that humanists aren’t as active as belief groups.  And unlike religious affiliated charities and NGOs, we do encourage the use of condoms, we don’t judge people based on their sexual orientation and we don’t tell lies about HIV transmission. 

Africans have a stronger sense of community spirit

Community spirit is a hard topic to define, but you know it when you see it.  And you see it every day in Salone.  I saw it when my taxi broke down on the way to Freetown.  I saw it when the poda-poda on the way back got a puncture.  I saw it when a school bus crashed.  I saw it when one of our managers mothers was taken ill and his co-workers took over his responsibilities.  You see it many days when one family is low on food and they are sitting outside their neighbours, sharing the only food they all have.

A lot of this community spirit stems from basic human needs and a very narrow margin for error.  People just don’t have savings, houses often wash away in the wet season, and almost half the population don’t get their requisite number of calories on a daily basis.  While the community spirit here may have imminent disaster as a backdrop, it fosters much stronger and deeper relationships.  In addition, life in Salone happens outside the house.  People spend all of the day in the company of others.  They know more people.  They build stronger relationships.  We call ourselves social in the West when we go to a pub and have yet another conversation with someone we’ve known for 15 years.  But here, everyone knows everyone else.  Everyone looks out for everyone else.  They go out of their way to introduce themselves to strangers.  To include everyone in every activity.  You can touch and feel the strong sense of community.  Very unlike our concrete jungles populated with neighbours we’re embarrassed to say hello to and total strangers we share a train seat with every day. 

Africans are happier

Despite all the problems people encounter on a daily basis, for the most part, they walk around the streets with a smile on their face.  It’s incredibly powerful to observe people with ragged clothes and little opportunity joking and having fun.  There is always a game being played or a song being sung.  Occasionally you’ll come across something quite random, like the time Will and I went out to the local radio station to get some beers (they have a generator so they can actually keep beer cool, unlike most stalls or shops) and there was 30 or 40 elderly ladies in full traditional clothing dancing just for the hell of it.  African’s celebrate their love for life on a regular, almost daily basis, through song and dance.  This isn't just a romantic view I hold of a people and a place I am enjoying either...the World Values Survey recently reported that Nigerians were the happiest people in the world.

I don’t want to compare this to home with examples for the moment.  A lot of people are having an incredibly rough time, immigration is draining our talent, our health and education systems are totally under-resourced, unemployment is sickeningly high and our politicians seem utterly incapable of allocating resources to solve any of these problems.  But no matter how bad you day has been, there are hundreds of millions of people in Africa who can’t even dream of our standard of living.  And yet they are happier people.


Africa is safer and more forgiving

What?  Are you serious?  What’s in the water over there??  Yes, I’m serious.  Sierra Leone and Ghana are safer than the UK and ROI.  I can’t prove this empirically but I see less violence, I feel less threatened and I have experienced less crime in Sierra Leone and Ghana than when I lived in London, Dublin, Limerick or New York. 

I think it stems from the level of respect people have for each other here, the sense of community, and the fact that everyone has your back – and is also there for you if the worst happens.  It means that the incentives to steal are quite low, even when people have virtually nothing.  Violence is also low.  Yes, tempers are often short here and you see plenty of arguments around town, but Africans have amazing powers of forgiveness and once an argument is done, it’s done.  How else does a people, one third of whom ended up in refugee camps during a bloody civil war, move on and create a well-functioning society only 10 years later?  There is less evidence of a Civil War in Sierra Leone today than there is of one in the USA from 150 years ago!

I’m not in any way trying to say that life in Africa is better than life in the West, I’m just saying it is not all one-way traffic.  Despite much war, corruption and turmoil, African communities have somehow managed to keep hold of strong values, many of which have been diluted by the commercialism, materialism and pace of life in the West.  For each one of the four categories I’ve mentioned above, there are one hundred problems; lack of opportunity, gender inequality, corruption, infant mortality, poor healthcare, inferior human rights, phoney democratic structures, lack of freedom of the press, voodoo religions and dangerous infrastructure are the ones to come to mind.  And there are many more.  But the only way I can reconcile the happiness I see here with the lack of progress in development is to believe that African’s optimism and outlook are the biggest factors in their enjoyment of life.  And there is a lesson for all of us in that.

Five weeks and counting

With just five weeks to go in Sierra Leone, we are really focusing hard on getting through the workload that we outlined in January to ensure that we leave at least a modest legacy here.  While we are all looking forward to seeing loved ones, eating some of our favourite foods (I’m badly missing sushi and Indian, and we all may have a big mac eating contest when we hit Heathrow) and doing the things we enjoy at home, we all seem to share a collective feeling of pre-emptive regret about our impending departure.  I don’t think any of us can or want to stay longer, but we’ve had such an enriching and stimulating experience that life at home threatens to be tedious and monotonous compared to our adventure in West Africa. 

Week seven here was action packed yet again.  On Friday, we headed north towards Sierra Leone’s border with Guinea to Outamba-Kilimi national park.  The park was a popular tourist destination in the past but was attacked and burned to the ground by the RUF in the mid-90s and still hasn’t fully recovered.  Things are slowly improving but it still lacks basic facilities.  And getting there is some challenge.  On the way up we spent 6 hours in a Toyota Hiace with 28 people crammed in, took a 2 hour motorcycle ride that got a puncture and, on the way back, in addition to everything, we had to stay three-in-a-bed in a guesthouse before a 4am rise.  However, the park was great.  We stayed in wooden huts, played poker under the moonlight and brought our own food (spaghetti and beans!) to be cooked by the park staff.  After a beautiful canoe-ride, we saw Africa’s most dangerous animal (the hippopotamus) up close; while chilling out up a tree, a troupe of rare monkeys passed overhead on their way for lunch; and from the same vantage point in the tree I could see fish hunting for and eating flies and each other.  Don’t be fooled into thinking that West Africa is all desert and rock, it is in fact rich in vegetation and overflowing in animal life. 

Most of the rest of the week was spent in the office making progress on our projects, but we also got to see some football, took part in a photo-shoot for the Sierra Leone marathon, I delivered a class on project management to the CBF managers and coaches, and I started giving Alusine some MS Office tutorials.  A few of you have asked what we’re actually working on and this is probably a good time to discuss what we’re trying to achieve here.  The footballistas amongst you may be disappointed that our work is a bit business consultancy but that’s our role, and our challenge was to look at how we could improve on all aspects of the league.  We’re working on dozens of initiatives, but below is a synopsis of the most important ones, with some comment on their impact and challenges.

1. Improve the sustainability and impact of community projects

In order to participate in the football league, the circa 2,000 boys and girls of the league must complete one community project a month.  This is a great initiative as it builds awareness in the children of the community around them, it underscores the importance of doing good deeds without expecting anything in return for them and it helps keep them away from gangs and drugs.  However, what we noticed is while all of the projects were very well meaning and some of them were quite impactful, there was a lack of sustainability – they were mostly one off benefits that didn’t change behaviour.  What we’re attempting to do here is to increase the ambition, value-add and sustainability of the community projects by partnering with NGOs, the town council and other organisations that are willing to engage and empower youth.  Joe is currently running a really good pilot whereby the Bellamy boys and girls are supporting the National Election Commission in getting voters biometrically registered for the election later this year.  The children hand out flyers, knock on doors and explain the process, deadlines and requirements to potential voters, many of whom can’t read or write.  There are many other similar projects in the pipeline that will similarly promote collaboration with like-minded partner organisations, delivering sustainable and impactful projects and empower the kids.

2.  Investing in staff

While CBF runs training courses for its staff that are more than sufficient for their day-to-day needs, we’re launching a curriculum to build their capacity and invest in their future.  There are so many advantages to this.  The CBF managers are very well educated by local standards and any investment in their education and development is an investment in the future of Sierra Leone.  Like all good corporate training it improves employee engagement and makes staff feel more valued.  We also believe it will improve the functioning of the league and will mark the Craig Bellamy Foundation out as one of the best employers in Sierra Leone.  I am currently delivering a 4 week module on project management, teaching staff on how to initiate, execute, control and close a project and teaching them about scope, Gantt charts, work break down structures and RAID logs.  Very exciting stuff!  Other modules in the pipeline include business strategy, stakeholder management, communications, culture and economics.  Rather than just deliver what we can while we’re here, we’ve structured the curriculum over a two-year period, with strict requirements to achieve a certificate. 

3. Passport to Empowerment

Along with community projects, the kids are also required to do peer education classes.  Similar to the community projects, these have excellent objectives but we have found execution to be inconsistent, with each manager required to come up with their own education programme each month.  Our idea was to put together a formal curriculum so that after spending four years in the CBF league (age 11 to 14) the children would go through a standard programme of life skills that would stand to them into adulthood.  While I have a curriculum outlined, I am going to meet with some of the children next week to better understand their level of comprehension and understanding – I can’t remember the last time I had a conversation with an 11 year old and remarkably all of these kids speak three languages (Tenme, Krio and English) so I need to understand their capacity for leading these sessions themselves.  But the courses should be interesting and include topics such as African human rights heroes, best health practices, children’s rights, careers and contraception.  This initiative, which would be rolled out to all 2,000 Bellamy kids a year would clearly be our biggest win while here and would create a real legacy that would make a material difference to the kids in future years.

4. Attendance records

Another requirement of the league is that the kids have very good school attendance records and one of the key roles of team managers is to meet with “linked” teachers in order to get attendance records and to assess class contribution.  However, on average this involves the managers having relationships with 11 schools with huge overlaps between managers which the school teachers find frustrating.  It is time consuming, expensive and not always productive, even though it is central to the league’s values.  This aim of this initiative is to reduce the number of interactions and miles covered by moving from a one-to-many relationship to a one-to-one relationship where the managers will take sole responsibility for all the children in a school close to where they live / work, regardless of what team they play for.  The challenge here?  Trust!  Some of the managers believe that their children’s attendance may be underrepresented by opposing managers looking to gain an advantage – if children don’t go to school, they can’t play in the league!  So we’re working on a system that ensures there is secondary validation of attendance.  And on building trust.

5.  Girl’s league launch

The final major initiative on our radar is the launch of the girl’s league.  Promoting gender equality is one of the top objectives of the CBF league and on the 8^th of Match, International Women’s Day, we will launch our girl’s league.  Will has put a lot of work into this.  In the week leading up to the launch, each of the teams (boys and girls) will get delivered a module from an NGO on topics such as domestic violence, teenage pregnancy and gender equality.  Then on the launch day, we’re gathering all of our players outside the council offices (old HQ for the RUF militants funded by Charles Taylor) and marching to Wusum Field.  The girls will lead off and the boys will be in support, banging drums and waving flags.  When we get to the field everyone will gather for speeches from local prominent women, speaking on a range of gender equality issues.  After some refreshments we’ll then have an exhibition game between two of the teams on what is, by all accounts, the best football pitch in the country.  Local and national journalists will be in attendance, there is plenty of radio coverage planned in the run-up, we are expecting local dignitaries (including the elusive mayor) and we are they 1^st (and we think only) West African event formally recognised by International Women’s day.  There will be a big celebration after.

There are a raft of other initiatives we’re working on, some of which are challenging (how do you create a graduate league with no financing?), some tedious (how do you standardise and improve homework clubs?) and some entirely mundane (how do you build a database repository to reduce the volume of paper and improve accuracy in reporting?).  The latter is one of my babies!  I know some of you have probably been thinking that we spend all day on a football pitch, training kids, posing and working on our suntans – while we’ve done that on occasion the reality is that we spend most of our days in an office, exchanging ideas, writing proposals, doing analysis and engaging with the managers to better understand their challenges.  Office work is Monday – Friday, we try to go to games and community projects on Saturdays and we give training sessions on a Sunday – it can be a 7 day a week job at times.  But on reflection, this is a near-perfect volunteering position for me.  It has balanced stimulating work, a great cause, a country very much in need, amazingly positive people and a fantastic, life changing adventure.  Football is what attracted me to this role, but it’s been a relatively insignificant factor in my fascination and infatuation with Sierra Leone and West Africa.

Where the streets have no name

Firstly, apologies for the long break in blog entries.  Two reasons, firstly we had a full week in Makeni without Internet access.  The two locations where we pick up a connection had no service for unexplained reasons.  The second reason is that I have taken a week out of my schedule to tour Ghana, which is worth a blog entry of its own.  It is just as friendly, raw and beautiful as Salone, but with more infrastructure, more options and a few added luxuries.  Other than pregnant mothers (risk of malaria) and families with young children (infrastructure) Ghana should be off-limits to no one and enjoyable for everyone.

Secondly, thanks for your interest in my blog.  I’m averaging over one hundred page impressions a week and it’s great to know that so many people are following our adventures while also learning about Sierra Leone.  Thanks also for your emails and messages of support, it’s hard to get the time (and internet access) to reply to all, but I will get through them eventually!  One of the consistent questions / requests you have been asking for is some pictures of Makeni.  I have added one below from our boys league game below and will try to put up one a week going forward.  But I’m not inclined to take too many pictures from around Makeni.  Firstly, I’ve always hated it when aid agencies use pictures of children living in squalor to emotionally blackmail viewers – I don’t want compromise anyone’s dignity while I’m here.  Secondly, the natives frown upon it.  Being white here equates to having money, and when they see white people taking pictures they think that the exploitive pictures will be sold in the West for a small fortune.  Finally, some of the traditional religions have superstitions about images of the living, and I while I’m not afraid to have a voodoo spell cast on me, I don’t want them burning down my house!  So instead, for this entry, I thought it might be interesting to paint a picture of the town of Makeni, to give you a better sense of our surrounds, friends and environment.

Our house is a tidy burnt-orange bungalow with a small front and back porch and an uneven corrugated iron roof.  It is a new build and is nestled in sight of about 10 other houses in a district in Makeni called New London.  It has four bedrooms, a bathroom and an open-plan living room and eating room.  You can’t really call the latter a kitchen because there is no sink or cooker; it just has a table and a cupboard and is suitable for only eating and, more recently, beer-pong.  Cooking takes place outdoors in Sierra Leone, starting at about 6am when mothers and young daughters emerge from their houses with enormous cauldrons that just about feed the average family of 10.  They cook in thatched roof huts and ignoring the fact that they might be 100 yards apart, the ladies shout loudly about whatever is vexing them.  While there is no way to sleep after they rise, the truth is that I’m awake earlier than this most mornings due to a combination of restless dogs and eager chickens – a combination that makes a full night’s sleep difficult.  

Our house is probably the second nicest in the immediate vicinity.  I haven’t seen the inside of any others but the generator at number 27 that kept me awake till 1am a few nights recently, indicating that they have more resources than anyone else in New London.  In contrast, the house that my bedroom looks onto has never been painted and doesn’t have glass in the windows – just wooden shutters and jaded curtains.  The owner, Eric, is a half-brother of Alusine’s and their father (the local Imam) has three wives and 21 children, symmetrically and considerately distributed with seven per wife.   Between the houses are a combination of mango and palm trees and the occasional outdoor toilet.  I haven’t quite figured out how many houses are as fortunate as us to have indoor toilets and showers, even if you do have to lug a couple of gallons of water into the cistern before flushing or showering.

As soon as you close the front door, you hear the chants of the children singing “a-po-to” (everyone tells us it means white man but we’ve convinced ourselves it’s derived from “Portuguese”) announcing our presence too all and sundry.  Sometimes they want to shake your hand or to be lifted up, other times they want a high-5.  In a typical day we probably hear “a-po-to” 200 times and get 50 high-5s.  The younger ones sometimes approach in curiosity but run away in tears, afraid of our “snowman” appearance.  Such is their unbounded friendliness and curiosity that you’ll occasionally be offered chop-chop (food) if they are eating.  The children are always happy in Salone.  Playing, chasing, observing, chilling, talking, eating, but always smiling.

There only a couple of miles of tarmac roads in Makeni so the path towards the town centre is an uneven mud-track complete with rocks, weeds and household rubbish.  It’s too bumpy for most cars and the okada riders have to skilfully manoeuvre around the same ridges to minimise the unrelenting undulation.  As the road meanders we pass the same people who are becoming our friends.  Alusine’s “corner boys”, each wearing a shirt from their favourite premiership team.  The “well girls” who seem to be continually pumping and playing in well water.  Then there is Fatima and her 9 brothers who hang outside their mom’s corner shop.  Our “Aunty Ellen”, who has promised to mind us while we’re away from our mothers, also has a corner shop that competes directly with Fatima’s mother’s shop.  We try to split our business fairly between both, but sitting on Aunty Ellen’s porch and listening to her pride when she talks about her children who are doing well in Freetown, is our preference. 

Further down Frontier Road, you begin to realise how much rubbish is just lying around in Makeni.  There is a limited refuse collection service in Freetown but in the rest of the country, rubbish just accumulates on the side of the road – no one has responsibility for it.   The local men are equally as shameless in their toilet habits and in any given walk in Makeni, you’re likely to pass one local relieving himself in broad daylight.  You also notice how dusty the town is, every car or okada that passes throws up a burst of red powder.  If you spend too much time on an okada it beings to accumulate on your skin like foundation makeup, fooling you into believing that you’ve got a great tan…until you check your towel after showering.  Jah knows how much of this we inhale as we stroll around town.

At the next junction, where Frontier Road meets Lunsar Road, you finally meet tarmac.  Taking a right brings you down to the two petrol stations (NP and Total) that are the transport hub of Makeni.  This is where poda-podas, taxis and okadas depart every morning and afternoon for Freetown, Lunsar and apparently even to the Guinea border.  Rumours of bus from the state run bus company departing here for Freetown at 6.30am are just that, rumours.  Going straight at this junction brings you down Ladies mile which is one of the centres of entertainment in Makeni.  On the left there is a concert venue where we saw Shady Baby, Sierra Leone’s most famous artist, “perform” recently.  I’m not lying when I say it was not worth the £1.20 entrance fee to see him lip-sync – I mean he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page!  Further down is Flamingo’s night club.  We’d heard a lot about this place before we arrived and it has lived up (down?) to its reputation – providing a location for expat miners to find local prostitutes.  At the end of Ladies Mile is MJ’s hotel, where David Beckham stayed on his visit here in 2008.  As the only in town (at the time) that had running water, it was a good choice.  MJ’s motto is “the best hospitality” but you shouldn’t let this statement increase your expectations regarding the service on offer – this is still West Africa.  Ladies Mile is a great walk at night - dozens of street traders sit side-by-side under candlelight selling a huge range of street-food - oranges, popcorn, roasted peanuts, goat kebabs (or so we’re told!), cassava root, fresh coconuts, toasted coconut, oranges, packet water and sticky toffee – we’ve tried and loved all the street food Makeni has to offer!  Music can be heard from every direction on Ladies Mile, with block parties adding to the afro-beats from the two nightclubs. 

A left hand turn at the Lunsar Road takes you towards clock-tower, the town centre.  On this journey, houses morph into businesses that specialise in beds, motorbike parts, mobile phone credit, stationery, more street-food and more mobile phone credit.  As you approach the clock tower, the buildings mostly improve, some are freshly painted and some even have a second floor!  The clock tower is a broad arch that spans about 60 feet and has four large clocks.  But don’t set your watch by them as they all tell a different time.  It’s also a bit of a death-trap as Okada riders are as likely to go around the tower clockwise as anti-clockwise.  In addition to the road we’ve approached the tower from, there are three other roads leading off it. 

The first is Mugburaka road.  It’s a long road that dives downhill for half a mile, then flattens for half a mile before it bounces back uphill for the same distance.  The first structure you meet on it is the town Mosque, painted in different shades of green paint, all of which are peeling.  Unlike Mosques in Northern Africa, it has four minarets, each one topped off with a crescent moon lying casually on its back.  A little further down the road there’s one of the dozens of “football cinemas” you find in Makeni, which is the real Mecca here.   These are effectively large, sweaty, tree-huts with two to three TV’s and a satellite dish that shows every English football game broadcast globally.  The entrance fee varies between 14 pence and 28 pence and is worth infinitely more than that to see the passion, desire and fear with which the locals watch the Premiership.  The African Cup of Nations, which has been on since we got here, just doesn’t matter.   In one of these cinemas recently, I watched Wigan vs. Everton - I had a packet of biscuits in my bag, which I passed around to the other viewers – each one to a man took a single biscuit and passed the rest on to the person beside them.  The packet was returned to me still half full in a country where 40% of the population don’t get their requisite number of calories in a given day!  No greed, no gluttony, no selfishness - just as I’ve come to expect in Sierra Leone. 

At the mid-point of the road is the Clubhouse bar, that serves an English (Irish!) breakfast, western food and even has a projector for the six nations.  Our housemate Ed works here, racking his brains to come up with marketing ideas and events to fund the Street Child project that benefits from its profits.  At the end of the road is a roundabout leading to Mem’s and Hemingway’s, two of our favourite spots in Makeni.  The former in particular is where big nights out get started with cool beers and maybe even some dancing.  Just before these two establishments is a billboard saying “always condomise”.  The AIDS rate here isn’t as bad as further down the continent, but the high level of teenage pregnancy and open relationships / cheating we’ve come across means that these messages are incredibly important. 

The next road is Station road.  It too has a large Mosque but the first shop you come to is owned by Abu, who will sell you anything from Obama school bags, to Tesco Value teabags to a 1,000 watt RMS stereo speaker to a can of Fanta lemon.  We’ve tried on several occasions to go to Ab-Zain’s restaurant next-door to Abu’s, but although the door is open, there is never anyone there!  The council offices are a little further down station road, and these were the infamous headquarters of the RUF during the civil war.  There is nothing to indicate that the rebel mercenaries, funded by Charles Taylor (shame on you Naomi Campbell), who dragged this country into the dark ages in the 1990s were based here.  But everyone knows.  Having been reclaimed, the Sierra Leone flag now flies high and proud outside once again, with its message of “unity, justice and freedom”.  With the market in close proximity, this road is stuffed with ladies bringing goods to and from the market.  A glimpse of this road is all you need to know that there is nothing Salonian women can’t or won’t balance on their heads.  Two gallons of water, 25 foot bamboo poles, a huge basket of flip-flops, an orchard of apples and a up to 100 fish are regular sights on the top of women’s heads, expertly balanced with minimum body movement in their stride and a stiff neck providing a steady base. 

Xxx Road is next, possibly the liveliest and most congested road in Makeni.  Bama’s restaurant, hidden at the back of a nondescript building does excellent beef shawarma but they rarely have more than two portions in stock, which has led to the odd disagreement between the flatmates!  We were here a couple of Sundays ago for the first time and while the food was great the toilet was straight out of Trainspotting and at one point the waitress emerged from the kitchen with just a towel on to serve us our dinner!  What you find going down this street is that the stores and stalls get repetitive – with a lack of capital and limited supply of goods arriving from Freetown – there just isn’t a broad variety of consumables for sale.  The equivalent stores in Freetown sell luxuries such as scented soap, solar phone chargers and books – these never make it to Makeni.  

Further down there is an old petrol station that is converted into a bar.  Well, not so much converted as maintained with the addition of some plastic chairs and a beer fridge.  We were sitting here one night when a guy saw me drinking Guinness and joined our table.  Mohammed (not his real name) loved Guinness and was thrilled that I was from Dublin (I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was from Limerick).  We had a bit of banter with Mohammed, until we found out that he was a mercenary soldier based in Iraq.  The conversation got a little more serious as we questioned him about what he was doing in Iraq.  Turns out, while the US government claims that they have no more ground troops in Iraq, they have at least 2,500 Sierra Leoneans troops on the payroll.  This was further confirmed by Hassain (not his real name!) who joined me for a run around Wusim field a few days later.  He even said that the Americans provided them with women for their off-weeks.  I wonder where those services fit in the Department of Defence budget. 

The final road off the clock tower (doesn’t have a name and) is an alternative route home that passes by Wusim field, the home of the local soccer team and apparently the best soccer pitch in the country.  I passed by there last Sunday and there were kids peering over the barbed wire and through holes in the wall.  On enquiring, it turned out that the national girls under-17 team were playing against Guinea.  I’ve no idea what the attendance was but it was about 4 deep around the pitch and a full stand – so I’m guessing 3-4,000 people – with an entrance fee of half a days wages.  You can’t question passion for football here – England’s womens team doesn’t get that kind of turnout in a country with eight times the population.   

Wusim field is named after Wusim hill, a “mini-Uluru” (my description) that can be seen from any point in the city.  Although the Bradt guide indicates that the hike can be done in 30 mins, it took us more like an hour and was tough going.  The views from up here are great and you get a sense of how lush the land is and how full of life Makeni is. 

If a picture paints a thousand words at this stage I should have described three pictures worth of Makeni.  I hate making this comparison but it does have some validity – Makeni today reminds me of the Limerick that my grandparents and Frank McCourt describe. I don’t mean to infer that there is anything backward about Makeni or its people, but when I recollect my grandparents talk about being poor but happy it is what I see in Makeni. 

One of the things we’ve remarked to ourselves is how easy it is to live here, and I hope that has come across in this entry.  The town is walkable, has sufficient amenities to keep us well-nourished and coupled with the friendliness of the people and the work we are doing, we are definitely enjoying ourselves.  In addition, the four of us are getting on incredibly well and it would be much harder to do what we’re doing without such good company.  But all this enjoyment occasionally makes me feel guilty – should volunteering in the second most underdeveloped country in the world be this enjoyable?  The answer feels like it should be no, but in reality, it is yes.

Week 3 – Freetown, a day in the life

Amazingly, we are now a quarter of the way through our three month programme in Sierra Leone.  It seems silly to suggest that things suddenly feel natural in an environment so different but I guess the passing of time helps to normalise everything.  One example of this is the temperature.  On our first morning in Makeni, I woke up after an uncomfortable night’s sleep and was drenched with sweat.  A quick look at my bedside-barometer informed me that it was 19 degrees.  However, today I woke up to a soft cool breeze and was happy to feel a drop in temperature.  But I was way off, it was actually 25 degrees!  The day time temperature has also increased and is averaging about 36, edging up as the Harmattan Haze eases.  We're not quite sure where it will peak, but we're hoping that our bodies will continue to adapt! 

We've had another fun, productive and interesting week.  We've made steady progress supporting CBF.  We've agreed in principle to enter a long term strategic partnership with a local microfinance trust, we've secured a venue for the launch of the girls league, we agreed an approach to strategic sponsorships and we had half an hour radio time to publicise the league and inform the public of the importance of education and community projects to the league.  We also got up early Sunday morning to hike the local hill overlooking Makeni. It was a great hike, at times we were vertical and on all fours, but it gave us a new vista of Makeni.  From the streets we’ve found the town dusty and dry; from the water tower we saw how rich in vegetation it was; and from the top we marvelled at the sounds, colour and smells that define life in Makeni.  It was a tough climb, but very rewarding. 

However, as to be expected in Salone, we also had our challenges.  The Mayor was a no-show for the fourth time.  Will organised a meeting with the managers of the girls’ teams and not one of them showed up!  There is currently a fuel shortage in Makeni so every petrol station has a couple of hundred angry Ocada drivers outside whose livelihood is threatened.  We had a small theft at our house, but it was just opportunistic, not sinister.  There was a big fight in a local nightclub, but we spotted it immediately and exited.  I even went to a local cinema to see Everton in the FA cup but, despite being advertised, the game wasn't actually available!  Also, on our radio interview, a texter to the show inquired as to "why you are including girls in this thing?"!  Social attitudes here will take much more than the work of four volunteers to change.  But perhaps of all the challenges this week, the one that tested me the most was a day trip to Freetown to apply for a visa to Ghana. 

The trip started with a 6am rise.  I packed everything I thought I could need, not knowing if I was going for one day or two, and not knowing what documents were required because the embassy doesn't have a website and after 40 phone calls, no one had bothered to pick up.  There is no reliable public transport here but there are hundreds of taxis and poda-podas (think a 1980's Toyota Hiace that has no upper limit on the number of passengers it will take - if the cabin is full you can even sit on the roof!).  The fare is about €3 for the two and a half our trek by taxi, which the option I went for, despite the obvious roof-surfing allure of the poda-poda.  There were 8 in our car - I shared the front passenger seat of our 1992 Nissan Sunny with Hassan, a mild mannered student who spoke broken English and seemed more embarrassed than I to be in such close proximity.  I started reading Homage to Barcelona as we left port and was about 60 pages in when pandemonium broke out in the car.  Everyone was speaking Temne, so I couldn't quite understand what happened, until I looked at the dashboard and saw every warning light possible flashing - and then looked at the hood to see a couple of flames.  I didn’t expect the journey to be comfortable, but I didn’t expect that we might spontaneously combust!  We pulled into a house on the road side and everyone (bar me) literally did a tuck-and-roll to get out of the car in case it exploded into a fire ball.  Having watched one too many episodes of Brainiac, I knew this was an unlikely outcome, unless our Nissan was running on Nitrous Oxide.  Everyone worked hard together to get the car back on the road.  The gender roles were interesting - the ladies fetched water, bought some food and thanked the locals who helped.  The men argued about what the problem was and how to fix it.    A plank of wood, a few gallons of water, an oil top-up, an old rag and 20 mins later we were back on the road. 

Freetown's notoriously busy roads were remarkably quiet and we arrived in the Eastern part of the town about two and a half hours after we departed.  With step one accomplished, step two was to find the Ghanaian embassy.  I had two different addresses from two guide books and a local friend had made some calls and given me a third address.  After two hours of taxis, motorbike rides and a hot, sweaty, mid-day walk, it turned out that all three of these addresses were wrong.  Hungry, thirsty and increasingly delirious, I began questioning whether Ghana was even a real country and I contemplated going back to Makeni and abandoning my holiday plans.  Thankfully a local government official, about the 15th person I asked, said she thought she knew where the embassy was.  This was confirmed by my eager travel partner in London who had made numerous phone calls.  I began to hope.  Another motor bike ride brought me to Spur road and to the Ghana embassy!  But that was the easy part.

The bureaucrat responsible for visa issuance, presumably the same lady who sat at her desk looking at the paint drying while I rang her phone, had the authority of a four star general but the competence of Conrad Murray.  Blue ink.  No, black ink is better for scanning.  Three copies of the application form.  No, four, just in case one gets lost.  $50 application fee, no $100 - and it had to be a $100 note!  This woman had only one job in life and she couldn't give me a straight answer to any question.  After carefully filling out the application form, she threw a tantrum because I had spelled Sierra Leone in lower case and the rest of the form in capital letters!  She was really close to breaking my spirit but I dug deep and filled out the application form again.  She approved it.  HALLE-FUCKING-LUJAH!  I nearly did cartwheels around her shabby office to celebrate.  Now all I had to do was find a bank that was selling US$ and a photocopier and get back to her within the hour or I'd have to stay the night and come back tomorrow.  She doesn't like to work passed three, you see.  Four banks, two hotels, two internet cafes, five motorbike rides and two Coca Cola's later and the mission was accomplished!  Well, not exactly.  Why wasn't my letter of invitation signed?  Well, because it came from Ghana and there is no postal service in Sierra Leone - so how could it be signed?  This was now a matter for the High Commissioner himself. He was dragged out of a very important meeting to make the important decision.  Nope, above his pay-grade, so he had to call his boss in Ghana!  WTF?  All I want to do is visit your country, spend my money, eat your food, meet your people and tell my friends about how much I enjoyed it.  Look at the stamps in my passport; I’m not a flight risk!  Why are you crushing my soul before I set foot on your soil, Ghana?  Finally I got approval in principle, just get the letter signed, scanned and re-present it for same day processing.  I can't remember fighting so hard for so little in all my life.

To get back to Makeni I first had to get back to the petrol station on the other side of town where the taxis leave from.  The choice was 2 hours in a car or 40 mins on a motorbike.  After the hell I'd been through, I decided I deserved some reward.  So I took a motorbike.  It was immediately apparent that Peter, my driver, and I, were kindred spirits.  I've always wanted to own a motorbike, but never quite trusted my thirst for adrenalin to keep me safe.  Peter drove exactly as I (feared I) would drive if I was in his helmet.  Ducking and diving through traffic, accelerating through the tiniest gap, darting through side-streets to beat traffic, and going the wrong way down one way streets.  "The closer you get to my ass, the faster I can go" he said.  So I shamelessly nudged closer to my brother from a different mother.  The smells, sights and colour of Freetown whizzed by as I took out my ipod and added a hip hop sound track to my journey.  At one point we came across a funeral and the other motorcycles were held up behind it in a half mile of chaotic traffic.  No problem for Peter, who mounted the carriageway divide and continued at pace down the wrong side of the street, immune to the velocity of the traffic passing inches from his fingers.  Peter got me to the pick-up point just in time to get the last taxi.  I made a promise to myself that I’d learn how to ride a motorbike.  And check my life insurance policy.

The crew in this car home were a little friendlier than on the way up, though when we got a puncture they weren't nearly as willing to help out.  At 5pm the driver tuned into BBC World Service for the daily African News.  An international mining company had agreed to uphold its Corporate Social Responsibility policy in Salone, despite some recent breaches.  My companions sniggered and swopped stories about child labour in the mines.  Three Kenyan officials (including the son of Jomo Kenyatta) have been indicted in The Hague for corruption.  “That's nothing!” my fellow commuters roared; get the ICC to come to Salone if they want to see corruption.  The final story was on Boko Haram, the northern Nigerian terrorists who want to impose Sharia law throughout that country.  Their attack today had brought to 950 the number of people they have killed in Nigeria in the last three years.  This story was met with awkward body language, glances out the window and an uncomfortable silence.  My comrades were of an age where they would have seen the brutality of civil conflict first hand.  They were not going to engage in conversation on the topic, the memories were too disturbing.  

Week 2 - Lifestyle and Culture

Folks, I'm happy to report that we've had another great week in Salone.  The lifestyle here is far better than we expected and I think we've adapted well to the West African way of doing things.  The food is tasty but a little predictable due to the restricted selection at local markets.  If Fat Marta doesn't get to the market by 8am, there is no cow meat (aka beef!) available.  Whether we eat in or out, the food choices are similar.  Every dish is a mammoth portion of carbs, either rice, couscous or pasta, coupled with a slender serving of either chicken or beef.  Fish is available but having walked the local markets and seen the state of the full-body, fly attracting, sun dried catch, we have been put off.  Occasionally we get fried plantain which is excellent, though deep fried in cholesterol rich palm oil.  The meats are well spiced with red chillies, with a kick that's rich in flavour.  The beverage selection is equally limited.  Star beer isn't always available, isn't always the same strength and doesn't always taste the same - sometimes it's brim-full of hops, other times it tastes fruity and sometimes it’s just stale.  The Guinness here, at 7.5%, is rocket fuel.  A half dozen and you'll forget what part of the world you're in, which for an Irishman in Salone should be quite difficult!  Import Heino and Carlsberg are available but they are more expensive for takeout than they are at home, so we only drink import when there's no alternative.

Appointments here are hysterical.  Meeting times are, at best aspirational.  When I go to the bank I settle in and watch an hour of Al Jazeera. When I go to the phone shop I bring a book.  Being on time is a moral hazard as you know you'll end up waiting for your counterpart to show.  We've made four trips to meet the mayor but still haven't pressed the flesh.  We've been two minutes from going on national radio twice, and each time the DJ hasn't shown up for work! Having some African friends, I was expecting this - the culture is so ridiculously relaxed I've decided to roll with the punches rather than get frustrated by it.  A new friend that we've met here, Fatima, said she'd meet us at Mems bar on Friday night about 7.  At 8 she text to say that her radio show was running late.  At 9 she text to say she was almost there. At 10 I text back "No rush Fatima, This Is Africa!"  If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. 

                           A picture of Joe, Will and I after playing soccer with some Bellamy League Kids

After two weeks of meeting stakeholders, our daily schedule has now become settled.  We wake at 8am and go for a 5k run.  Three of the four of us have run marathons in similar times so we're good running partners.  We have breakfast at 8.30, then have cold-water bucket showers and head for our office at 9.30.  Our office is modest but comfortable.  No AC, but a bombing diesel generator provides electricity which is quite a novelty.  We share the office with youth workers at Restless Development, who are full of energy and great company.  Lunch tends to be a bread roll, some Laughing Cow cheese and packet water.  The packet water is a 500ml plastic bag that is cheap (circa 7p), well chilled and available at any store, keeping us hydrated through the midday heat (mostly >35 degrees).  In the afternoon we'll have meetings with coaches, managers, other NGO's or public officials.  I try to get home for 5pm to listen to BBC World Service on local radio - without internet, TV or newspapers, it's the only source of news.  Dinner is at 6 and after we read, play cards, watch football in a local cinema (they usually play two games at the same time and the entrance is only 16p!) or go for a beer.  We've recently turned our kitchen table into a table tennis table, so beer pong is only around the corner!  All in all, we've found Makeni to be a very liveable place and when you adapt to the culture, obstacles such as no internet, no running water, little electricity and no public transport become but minor annoyances.  

One of the reasons Sierra Leone appealed to me for a volunteer placement was because of its low ranking in several standard of living type indices.  If you're going to volunteer, you might as well do it where it's most needed.  And in Salone, it is needed.  In three of the last four years it has been ranked last on the UN Human Development Index - sharing this dubious honour with Afghanistan.  Coming from the West, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that aid and / or economic growth can fix many of these problems. But several experiences in the last week have altered my thinking on this.  So many of the issues that impact Salone's ranking are cultural or traditional and I'm not sure there is any amount of money that would address the root causes.

On Tuesday morning, at the invitation of the head of the local Welfare and Equality ministry, I attended a meeting on child welfare in the local district.  It was a chance for all of the hard working NGOs in the region to give updates on progress, identify common issues and organise themselves in the most effective manner. Though organised and effective were not words one would use to describe how the meeting was run.  Scheduled for an hour, we were 50 mins in before everyone arrived and it ran for two and a half hours.  For the first half an hour, the participants argued about grammatical errors in the minutes of the last meeting.  I'm sure abused kids in the Bombali district appreciate the effort it took to correct "giving" to "given".  The action list was equally disappointing.  With rumours of child slave labour, it was agreed at the last meeting  that the local mining companies should attend.  But only one letter was sent to one company and it was never followed up on because the Minister "doesn't have the resources for that kinda thing".  After 20 minutes, they agreed to the delegation of a single phone call.  While everyone clearly had good intentions, the most commonly used phrase in the meeting was "we have to be seen to do something" and the pre-eminence of optics over action would seem to be the hallmark of this committee.  

But the updates were horrific.  In December in the local region 4 children were kidnapped, there were 56 cases of domestic violence involving kids, two cases of unlawful carnal knowledge and unknown but substantial numbers of child sexual abuse, child prostitution, slave labour and street children.  There were numerous cases of state teachers getting young teenage girls pregnant.  And when perpetrators for these crimes were identified, the powerful village chief's would give them protection and not hand them over to the police.  Most disturbingly, a recent survey indicated that 94% of teenage girls in the district had been genitally mutilated.  When one NGO asked the police representative to intervene he replied that there is no law in Sierra Leone that makes FGM illegal!  

The common thread and root cause of many of Salone's problems is the role of Secret Societies - Voodoo type quasi-religious organisations that are pervasive throughout the country.  At young ages, local girls are forced to join and the initiation ceremony requires FGM, branding and “education”.  The latter is bothersome, telling girls that condoms cause health issues and that leaving school, getting pregnant and being a good wife are a 14 year olds obligations.  The Secret Societies are immensely powerful and shape Salone's culture outside of its big cities.  A UN report on teenage pregnancy here found that archaic gender roles mean that women are seen as little more than sex objects and a contrived lack of female education (coupled with young pregnancies) mean that the women of Salone are deprived of dignity, opportunity, education and equality.  This is the primary reason that Salone ranks so lowly in terms of human development and human rights and it is not a problem that can be solved by aid, economic growth or FDI.  

This really focused our minds on our work here.  We have the opportunity to reach out to about 2,000 boys and girls and give them strong messages about gender issues, human rights, the importance of education and sexual health.  We can help to make them ambassadors amongst their peers, giving them fact rather than fiction as a tool for life.  It's not a lot, but it's a start.  And if we can demonstrate the impact of our balanced approach to football and social education, then it could be the start of something much bigger.  That can't be said of the local child welfare committee.  The meeting ended without one firm action.  But it gave us focus on what we need to do. 

Week 1 - Getting Settled

Greetings from Sweet Salone everyone.  We've had a fantastic first week out here.  As it was our induction week, the objectives were clear: get to know each other; get to know our environment; reflect on our objectives for coming to Salone; and to acclimatise to our new surrounds.  I'm happy to report that we made excellent progress on each of these, and had a fun time in the process.

We spent most of the week at Tribewanted Sierra Leone, which is a eco-resort outside of Freetown.  It's hard to describe how beautiful this location is.  Virgin blue ocean meets unspoiled beach with a jungle infested mountain as a backdrop and a poor fishing village providing character.  Everything possible is done to limit the impact of tourist visits on the local environment.  Compost toilets provide fuel for banana trees, solar panels provide light and refrigeration, a deep water well lubricates the veg patch, the veg patch drastically reduces food-miles and CO2 emissions and most food is sourced from the local fishermen or at worst, the local market.  The word tribe is also not just a name - everyone contributes to the tasks required to keep the resort ticking over.  Visitors wash their dishes, clean the beach, serve themselves beer via an honour system and lug water to the bucket-showers.  While the showers aren't ideal, there are few more refreshing feelings than a cold shower at the end of a long hot day overlooking the beach as Venus edges up on the horizon.  Tribewanted was the perfect introduction to Sierra Leone, a country far more beautiful than I expected.

Our activities at Tribewanted were well designed.  Charlie and Alex, the co-founders of the Collective SL, led us through a range of activities and tasks that gave context to our sojourn.  What's the nature of community development?  What do we mean by social justice?  What are the objectives we aim to achieve while in Salone?  How do we think about culture and what happens when cultures collide?  These topics were very useful in getting us to put a framework around the challenges ahead.  We also covered Salone history and did some Krio (creol) language lessons and discussed our child protection policy.  There was lots of food for thought in these discussions and they provided the perfect context for the coming 3 months.  It wasn't all just hard work though - Tribewanted has too many attractions - so we played volleyball (I won every day!), swam, hiked, built boats (Ed and I invented a revolutionary new hull design called the Tri-Murnane, but it sunk quicker than the Titanic), raced in canoes carved out of tree trunks and sampled the local beer, which is 5%abv but apparently varies between 3% and 7% depending on the batch!

After 6 days at Tribewanted, we packed our bags and took the Craig Bellamy Foundation bus to Makeni, our home for the next 13 weeks.  Mr. Kamara, our driver, covered the 170kms as efficiently as a Kenyan long-distance runner.  Our first stop was our new house, a four bedroomed one story square block doused in pastel colours.  We meet Alisan and Fat Marta - our genial general helper / security guy and pleasant but shy cook, who is remarkably unoffended by her undeserved name.  Finally we were able to unpack and spread our clothes, gadgets and toiletries around our sparsely decorated bedrooms.  I managed to draw the second-longest straw and somehow managed to get the en suite.  Quite fitting for the elder-statesman of our team.  We drove around Makeni to get our bearings and stopped into the Clubhouse, where Ed is going to be working with Street Child Sierra Leone for some beers and darts.  The Guinness here is of Nigerian extract: strong (7.5%), flat (drank straight from the bottle), bitter (tastes like malt vinegar) and substantial.  34 years an Irish man, and it's taken a trip to the black continent for me to develop a taste for the black stuff. 

Our first day in Makeni was outstanding.  We met everyone of importance in the city.  We were treated like dignitaries. And we felt like celebrities.  We met the CBF team-managers, the deputy mayor, the deputy police commissioner, the provost of the Makeni Polytechnic, the general manager of Makeni Radio, the board of Centre for Democracy and Human Rights, the regional head of the voting commission and many more wonderful people.  Each one cancelled meetings to accommodate our unannounced arrival and welcomed us a thousand times.  They were impressed that we were volunteers (rather then well compensated NGO staff) and we shared lots of ideas on how we could work together to promote our shared objectives. 

On our second day, a football match was arranged in our honour at Wassum Field, the home of the Wassum Stars, our local Premiership soccer team.  The pitch is a stunning FIFA level 3D Astroturf and just before kick-off I estimated that there about 500 people in attendance - proving that African's will indeed watch any level of football!  Kick-off was at 5pm, presumably so that we wouldn't collapse in the 36 degree mid-day heat.  The pace of the game was good, with a lot of very talented players - we played with the general managers and took on the coaches, who were pre-match favourites.  Ed and I both had chances in the first half, but it ended scoreless.  I really struggled for breath after half time - I was covering the left flank on my own and the Harmatan sands blowing from the Sahara had to take their toll on my asthma.  I was subbed off to chants of "Johnny, Johnny, Johnny" and was met with a gaggle of children wanting to high-5 me, when all I wanted to do was drink some water.  As soon as I got back concentrating on the game, we got the breakthrough, Joe peeled of his marker at the penalty spot, crept towards the back post and directed a firm header in off the post!  After a fantastic celebration, we quickly scored a second and the bragging rights.  A truly memorable day - and at my level of football ability, probably as good as it gets!

On Sunday we woke to a breakfast of spicy eggs and local fruit, before heading to the St. Francis RC church for mass.  It was my first religious experience in Africa, and let me tell you that this is 110 minutes of prime-time entertainment.  It impacted all senses.  An array of colourful clothes, rhythmic beats and choiral singing, incense, water spray and three different languages.  Although there is still segregation (women on the right, men on the left), this is a female dominated event.  The choir, the alter girls, the ladies who bring the bread and wine to the alter and even the woman who ushers you up to make two mandatory donations.  It was all very enjoyable, even for a heathen like me, until I noticed that one of the poorer men had started having an epileptic fit.  We watched in horror as on of his friends helped him in to the recovery position and stuffed cotton wool down his throat to ensure he didn't swallow his tongue...but despite the fact that the whole congregation were now distracted and disturbed by this, the priest and his side-kick ignored the inconvenient distraction and continued to announce the upcoming weeks religious activities and last weeks church attendance.  Which brings me to my thought of the day: What kind of omnipotent, omnipresent, benevolent "god" would allow an incident like this to happen in a place of worship?  We were horrified. 

It's impossible to believe that only 10 years ago this country was being torn apart by a civil war.  If its atrocities and crimes hadn't been so well documented, I wouldn't believe it.  The people we've met are the most gentle, friendly and tolerant that I've encountered in the 34 countries I've visited.  Everywhere we walk people want to say hi to us, converse with us, ask us what we're doing here.  The children rush to shake our hands or point to us from a distance and shout "a puto", meaning "whitie".  Without TV, Internet, printed press and books, for many of them it's the first time they've seen while people in the flesh.  And they are clearly impressed!  There are other Westerners in town, but the NGO’s only see Makeni from the tinted windows of their sparkling new 4x4’s, and the expat miners only interaction with the locals is for the procurement of prostitutes.   The older teens are the exception, benignly observing our movements and occasionally nodding their head.  But that just makes them normal.  Everyone rushes to tell us how peaceful the city is and how safe we'll be here.  But we had figured that out from the warm welcome and honest smiles.  Only a week in and our fears about coming to Salone have been extinguished and our hopes of making a meaningful difference are stronger than ever.

We were scheduled to be on national radio for an hour last night, to promote the CBF and related community projects, but it was cancelled just two minutes before we were due on air.  You can’t take these things personally, after all, This Is Africa.

Kick-off!

Folks - Welcome to my new adventure! Far away from the pressure of professional life, a morbid climate of endless overcast days and excruciating MSc. assignments,  I will be cataloging my experiences in Makeni, Sierra Leone.  My first entry gives the background to what I'll be doing.  I hope you enjoy the insights, commentary and endless stories of life in one of the worlds poorest countries - but one where I expect to find resilience, character and optimism. 

While I've been telling friends and family confidently what I'll be doing in Sierra Leone, the cold truth is that we are the first cohort of Western volunteers to work in Sierra Leone (Salone to the locals) with the Craig Bellamy Foundation.  Like any complex project it will most definitely end up at a destination we didn't foresee, go down a path we couldn't have expected and take much more effort than we ever realised.  Despite this, I am confident we can deliver benefits above and beyond our scope, engage wholeheartedly with our stakeholders and leave a legacy to be proud of.  

So why am I going to Salone?  With my first blog entry I'm going to attempt to put together all the basics I've gathered to-date about Sierra Leone, the organisatons we'll be working with and what I expect to find and achieve.  On the completion of my soujourn I'll reflect on the accuracy of my pre-reading and whether we did indeed create some form of legacy.  I hope you find the blog interesting. My writing style, straight-jacketed by years of factual corporate documents and more recently, the Oxford Examinations Board , is a little cold and formal.  But hopefully the experiences I live through and events I influence will provide sufficient colour and intrigue.    


As I write this, Peter, Ed, Will, Joe and I are sitting in Heathrow and our flight is already 3 hours delayed.  But nothing could ruin our sense of excitement about our upcoming journey.  

What is the Craig Bellamy Foundation?

The Craig Bellamy Foundation is a charity that offers children in Sierra Leone the chance to achieve their potential through sport and education.  The Foundation runs both an academy and a league.  The Academy is a fully residential international school based in 15 ocean-side acres and boasts Sierra Leone's best full-size grass football pitch.  It awards five year scholarships to talented footballers aged 11 to 13 and invests in their football skills, personal skills and education.  The Youth Development League is a ground-breaking initiative that uses football to empower a new generation of children to change their own and their communities’ lives.  Established in 2009 with the support of UNICEF, the League provides a nationwide football structure to nearly 2,000 boys and girls, whilst tackling the country’s urgent social development priorities – education, health, youth exclusion and gender inequality.

What is the Collective Sierra Leone?

The Collective SL is a not-for-profit organisation that places talented and enthusiastic volunteers in challenging projects in Salone. It has contacts with social enterprises and NGO's in Salone and matches their resource requirements with students and professionals in the UK and further afield for short and medium term placements.  The Collective is the brainchild of Charlie Habershon, a young and talented social entrepreneur who first envisioned a synergy between the people of Sierra Leone and foreign volunteers.  

What is Salone's post-colonisation history?

Like much of West Africa after World War 2, the optimisism of freedom and independence was quashed by dictatorships, poverty and corruption.  While the country set out on a democratic path, dictators such as  Siaka Stevens executed opposition politicians, neutralised the army and mismanaged one of Africa's most resource rich economies.  His successor, Joseph Momoh, was weak and unpopular and corruption and mismanagement continued.  Entering the 1990's, Sierra Leone typified a failed post-colonial Africa state. 

What caused the Civil War?

There were multiple contributing factors, as uncovered by Sierra Leone's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  The Bradt guide book to Sierra Leone (the only one!) summarises the factors well - structural divisions created by the colonial power (the UK), an angry rump of urban youth, a long history of social resistance, a corrupt state, an under-resourced army, grinding poverty and social exclusion.  But the most important factor was the influence of Charles Taylor - the Liberian president who sent his mercenaries over the border looking to capture a share of Sierra Leone's lucurative diamond trade. While it's often termed a civil war, and there is no doubt that locals inflicted serious physical harm on each other, the outside influence of Liberian mercenaries was probably the most important factor contributing to the war.  It is important to note that there was no ethnic or religious dimension to the war, though the stats are grim.  In a country of 5 million people, 2 million became refugees, 50,000 were murdered and maybe half that again lost limbs.  One of the enduring images of the war is of child soldiers, armed with AK47's and machetes, high on coke, marauding through villages and summarily executing innocent civilians.  It took the arrival of British forces in 2000 to restore order.  A peace treaty was signed in 2002 and it has been broadly peaceful since.  Charles Taylor is currently standing trial for war crimes in Sierra Leone. 

What is its current status?

Poor, corrupt, dependent on donor aid.  But peaceful.  There have been two democratic exchanges of power since 2002, remarkable for any African state.  The UN and the Birish soldiers have now left and work is underway to improve national infrastructure - roads, electricity and telecommunications.  But it faces a long journey and today ranks 180 out of 187 countries on the UN Human Development Index.  

Why this opportunity?

I’ve wanted to spend some time volunteering in Africa for a while and I was open to pretty much anything job- or country-wise. I researched quite a few opportunities but the Craig Bellamy Foundation really stood out; it combined my favourite sport with the ability to enhance the lives of children through education and community projects. All of that in a country which has experienced great trauma but has equally great character.  Working with the Collective SL will also introduce me to a world of other opportunities and will allow me to get to know Sierra Leone so much better, which I hope will empower me to dispel the grim images shown in bad Hollywood movies.  My main other motivation is that, after years of corporate work, I’m keen to gain experience in the world of social entrepreneurship, which I believe has the ability to make a material difference in the lives of ordinary people in the developing world.  Unfortunately, all this means that I’ve had to forgo my ambitions of being a part-time beach bum.

What do you hope to achieve on your placement?

Going into this experience with an open mind, I’m reluctant to define precise success metrics before having even started. Nevertheless, I hope that my achievements will be a combination of the following: see local children smiling as they play football, however cliche it might seem; use my experience to come up with fresh approaches to solve long-standing problems; make the league financially sustainable; encourage and/or coax my friends, family and business contacts to sponsor a child or, better yet, an entire team; teach and learn in equal measure from the people around me; and meet locals and other wonderful volunteers who will add to my knowledge and understanding of sub-Saharan Africa.