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.