Memories of the war

Sometimes I forget that Sierra Leone experienced a brutal civil war in the not too recent past. People here are generally so hopeful and focused on future plans for development and improvement in the country that I can forget the tragedy that affected everyone here. Although it sometimes comes up in conversation, people here don’t talk often about the war, and I generally don’t ask many questions in order not to pry into something that may be very difficult for people to talk about. Also, since this is my first time in Sierra Leone, I have nothing to compare it to in terms of how the war changed things here. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between what was destroyed by war and what has deteriorated due to neglect.

Two days ago, Mary Hawa Turay, co-founder of cdpeace, arrived in Sierra Leone for a visit (she is still living in Canada). As we were driving back from Freetown together, she talked about some of the changes she could see due to the war, and some of the things the communities I’m working in have experienced. One thing she mentioned was the state of people’s houses. Before the war, the houses used to be bigger and better constructed – whole compounds with several buildings and a wall around where families lived together. Unfortunately, many homes were destroyed during the conflict. Throughout the country you can see the remains of buildings, still charred from being burnt to the ground. When people had to flee their homes as the fighting advanced, they left everything behind, and in most cases lost it all. Although people have been able to build new homes, they are working with much less than they had, and the houses now tend to be smaller and less solidly constructed.

The two chiefdoms in which I’m primarily working (Gbonkolenken and Paki Masabong) were really affected by the war, Gbonkolenken more so. Mary told me that when the rebels were advancing through the country from the south, when they came to the villages in Gbonkolenken chiefdom (which is essentially right in the middle of the country), the people of Gbonkolenken were one of the first groups to put up real resistance to the rebel advance. Because of this, the rebels decided to punish them – many people were killed and injured. Children were kidnapped. People were forced to commit atrocities (raping, killing, maiming) against their family, friends and neighbours. Whole villages were destroyed and burnt to the ground, so much so that there was nothing left. In the village of Mathombo, school children and adults were locked inside the school and it was set on fire. Many people died. The foundations of that school are still visible in the Mathombo community (Mathombo school is one of the cdpeace pilot schools and has just recently been rebuilt by cdpeace with the support of donors from Canada). Mary said that after the rebels made an example of Gbonkolenken, other villages throughout the north surrendered to them more easily.

I repeat these stories not to dwell on the terror and destruction of the war, but to contrast that with the current climate of hope I see here, and to remember what Sierra Leoneans have experienced. In the face of the devastation of the war that was really so recent (the war began in 1991 and was declared officially over in 2002), it is even more admirable and inspirational to me that the people I have met here now live so peacefully together and that their focus is so strongly on bringing development to the country. Of course there are many challenges here, and a lot of work to be done, but it is obvious to me how much people here are ready to move beyond what happened to them during the war and work hard to build a peaceful and prosperous country. It's pretty impressive.

The Nova Scotia Gambia Association (NSGA) and their work in Sierra Leone

When Chris and I were travelling, we had the good fortune of travelling with a friend of mine from Nova Scotia, Andrea MacDonald. Andrea is the Executive Director of the Nova Scotia Gambia Association, which works both in The Gambia and here in Sierra Leone. In Sierra Leone, their project is called the Nova Scotia Sierra Leone Program (NSSLP). Andrea was here visiting some of NSSLP’s projects and invited us to travel with her. We went with her to Koidu, Kenema, Bo and then back to Freetown. This was a great way for us to see other parts of the country without going through the trials of using public transportation or paying a lot of money for a private vehicle. Some of the roads were pretty bad (as evidenced by the mud-soaked truck in the photo) and we were thankful to be in a 4x4 vehicle. So thanks Andrea!

Over the 5 days we spent travelling with NSGA, we had the opportunity to visit some of their projects, and I really wanted to say something about the work they are doing here. The NSGA’s work focuses on peer health education. Their motto is “learn and teach others”. The also do voluntary counselling and HIV testing in coordination with health services here. We were able to see some of their peer health education work in action. In Kenema we visited a boys school that had a peer health education program around HIV/AIDS and sexual and reproductive health. It was so neat to hear the boys that are the peer leaders in this program talk openly and without embarrassment about how you can get HIV, how to prevent it, how to have safe sex, and other topics that are so important to sexual health. These boys share this information not only with their peers at school, but also with their families and communities (many of them come from villages outside of Kenema). Without open and frank discussions on these subjects, health issues like HIV (with prevalence rates currently around 2%) and teenage pregnancy (already a big problem here) are sure to become more serious problems in the country.

(As an aside, one of the boys from this group in Kenema told me at the end of the session that he wanted to marry a white woman :-) I don’t think he was proposing to me, because I was there with Chris, just expressing his general dream!)

The project that NSGA is involved in in Kono District (the eastern part of the country) was really interesting to learn about. They are doing the HIV testing and counselling and peer health education component for a larger project that is run by the German Technical Cooperation, GTZ (GTZ has a similar role to that of CIDA, the Canadian International Development Agency, in Canada). This project aims to help youth that were displaced by the civil war to urban areas like Freetown, or to the diamond-mining areas, resettle in their old villages. A 3-month pilot project just finished, and GTZ aims to soon launch a five-year project to do the same work, resettling 30,000 youth.


This is how the project works: GTZ “scouts” find young people in Freetown, or in the mining areas in Kono that want to go back home but don’t have the means to go themselves. The scouts then visit the home communities and mediate with the villagers to ensure that the return will be accepted and peaceful (some of these youth may have been perpetrators of or witnesses to atrocities committed during the war). GTZ provides returnees with basic support in terms of transportation and getting set up with farming and housing when they return to the village, and works with them to educate them and the rest of the community in the areas of hygiene, water and sanitation, reproductive health and HIV. This education work is where NSGA comes in. They also work with district health teams to HIV counselling and testing for returnees and villagers.

With Andrea, we visited one of the villages where resettlement has taken place as part of the pilot project, the village of Gbematambadu (photo of villagers to the left), about 15km outside of Koidu (on a TERRIBLE road). The villagers and returnees talked about their experiences thus far (they had been back for about 3 months I think). Everyone generally seemed to be happy with the new arrangement. The returnees were able to feed themselves from their farming (as opposed to living on Le 1,000-2,000/day doing alluvial mining in the diamond areas), and the villagers appreciated having more young people around to share in the work. While there were certainly ongoing challenges (housing and education for the new influx of children seemed to be two big ones), the project seemed for the most part to be successful.

The whole concept of the project is very interesting, as the general assumption in the west is that anyone working and receiving a salary is better off than someone depending on subsistence agriculture, and that moving to an urban centre is better than being in a rural area. However, this GTZ project seems to demonstrate that this is not the case. In fact, rural communities have a lot to offer. Although subsistence farming has its own challenges and is by no means easy, at least people have a certain measure of control over whether or not they can feed their families. Trying to live in a city and pay for lodging and food for your family on only pennies a day (Le 1,000 = about $0.28 CDN) is pretty tough.

In addition, returning to their home communities offers people a support network that they likely did not have in Freetown or Koidu. From my own experiences here, I’ve seen that extended family networks are very important, especially in rural communities. If you live close to your extended family, when you are sick, they will take care of you. When your harvest fails, they will share their food with you. You help each other with work in the fields and in the house. Children take care of parents, grandparents take care of grandchildren, siblings take care of siblings. Again, it’s certainly not a perfect or an easy life, but the family and community networks in rural communities act as an essential safety net for people here, in a country where social services provided by the government are limited or non-existent.

At the community meeting, people talked about what they had learned from the peer health education program. Topics included prevention of sexually transmitted infections, child spacing, and basic sanitation. Some spot checks in different project areas have already seen some changes in behaviour (for example, always covering food and water to prevent contamination, hanging laundry up instead of laying it on the ground to dry, etc.). In a year or two, other bigger changes (such as in the birth rate or rate of STIs) will hopefully be visible as well.

I have more to say about rural communities and about both agriculture and mining in the country, but those will be topics for other posts. For more information about NSGA’s work in Sierra Leone and The Gambia, or to donate to NSGA, please see their website, www.novascotiagambia.ca.

Visit to Gbonkolenken

I’ve just returned from 2 days in Gbonkolenken chiefdom, visiting the communities of Mabarr Line, Makonkorie, Mathombo and Yele. We stayed overnight in the cdpeace guesthouse in Mbarr Line and I had my first experience with a pit latrine (an outhouse). The outhouse wasn’t so much the problem, just the fact that we had to walk outside to get there and it poured rain most of the night. I’m definitely spoiled here in Mapaki with a bathroom right in my bedroom.

A few interesting stories to tell:

On the first day in Gbonkolenken, some kids from the neighbour’s house came over to sit with us at the guesthouse (we were all sitting outside). One little girl, maybe around 3 or 4 years old (it’s difficult to tell someone’s age, and the kids don’t know how old they are) immediately adopted me. Her name was Maio. She started telling the other kids that she owned me and they weren’t allowed to touch me. One of the other adults asked her how much she paid to bring me from Canada and she said “5 block” (that’s 500 Leones, or about $0.25 Cdn). She generously also offered to pay that amount to send me back home too :-) Maio is the little girl on the right in the picture – the kids here are generally all familiar with cameras, and “opporto, snap me” is heard quite often (meaning, white person, take a picture of me).

Another story: we met on the second day (this morning) with the women’s groups from the 6 surrounding villages. Cdpeace gave them groundnut (peanut) seeds to plant this year. The women told us that apparently the seeds weren’t good and the crop they have is poor. The women were asking about the possibility of getting access to microcredit to help them earn additional income in times like this of poor harvest. I was curious how they knew about microcredit – turns out that a lot of the bigger towns have access to microcredit either from government or NGOs and that’s how these women heard about it. The women would use the loans to supplement the food they got from their farms through petty trading. For example, they would tie dye cloth or make soap. Selling these items would then help them earn a cash income that could be used to buy additional food, to pay education costs, or any other household expenses. I’ll have to look into the microcredit situation here and see what I can do.

While in Gbonkolenken, I also saw much more evidence of the conflict than I have seen so far. For those who don’t know, Sierra Leone experienced a horrific 11-year civil war (1991-2002), and there are still plenty of reminders about the war around the country. In Gbonkolenken I noticed many more homes that were burnt out or destroyed during the conflict. We also visited the community of Mathombo, where they have just had a new school built by cdpeace with funds from the PSI-cdpeace project supported by CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency). I was told that the old schools was burned down by RUF fighters, with many children still inside. The effects of the war are visible in other ways as well – when we stopped on the highway to buy some bread, a young man came and stared in the windows of the car. Sally told me that most likely he had probably fought during the war, and gotten addicted to drugs (the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), the rebel fighters, used drugs to fuel their fighters, especially child soldiers), and was now crazy. She said that there were many boys like this all around the country, and no help for them, so they just wander the streets. I met someone last week who works on mental health here and the situation is pretty dismal. There is almost 0 support for mental health, so many of the people who are dealing with mental health issues are left to fend for themselves if they have no families to help care for them.

Oh, I also learned an important lesson on my visit to Gbonkolenken: Never go anywhere without your raincoat in the rainy season. Even if you don’t think you’ll need it, even if it seems nice, just bring it anyways :-) I was caught in the rain more than once over the two days I was there, and riding on a motorbike in the rain is not so fun!