Flying into Freetown, looking down at the Sierra Leone bush, I imagined all the stories I’ve heard and read in the last year. Maybe story isn’t the right word. My mom used to say my sister was ‘just storying’ when we were growing up and I had accused her of lying; my mom claimed she was just learning to use her imagination. So to me ‘story’ implies something false or made up. These accounts are not fiction and go beyond anything I could ever imagine making up.
Killings and rapings are bad enough, but what happened in Liberia and Sierra Leone was far worse. Rebels would demand that a father sleep with his daughter, or a brother with his sister. Heads were cut off and the witnessing wife or daughter would be made to carry his decapitated head and sing and dance—or else face death herself. Rebels would bet on the sex of an unborn baby and then slash the pregnant woman open to see who was right. Girls as young as 9 or 10, were taken forcibly as house help, ammunition porters and invariably sex slaves or ‘wives.’
I wonder how such perverse ideas could have become standard tactics. And what it would take for it to all fall apart again.
(**Please note that the information above is taken from human rights reports and news accounts. It is not a disclosure of confidential work-related information!)
Freetown is a hilly peninsular city, a helicopter (or very slow ferry) ride away from the surprisingly clean and hassle-free airport. From our hilltop hotel, I tried everyday to get my bearings, but the sun insisted on rising from the west and setting there, over the water. As if this world weren’t governed by the same laws of nature.
I didn’t feel unsafe there, per se. But surveying the people around me on a street or at a restaurant, I assumed that some of these men had committed atrocities. How many hands did that bus driver cut off? How many women had that waiter raped?
Sierra Leone is at the bottom of the Human Development Index. Only Niger managed to slip below as the poorest country in the world. But things were so expensive in Freetown. A take-away portion of fried rice was $7 US. Water was $1/bottle. There clearly must be two economies operating--one for the diamond miners and foreign aid workers and another for the locals. Outside, Freetown, prices must have been lower. It boggled my mind and I subsisted on Laughing Cow cheese and flat Lebanese bread. When it sprouted a bit of white fuzz, I didn't mold wasn't bad for you unless it was green or blue.
The beaches in the central part of Freetown were surprsingly clean, but on Sunday we spent 1.5 hours on the worst road I've been down to get to the best beach, misnamed No. 2 Beach. We met a South African diamond miner there who kept insisting that he wasn't 'checking us up.' He noticed a chameleon on the top of a straw shade hut and went to pick it up. It was in the midst of a No.2, but he didn't seem to notice. He went on about how the Africans thought that it was the devil. He said a lot of things, but I couldn't always understand what he was jabbering about. Maybe that's the shit that gave the beach its name.
We worked too much to be up for a night out dancing, though we'd had high hopes. We checked out a few restaurants and made it to the market, where the women were annoyed if you didn't buy. There was no friendly bantering. I ended up buying a blanket made from country cloth since everything else I could have gotten in Ghana or already had from Guinea. When I got back to Ghana, I was so happy with my purchase---it's been cold enough here at night to need a blanket even with the windows shut!
Our flight back to Ghana actually left on time and, despite a stopover in Monrovia, arrived to Ghana ahead of schedule! As I chatted with the friendly taxi driver, I never once had to wonder what evil he may have committed.
My next trip isn't scheduled until the end of August (to Ivory Coast). That means 5 weeks straight in Ghana now--the longest stretch I've spent here in one go since last October. It feels good to get re-acquainted with the place I supposedly live.
