|
Back
SIERRA LEONE
By Jheri St. James
This photo is a view of Freetown taken by
Brenda Soya of the American Embassy there, the Common Ground
191 collector. The location is “Leicester Peak, one
of the highest peaks in the Freetown area, with its stunning
view of the city and ocean below.”
The Republic
of Sierra Leone is located in West Africa, bordered by Guinea
north and Liberia south, with the Atlantic Ocean on the west.
The name Sierra Leone was adapted from the Portuguese name
of the country, Serra Leoa, (Lion Mountain). During
the 1700s Sierra Leone was an important center of the transatlantic
slave trade. The capital Freetown was founded in 1792 by the
Sierra Leone Company as a home for Black Britons who had fought
for the British in the American Revolutionary War.
In 1808,
Freetown became a British Crown Colony, and in 1896, the interior
of the country became a British Protectorate. The Crown Colony
and Protectorate joined and gained independence in 1961. From
1991 to 2002, the country suffered greatly under a devastating
civil war. To end the civil war, UN and British forces disarmed
17,000 militia and rebels, in the largest UN peacekeeping
act of the decade. The average life span of a Sierra Leonean
is 38 years for men and 42 years for women.
 Roughly
circular in shape, Sierra Leone has an area of almost 30,000
sq. miles. Three topographical regions run northwest to southwest,
roughly parallel to the coast: a belt of mangrove swamps and
white sand beaches; an area of low plains covered with secondary
forest and cultivated land; and a region of high plateaus
and mountains to the east. The mountainous peninsula on which
Freetown is located makes up the fourth distinct geographical
region. Sierra Leone has an average year-round temperature
of 80 degrees. The famous Harmattan, a gentle wind flowing
down from the Sahara Desert affords Freetown its coolest period
of the year, November through February.
Unlike many other countries, the religious
and tribal mix of Muslims, Christians and indigenous people,
as well as the 18 ethnic groups, each with its own language
and customs rarely causes religious or tribal conflict—it
is civil war which is the major conflict in the country. Football
(soccer) is by far the most popular sport in Sierra Leone,
followed by cricket. The Sierra Leone cricket team is among
the best in South Africa. Basketball, volleyball, tennis,
boxing and track are other popular sports activities in this
country.
Anthony,
writing on www.artinallofus.org
has this to say about his trip to Sierra Leone: “. .
. A 12 hours and 350km journey brought us from Conakry to
Freetown by the end of the afternoon. Checkpoints and the
omnipresent corruption took the major and most painful part
of our day and of our stress. Cops of the two countries are
really shady. I wonder who would win the Oscar. Some of them
are very direct in their approach; others are more conservative
and prefer to create an unhealthy atmosphere without asking
directly for their Christmas gift. The last attitude is more
time consuming and painful than the direct one. The ‘good’
thing is that we have the feeling that they don’t see
us as walking moneyboxes coming through. Most of the time,
local passengers are on the same level and suffer the same
aggressiveness as we do. Solidarity links are created between
us and the other fellow passengers. Another positive point
is that with a couple of smiles, we have always succeeded
quite easily to negotiate our bribe debt and reduce it to
some cigarettes or some small and insignificant notes . .
.
“Freetown
is quite a big melting pot of countries I’ve visited.
It reminds me a little of Colombia and its small fishing villages;
but also of the port of Aden in Yemen, with its swarming markets
and its non-stop singing mosques; or also the seven hills
of Antananarivo, capital of Madagascar; but it is probably
more similar to Rio de Janeiro, with its green hills and favelas.
“Crossing the city, I try to go 2-3
years backwards and remember the attack of the rebels on Freetown.
‘No living thing’ was their motto. Trying to picture
this bloody slaughter is a very painful exercise. How can
we imagine that just a couple of months ago, Freetown has
been the scene of 6000 brutal deaths, and that some other
thousands were tortured, raped, etc…? And all this for
nothing, except some precious stones worn by the wealthiest
of this planet.
 “.
. . I see rebels everywhere, and my head imagines fields of
battles on the gardens that edge the hotel. I have pain in
my head and the anger is unbearable. It is very difficult
to describe our first impressions of Sierra Leone, as we saw
only a luxuriant vegetation, paradise environment, hot delicious
food, and charming people. How can we imagine there was war
only 2-3 years ago? How to believe the awful stories that
one tells you with a thin voice? How could the people forgive
the rapes, murders, torture from their neighbours? How to
trust the taxi driver, the waiter or the street seller? How
not to imagine some some of them took part in the atrocities?
How to presume that rancour does not exist in this country?
“. . . It hurts me to write on the atrocities
that have been committed. There are so many stories. I cannot
translate them in words and spread the emotions of people
without travestying them. Others would have more talent to
do it. We worked with the UNICEF in an Islamic school inland
in a small city called Makeni, eastern Sierra Leone. We observe
that there is still a huge job to realize in Education. The
level of instruction is low. For teens it is often also their
first years of schools. After spending the morning in the
school working on the poetry, drawing and pictures, we trained
the local UNICEF staff on digital photography.
“A sinewy lady, dressed of yellow, brings
back the water of the well. She hisses at me, seems to shout
at me. A hen and some black pigs run behind her. With her
words of English and my first words of Creole English, I now
understand that she asks me to take her in photo in order
to show at home how the African women suffer at work, but
also explain their good will. I grant her wish and continue
my way under this vivid sun into the small humid village…
“As a last image, I can say that Sierra
Leone is a marvelous country by its beauty and its invigorating
nature. A country that would have been rich thanks to its
minerals, earths of agriculture, its beaches and tourism.
I wish it for the future. I want to believe they are taking
the good path. The United Nations made an outstanding job
here!”
* * *
Doug
Brooks
from www.allafrica.com
Freetown street: It's all happening here - business, taxis,
law and order...
*
* *
”‘Diamonds are forever,’ it is often
said. But lives are not.
We must spare people the ordeal of war, mutilations and death
for the sake of conflict diamonds.
“Conflict diamonds are those that originate from areas
controlled by forces or factions opposed to legitimate and
internationally recognized governments, and are used to fund
military action in opposition to those governments, or in
contravention of the decisions of the Security Council. Rough
diamond caches have often been used by rebel forces to finance
arms purchases and other illegal activities. Neighboring and
other countries can be used as trading and transit grounds
for illicit diamonds. Once diamonds are brought to market,
their origin is difficult to trace and once polished, they
can no longer be identified. The horrific atrocities in Sierra
Leone and the long suffering of the people of Angola have
heightened the international community’s awareness of
the need to cut off sources of funding for rebels in order
to promote lasting peace in those countries.” (UN Dept.
of Public Information in cooperation with Sanctions Branch,
Security Council Affairs Division, Department of Political
Affairs.)
“It
has been said that war is the price of peace . . .
Angola and Sierra Leone have already paid too much.
Let them live a better life.”
(Ambassador Juan Larrain, Chairman of the Monitoring Mechanism
on sanctions against UNITA)
* * *
 |
Doug
Brooks |
Freetown
Survivor: Giant Cotton Tree in the center of town.
Even the RUF couldn't kill this tree, says Brooks.
 Djimon
Honsou is one of the stars of the current film Blood Diamond,
set in Sierra Leone. The story centers on a rare pink diamond
discovered by Honsou’s character, a local fisherman
forced by militants to work in the diamond fields. “The
shoot was very physical and emotional—being chased,
running left and right in the bush, day in and day out. There
was nothing about it that was easy. Hopefully the movie’s
message will come through; people who see it will have a better
understanding of what went down and, in some places, is still
going down . . . Africa is my continent. It is where I opened
my eyes. The more awareness we can bring to an issue there,
the more people will rally the leaders of developed countries
to do something about it . . . It helps certain people in
the industry to think the problem doesn’t exist anymore.
Obviously, things have toned down in Sierra Leone, but people
are still dying, and being displaced, over conflict diamonds
in countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It’s
not enough to get it down to even one percent when the abuse
and the use of child soldiers is continuing… I hope
more people will ask diamond companies to continue changing
the way they do business in Africa. They’ve done well
mining in certain countries; now they can put more of the
money back into those countries and do what’s right…it’s
more like you’ll say, ‘I’d like to have
a diamond but wear it comfortably. I want to make sure nobody
died because of it.’”
*
* *
John Hyman
writes from a different perspective (10/19/06): “The
civil war was indeed extremely brutal, but was less about
diamonds in themselves, rather, that diamonds were the key
to political power. A point that must be stressed is that
‘blood’ diamonds only exist, as it were, during
wars (and ones presently held in storage by DeBeers from times
of conflict cannot be identified as such). Watch out for a
dangerously misleading film out soon with Leonardo di Caprio,
“Blood Diamond,” which is likely to have a deleterious
effect on the diamond industries of various countries which
have made great progress to clean up diamond operations. Diamonds
make up 80% of SL’s exports, and any possible consumer
boycott, well-meaning as it will no doubt be, will only retard
the country’s development. (Comments on Normal Life
in Sierra Leone - www.samizdata.net)
*
* *
We conclude with the other photo
from Brenda Soya, a picture of the U.S. Embassy staff in Freetown:
Martin Dale, Brenda Soya, Elspeth Horton, and Francis Amara
with the collection jar and a view of Freetown in the background.
Our favorite pictures in the Common Ground 191 project are
of people holding jars of soil, smiling broadly with a look
of historical significance in their eyes. In the case of the
soil from Sierra Leone, it is especially heartening that it
will join our collection of soils on the 50’ x 50’
fresco, bringing all the soils of the world to one place,
symbolizing the unity of mankind’s home ground—if
not man, yet.
This is
truly art at its greatest, a concept realizing itself in form
and color and meaning. When the ‘H’ in EARTH is
moved to the front, the word becomes ‘HEART’ and
both words have the word ART in them, an interesting, simple
anagram and symbol of Common Ground 191. The UN is sending
people like Anthony to share art in Sierra Leone. Movies are
being made depicting some of the issues existent there. Art
can be more than just insignificant colors on the wall; it
can be healing, instructive, inspiring, and deep. In the meantime,
Mother Earth in Her stoic wisdom continues to hold all of
us in Her lap, waiting for the vision of Common Ground 191
to manifest itself. The word for peace in Sierra Leone is
the English word “peace.”
* * *
Top
| Back |
|
|
