Hello, Freetown!

I’ve said goodbye to the rural life in Sierra Leone and have moved to the big city, Freetown. My roommate in Bo, Chris, has been sick on and off with malaria and food poisoning for the past six weeks. After a visit to the hospital, where the nurse inserted an IV by candlelight (there wasn’t any power in the hospital that night), he’s decided to go back to Canada to take care of his health. I don’t blame him one bit, considering the abysmal state of the health care industry in this country.

But with him on his way back to Canada, I wasn’t willing to stay in Bo alone. Our house is in a rural section of the town and it wasn’t safe for me to live there by myself. I was concerned that if I got sick like Chris did in the middle of the night, no one would be around to help me. There’s also very little to do in Bo but work, so I was certain I’d get really, really lonely and start talking to the giant spiders.

So I packed my bags and headed for Freetown. I’ll continue my work at a different media outlet, at a newspaper called the Salone Times. I’ve moved in with my co-workers based in Freetown and once again have access to running water, which makes me feel very spoiled.

After all the stresses of this experience so far (falling staircases, maniacal landlords, roommates with turbo-malaria, 67 marriage proposals, heat rash, bedbugs), I’m fairly certain I’ve become a more tolerant, understanding person; either that or a very cynical, sarcastic person.

Bo by Motorcycle

Motorcycles are the most common mode of transportion in Bo, and also a huge source of employment for young adult males. But this also means the young adult males will a) hit on me as they drive, and b) drive really fast. I am finally using my video camera here and spent an hour painstakingly uploading this short clip to YouTube. I don't recommend it for people who suffer from motion sickness.

1 Step Forward, 497 Steps Back

If I had to pick one emotion that has defined my experience in Sierra Leone so far, it would be overwhelming frustration. It has a bit to do with the way things work here – the horrible traffic, the haggling in the market and the aggressive nature of the men – but it has more to do with my interactions with the journalism industry and the people who work in it.

The industry is defined by strange and disturbing practices that make me want to sit on the ground, put my head between my legs and cry.

Journalists are paid very little in this country. They generally make about $50 a month, but it’s normal for their employers not to pay them regularly. I work with a radio station, but at newspapers, journalists are often paid by the story. To supplement their meagre incomes, journalists engage in a practice called “coasting.” They attend press conferences put on by government ministries or NGOs and accept some form of payment, and lunch, to write a positive story about the event. The stories they produce are very basic and have little to no news value. But the journalists have to eat and provide for their families, so this practice helps them continue to work as journalists, without living in complete and total poverty.

A more disturbing form of coasting involves the outright blackmailing of prominent members of the community. The journalist will approach the person and threaten to write a bad story about them if they don’t cough up some money. That person promptly complies.

Most journalists have little to no training in journalism and have no grasp of what makes a well-rounded story. Of course, they lack many basic resources like computers and recorders, which would significantly increase their capacity to produce thought-provoking content. I’m sure this is run-of-the-mill in any post-conflict society.

I encourage the journalists I work with not to take what they hear from government officials at face value. Dig a little deeper, I tell them. Try and find out what the regular people are saying. But pushing boundaries in this country can have serious consequences. Libel or slander, whereby a person is defamed by a (possibly) untrue statement made in the media, is a criminal offense in Sierra Leone, rather than a civil offense in Canada. This means a team of burly police officers can show up at your door and throw you in prison, even if you have yet to be convicted. The country is highly political and the journalists are rightly afraid of angering either of the two political parties.

Sierra Leone is a country rife with human rights abuses. Part of my job is to help the journalists inject more human rights content into their reporting, in the hopes that it will help the public become aware of what they can do to stand up for themselves. But the attitudes of journalists reflect many of the issues endemic in the rest of the population.

Much to my chagrin, many of the human rights they don’t believe in have to do with the rights and welfare of women.

One of my reporters regularly tells me the failure of Sierra Leone as a nation to become a player on the world stage can be attributed to the laziness of women. They don’t want to work, he tells me. They leech off their husbands and cheat while they are at work. Women are also witches, who casts spells on their husbands, making them drink and spend too much money.

Another reporter told me he doesn't believe in men and women having 50-50 power and rights in a relationship. I asked him how he'd feel if he were the one with less power, and he could only reply that the dominance of the man is a cultural tradition.

I had a constructive conversation with one of my reporters about the sex trade in Bo and about how the prostitutes seemed to be getting younger and younger. The conversation turned to rape and how it is a common occurrence in Sierra Leone. We agreed that we’d work together on researching a story on the issue. But then he smiled slyly and told me that considering the way some women dress these days, they are just asking to be attacked.

He was dead serious.

Like I said – overwhelming frustration.

When the Odd Becomes Ordinary

After 10 weeks in Sierra Leone, the things about this country that once felt alien have started to feel surprisingly normal. I’m used to sleeping with a mosquito net draped around my bed, with nothing more than a sheet for warmth. Boiling water on a tiny camp stove on my porch for oatmeal and instant coffee has become a part of my morning routine. When I haul up buckets of water from my well for a shower, I don’t think about how primitive this is, but about how awesome my arms will look when this is all over. I’m used to the oppressive humidity of this country and my constant sweating. Without a second thought, I regularly yell at motorcycle drivers who try to rip me off.

But things that would seriously disturb or scandalize Canadians or Americans have also become unremarkable to me. Riding in a taxi with my colleague Jordan out to the edge of Freetown, where I’d catch a bush taxi to Bo, we noticed a couple chasing after another taxi. The taxi had driven off with its trunk open, with the couple’s luggage crammed in the back. We just laughed. I just shrug when I see a family of four, including a tiny baby, climb aboard a motorcycle built for two, and go speeding down a dirt road.

On my way back to Bo after a weekend in Freetown, the car I was riding in (built for five but crammed with eight people), got a flat tire along a deserted stretch of road. But I didn’t panic, as I would certainly do in Canada. I was delighted at the chance to use the bathroom and when I returned, the tire had been changed and we were ready to go.

One of my neighbours in Bo is a woman I think is about 60 years old. If the weather is hot, she wears only a lappa (a long, colourful piece of cloth), tied around her waist. Her massive breasts swing back and forth as she waves hello to me, making it clear she’s never worn a bra in her entire life. At first I blushed and looked away, but now I just smile and wave back. Breasts aren’t sexual in Sierra Leone, as they feed children. It’s all about the backside – but that’s a blog entry for another time.

But there are far more disturbing things that have become commonplace for me. It’s not uncommon to see young children sleeping in front of stores in Bo in the middle of the day. They lay sprawled out on filthy blankets, clearly exhausted by the mid-day heat. I can’t tell if they have parents, or if they live on the streets. Stray dogs are everywhere, searching for food in the gutters, their bodies covered with open sores and flies.

It’s a stomach-churning realization that there’s little I can to do help, and that to maintain my sanity, I have to walk past the street kids and the stray dogs. I’ll occasionally buy a child a coconut or hand out some change, but beyond that, I’m just left feeling overwhelmed and helpless.

Snap Happy

I've taken over 2,000 photos since I've been here. It's impossible to post them all on Facebook or Flickr because of my temperamental Internet connection but let's face it, not everyone wants to look at 16 different photos of the giant dead bug I found on my bathroom floor. So, here I present the second instalment of a small selection of photos I've taken over the past nine weeks:

This photo was taken outside the headquarters of a Chinese construction company operating in Bo. Chinese companies have come to Sierra Leone in droves, to snap up lucrative contracts to build roads and stadiums. An NGO worker I met told me China has moved into Sierra Leone because they see incredible opportunities to make money and they don't care about the country's human rights abuses. These human rights abuses are what keep businesses from other countries from coming to Sierra Leone, although many foreign companies do mining in the country.

Easmann, a reporter in Bo, took me out to visit one of the Chinese construction companies. He wanted to interview them about allegations their blasting was wreaking havoc on a nearby village. Cracks caused by the blasting had developed in the village's homes and mosque and the elderly were fleeing because they couldn't handle the stress of the explosions. We were made to wait for an interview for a good 45 minutes.

Kids in Sierra Leone get very excited when they see a foreigner. They particularly like having their photos taken and getting a chance to see the photo on the camera's screen. They scream, "po muay" when they see me, which means "white person." I counter that by pointing at them and saying, "Mende muay," which means Mende person. (Mende is the predominant tribe in the Bo district region of Sierra Leone). When they hear this, they either collapse into giggles or stand there shocked, with their mouths wide open. I'm not entirely sure that's how you spell "muay," so if anyone wants to correct me, please do.

On a weekend trip to Freetown, I got the chance to check out one of Sierra Leone's famous beaches. This is Bureh Beach, which is an 80 minute drive from Freetown. When we arrived it was completely deserted. For a couple of dollars, we got a table and some chairs. For a couple more dollars, we ate freshly caught and cooked swordfish and rice. Sierra Leone has incredible potential for tourism, although there is a lot of work to be done. The road down to the beach, for example, was in such poor condition that our taxi driver punctured his car's muffler.