Wildlife in a War Zone

Tonight, I went to a special screening of a documentary about Sierra Leone’s wildlife, with a particular emphasis on how the war affected the wildlife. It was interesting for many reasons.

The first is that it made me realise how much I have started to take for granted the kind of wildlife that I see regularly here. The lizards and the birds and the bats and the insects that I see everyday that most people in the UK will just never have seen as they look out of their bedroom window. I’ve seen wild monkeys twice, how many people have done that? I should appreciate this a little more whilst I am still here to enjoy it.

The second was that I have visited myself some of the places featured in the documentary. The Tacugama chimpanzee sanctuary where I visited before Christmas, and Tiwai, the island I went to over Easter. These are beautiful places and I am incredibly lucky to be able to recognise them and see them as familiar. The third place he visits is the Lomu Mountains, not been there yet, but if all goes to plan, Kate and I will be climbing Mt Bintumani, Sierra Leone’s highest peak, sometime in the next couple of weeks. The filmmaker found evidence of baboons, buffalo and leopards, fingers crossed I might get chance to see a few of these myself. The film is a fantastic piece of evidence that shows just how beautiful and somewhat untouched Sierra Leone is. At the same time, it doesn’t hide the destruction caused by the war and you do get an idea of the condition of this country, the ruin. I would recommend that anyone watch this film should they get the chance.

But, I have to be quite critical of the way the film maker dealt with the subject of the war in Sierra Leone. This man grew up here, leaving 15 years or so ago when the war began and having lived in America since then. He was shown on camera, asking a market trader in Kenema if she knew of anyone who had been affected by the war. The civil war here lasted around 11 years. Almost half of the population were displaced as a result, not to mention the deaths, the mutilations, the sexual assaults. I have never met a Sierra Leonean who didn’t know someone who was affected by the war, most witnessed these things happening. I find it incredible that a man with a personal connection to the country would need (or in fact want, if it was purely for cinematic purposes) to ask such a question.

He also talks repeatedly about the atrocities committed by the rebels. Yes, there were atrocities committed, to man, animal, landscape, structure, process. But it is not simply a case of rebels as the bad guys.

I do not claim to understand much about the conflict here, but what I do believe is that to reduce the civil war here to a case of good vs evil is an insult to Sierra Leoneans.

Films like this one can do a lot to help raise the international profile of Sierra Leone. This is a wonderful and beautiful country, with much to offer. It is also incredibly safe, what the film did do well is to explain how successful disarmament has been here – even poachers can’t get hold of guns to shoot monkeys for bush meat! Sierra Leoneans generally, to me, seem to be committed to the idea of peace.

To truly represent Salone, we have to start understanding that this is not a country with only a civil war to blame for it’s position. Atrocities were committed during the war, no one is going to deny that, and justice and reconciliation are being sought for those things. Their impact will echo for decades, if not centuries.

But atrocities continue to be committed daily. I see their evidence in the decadence of the new Vice President’s Office, just a few minutes drive from the deprived Kroo Bay slum (link). I see it in the boss man who charges $300 for one day of work, but hasn’t paid his own staff for two months. I see it in the absence of youth parliamentary representation in a country where three quarters of people are classified ‘youth’.

We need to move away from the idea that because someone picked up a gun or a machete to defend their family, their rights, to protest against their situation, because they believed it would somehow improve their life, they are automatically evil, and that those who didn’t have the moral high ground.

I’m not saying that the war was right. I’m not saying that the people who suffered injury and trauma in the war should ever have had to go through that, or that any condition, political, environmental, economic, justifies their experience. I’m not saying that those who took arms, on either side, should relinquish responsibility for their actions.

But don’t go blaming ‘the rebels’ for every problem in Sierra Leone.

Challenge Jeneba!

OK, so many people believe that when people like me come out on voluntary placements it’s all about building schools and repairing hospitals. It isn’t, but sometimes it is. Like this weekend.

I went to Makeni (yes I go there a lot it’s my favourite place in Salone) to help my friend Simon with installing solar panels on the library. I had a 10 minute lesson in how to construct and re wire light fittings and was left to it for the rest of the day. What an experience… in between helping small children in the library with their reading “aunty aunty, what’s this one mean?” and generally causing a bit of a scene (it’s not often you walk into the library in Makeni and find a white woman fiddling with the electrics!) I managed to fit a few new lights. The guys working at the library told me that they had never seen a woman do that kind of work before. Then they thought I knew allsorts about electrics, and tried to get me to repair all kinds of appliances. Clearly I was good at convincing them I had a clue.

Anyway, there were some problems, and we didn’t get the light to work in Makeni that day, but it will do after a bit of rewiring (even I spotted that the wiring was a bit strange, which says something). And I learnt a bit about electrics. And got to visit my kids and my friends in Makeni. And buy lots of lapa.

We also had a lovely evening with Simon’s colleague Foday, who drove us to Makeni and his brother who invited us to eat dinner with them on Saturday night. Delicious food and great company… washed down with the best poyo in Salone.

So a good weekend all round.