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.

Easter Monkeys

We had a five day holiday for Easter, as there was a Muslim holiday on Thursday, so we decided to take advantage of our long weekend and take a road trip. So, myself, Krystle, Kate, Patrick, Simon and Gianni headed to Tiwai a nature reserve on the in the south of Salone, in the district of Pujehun. Tiwai means ‘big island’ in Mende and it literally is a big island in the Moa River. The island is uninhabited, but the EFA (Environmental Foundation for Africa) have set up a wildlife reserve, so you can camp in the bush and go for forest walks etc.

Tiwai is easily one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, and incredibly peaceful. It was the kind of place where seeing people on the landscape just looked wrong. You just don’t find that sort of untouched landscape in the UK.

On Easter Sunday morning we woke at 7 and went on a forest walk. We saw many monkeys of different types, mainly in the trees, but also one on the ground. It was amazing. We also saw all kinds of birds and butterflies and insects and lizards. There were some fantastically old trees, with roots that I literally had to climb over. No Easter bunnies though. And no Easter eggs this year, although somehow without the commercial Easter stuff surrounding me, I never even thought about that until yesterday.

One of the big issues in Sierra Leone is roads. Most of the roads are pretty bad, which makes travelling around hard and long work. However, the road to Bo, which we travelled along, is starting to be redone and it’s easy to see what a difference it will make to industry and to life in Sierra Leone to get the road network repaired and give transport infrastructure a chance to improve. There are so many places where people are isolated, they don’t own vehicles and they have to take any chance to grab a lift to the nearest town, sitting in the back of a truck or on the roof of a poda poda. The picture below shows some people we saw in Bo travelling with their furniture on the back of a lorry. We travelled six in a hilux, with me and Krystle sharing the front seat. It wasn’t always that comfortable, but at least we were inside the car!

I have some pictures to post, but the connection is slow right now so I'll post them seperately later...

Someone shoot me, I’m turning into a feminist

Last week, my entire organisation took a trip to our extension office in Makeni to engage in a workshop concerning Gender, HIV and AIDS. This was organised by my fellow VSO volunteer, Alona, who also works there as a gender advisor.

The workshop was fascinating, not only because of the different information that was presented to us, but also because of what the associated discussions revealed to me about some of the views that are ingrained within society here.

We had a quite heated discussion on some of the issues surrounding the treatment of women, gender based violence, womens position in society and in the family and the relationships between women and men. I have to admit, and I’m not proud of this, but I did get angry. I found that my colleagues would say one thing, say what was considered progressive, but then the underlying view, the humour, the jokes, would reveal a different view altogether. It upset me, more I think than I ever expected it to, to hear women discussed in such a way, so openly.

Of course, the week wasn’t all work. We managed to fit in a trip to Apex with some of my friends from Makeni and of course my lovely colleagues. I stayed the weekend, had some quality time with Yankuba discussing football hooliganism, with Grant eating peanut butter cookies (girl scout ones no less) and talking the meaning of life, lapa shopping with Diya, watching James successfully highjack one of Sierra Leone’s top artists album launches... I got caught in an amazing thunderstorm, gave an impromptu spelling lesson to the local kids and coped through an all in Krio conversation with some of the girls from COG about traditional cultural practices. I even managed a picnic under some palm trees, and I had my first experience of going to church in Sierra Leone (catholic mass none the less, another first). I made friends with the latest additions to the Makeni ex pat scene (welcome to Mackay and Rachele), caught up with my favourite ocada driver, Abass and was eaten alive by mosquitoes. All in all it was a busy few days and I was grateful to snatch a few minutes nap on the journey back with my two favourite Abu Bakarrs, ABJ and ABK.

Next week, it’s Easter, we get 3 days off and I’m going to find monkeys and hippos in the bush. Yay.

Pondering in a pia tree

Being ill gives you time to think. Especially when you’re ill in a house with no electricity and a hammock. My time being ill led to me spending many hours in the hammock on my balcony, watching the pia tree and the birds, listening to the hustle and bustle of life on Byrne Lane and thinking. Thinking about all kinds of things, from how to get the pias down from the tree (I’m going to climb it!) to how I ended up living in a house with a pia tree anyway.

Before I came here, VSO sent me on various training courses to prepare me for life in the developing world. Unsurprisingly, one of them was about development. Now, on the YfD scheme, there are a lot of people who had studied development academically. I felt a little bit out of my depth at times, having never done that kind of academic study. Looking back, I think that gave me something of an advantage. I didn’t have expectations or preconceptions. I was ready to just take Sierra Leone as I found it.

What it did do though, was make me really think about what development means. It also made me question whether I should come here at all.

I never answered that question.

I came anyway.

I don’t regret that for one second.

But I still haven’t answered that question…

I sat on the beach a couple of weeks ago with a good friend of mine, eating grilled fish and looking out at a starry sky over the Atlantic Ocean. “How can this be the least developed country in the world?” we said.

I think this everyday. I’m here to help Salone develop. But develop into what?

Right now, I spend my weekends on beautiful, empty, unspoiled beaches. I met a man recently who had come to investigate the possibilities of building a hotel resort up the peninsula. Simon and I lied. We told him that the best beaches were before York. We don’t want tourists coming to invade our relaxed weekends. But maybe Salone needs it.

I spend my days and nights talking and laughing with an assortment of people. In the absence of TV, it’s amazing the hours you can spend discussing all number of things. As a result my friendships here are richer and deeper. But maybe Salone needs TV, electricity, improved communications methods.

Children can’t all go to school, and the ones who do go, no one can guarantee what they will be taught. People don’t have enough to eat, 75% live below the $2 per day threshold. In the UK we complain about having to wait to see a doctor, but we have 230 physicians to every 100,000 people. In Sierra Leone, we have 3. Running water, electricity and shelter are taken for granted back home. Here they are luxuries.

Sierra Leone needs to develop. That is true. Sierra Leone needs people, like me, to come here and help it to develop? For me, the answer to that changes everyday.

I doubt I will see much obvious change in the development of Sierra Leone in my remaining 7 months here. I am certain that should I come back in 7 years, I will see some. In 27 years, hopefully more.

Maybe they will ruin the isolated beaches, and everyone will be watching TV and, God forbid, there might even be a McDonalds or a Starbucks.

But does it matter, so long as the sick can get well, the children can learn and people have enough to eat and drink?

If development means that people start to have more access to essential services, that they live longer, eat healthier and have the freedom to pursue their dreams, then that is why I’m here. But sadly, everyday working in development, I see the rich getting richer and the poor staying exactly where they are.

My view is a simplistic one, based on just a few months of experience in this field. It will be interesting to see how my views themselves develop too…

Woof! Woof!

Dogs are everywhere (I think that’s a line from a Pulp song, Jonny please confirm?) maybe Jarvis had visited Freetown. Here there may well be more dogs than people. Actually that’s an exaggeration, but there are a lot. People don’t keep pet dogs in the same way here as they do back in the UK. Dogs generally live on the streets or in compound yards. They roam around fighting each other at night causing a lot of palava. These days I’m so used to it that I just sleep through it. Noises of people talking, music playing, goats and frogs and crickets and dogs and the constant buzz of generators are commonplace and they rarely disturb me now.

Anyway, back to the dogs. There are some really mangy dogs around, full of injuries and fleas and allsorts. But they rarely approach you (unless you’re trying to get into their compound!) and they’re very much just a part of life here. Where Simon lives there are about 6 compound dogs, that are nicer than the typical dogs you see around and they follow him when he goes out. (In fact I remind him of one of the mangier dogs, so he’s nicknamed me after him. It’s not a name I’m going to post on here, because it’s taken off quite enough with Krystle and Simon without anyone else adopting it too!)

Names are important. I was cursed (sorry mama and papa, but it’s true!) with an unusually spelt name, which means that I am obsessive about (a) people spelling my name right and (b) spelling other people’s names right. In Sierra Leone, my name has become even more important to me, but in a different kind of way.

At work here, they always called me “Jayney” and quickly this was turned into my Salone name, Jeneba. So, I am Jeneba. Jeneba Jalloh. Now, whenever I meet anyone, I introduce myself as Jeneba. The other day in the taxi, I was talking to a guy and he turned to the driver (also a Jalloh – the surname Jalloh suggests that you’re from the Fullah tribe) and said “Do they have Fullah’s in England?” he replied “No, she must be from Guinea!” I’m still chuckling from that one.

To make matters more complicated, I also get called Zainab and Yebu, which are different versions of Jeneba, when I’m in different parts of the country. That’s a lot of names to answer to!!!

But why take a Salone name (or three)? There are plenty of English names here; I have Leonean friends called Charles, Michael, Elizabeth, Florence, Daniel. My name is not difficult or unusual.

Do I introduce myself as Jeneba because I don’t want people to know my real name? Yes, in part I do. I meet a lot of people, everyone wants to know my name. Also, using my Salone name makes people laugh, starts a conversation.

Having a Salone name makes me feel a little more settled in, a little more part of this country. But in the process of being here and experiencing so many different things, it also starts to become confusing at where Jayne ends and Jeneba begins. It’s such a cliché to talk about this place changing me, but it’s true. Jeneba in Sierra Leone, is not quite the same person as Jayne who you all know back home. She’s part of a different life and a different world. And I guess the person who returns to the UK will be some sort of hybrid Jayne/Jeneba mix.

I wonder if anyone will recognise her…

Do you believe in AIDS?

My friend Greg and my bro ABJ made this film about HIV/AIDS in Sierra Leone.
Have a look at it and let me know what you think...