Carnivals and Christmas: Looking back on a year in Sierra Leone

The dust is settling in Freetown as the dry, cooler Harmattan winds blow off the Sahara for Christmas. Each morning you wake to a fine layer covering the surfaces in the house and the previously expansive view across the 3^rd largest natural harbour in the world is shrouded and the waters still in the hazy sunrise. By contrast Freetown is vibrant and chaotic as Christmas approaches. Each day bring a new sign for a Carnival, most recently the Nurses of Connaught Hospital Carnival – tonight Friday 18^th December – and another street is festively adorned with bunting (where does it all come from?). One older Sierra Leonian Muslim proudly told me “no one does Christmas like the Sierra Leonians…”. An exciting prospect for the next could of weeks.

As I mentioned in the last blog this is an incredibly young national, in 2010 50% were under the age of 20 and it feels like it. At night the hum of music and bars, cheers from screened football matches and noisy streets drift through the air. Our street had a carnival (street party) in November. After a relatively gentle start it was only after midnight that things really got going – big sounds systems, dancing, eating and drinking... I thought, does no one on the street mind about the noise? Then you look round and can see – the street are all here, maybe one or two houses had some older members who may be at home with earplugs  (or dancing Dom) but otherwise the whole street was young and out partying.

I feel that the conical age distribution sometimes it gives the city the feel of an impetuous, sometimes cheeky 20-something year old, brimming with vitality to go places and do things, but lacking the outlets and opportunities. And with the energy and good humour that they carry, I guess it’s easy to forget what this generation has been through, and although war and ebola come to mind, these are in equal part the symptoms and cause of their issues. Many, many more have lost family members to systemic problems of childhood disease, childbirth, HIV and accidents than the headliners.

This year has been like no other, I have no misgivings and I chose it, but there is no doubt work in Sierra Leone can be an emotional rollercoaster. Arriving to Sierra Leone in the shadow of the Ebola epidemic was harrowing, moreso to hear the stories of others from the previous months although reminders still stung you from time to time. Honestly, I still sometimes have to pinch myself when I go to work, just to remind myself its all real – the global inequalities are so gross and so tragic. At the same time, I’ve met people for whom praise and admiration is the only thing they deserve – nurses, doctors and others that I hope will be friends for life.

One of these friends was a guy named Ivan. We ran together on the hash and partied away a few evenings (and mornings..?). And, although I knew him for a few months, we became good friends and he was one of those young people who was lucky to be given a break of a beneficial sponsor through school, an opportunity he grabbed with both hands. He worked for the UN, was learning languages and was energetic and full of ideas for himself and the country. Unfortunately, the night after the Street Child Makeni Marathon, he was killed in a road accident. For his friends and family it’s a tragedy, for many of us were there when he died it’s a memory that will stick in our minds and for Sierra Leone sadly I think it’s a loss that may never be fully accounted or realized.

On the wider context, I’ve been between African countries for the last 15 months and the wider context is of business and growth in a sea of ageing and grandiose leadership dotted with islands of governance. In Tanzania happily the future seems brighter with the recently elected Magufuli showing how it’s done. And in this vein, it remains clear to me now as ever that neither I nor any expatriate colleagues will ever, or should ever aim to, make the lasting changes to a country, that is the task of its people and will always come from within. But I'm proud that,in our work at KSLP, we are trying make a space for and support those who are willing and do want to. And so I’ll finish with something that Ivan told me. In fact, as we drove up to Makeni I asked him to remind of it because I’d forgotten from the last time.

If you go somewhere for a year, you grow rice, if you go for 10 years you grow trees and if you go for 20, you grow people.