KATHMANDU BABY

Its very hot in Matagelema. There is no electricity supply. The ceiling in the room we are staying in is very low, there’s only one window and it feels like an oven. I can’t drink my packaged water from Freetown fast enough. I can’t drink the local stuff, it’s a shame care international have made a great well here.

But then I need to use the ‘faciliities’. Its dark and I forgot to pack my torch: mistake number one.

We find a spare one and set off to the structure outside with a ‘toilet’ inside.

I am confronted by; a built up hole, a not great smell and a teeming mound of cock roaches. It reminds me of a scene in Indiana Jones involving copious amounts of insects that make your skin crawl. Of course nature dictates (and after some spraying of anti cockroach) I use the facilities.

I try and work out how I can get through the next fourteen days without having to go to the toilet ever again. I ponder on this one whilst downing as much water as I can. My knee is a raging blister and I feel just a bit hot.

Musa, Emmanuel and R hit the road;  sometimes road,  sometimes track,  always red and dusty, for Matagelema village.   It is in the Lower Bonthe Chiefdom and it is where Emmanuel’s ‘family’ live.

The Journey is long and hot.  I have turned  a sort of orange from the red dust.  We stop at Moyamba junction  and eat chicken and rice.   Hot, dirty and tired not the  best entrance.

And then we arrive and  I am engulfed in buwaas (hello in mende) and hugs  by the seemingly endless  siblings aunties, uncles, nieces and nephews.

They have not seen their brother Emmanuel for over two  years: they are joyful and happy.  I wonder what they make of the usually white,  but now orange on account of the road trip, girl that there prodical son has rocked up with. 

So covered in red dust someone asks if I’d like a shower.  Of course I would like a shower.  A shower is exactly what I need.  I thought.

Emmanuel’s sister, Edna,  whisks me off for the shower.  I have a towel and a bar of soap. I am looking  FORWARD  to this.  I’m outside, I’m in some trees, there’s a bucket full of cold water and there seems to be a lot of gaps in the tree structure. 

The sister can see I am struggling and seemingly unable to shower.  She tells me what to do and I follow her command. We hang a sheet so I’m not more exposed to the endlessly inquisitive stares.  She tells me to get undressed.   When almost completely naked I signal to sister that I am now able to shower with a bucket and cup.  I’m trying to impress his sister, confident with my figure, I’m still  not certain that being totally naked in front of her is going to be that impressive.   It’s cold but refreshing.

Next we are sitting in a room, Emmanuel, the  taxi driver, a mum , a step mum , sisters, brothers and the head of the family: the dad.  There is now an official introduction of the ‘girl friend’ for the dad.   The step mum embraces me, the mum looks like she might cry: I want to. The father rescues it, ‘we’ve always wanted one like you in the family’.    

Drinks in East Freetown: an ex-child soldier

East Freetown is the cheapest area of the city to live in, we go for drinks at a bar there with one of Emmanuel’s relatives, Mr Kamara. 

I go for ‘star’ beer locally brewed.

There is a teenage  boy dancing violently, shouting, dancing wildly, I catch some of his repetitive shouts,

’I don’t support your government’

The  boy is dragged out of the bar by staff.  No one seems to have paid much attention. People are good at minding their own.  But I ask Mr Kamara, what  was happening with the crazed dancer,

‘ he is not correct in the head, these children were given guns and drugs by the rebels.  The UN gave them a Disarmament and disengagement programme at the end of the war.  The programme gave them a set of tools, they left them.  The boys sold the tools and now they have nothing. During the civil war many killed their families.  They can-not return to their villages where they acted so wicked. There is one psychiatrist in the entire country.’

8/5/08 : The UN is leaving

Changing money. There are 6000 leones to the pound. I  have stacks and stacks of money.  I have never seen so much money ( and I don’t for long: the stacks soon diminish)

A procession, woman with painted white faces, masks and music. The men follow behind.  It is an FGM ceremony, there is no age limit. For the first time in Sierra Leone I am touched by a feeling of anxiety.

Special Court, visit some lawyer friends from London.  One  bemoans the lack of due process for his rebels on trial at the court.  I don’t talk to Emmanuel or any other sierra leoneons about the rebels, they have their own views of what should happen to the people whose brutal wickedness they witnessed first hand.

 I hope Emmanuel is not listening to defence counsel complain about the lack of fair trial.  It could open up a huge pile of other complaints, ‘severed limbs, people burning in tires, digging graves before being shot into it, stripped naked and left in the sun, put at the front of an onward assault by the rebels for the Nigerian ECOMOC troops to take aim at you …’ Emmanuel has his own views of the rebels.

‘good luck in the provinces: Yikes!’ is the lawyer from London’s  parting text

Yikes Indeed

Beautiful  beautiful  stretches of beach,  eat fried rice with Musa and Emm. Em drinks stout,’ it is good for you’.  I will never be able to convince him otherwise.

United Nations Integrated Mission In Sierra Leone Ems first proper and paid job after 9 months of volunteering for the them. The mission is leaving at the end of September.  Redundancies loom for the national staff, the well paid internationals leave for other pastures.   

Sheku, Ems country brother, also working in Nepal comes with us.  He gives money to the UNIMISL staff, why I ask?

‘ we give money, we are all victims, I was a victim once.’  The 43 year life expectancy is never far away.

7/5/08

So I leave on a jet plane, a BMI flight, not very full.  BMI are flying to Sierra Leone from London Heathrow three times a week now. It’s hoped it will bring tourists to this country recovering from the civil war that ravaged it.

 The Country; better  known in the west as the film setting for Di Caprios role in ‘Blood Diamond’ , the movie about the stone over which the war was fought.    Most Sierra Leoneons are like Emmanuel and have never set eyes on the stone themselves.   More recently David Beckham could be spotted in Freetown on a flying visit for UNICEF.  Sierra Leone s children face the highest rates of mortality. He played football with some of the victims who had had their limbs severed during the conflict ‘how will you vote now?’ the rebels asked them as they hacked off their hands, ‘short sleeve or long sleeve’?  they enquired.   The victims I saw had a short sleeve, the arm hacked off above the elbow.     

Perhaps Ironically or more grotesquely as David Beckham was touching hearts In Sierra Leone his wife could be seen photographed on the cover of vogue dripping in diamonds.   War, poverty, diamonds.

Arrive, fast exit from airport: Emmanuel seems convinced we will be robbed at any time

Wait one and a half  hours for the ferry to Freetown. Ferry music videos accompany our journey. ; ‘feed the world’, ‘ la is la bonita’, ‘diamonds on the soles of her shoes’. 

Lungi to Freetown:  a happy , relaxed, warm.  There is definitely a good vibe awaiting any visitor here.

Arrive in a B and B, no running water but a bucket.  ‘Nyan den goh’ , (mende for its fine a language I will discover I should have learnt before).   Emmanuel barricades the door with some chairs, what is he expecting to come through the door?   I sleep: some kind of insect munches on my knee.  I notice the remnants of the feast a few days later, when my knee is a huge red blister, my temperature is soaring and I realise that there really is no health care where I am staying.