Feb. 3

Before I share my recollections on my last night in the country, I wanted to share something I forgot to mention in the last entry.

On the night we get back from Pujehun, after everyone had dropped off their bags at Sahid’s place, I was sitting in the foyer of the house just outside of the living room waiting for the Internet to load when Augustine, the teenager who stays with Sahid and his family in Freetown, approached me very quietly. I could tell he was connecting with me since we first began talking about hip hop in America.

So when he approached me, he was very honest. Standing against the wall, he told me that his views about agriculture had changed since I had arrived. A few days ago, he was explaining how he, like many youths in Freetown, felt agriculture was not appealing to him. But he said he had witnessed my commitment to my assignment and how I had traveled to each youth farming group in the provinces to hear what they had to say about agriculture. That effort, he said, had inspired him to perhaps go into farming after he finishes secondary school.

That statement right there should be an indication that youths’ attitudes about agriculture in Sierra Leone are indeed changing.

My last night in Sierra Leone was a memorable one. I guess I made such an impression on one of the youth groups that I interviewed in Waterloo that they decided to show their appreciation by hosting a send-off party for me and my guides. Mind you, these are youths from a rural part of the country who often can’t afford to finish school, who don’t have anyone supporting their organization, who have to struggle for everything. Yet they plan this big celebration just for us. We ate, danced and perspired until about 2 in the morning.

They put so much effort into it. They cleared out a room in their multipurpose center and had a few lights hanging from the ceiling. They got chairs for me, Sahid and Theo to sit on, a table and a table cloth, plates, glasses, silverware, napkins and plenty of Fanta (for me, of course), beer and palm wine, and a D.J. These were all rare sites in most of the places we have visited at night. As I’m writing this, I can still hear LRG’s “Money in the Bank” and everyone jumping to the middle of the room and dancing in a circle when they hear it.

As I traveled back home, I stopped at Heathrow Airport in London for one of my layovers. I walked through the airport to my gate, and what did I see? A Tiffany’s store with the best of the world’s diamonds on display for all of those passengers who just can’t leave London without a piece of high-class jewelry in their suitcase. I want to qualify this by saying that I have no problem with Tiffany’s or anyone who shops there. But, at that moment, I couldn’t help but be reminded of that 25-year-old guy I met in Kono who was in that mining pit, knee-deep in the murky, sewer-brown water, working for meager wages and searching for a diamond he may never find.

Feb. 2

I’ve been without the electricity or time now to jot down my daily thoughts for a while. But here are my recollections of the last few days.

On Friday, we traveled to Kono in the eastern part of the country. It is known as the breadbasket of the country because of its rich diamond resources. How do you know you’re in Kono? You can feel the bumpy roads along the way to the district (and, in the case of the video below, you can hear them as well).

I saw a mining site, where I interviewed a 25-year-old guy who had been working in the pit for about five years. Diamond miners spend the whole day swishing around gravel in a pan looking for the precious metals. The diamond boom here has subsided, so discoveries are quite rare these days. Most people just find these tiny black rocks which they call “black material,” which is supposed to indicate to the miners that a diamond is near. I asked the guy when’s the last time he found a diamond. He couldn’t remember (or maybe he wouldn’t tell me).

We visited a war memorial, which is housed in a rebuilt building where eight people were burned alive by the rebels during the civil war. On one of the posters inside the memorial read:

“Mammy Isata has described how in pain and death by fire the victims ‘gripped’ one another. The skeletons stood against the wall. One person escaped.”

That represents just a small portion of the destruction the war caused. You can see other remnants of the war in the hollowed-out buildings that still stand throughout most of the rural provinces.

I lost my footing on the way to one of the many farms I have visited here. I don’t know if it was because of exhaustion or just thinking this was another simple hike (it was not!), but it resulted in both of my shoes being baptized in the swamp mud.

On Sunday, we traveled to Pujehun in the southern region of the country. On the way, we stopped in Bo, the second-largest city in the country, to watch a soccer game in a sports bar where the Manchester United vs. Arsenal game was playing on the big screen. I noticed that the Africa Cup of Nations championship game was showing only on a bunch of small screens throughout the place, and no one was paying attention to it. Sahid said that’s because when African players play for their own countries, they aren’t as good as when they play for foreign teams.

We spent all Monday in Pujehun. The first thing I noticed about this place was how it looked like there was only one short block of homes in the center of the district with working electricity. Those homes provide the only glimmer of light for as far as the eye can see. As for the rest of the homes, many are subject to no electricity or running water. Theo told me everything is politicized here. You can tell where that is true.

We woke up early the next morning to visit the next set of groups, and I was glad to be spending the day in the environments of the youth farming groups. I spent a lot of time in the bush, where you can see acres and acres of cassava, palm trees, pineapple, coconut and even apples. I also saw benny, a staple crop here, but it was either brown or wilted because, like in Kono, the government gave the groups their seeds too late in the rainy season for them to harvest.

Later in the night, back at the guest house, we met up with another Sierra Leonean journalist who knows Sahid and Theo. We talked for hours, and during one of the conversations the journalist told me he heard about my arrival in Pujehun even before we had met. As a TV journalist for the southern region, he said it is his job to check in with the city council in the area everyday to check on the day’s events. He said he met with the council administrator, who told him he had met with a delegation of journalists earlier in the day, including a white man. The white man he was referring to was me. I couldn’t help but chuckle because I had been anticipating this moment while I was here. No doubt, my skin tone is fairer than about 99.99% of the people in Sierra Leone. For many of them, the only person they’ve seen with my same complexion was probably Barack Obama (as a matter of fact, many people here say I look like him). So most people here assumed I was black like Obama, meaning one of my parents is white. I explained that both of my parents are black, and that in the U.S. there are many shades of black. I don’t mind the misunderstanding, but I do mind that council administrator blatantly disrespecting us like that, especially since earlier that day we went out of our way to meet with him and explain what I was doing there. Another reminder that even though you may be a black man, let alone a black journalist, in Africa, sometimes you are still considered just another American.

Jan. 29

I’m starting to feel right at home. We spent most of the day Wednesday in Waterloo, in the Western Area Rural District, where we met with three youth farming groups. They all had interesting stories and seemed very determined to get their projects off the ground.

But they all mentioned one similar problem: Because they were women’s groups, they were all dealing with the issue of getting young girls out of prostitution (which is very common here because of the lack of job opportunities and the difficulty of funding education for young people). They seem to be having some success pulling former prostitutes off the streets with the incentive that farming could not only provide self-sufficiency but also income.

While we waited to start the day, I sat with Alhaji, our driver in Freetown, outside of Sahid’s house. Since I told him I was from California, he had been telling me about a friend he knows from San Francisco, Janet Allen. He told me he met her while she was on a Peace Corps mission in Sierra Leone. So he asked me to contact her when I got back home and give her his information. He carries her number and e-mail address on a piece of college-ruled paper in his wallet, perhaps just for opportunities like this. I consider this my reminder to follow up on his request as soon as I get back. He also showed me his tax receipt that he keeps in his wallet at all times along with the piece of paper with Janet’s contact information. He told me that the government makes everyone here pay taxes, 5,000 Leones a year (about $1.25 in U.S.). Interesting fact knowing that 70 percent of the population here lives in poverty, and jobs aren’t necessarily easy to come by.

It was late in the evening. Sahid, my other guide in Sierra Leone, invited me into the living room because he wanted to show me a documentary about his NGO, Democracy and Improvement Associate-Sierra Leone, which helps youths find employment in rural parts of the country. But a few minutes into the documentary, the generator gave out, which meant no more electricity for the night. So we moved a few chairs from the living room outside to talk and relax. There was a cool breeze that keeps my mind off the mugginess of the night. The only other light came from the moon.

After awhile, Augustine came to join me outside. He is one of the nine people Sahid takes care of, and when he isn’t in secondary school he helps out with chores around the house. The first question he asked me was one that I’d been waiting to hear since I arrived. “Do you know about Litt-le Wayne?” he asked. Of course, I responded. He listed a few other popular American rappers, and we got into a long conversation about how much hip hop has influenced young Sierra Leoneans. Augustine told me that he, like many young people in Freetown, listens exclusively to hip hop. He told me how much young people relate to the music, and I told him I completely understand. I also gave him my thoughts on how I love hip hop as well since that is the music I grew up listening to, but how I’m troubled with the images some artists portray in the music.

Augustine told me that the music gives he and his peers the message that black people in America take for granted the opportunities they have obtained since the Civil Rights Movement. He told me that people here have heard that the day a baby is born in America, they have a bank account. I assured him that reality is only true for some people born in the U.S. While we’re talking, I couldn’t help but wonder why is that if hip hop has had such a big influence over here and if American hip hop stars have made so much money over there, then why is it that Bill Gates is the person putting all this money into Africa and not a 50 Cent or a Lil’ Wayne.

Jan. 27

The journey to Sierra Leone was long. I left California Monday afternoon and, after two layovers, I finally arrived at my destination the next evening. It really didn’t start to sink in that I was heading to Africa until our plane began flying over the Sahara. All I remember seeing was vast areas of sand, with layers of blue and orange coating the horizon. The nice lady sitting next to me described it as an “ocean of brown.” I would concur.

When I arrived at the airport, I was both excited and anxious. Excited because I couldn’t believe that I had actually made it to the Motherland. Anxious because the task ahead of me, I knew, was going to be a challenge.

We got off the plane and walked a short way to the security gate.

I stood in line, patiently waiting for the security personnel to check my passport and send me on my way. There was a piece of white paper with my name written on it (spelled Martin Richards ["Dang," I thought to myself at first, "They didn't spell my name right, like always." But I found out later there was a reason.]) by one of the security windows. No one was holding it. It was just resting against the window. That told me that my guides were nearby. Then the deluge began, not from people saying hello or asking for anything, but from immigration officials skeptical of the reason I was there. If it wasn’t for a young man sent by one of my guides whisking me through the line, I might have still been in that airport. Nonetheless, my guides were waiting for me right when I got past security and they made me feel welcome.

It was pitch black when we got on the road. We had to catch the ferry to get from the airport to Freetown. It must have been about 11 o’clock, and people were either walking on the side of the road or chilling outside of their residences.

While on the way to the ferry, we overheard a news update about Haiti. I asked one of my guides, Theo, what he thought about Haiti. He said it made him very said. Then he told me the Sierra Leonean government donated $100,000 to Haiti, the first of its kind for the country. He added, however, that people have been wondering how the government could make such an enormous pledge when it didn’t have the money and people were suffering in their own country.

We continued down the road, and as we got closer to the ferry, I noticed that many of the buses (here, they are usually small Eurovan-type vehicles) are emblazoned with religious homages and benevolent sayings like “God’s Time is the Best” and “Allah is the Greatest.” Theo told me the main religions practiced here are Islam (about 60% of the population) and Christianity (the rest), and they all get along. He said that it is not a part of the law, but when an official is elected to office from a certain religion, for example, normally they like to have someone from another religion in the next subordinate position. Theo himself is a Rastafarian.

We arrived at the port where the ferry was supposed to take us to Freetown. To get on, cars have to line up single file. We waited for at least 30 to 45 minutes for the ferry to drop off passengers coming from Freetown. Getting on the ferry looked like a task. Vehicles have to scale a slippery ramp that looks like it is nearly at a 45-degree angle. Many cars hydroplane on the first attempt (we slipped back on to the pavement on the first try) but usually make it the second time around.

Theo took me upstairs to sit down. We walked into a nautical enclosure that said “First Class” on the door post. There, people sat on wooden seats, a young man with dreads was DJing and there was a small bar where women were selling snacks and drinks. Second class was upstairs, on top of the ferry, where everyone else sat. Theo took me up to see what it looked like, and there was a cool breeze from the ocean. I would rather be up here on a night like this, I thought, when it feels like about 80 degrees just on the inside.

We returned to first class. After sitting for awhile, I noticed a familiar song playing on the TV above the DJ. It’s Soul for Real’s “Candy Rain.” I nearly jumped out of my seat because that was my jam back in the day.

We finally arrived in Freetown, and as we stepped off the ferry the darkness was broken up only by the lampposts at the port. Beyond that, the city was nearly pitch black at this time of night. The only other specks of light came from a far-off distance beyond the port. Theo told me those were fishing boats. He told me that the country is having a big problem with poaching right now. Although there is an abundance of fish available to catch, Sierra Leonean fishermen have to compete with poachers from outside the country, who basically have free range over the seas because of lax (or should I say hardly enforced) regulation. Looks like there will be a lot for us to talk about while I’m here.