Bo, Sierra Leone

Am sitting here in Bo, with ear plugs in, but still finding it hard to concentrate as there is a huge speaker system right next to my bedroom, which is warming up for tonight’s wedding reception, which will be held on the forecourt right in front of my room, and which starts at 10pm!

Ho hum.

Yesterday was a long hot day travelling round and visiting projects. Sometimes with my job it is easier not to think too much about the individuals behind the poverty that you see everywhere, however yesterday there were lots of little things that really bothered me...

The teenage boy who was a war amputee, one of 9 children, whose father had recently died, and who had to drop out of secondary school as he could no longer afford the fees for uniform, books etc.

The little girl who had fallen over and badly hurt her shoulder, but had received no medical treatment for 2 weeks as her parents thought the traditional healer/ witch doctor could heal her by “bringing out her bones” with a strange poultice. We ended up taking her to an MSF clinic, where although she was sharing a bed with 2 other very sick munchkins, she at least had a chance of getting better.

The school children with no text books and no writing materials (paper/pens), patiently reciting random English phrases down from a blackboard.

The + 10 and 11 year olds who wanted to be a doctors/ nurses/ the president, but whose “mid term test” consisted of drawing a) a football pitch and b) a school. Their teacher was then giving them % grades based on how good the drawings were.

The highly educated Project Manager who told me in all seriousness and with absolute belief about an FGM/C ritual where one of the initiates turned into a snake and dragged the initiator off into a swamp, before disappearing into the bush never to be seen again. The initiator lived to tell the tale and went on local radio to do so. Apparently belief in “shape shifting” is very common in SL, but it is really scary when someone you know well, and who is intelligent, well travelled, well educated etc. etc. is telling you this kind of story… in the dark!

On a slightly more amusing note I visited a preschool where the children recited “fee fi fo fum I smell the blood of an Englishman, be he alive or be he dead I’m going to grind his bones into bread”… I found this hilarious, but I don’t think anyone else got the irony that I am an “English woman” and that a whole bunch of 3 and 4 year olds were happily suggesting grinding my bones to make bread...