My home in Freetown

The garden outside our apartment

My very comfortable bedroom



The rooster that wakes us up every morning



I suspect he knows he's dinner



C'mon I had to throw in one of myself



Housemates Jordan (left) and Stephen pretending
to work on the patio

The need for a disability law in Sierra Leone

I recently found out that Sierra Leone has a disturbingly high percentage of people living with disabilities, around 10 percent of the population. Despite this the country has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. For many years civil society groups have tried hard to convince two successive governments to ratify the convention and subsequently enact it into law.

A large number of people suffered amputation during the civil war and many of them now beg on the streets because there is no opportunity to be employed. The number of schools for disabled people is minuscule and they can only accommodate up to 50 students each.

Recently a group called Health for All Coalition in collaboration with Handicap International organised another meeting in Freetown to sensitise members of the media and the public about the need for a disability law. Although many media persons attended the gathering, I have not seen the meeting covered in any of the newspapers here. It was even presided over by Julius Nye Cuffie, the country’s only disabled parliamentarian who has been campaigning tirelessly for the convention to be ratified.

My reporter Ayodele, a somewhat lazy but eager young chap attended this conference and was all set to write it up as a boring ‘he said she said’ kind of piece. That is usually the way that most events are covered here. He had already written out his piece and it made no mention of the fact that for over three years, the government had been finding excuses not to ratify the convention. This, he narrated to me only in conversation. I think my biggest challenge will be enabling reporters to spot a good story when they see one and be able to decide what issues merit detailed coverage. He also told me that taxi drivers often speed by when they see a disabled commuter on the street because according to traditional myths, disability equals the devil.

We managed to thrash it out and it’s now a very good story that talks about the need to ratify the convention and the rights of the disabled to live with dignity. We took an extra day to work on the editing and decided to reserve it for our newly launched Community Watch column. I was really disappointed that no other publication had picked up the issue. Perhaps this points to deep-seated social prejudices that spill over into the media and influence the way that editorial decisions are made. Or maybe reporters are not able to devote their time to all just causes because multiple social issues compete for their attention. I think this is where we as trainers can help the most, to bring in an outside perspective to help them crane their necks and look at the bigger picture.

New England, same old problem

WHO's 2008 World Health Day banner

The 50-year-old crumbling cave well that has become a death trap

One of the first people to come to me with a story idea at The Exclusive was Musa Sesay. He wanted to do a follow up on a recent unfortunate incident at the New England village where a 16-year-old girl had been crushed to death by a runaway boulder while fetching water. The 30,000 residents of the area all depend on one solitary cave well for water and every rainy season there are casualties due to landslides. The burgeoning populace has built their homes on the edge of the hill causing both sewage and debris to seep into the water supply.

Musa explained to me that the current government had promised the people of the area access to water but had not lived up to it. I was a bit suspicious when he pitched the story. Did he want to discredit the ruling APC government through this story? I had been warned that reporters in Sierra Leone were fiercely partisan and that The Exclusive’s sympathies lay with the Sierra Leone People’s Party that was currently in opposition.

But I soon realised that Musa was genuinely interested in highlighting the problems of the people. The residents had been forsaken both by the government and the city’s multiple NGOs. In 2008 the World Health Organisation used a picture of the area on their poster for World Health Day. But since then there’s been no further contact with them.

The site of the incident, the well itself is a dark square hole in the rock and is the scene of a fight over water every morning. Since the authorities have done nothing to help, the local residents have organised into a self help group called Water Is Life and charge the community members a small fee to help maintain the well. But this is not nearly enough, the water from the well is untreated and cases of diarrhea and typhoid are common. Some months back both the Mayor and the Deputy Mayor visited the well and asked for an estimate of how much it would cost to carry out some renovations. It was estimated that it would only cost about $7,000 to make the well safer for drawing water and provide a supply of drinking water. The city council is yet to get back to them.

While walking back to town I noticed that we were across the road from The Special Court for Sierra Leone which had been set up in collaboration with the United Nations to try civil war criminals. This heavily fortified compound costs millions to maintain and some within the county wonder where this money could have been put to better use.

Musa’s story was an immediate hit and he’s already received requests from two other local papers to reprint it. I am delighted because as reporters realised the impact their stories can have, they will be eager to work on more.

The locals vs. the foreigners

Every newcomer to Freetown gets tagged with a nickname and mine is Mumbai Sistah. I was christened by Michael, the neighbourhood top up guy around our guest house who is a big fan of Bollywood films. The other popular film industry here is Nollywood or Nigerian commercial cinema. I’m told that most films have a religious theme and revolve around the triumph of good over evil, usually witchcraft.

Back in India we often smirk when we see a white foreigner getting ripped off on the streets. Here in Freetown I was white by association with my colleagues and became a victim of the ‘white man burden’. Put simply this means that everywhere I went with Stephen, Chris or Allison I paid double for everything. Jordan was less problematic because being half Jamaican he was almost as brown as me. Stephen knows nothing of the art of bargaining, so often we ended up paying 15,000 leones for a 5,000 leone cab ride. I must mention here that the currency is so poorly valued that it’s common to see people carrying around thick wads of cash worth just a few dollars.

The fanciest cafe in town, the Crown Bakery on Wilberforce Street is Lebanese owned and populated with the NGO types who relax over overpriced coffee and sandwiches. But most Sierra Leoneans I’ve met don’t trust the Lebanese businessmen too much. Perhaps it has to do with their involvement in diamond trading and therefore the civil war. My Indian landlords, the Tilwanis, believe that the reason there hasn’t been power at night recently is that the owners of the Lebanese mini mart down the road are bribing the city council to keep the lights on during the day.

From the Tilwanis I also learned that even though the Indian community runs many successful businesses in the country they are charged high taxes and treated with disdain. For many years they have been sore about a promised cremation ground that hasn’t been delivered. Even though the city’s landfills smog up from piles of burnt garbage, the council doesn’t allow human bodies to be burnt on a pyre. Every time a community member passes away some prominent Indians pool together their resources and have the body repatriated back to India.

The Indians are not the only disgruntled group here. Two days ago I was in the village of Waterloo 18 km from Freetown helping a journalist research a story. I met Bashir M Fahnbulleh, national chairman of the Liberian Refugees in Sierra Leone and he told me about the deplorable plight of 11,000 Liberian refugees who had stayed behind hoping for a better life in Sierra Leone. The UNHCR wanted them to return to Liberia and the Sierra Leone government refused to provide access to education or jobs. They had lived in refugee camps for years now and many would never know another way of life.

A taxi driver once told me that the Sierra Leoneans love foreigners more than their own people. After listening to these stories, I’m not sure how true that is.

Training at The Exclusive

The Exclusive office


David Jabati, the editor hard at work

The newsroom empty in the middle of the day

Nene who types all the stories, but charges reporters a small fee on the side for doing it

My job as a print media trainer in Freetown is to help improve the quality of reporting in the print media by enhancing the journalists’ capacity to report human rights stories more effectively. I was told that I would be placed with The Exclusive newspaper which wasn’t as big as The Concord Times or The Standard Times but according to Umaru Fofana the head of the Sierra Leone Journalists Association (SLAJ) held great potential.

We were invited by SLAJ to attend a press conference meeting with media stakeholders to discuss the poor condition of journalists in the country. Many work as volunteers and if they are lucky to be paid it’s less than $100 a month. A number of reporters get into the profession only to gain access to a press badge which they can then use to blackmail people. This practice is known as ‘coasting’ and is rampant in all parts of the country. Reporters are also eager to cover press conferences because usually at the end they get handed a packet of money to write a positive story.

This meeting supported by the UNDP was slightly disappointing as few publishers turned up. A number of issues were discussed such as how to pay freelancers, and how long a person should work as a volunteer before they had to start being paid but no consensus was reached. Most newspapers in Freetown are individually owned and publishers are more interested in sensational political headlines than the welfare of their staff. Many are also aware that if the reporter attends enough press conferences, he or she will get by.

The Exclusive is located on the first floor of a busy market street, the entrance flanked by giant suitcases for sale. The office is basically David the editor’s room, a newsroom with one wooden bench and a computer room where Nene types out the reporters’ handwritten notes. There’s no access to the internet and due to a shortage of cameras, stories usually go without pictures.

I don’t want to be judgmental but the quality of reporting is really poor. Stories are biased; one dimensional and reporters rarely bother to follow up on events. Among the staff I found that only Ibrahim was diligent about investigating his stories thoroughly, but the problem was that he was not able to translate that knowledge into a good story.

Although The Exclusive claims to be objective very often news is editorialised depending on where David’s sympathies lie. For instance last week Slyvia Blyden, the owner of The Awareness Times was being tried in court for libel. She had published a story suggesting that President Ernest Bai Koroma’s girlfriend had gone to the provinces masquerading as the first lady. This landed her in trouble with the ruling APC government and while she is currently out on bail the case is far from over. David used to work at The Awareness Times and the day after her first court appearance he wrote her a eulogy in on the front page with the news about the court case buried somewhere in the last two paragraphs.

There’s a lot to do here, but I have to be careful about stepping on people’s toes. I am tempted to severely edit stories when I read them but I know that the learning has to be sustainable in the long run and not a cut and paste job.

Arriving into Freetown

My first impressions of Freetown were by night after a seven hour flight from Heathrow. I’m Indian and quite used to landing at disorganized airports, but Lungi International Airport was a little more rundown than I had imagined. It was basically one large hall with the immigration department, baggage claim and arrival lounge all crammed in.

Although my visa was a six month multiple entry, the arrival stamp said that I only had a month and if I wanted to stay on I’d have to renew it before that. I had way too much luggage and as I and my four colleagues stepped out of the airport we were ambushed by about 50 cab drivers, porters and other random people eager to wheel our trollies for us. It was only when I raised my voice that the man who was threatening to drag my bags away, agreed to let go.

We all knew that the fastest way to get across the Sierra Leone River into Freetown was on board a Russian helicopter service that was infamous for crashing every few weeks. Our local escorts from jhr led us to the ferry terminal which is the cheapest and safer way of getting across but also takes forever.

By the time we got to our rooms at the Marianella guest house, the power had gone off and the generator had been put to bed for the night. This was annoying as I ended up having to unfurl and tuck in my mosquito net by torchlight. I was very thankful that my boyfriend Veer had convinced me to grab the powerful halogen light off my bicycle and bring it along.

There was also no water at the guest house, which was alright because the work boys were very prompt about bringing up buckets of water when you needed them. And unlike my Canadian colleagues, I was used to bucket baths in India.

Stephen and I were starving as we hadn’t had much to eat on the flight so our chauffer Lamin drove us to one of the few places that were still open at midnight, Noreskar Foods on John Street. We had our first taste of local cuisine that night: a heaped plate of jollof rice, which is rice slow cooked with tomatoes and onions in stock and groundnut oil, served with a spicy chicken drumstick on the side. Meat is staple here and the food often quite spicy, even for my Indian palate. Popular dishes include cooked cassava leaves, groundnut stew and plantain fritters all of which are on my to-eat list.

I know I should have been used to the weather; I had been back in Mumbai just a week ago but that night I had a really hard time drifting off to sleep. It could have been the sneaky mosquitoes that crept into my tent or the loud music from the concert across the road, but I can safely say that my first night in Freetown was not a comfortable one.

Who am I?

My name is Sulakshana Gupta and I'm a print journalist from India. I'm currently in Freetown, Sierra Leone for seven months as a print media trainer with the Canadian media development NGO, Journalists for Human Rights (jhr). I started this blog to communicate with friends about my experiences of working with local journalists, sampling the local cuisine and culture and finding my way around vibrant but chaotic Freetown.

Some of the characters in my story are likely to be my colleagues Stephen, Jordan, Allison and Chris and the country director for our programme, Elvis Ghanabom Hallowell.

Facts about Sierra Leone and Freetown:
Sierra Leone is tiny a West African country and one of the poorest places in the world. The country recently ranked lowest on the Human Development Index. Freetown, the country's capital is a major commercial shipping hub and one of the largest natural harbors in the world. Sierra Leone's main exports. Industries include fish packing, rice milling, petroleum refining, diamond cutting, and the manufacture of cigarettes.

Freetown was colonised in 1787 by freed black slaves from England is also home to the Fourah Bay College. Founded in 1827, it's the oldest university in West Africa. For more information on Freetown and Sierra Leone, check out the following wikipedia pages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Leone.