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.