Yenga is still the issue (for John Pilger)

Musa Tamba Sam is a troubled man. He’s just stepped out of Parliament where his attempt to slip Yenga into the agenda was shot down by the speaker. “I’m from the opposition you see,” he explains to me. Sam, an SLPP (Sierra Leone People’s Party) parliamentarian from the east of Sierra Leone is trying to make sure no one forgets about his people in the tiny border town that has been under Guinean occupation for almost 10 years. He is also part of ‘Save Yenga Save Salone’, an advocacy-through-music campaign that kicked off recently with a concert in Freetown. The aim is to rally support for government intervention in the region.

Yenga is a hamlet in the eastern Kailahun district of Sierra Leone, bordering both Guinea and Liberia. Situated on the bank of the Makona River, the fertile tract of farmland is also believed to be rich in diamonds. Guinean troops first entered Yenga in the mid ’90s to help fight the Revolutionary United Front rebels during the civil war and block their exit routes into Guinea. After the war ended in 2002, they retained their military presence in Yenga. Over the past week reports have poured in about Guinean officers trying to tax the locals.

Back in 2005 tensions were quelled with the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the two countries; Yenga belonged to Sierra Leone and the Makona belonged to Guinea. The borders reconfirmed, then Sierra Leonean President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah declared the issue resolved.

Not quite. Like with all border disputes, quick fix political solutions are often ignorant of ground realities. Even today Guinean military personnel continue to guard Yenga from a base just across the river. “They claim that the boundary should be another 800m inland, covering Yenga,” says Sam. Approximately 500 people call Yenga home. Sam’s mother lives close by and he fears for her safety if the situation gets out of hand.

It is hard to say exactly how many soldiers remain in Yenga but there is no ambiguity about the Guinean armoured tank on top of the hill overlooking the area. Recently the Sierra Leonean Parliamentary Committee on Defence and Presidential Affairs was halted from entering Yenga by Guinean personnel. The committee maintained their right to visit their own people and was eventually let in after a 90 minute standoff. “They then informed us that we were now in Guinea,” adds Sam.

The ruling APC (All People’s Congress) administration’s official response is that there is no problem in Yenga. A friend at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs claims that Sierra Leoneans and Guineans are living peacefully as they share both language and culture. But the situation on the ground undercuts this argument. Media reports tell pitiful stories of residents that are starving because soldiers have usurped their farm lands. People are frequently threatened with arrest. “There are no schools or hospitals,” says Sam. This, despite the fact that the people still pay their local taxes. A few years ago World Vision tried to build a school there but were hindered by the military. For this same reason other NGOs hesitate to go there. So how do the people survive? Mostly on handouts from relatives in neighbouring villages and “by miracle”.

Part of the reason for the official silent treatment is that Sierra Leone does not recognise Guinea’s military government and are unwilling to engage in talks. Unofficially I’m told negotiations are underway but obviously with no visible results. War is not an option. There are enough scars here to remind people of the last time soldiers roamed the streets. “We need to increase pressure for a diplomatic solution,” Sam asserts.

Since I first wrote this post on The New Internationalist three weeks ago, a technical committee from Guinea has been mandated to evaluate the situation in Yenga.

The A-Z of food in Freetown

Sierra Leonean food for me has its ups and downs. Some days it can be comforting to drown your sorrows in a greasy bowl of cassava leaves. On other days the very smells make me want to hurl. Glutton that I am, I think I have gone through a fair number of local restaurants in Freetown and have gathered enough culinary expertise to write this bibliography. I’m missing a few letters in between, but I promise to keep eating until the list is complete.

A

Attieke: couscous with fried onions, tomatoes and cucumbers. Served best with grilled barracuda.

B

Banga soup: palmnut stew served with rice

Benachin rice: A Guinean version of jollof rice (see below), spicier.

Banana cake: Deliciously greasy banana muffin.

Bangku: cornmeal dumplings

C

Casaava leaves: The staple food of Sierra Leone. The omnipresent starchy tuberous root that manifests in many forms, cassava curry with rice, cassava bread with fish and even dried cassava chips.

Crain Crain: A slippery leaf cooked like cassava.

Checked rice: Rice mixed with crain crain.

D

E

Ebba: Now I haven’t actually tried this but I’m told it’s a pasty dish made from maize meal (gadi).

Efo: Nigerian spinach soup

F

Foo foo: A thick paste or porridge made from cassava or corn. Very sour and can’t say I care much for it.

Fry soup: Fried balls of onions, tomatoes and peppers, stuffed inside bread and served on the streets.

G

Groundnut soup: My personal favourite. Crushed groundnuts stewed to perfection with fish or meat. Served with rice.

Green Green: I’m told this is a local version of spinach. Again cooked like cassava with meat.

Ginger beer: Available wherever drinks are sold. Very pungent.

H

Humus: Safe bet when all else on a menu sounds dodgy.

I

Ice cream (the street version): Frozen plastic pouches of flavoured milk. Made with milk powder and tastes like sawdust.

J

Jollof rice: Prepared almost like risotto. Rice slow cooked with tomatoes, onions, spices and stock. Served with spicy chicken. Yum.

K

Kebbe: A lemon shaped cutlet deep fried. Normally filled with meat.

L

Lebanese bread: Flat bread available at all the supermarkets.

M

Mina fish: Finger sized fish served deep fried. Great snack food.

Meat pie: English pastry filled with meat.

Mayonnaise: Popular ingredient, liberally ladled onto burgers, sandwiches and even tea according to one source.

N

Nescafe: Quintessential Freetown coffee. Can be purchased from Nescafe carts around every corner. Frothed by juggling between plastic tumblers.

O

Omole: Very strong local gin. Not advisable.

Okra soup: Okra cooked in palm oil with shrimps and beef.

P

Plantain chips: Delicious deep fried plantains served with beef stew.

Potato leaves: Cooked the same as cassava

Pepe soup: Fiery goat stew made with crushed chili peppers. Will burn a hole in your stomach.

Palm wine: Sap from the palm tree. Don’t know what the fuss is about.

Q

R

Rice rice rice: It’s part of almost every meal. Imported from Thailand, India, China.

S

Sauce: all gravies are called sauce.

Snapper: Awesome local fish

Star beer: Light Sierra Leonean beer.

Sawa Sawa: Another leaf, once again cooked like cassava.

T

Tatale: plantain cake

V

Vimto: Sickly sweet soft drink that tastes like fizzy cough syrup. The locals love it.

W

X

Y

Yassa au poulet: West African chicken marinated in lemon, chiles and garlic.

Z

A Short Guide to Freetown

By Tristan Reed

Just found a very good guide to bars, restaurants, hair salons and all things essential in Freetown.

The Concise Freetown Dictionary

If you’re going to live in Freetown, you’ve got to speak the language. Here’s my take on the local lingo, a mix of Krio, and slang. Will update as my expands. For a basic guide to Krio check out The Peace Corps Krio Language Manual.

‘Mind your business’ bag: A black shopping bag . Great for carrying around the thick wads of cash the ATM spits out.

I’m coming: means I’m going.

Make fast: Hurry up

Take time: Slow down

Block: A hundred leone coin. Bread is 5 blocks and cigarettes are 2 blocks for three sticks.

Okada: a motorcycle taxi. Don’t get on if you’ve just had lunch.

JCs (Just Comes): locals who’ve just returned from abroad.

White girl/boy: any foreigner with lighter skin. Even me who’s brown.

Swazis: chaps who change money on the streets.

Poda poda: overcrowded mini van. It means hither and thither. At 8 blocks it’s the cheapest way to get around.

Pear: actually an avocado.

Done done (i'm done), tie tie (knotted plastic bag), ice ice (cold water), small small (slow down, a little bit), waito waito (wait please). Rule of thumb, repeat for emphasis:

Upstairs/downstairs: Up the road, down the road

Relaxation bar: Not a brothel as flat mate Steve seems to think. Actually roadside shacks that serve up beer and soft drinks

Omolanki: A mobile wheelbarrow store used to sell everything from toothpaste to tampons.

Junk sellers: Peddlers of second hand ware, shoes, lingerie and T-shirts

Coolaid: Generic term for local cold drinks

Rubber: Refers to plastic bottles and canisters

Cookery: Cooked meals brought off streetside vendors. That's how my friend Chris got food poisoning.

Pega pack: Small pouches of whiskey, gin and rum. Sankerdas is the popular brand, turns out the guy's Indian.

Nail polishers: Young boys who roam the street painting nails for a living.

Chop chop: food

PHD: Pull him down, this means cutting down to size a relative who has become too successful.

The trial of Charles Taylor

It’s 8 in the morning, far too early to be going to court but this time it’s different. I’m at The Special Court for Sierra Leone to watch the live telecast of the Taylor defence opening from The Hague. Here in Freetown, we’re two hours behind European time. The proceedings actually begin at 10 am so we’re here at 8.

Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president and warlord was indicted by The Special Court in 2003 on 11 counts of crimes against humanity. He was allegedly at the helm of Sierra Leone’s decade long civil war, funding the rebel groups, the RUF and AFRC in exchange for diamonds. The charges set some important precedents. Both rape as a tool of war and the recruitment of child soldiers was criminalized. Also his indictment as a head of state paved the way for the International Criminal Court’s move on Sudan’s Omar al Bashir.

I’m more excited than I should be, given the gravity of the occasion. But I feel like I’m part of history. Some day in the future I might be able to tell someone where I was when Taylor broke his seven year silence and testified.

We huddle into a semi circular screening room with two large plasma screen TVs. I am joined by some civil society observers, members of the international media and local NGO workers. I glance around to see if I can spot any former victims. Of course I know they would look like anyone else so I ask Peter Andersen the public relations and outreach officer at the court if he recognises anyone. He doesn’t and I wonder why.

I’m told that when the AFRC and RUF trials were being conducted in Freetown the court house was packed with all sorts of people. But relocating Taylor—in 2006 his trial was shifted to an ICC courtroom in The Hague for security reasons—has evidently come at a price. People are no longer able to observe the process as closely as they had done in the past.

The opening by defence lawyer Courtenay Griffiths is fairly predictable. Of course Taylor denies all charges. Some excuses were that he was too busy rebuilding Liberia after a civil war to be bothered with neighbouring Sierra Leone. Snickers Mexican waved around the room. Here in Sierra Leone Taylor has always been guilty.

On the second day of trial Taylor finally testifies. Some bits were most amusing. When asked about diamonds that were transported to him from Sierra Leone in washed out mayonnaise jars, he replied, “This never happened, not in a mayo jar, not in a coffee jar, not in anything, I never received diamonds from the RUF.” Griffiths also asked him to spell out the names of every single African leader he mentioned. This took a good 15 minutes.

At some point I started to switch off when Griffiths began questioning him about how his father and his mother met and how she became pregnant with him. If a writer were paying close attention it is quite possible to pen a Taylor biography just from his testimonies.

The crowd in the screening room has not grown and I begin to wonder if people even care. Peter says that one of the reasons for the poor turnout could be the ungodly timing. I’m somewhat convinced but I still don’t understand why more people have not shown up to see the man that virtually ruined their country.

My short trousers/skirt

I must start off by saying that I’m not auditioning for another one of Eve Ensler’s monologues. But I do tend to get shooed out of government offices for turning up in linen capris which end way below my knees and are not short by any measure.

This first happened when one of my reporters Ibrahim took me to court. The guards at the entrance made a huge fuss about the fact that I was wearing trousers and that my head was not covered. Apparently it’s an unwritten rule, yes, unwritten that women must appear in court only in skirts. I caught a couple of women in pencils so obviously knees are not the problem. Coming back to my own trouser trials, Ibrahim argued with the guard and ushered me in before he could protest.

My second time at court I was not that lucky. I was wearing capris again—same style, different colour—and was standing by the cafeteria minding my own business. At this point a guard came up to me and said that I was in contempt of court because of my attire. I scurried off to the top of a flight of steps where evidently I wasn’t in contempt anymore. The distance between the two positions was approximately 5 metres.

I was fortunate to run into a prominent female lawyer and asked her if there was a formal rule about skirts and head dresses. He got all excited and said that they had been trying for months to get the guards to stop harassing people. Obviously this has not worked and easy targets like me—I’m whiter than most people here—are still wagged fingers at. So I’ve decided to relent and put on a skirt the next time I go to court, just so I don’t court any more trouble.

But that’s not the end of my wardrobe woes. The other day I accompanied my reporter Kai Samba to Parliament and was stopped at the gate by a couple of female guards who stared disdainfully at my crumpled capris (we haven’t had power at home so I haven’t been able to iron anything). “We only allow formal wear and Africana,” she said. I put on my ‘I’m so stupid’ look and my strongest British accent and tried to be as foreign as I could. I promised to cover my legs completely the next time I showed up. So they let me go with a warning. I haven’t asked but I’m pretty sure that there’s no written rule about women wearing Africana to parliament either.

I came to Freetown with exactly four pairs of trousers (capris included) and two skirts, one of which happens to be short. Why is Sierra Leone threatened by my short(ish) skirt and trousers? Hey this is turning into an Ensler piece after all.

For Aisata

Last Sunday was my worst day in Freetown so far. I had to attend a funeral of one of my female reporters who had succumbed to a severe bout of typhoid. No one in the world should have to die of typhoid. But in one of the poorest countries in the world, you’d have to be pretty privileged to be able to say that.

I last saw Aisata a month ago when she attended my first workshop. She was already ill and showed me some Chinese pills she was taking. Going to the hospital is prohibitively expensive for most people—you have to pay 20,000 leones just to be seen. After that I kept hearing reports about her but was convinced that she’d be back soon. I’ve had typhoid and I was fine in a few weeks.

But then the other day one of her colleagues told me that she’d put her faith in a traditional healer and her condition was critical. I slapped my forehead and thought that was the worst possible thing she could have done. A traditional healer’s first instinct is to tell you that you’ve been shot by a witch gun. Then they proceed to remove these ‘bullets’ by making ugly incisions on your arms and legs. Aisata claimed she was feeling better once these so called bullets had been extracted.

Of course, without proper medical care she got worse very quickly. I’m told at this point the traditional healers whisked her off to Waterloo, a suburb in Freetown and told her that she must not see or speak to anyone. A few days later, Aisata had passed away.

I attended her wake and watched her two young children stare blankly at the crowd of people gathered in their house. I know that traditional therapies are very popular in Sierra Leone, but are also very dangerous in a lot of cases. One of the reasons for the country’s high rate of maternal mortality is women’s reliance on midwives who use unsterilised equipment resulting in infections and death.

Medical care in Sierra Leone is pathetic to put it mildly. A fake drugs market thrives on people’s desire for cheap medication. You have to be really careful buying even Aspirin in Freetown. In one of my drawers I have a whole catalogue of rip-off drugs that are available on the streets.

Aisata was a reasonably educated woman who lived in Freetown. When she opted for traditional treatment she knew her options. I shudder to think of the scores of people in the provinces that don’t even know any better.

Cell phone cool

The first time I asked someone for their phone number, the man announced “I am Comium” before proceeding to read out the six digits. I didn’t think much of it until I asked another woman for her number and she said “I’m Africell” Is this brand loyalty? I was told no, it was a pronouncement of your status in society.

Networks vary in Sierra Leone according to how much area they cover and how much money they spend on advertising. Zain, Africell and Comium pretty much help run most of the local newspapers that would capsize without their full page spreads. Which isn’t much because ad rates in Sierra Leone are among the lowest in the world.

But coming back to the brands themselves, every network suggests how deep your pockets are. Comium and Africell have some of the lowest call rates so are considered the most cost effective. Zain on the other hand is the head cheese of phone networks. A (076) prefix means that you’re a somebody. Not only do they have great national coverage but also the best international roaming deals. Again, a subtle way of letting people know that you’re well traveled.

There are other smaller networks which don’t carry much weight. No one wants to be caught dead with a Tigo sim for instance. Most people in Sierra Leone have more than one phone and multiple sim cards because calling between networks in prohibitively expensive. But I think it’s also a social tool, you give out the phone number that you believe will impress the person you’re talking to.

I guess it’s not very different from other parts of the world. I remember a scene from the Sex and the City movie where Carrie freaks out about having a (347) area code in New York. In Mumbai, your phone number immediately categorises you as a yuppie townie or a suburbanite who travels in the crowded local trains.

This is my cursory understanding of the cell phone culture in Sierra Leone. It’s the kind of brand loyalty that Vodafone and Virgin would kill for. By the way, I’m Zain and I think they should sponsor this post.

Free scholarships for virgins

I can't believe I forgot to blog about this absolute gem of a story. The other day my American friend Robin wrote to me saying that she'd heard the most absurd thing about Sierra Leone, that scholarships were being offered to young girls who chose to remain chaste.

I was surprised she knew about it, in the local media only one paper had covered the story. But apparently it's up on a number of blogs already. So even though I'm late on this, here's my two cents anyway.

In the Biriwa Disrict in northern Sierra Leone, the Biriwa Youth Association for Development (BYAD) claims it has a hundred university scholarships to offer teenage girls who can prove to a community nurse that they are virgins.

The group feels it is a way of curbing teenage pregnancies which is alarmingly high in the region. According to the National Aids Secretariat the district also clocks the highest number of HIV infections in the country.

The funny part is how they intend to enforce chastity. Any young boy "found wanting to impregnate a girl" would be barred from attending school in that part of the country. Also, bikers found guilty of the same would have their bikes compounded.

I have four questions which I would love to throw open:

Why don't the boys get scholarships?

How would a young girl go about proving she's a virgin? I know there are ways, but nothing fool proof

What young boy in his right mind would actually want to impregnate a girl?

Is taking a person's bike away sufficient punishment for having sex with a minor?

What’s the truth about Ishmael Beah?

When I first told friends that I was going to Sierra Leone, they insisted that I simply had to read Ishmael Beah’s ‘A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier’. It has all the trappings of a tear jerker, a young boy whose parents are killed by the rebels in the civil war, friendships that are ripped apart by the devastation of conflict, forced drug abuse and finally an American adoption and a happy ending.

I must admit I hadn’t done much research on him and was quite moved by his account. Then I met a senior UN diplomat in Freetown who struggled to control his laughter when I told him I had just finished reading Beah. “Don’t you know he’s a complete fake?” I didn’t know. “He was sitting right where you are with a group of other child soldiers from the same regiment he had written about and no one could remember him,” he continued.

I felt silly and uninformed. As soon as I got home, I googled Beah and found that in early 2008, the Australian newspaper, The Australian, had challenged him on the authenticity of his story. Although Beah defended himself, the damage had been done. As it turned out no one was really able to vouch for certain elements of his story. The Weekend Australian revealed that Beah had been 15 not 13 when he joined the war and only served for three months in the Sierra Leone army instead of two years as he claimed.

Beah is currently a UNICEF ambassador, an appointment made before the damaging allegations. My friend at the UN confided that the local Sierra Leonean office of UNICEF was very unhappy about this and wanted to get rid of him as soon as possible. However they were unable to do anything since the decision had been made in the US. “They’re hoping that he won’t come back,” he said.