Another Image of Sierra Leone - a Failure to Look

When a person enters a country, their first impressions count. These can be changed by something contrasting, or reinforced by more of the same. So it is with Sierra Leone.

Outside the country the images we see in the general and social media are made up of countless photographs; of politicians and their followers celebrating one thing or another, individuals posing for the camera, people in anti-ebola clothing, ambulances and quarantine centres, war victims, idyllic beaches, beautiful landscapes, shiny happy faces, or horrifically graphic accident victims. There may even be some nostalgic images of wildlife thrown in here or there. But does this photo album give an accurate image of Sierra Leone? As anyone walks through the airport, into the country and outside of Freetown, is this what they see? What we see is what the cameras point at.

As we wander about in our daily lives we usually notice the things that are out of the ordinary, the things we're not used to. In the case of those coming from other countries, the scenes we see in Sierra Leone are very different, and so they'll stand out.  As a child of nine stepping off the plane, I can never forget the warm humid blanket that enveloped me. Stepping off this April I noticed the absence of another childhood memory, the smell of smoked fish mixed with charcoal and permeating the air everywhere. Where had it gone? At 4am in a rickety vehicle travelling from the airport to the ferry along the night road, I noticed the vehicle, the darkness, the heat, the insects, the many huddled shadows of children and women with large bundles sitting by the roadside. Waiting for the ferry I noticed the quiet small queue of vehicles and people milling around outside the gate, sitting around on benches and in their vehicles, and the constant warmth.

On the ferry my senses were overwhelmed by sights and sounds too many to describe. The lasting image was of the dilapidated state of the ferry, overloading, endless delay, the mass of market people treated literally like cattle and risking their limbs and their produce to find a niche on the boat, smells of all kinds, the heat inside and outside of the vehicle and the dirtiness of every surface. Then came the assaulting images of Freetown. Insanity on the roads, a cacophony of sounds, dirt and dust on everything, the bravest pedestrians in the world, every kind of bric-a-brac selling from so many small open shops and laid out on the roadside.  More mad okada motorbikers than you can imagine, with their insanity spreading to their passengers who put their lives in the hands of these outlaws. The yellow taxi drivers; no better, just driving more dangerous vehicles.

Some may say these images are the ingredients that give the city some semblance of charm, although this romantic view is knocked back every few metres by a pungent wave of urine or raw sewage. All those photographs I mentioned before cannot capture the toxic exhaust fumes from countless generators and engines stuck in traffic, they cannot capture the even more toxic fumes of hydrogen cyanide, hydrochloric acid, dioxins and furans released each day across the country from tonnes of burning plastic, or the chronic coughing induced after a few days by breathing in this lethal cocktail. Nor do the images we see portray the decline of morality, compassion and social responsibility, or capture the insecurity of a lawless state, inaccessible healthcare or little social security.

Perhaps it is time to question whether any of this is actually invisible and ask whether the images are there to be seen but are not noticed, do the images portray this decline and insecurity?

Somehow people are able to travel daily past the un-emptied stench of the gutters outside their own houses without noticing them, step past the blue drinking water supply pipes submerged in these stinking gutters without batting an eye. They can drive or walk up unpaved, unmaintained back streets without noticing the bumps or damage to their fine vehicles or sandals, past periodic rubbish dumps filling riverbeds without seeing their danger or wondering where the rubbish ends up, and without smelling the even more lethal cocktail of toxins released by burning plastic. Perhaps that's the reason right there, poster blindness, the denial of danger or personal responsibility, exhibited perfectly by the government and people for months after the first outbreak of ebola and exhibited just as well today by apparently sane respectable okada passengers.  The failure to look, practised at least twice a day by 17 presidential vehicles, countless ministers and civil servants, Visit-Sierra-Leone-dot-com and millions of inhabitants.

I think there are images that portray the decline of morality, compassion, social responsibility and the insecurity of a lawless state. Look up at every hillside and hilltop around the country that has been shaved as bare as a bad haircut and savaged and scarred by a holocaust of flame. Now imagine how they looked covered in lush forest. Do not fail to take a long hard look at the image of your waterless tap and ask what forest feeds the watersheds. Look into every river under the bridges of Freetown, and ask yourself where all this plastic is going to end up? (Perhaps this is a question to ask before you buy the next plastic drink). Visit Lumley's beautiful beach and take a dip in the luxuriously warm waters rich with detritus, plastic and unknown solutions. Look in and smell the gutters outside your front door.  And do not fail to look at what is being done to our land, all over the country.

You can see these images on You Tube: https://youtu.be/F-y3sGyPmYY or on Flickr: https://flic.kr/s/aHskAuGUpi

Sahr O Fasuluku, 1 May 2016