Mr. Sandman

This past Sunday I was enjoying a lovely afternoon at the beach with some friends, when all of a sudden the Sandman emerged. August is the height of the rainy season, so sunny days have been few and far between since my arrival in Freetown. But on Sunday I woke up in my new house to a beautiful sunny day. As much as I had enjoyed my time living with Emmanuel and Abraham up the hills of Babadurie, I had quickly accepted an offer from a Canadian journalist to move in with him and his roommate the previous Friday.

My new flat is in a much more convenient location, and even has electricty (whenever the city has power, which seems to be about fifty percent of the time). Since moving in, I have quickly been introduced to the ways of the expatriate community living and working in Freetown. Falafel sandwiches at Basha bakery just around the corner, candlit dinner parties (because the power is out in town) eating chili and drinking wine at a neighbor's house while singing along as some of the guys play songs late into the night on the guitar...and of course, weekends spent hanging out at the beach!

This particular Sunday the Special Court for Sierra Leone, set up try the leaders of the country's brutal war, had organized a mini Olympics at a sports facility in town, complete with volleyball, soccer, table tennis, and pool. They even had nice, hand painted wooden plaques made for the winners of each sport. After enjoying a leisurely lunch at Basha bakery, my new roommate, Kevin, and I decided to head over and check out the games. We got there just in time to catch a ride to the beach with Andre, a tough looking Russian guy, and some other friends. In Andre's big UN vehicle, we made our way through town to the beach road, along which sit many bar/restaurants along the sand. On this beautiful Sunday, it seemed like half of Freetown had decided to soak up the sun's rays and go for a swim in the pleasantly warm ocean water. My crew and I climbed out of the vehicle and staked out a prime table in the shade, where we settled in to pass the afternoon sipping beers and eating roasted groundnuts.

But soon our peaceful daze was broken by a crowd gathering right by our table. Everybody was staring at a large, round basket covered with a blanket resting on the sand to our right. Soon the blanket was yanked off to reveal a man curled up in the basket, sticking his hand out through the side. We all looked around at each other confusedly until we began to realize that this was the act of the Sandman. A youngish Lebanese guy even had his friend snap a photo of him shaking the hand poking out of the basket. Now that the Sandman had everyone's attention, he put on a little show for the crowd, moving around in the basket. After a few minutes he slowly emerged out the side, and then fell down on his knees in the sand. As the grand finale, he lifted up a large pile of sand in his cupped hand, and then brought it to his mouth and proceeded to chew and swallow all of it. I kid you not. He probably ate at least three large handfulls of sand before it was all over. At the end of the show, the Sandman went around to all of the tables asking for some money. I guess he has discovered that he is able to make more money by folding himself into a basket and eating sand on sunny days at the beach than by begging on the streets.

Life in Freetown

Sunday, August 10
I’m sitting in a giant brown chair in my living room listening to Ice Ice Baby blasting at full volume from the stereo in the corner, completely overshadowing the hum of the generator. I just finished an early dinner of rice and a tasty fish stew with my housemates, Emmanuel and Abraham. I’ve been sitting in this chair for the past hour or so beginning to transcribe an interview I conducted this morning with a former child soldier, my first such interview. We met near his house by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and then headed over to Victoria Park in the downtown area. Over a couple of sodas, he detailed his experiences first with the RUF rebel group, and then with the government forces.

Where I’m living
But now back to my living room. I am staying with a Sierra Leonean guy named Emmanuel, along with his best friend, Abraham, and foster daughter, Josephine. Emmanuel runs a local NGO called the Society for Democratic Initiatives (SDI), and has studied in the UK, Hungary, and South Africa. Josephine, a 17 year old half-French, half-Sierra Leonean girl, has been put in Emmanuel’s care. I’m not sure exactly what the full story is, but her mother died when she was young and her father lives in France. Emmanuel just moved in a few weeks ago, and every day the place gets nice and nicer. We’re still waiting on electricity and running water (I’m not hold my breath that either of these things will come soon), but we now have a television, stereo, freezer, fans, and even a coffee table. At night and on the weekends, my housemates like to turn on the generator and watch movie after movie.

The house is in an area called Bobadurie, and is about a ten minute walk from a main road. By this point, I have gotten to know a lot of the people who live in the area, so whenever I leave the house I hear shouts of “Rebecca! Rebecca!” coming from all directions. The trek to the house is a bit of a pain because the stretch of “road” before you come to the place is made up of two hills, the first of which is impassible by car. The problem with these hills is that they are steep enough to leave me drenched in sweat when I walk up during the hot or humid part of the day, but also become very slippery when the rain comes (which is at least once a day). Sometimes the bottoms of the hills even turn into mini rivers when the rain comes down hard. But the good part of the hills is the gorgeous view of the ocean and the town that we have from the veranda!

What I’ve been doing
I’ve basically spent my first two weeks settling in, getting to know Freetown, and making contacts. I knew that I was going to have to figure out how to focus my research more once I got here, and at first this proved to be quite a challenge. The war has been over here officially since 2002, and all of the reintegration programs for former child soldiers closed down long ago. Right now in Freetown, peace is prevailing. When I first arrived in Uganda two years ago, all I kept hearing from the people I met was that “Everyone has been traumatized by the war.” But in Freetown, people keep telling me how peaceful the people and the country are. In fact, if you came here without knowing anything about the history, the only hints you would find of the brutal 10 year civil war are the groups of amputees sometimes hanging out around town.

After many frustrating brainstorming sessions and crossed out pages in my notebook, I have finally gotten a handle on my plan for the year. I am going to document the reintegration experiences of former child soldiers in my project countries, trying to understand how they have been living since they went through demobilization. I have gotten permission from the Watson foundation to add Uganda to my list of destinations for the year in order to look at the consequences of reintegrating into Internally Displaced Persons camps in a context of ongoing war instead of into communities as part of a war-ending peace process. Also, I may try to add Rwanda to look at the reintegration of children who fought in the neighboring war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Here in Freetown, I am conducting interviews with former child soldiers who now live in the streets in an area called Lumley. I wasn’t sure how I could safely get access to these guys, but then my friends at the Lumley internet café came to the rescue. A number of these ex-combatants hang out around the café, and the manager has gotten to know them throughout the past few years. I was chatting with him a few days ago and explaining what I wanted to do, and he offered to help me out. So we met yesterday with Alieu, a former commander with the rebels, and Alieu has agreed to connect me with all of his friends. I interviewed four of them today, and am going to continue interviewing as many of them as possible throughout the next few weeks. I’ll post some of their experiences on the blog over the next week. Their stories are really horrifying and terrible. Many of these guys were forced with the threat of death to become rebels, and now they are left with no prospects for the future and no one to help them.

The Many Faces of Freetown

Throughout my first two weeks in Freetown, I have mostly just been meeting people and getting to know what their lives are like. Here are a few sketches from some of my encounters.

Lamin
Lamin, a 25 year-old guy working at one of the internet cafes near my house, is an aspiring professional golfer. His family lives in a rural village far from Freetown, so he is now alone in the capital. He has never actually even been to his home village. He lives near the Freetown Golf Club, a country-club originally built by the British offering golf, tennis, and squash. He started caddying for the golfers at the club when he was younger to make some money, and now he has become one of the best players in Sierra Leone (or so he says…I haven't gone to play with him yet so I can't vouch for his claim). He lives in an area called Ghana Compound (although there are not currently any Ghanaians staying there), in a two-room shack with two other guys. Together, they have made as nice a home for themselves as possible, and have in a way become each others' family.

Mask and Patrick
I had just finished up a late lunch with a friend at Freetown’s new sushi restaurant when the rain started to pour down. August is the height of the rainy season, and some days the rain comes down in intense downpours throughout the day, leaving you stuck in whatever location you happen to be in. I decided to brave the rain for a few minutes to make my way over to an internet café where I could wait out the rain and get some work done at the same time. But of course the power in town went off just a few minutes after I arrived, leaving all of us in the café with nothing to do for a while except chat with each other. Two guys came up to me and introduced themselves as Patrick and Mask (I thought I heard him wrong and that his name was actually Max, but then he wrote his contact info on a sheet of paper and it is indeed Mask). Patrick and Mask both come from Kono, the diamond rich region of Sierra Leone, and run mining companies. Patrick is actually the son of a chief in Kono. They have traveled all over the world to such places as Miama, Lesotho, and Europe to meet with their business partners. They both said that they are extremely happy right now because business is good and they are making a lot of money.

Mussa
My friend and I had to make a quick stop at the beach on Sunday to meet someone before heading into the downtown area to do some work. We decided to splurge a little and have lunch at a nice restaurant along the beach. As much as I like cassava and potato leaves, a decent meal was sounding pretty good. So of course we made our way over to Chinatown. Yes, there is a Chinatown in Sierra Leone, or rather a Chinatown complex, complete with a Chinese restaurant, grocery store, guest house, wine bar, and even a sauna! As I was eating my vegetable fried rice, a Lebanese man came over and introduced himself as Mussa. We got to talking and I learned that Chinatown was a creation of Mussa's brother and sister-in-law. Mussa works with a construction company in Freetown, and has no desire to go back to his country. He has been in Sierra Leone for over 20 years now and has made quite a nice life for himself here.

And now for another funny few lines from a conversation I recently had during my first meeting with a random guy who lives near my house.

Random guy: “Are you married?”
Me: “Yes. I stay with my very over-protective Sierra Leonean husband.”
Random guy: “Oh, because if you were not married I would have told you that I love you.”

Note: I am not actually married, especially to an over-protective Sierra Leonean husband. However, I have spread this rumor around my new neighborhood so that the men leave me alone.