Anthropologists often begin ethnographies with the story of their arrival—how did they get to a place and in what way were they inserted into the culture. Arriving in Sierra Leone would make quite the gripping prologue to any publication. Kenya Airways has a practice of announcing when the flight is exactly twelve minutes from landing, so as we neared touchdown time I peered anxiously out the window for signs of Freetown. Instead, spread before me for miles were only swampland and jungle until just a moment before landing, when a tiny concrete terminal appeared. The cement block, a bit smaller than the La Crosse Municipal Airport, was in fact the country’s international airport. The Lungi International Airport is set across the wide Sierra Leone River from Freetown—it seemed quite chaotic, and after arriving from Entebbe in Uganda, that is definitely saying something. There were only a couple of non-West Africans on my flight, so the “Other Nationalities” customs line was a breeze, and my backpack managed to make it along with me (though my shampoo exploded all over the front pocket…grr). I took my place in front of a line of police in all sorts of mismatched uniforms to have my bags officially cleared, exchanged a hundred dollar bill for a very thick wad of dirty currency, and then headed into the hot and sticky afternoon air. Sparrow was indeed waiting for me, having just arrived a few hours ago from Liberia, and together we set off towards the city.
Outside of the airport compound we negotiated with a battered old taxi to take us as far as the ferry port. I was immediately struck by the poverty; there was little order to the dilapidated shacks and shells of houses that crowded the roadside, and though the roads were nicely paved on this short stretch, everything beyond the strip of pavement was a cloud of thick dust. The plan was to take the large car ferry, but when we arrived just after six, we learned the boat wouldn’t leave until 8, and getting into the dock, located in Freetown’s infamous East side crime bed, after dark and loaded with luggage was apparently very, very bad. Thus, our only option was the local motorboats the locals took. We jammed more than ten people inside the small vessel, brightly painted in a variety of flaking paints and fitted with a powerful little motor. The boats couldn’t come all the way to shore, so local men waited to hoist us, swooping me off my feet and depositing me in the boat. And then we were off, roaring out to open sea in our little boat. We hit the rough chop and my stomach began bouncing up and down; Sparrow turned to me and remarked that it had been much calmer when he had left. A few minutes later he remarked, “You would never do this in the US, no?” “No, we wouldn’t send a boat like this into the open water,” I replied. “Especially not without any communications or life jackets, right?” “Right,” I replied again. The same thoughts had crossed my mind and it wasn’t particularly reassuring to hear them repeated. But Sparrow wasn’t finished: “If we sink here, there is no one to know. No one to help us. Maybe if your friend sees you when he is passing by, but otherwise we are finished.” Gee thanks—just the comforting I needed. But the passage was stunning, as we chopped closer to the capital city built around the coastal mountains.
The view upon arrival was less than stunning. The dock was just a set of trash-filled stairs opening up into one of Freetown’s poorer neighborhoods, and Sparrow aptly noted that the “city” looked a lot more like a village. I surveyed the scene as we waited for another taxi; it really was just like many of the trash-filled roadside towns I had been through, with nothing in this portion of the city to suggest it was a nation’s capital.
I’d have to wait until later to see the remainder of the city because Sparrow had decided we’d push onwards to Freetown that night. I certainly appreciate efficiency, and this was a good way to guarantee we’d not lose days beginning, but after my 3:30 am wake-up, the prospect of a 5-7 hour ride was turning this into a very long day! We found a number of vehicles heading south and secured bench space in the back of a Land Rover. The poorly paid government officials logically supplemented their salaries by jamming official vehicles full of paying passengers—certainly convenient, if uncomfortable, for us.
Before leaving we had a chance to grab some snacks. The proprietor of the store we visited pulled out a plate from her shop window of cold, battered, deep-fried hard-boiled eggs and fried whole fishes; so much for beginning gently on my still-recovering stomach. Regardless of how long the food had actually been sitting out, it turned out to be rather tasty, and after a rather long unexplained delay, I folded myself into the back of the trunk for the long ride to Bo, Sierra Leone’s second-biggest city located in the south of the country.
We left at dusk, so soon only headlights lit the countryside otherwise almost completely bereft of electricity. At first I was pleasantly surprised by the excellent condition of the roads, but Sparrow warned me that they would soon change. He was certainly right. Shortly the pavement dissolved into a rutted, corrugated dirt road, jostling our tangled mass of arms and legs all over the place as we passed through the dark savanna lands. We finally arrived in Bo after 1:00 am, but a few motorbikes were waiting on the highway to whisk us to our guesthouse, the Sahara Hotel in town. The place was completely dark, so by candlelight we found our rooms—two single rooms thanks to a bit of institutionalized homophobia that generally prohibits two men to share a room for any reason, regardless of the number of beds. The place seemed decent, if a bit plain, but was it ever hot! I’m glad I was exhausted that night because I was promptly dripping perspiration, which soon gave way to sweat pouring uncontrollably, with incessant buzzing of mosquitoes providing a constant background.
The place wasn’t exactly conducive to sleeping in, but I felt nicely refreshed in the morning to begin our real preparations. Sparrow and I met for a couple of hours to go over the research goals, preliminary questionnaires, and tentative plans. Then, he assured me that he’d be able to arrange the perfect research team and took off to assemble the group.
I had a chance to do a bit of exploring the town. For a city of nearly a quarter of a million people—the hub of all southern regional commerce—exploration didn’t take long. Though more than 2/3 of the country’s workforce are farmers, it is diamonds that offer the nation’s real export income—potentially a blessing but historically mostly a curse for Sierra Leone. Diamond mines are centered in the Eastern and Southern regions of the country, and much of the national diamond trade—and the economy in general—is controlled by the Lebanese, and this was instantly apparent. The dusty town’s streets were crowded with garish signs proclaiming their Lebanese storekeepers prepared to buy all diamonds. Many of these buying centers doubled as electronic stores, where naïve local miners were told they would receive free televisions or stereos in return for selling to a given merchant. Seeing the locus for so much wealth in such humble and unassuming offices certainly seemed surreal. As one book I read noted, diamonds have absolutely no local cultural meaning in the country and the raw stones aren’t even much to look at. Yet their extraction has shaped the trajectory of the country’s history perhaps more than any other single factor. Despite post-war reforms, Sierra Leone still estimates a huge portion of potential tax revenues are lost each year through illicit diamonds—certainly brought home to me as I exchanged money with the black market money traders offering better-than-official rates for hard US currency useful in all sorts of negotiations.
On my walk I was once again I was struck by the poverty and lack of infrastructure. Although the town apparently had a very reliable source of constant hydroelectric power as part of a southern electrification project for Bo and Kenema, the two major cities, the power plant had been down for more than the past two months for upgrading, and as a result the major city had absolutely no power outside of private generators. Finding an Internet connection proved to be quite elusive; the first several attempts offered a host of excuses but no connections. I finally found the one functioning line in the entire city—where the connection was surprisingly fast, perhaps due to the fact that no one else in the region was attempting to go on-line!
I should note that our hotel offers a few hours of generator power each evening, so I do get a fan to stir the hot air in my cubicle—really a dramatic improvement. It was comforting to know that I had such a capable research assistant—certainly far more experienced in research field work than myself. His younger brother would be joining us as an additional assistant, with another agricultural expert arriving later in the week to round out the team. Our plan was to start the pilot survey process the very next morning, and being in the field on only my second full day in the country was tremendously encouraging! Altogether an exciting arrival that seemed to promise a fulfilling research experience.
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