Exploit and Go: How the North steals from the South

A Scotsman, a Welshman and an Irishman walk into the Clubhouse in Sierra Leone...

This may sound like the beginning of a bad joke but it could not be further from the truth. The following account was made by my collegue Ellen Paton after a conversation with 3 miners in a popular European restaurant in Makeni city, Sierra Leone.

The three men were apparently on holiday "in this hellohole for two days. If you thought this was a s*&%hole you should see Tonkoli."  So I asked "bet you can't wait to go home?,"  they said "yep, exploit and go". When I said I was a volunteer their response was patronising to say the least, "aww that's nice. I mean, you have to live in this s*&%hole and pretend you are doing stuff. We are the ones giving the money back though. I spend so much at Apex! (Another name for Wusum Hotel)"   

They were two engineers and a supervisor working for London Mining. They seemed really racist. They told me that they were sinking 3 mountains in the north. They also said that the miners do not get adequate health and safety training. My friend Sheka (a national) said that in Makali, Bombali District there are frequent cholera outbreaks as miners work in gold mines where they are exposed to contaminated water, they are not provided with water purification tablets. It became obvious to me that there needs to be more transparency  in what these mining companies are doing. Everyone seems to be oblivious to the exploitation that is happening in their country. They like that there is foreign investment in the country whilst being unaware of the scale , the pollution and lack of remittances that it brings.

This account never fails to make my skin crawl. The lack of morality in this one conversation is disturbing but no longer surprises me after coming in contact with several western companies that were "investing" in Sierra Leone. We met the employees of two companies in particular, London Mining and African Minerals, in two locations in Makeni; Wusum Hotel and The Clubhouse restaurant. 

Wusum Hotel is a newly developed hotel in Sierra Leone, it has an internet cafe, swimming pool, gym and european style rooms. Manson & Knight's travel guide to Sierra Leone describes Wusum Hotel as the haunt of "miners, ministers & paramount chiefs" at night it can turn into a bit of a "hooker-fest" and the service is "less than friendly" (Manson & Knight, p.286). I can confirm this from personal experience, myself and Ellen spent several hours there during our search for reliable wifi. When the miners came out of their rooms the prostitutes would emerge, seemingly from nowhere. They would throw themselves at the often middle aged, overweight european miners who did little to deter their advances. These miners certainly do put a lot of money back into the local economy, but from my experience, not in the right way.

In 2014 there will be a West African Mining Consortium held in London, this will be attended by any self respecting mining company based in Africa, including African Minerals and London Mining. Why hold a massive consortium about the future of West African mining in London? Why not hold it in West Africa? Surely that makes more sense, considering the fact that you are mining very valuable natural resources from there and supposedly "investing" in the national economy. There are a lot of things that keep people in Africa poor, and this kind of foreign "investment" is one of them. 

I was part of a livelihoods programme in Sierra Leone and thid included career guidance lessons in schools. I saw a lot of young people benefit from these classes, however, it is my sincerest belief that career guidance is pointless unless the population is politically aware. If they cannot engage politically on a local and national level then how are they supposed to defend their rights as citizens and ultimately how their natural resources are mined and where they go? If London was rich in natural resources you can be sure that no foreign mining company would set one greedy foot near the capital!

Most of us international volunteers were educated to university level, we were all politically aware and had a critical mindset. We could not have been more different from most of the young people we met out there, we questioned some of our nationals about where their taxes go and what benefit did they see from it. They said that they didn't know where their taxes went and they politely shrugged off the quetsion with a smile, they said that to question the government in any way would be seen as revolutionary and after a decade of brutal war, revolution is the last thing on anyone's mind. To be honest I really couldn't blame them for feeling this way, they are peaceful to the point of being totally passive and who am I to judge, I wasn't the one who had to survive one of the most brutal civil wars of the modern age. Sierra Leone was recently revealed to have the most corrupt government in the world, this doesn't surprise me, however exploitation from companies like London Mining, Dawnus and African Minerals does not help this situation.

When a country and it's people are being exploited by their own government and external bodies, internal change is needed. However, we cannot forget the responsibility that our own government has to help stop this kind of exploitation. When it comes to the British government I would go as far as to say that they are not only responsible but contribute to the exploitation of Sierra Leone. During our first few days there we visited the Britsih High Commission in Freetown, of course it was at the very top of the mountain in a walled, green and almost suburban area. We met two sections of the British government, the Foreign Office and DFID. After chatting to several of them over expensive food and alcohol served by two local Sierra Leoneans, we soon discovered that each department were there for different reasons. DFID was there to promote Sierra Leonean interests and the Foreign Office was there to promote British interests. There was a beautiful pool, flushing toilets and air conditioning; after coming from a place where we washed ourselves with a a bucket of water none of us felt comfortable there. It just did not feel right, eveything was so lavish, expensive and so at odds with what we had experienced in the two days that we were there.

Most of the people of Sierra Leone are very poor, uneducated and politically unaware. How can Sierra Leone develop if there are so many internal and external bodies that jump at every chance to exploit this country and it's people? I do not know the answers to many of the questions I have posed in this blog, what I do know is that choosing to remain blind to the corruption of companies like London Mining and our own government will not help. Yes it would be easier to bury your head in the sand and trust me I have wanted to do it many times upon returning home, but one day it won't be a distant African country being exploited it will be our own.

The photographs below show a career forum that we organised in one of the local schools and all of us at the Britsih High Commission. Photos courtsey of the fabulous Kristine Vaivode :) 

  

With Great Change Comes Great Responsibility

"How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when you know in your heart you begin  to understand there is no going back?" Frodo Baggins, The Return of The King

You know things will be different when you return home, you know you will be different and everything that made up your life (including the ones you love) before you left will not be the same. What you don't realise is that knowing and understanding are two different things.  Six people will eat an apple but each one of those people will have a different experience and thus a different reaction to eating that apple. In this blog will tell you about my reaction and about how I am coming to understand the different life I now find my self inhabiting. I wish to attribute this change not just to Sierra Leone and it's people but to the team of people that I worked, lived, laughed and cried with. This one is for you Makeni ti ti's!

The obvious differences between Sierra Leone and the UK are things like the NHS, milk, a wider range of fruit and vegetables, clean running water, hot water, Televisions in every home, foot paths and roads to name a few. These are luxuries which we all survived without with relative ease, but it did not stop me crying during my first hot shower in 3 months and staring stupidly at a tap of clean running water. I couldn't stop thinking about how easy everything was and how none of it was "normal", that the majority of the world's population does not live like this. However, this is not your fault or mine, no one can help where they are born but I began to recognise the responsibility we had to help those less well off than we are. Uncle Ben had it right when he said that "with great power comes great resposibiliy" (Spider-Man for those who do not know); wealth is power, health is power, knowledge is power and the majority of the people I met in Sierra Leone have none of these things. I knew about the disparity between the northern and southern hemisphere but it was only upon returning home that I truely began to underrstand what that meant for me and for the rest of the developing world.

The night was fresh but warm, there was not a cloud in the sky and I was happy. I could see the moon and wondered if my Mum could see it too, I quickly rang her and she said she could. "We are looking at the same moon even though we are so far away", I could almost hear her smile , "well there is only one moon Denise". I had to laugh, typical for my Mum to kill the romance! I talked to her that night about how I felt like I had changed but I wasn't sure how, that the ground beneath my feet seemed to have shifted and that I had shed a very old skin. I don't believe that you can see and feel things differently unless you have changed in some way as a person and I would like to attribute that personal changed to my team mates both international and national. My team leader, Eric, taught me about maintaining professionalism even when things were very tough and your character was being criticised. I had some amazing conversations with him over some double punch and kill drivers, he encouraged me come back to Africa and volunteer again. He also gave me some amazing advice which went along the lines of, "people can criticise (for good or bad reasons) but never forget that only you know who you are as a person, so don't let anyone make you feel rubbish about yourself."

My roommate Ellen was my rock for the whole placement, we washed our hair in a rain storm together long before we were friends or even knew we were in the same team, I guess it was meant to be. I have never known anyone who connects with people in the deep and meaningful way that Ellen does, she sees people when others don't. There were many nights that I listened to her tell me stories of all the people she met, most were not friends or relatives but just ordinary people who came into her life sometimes for just a few hours. However, in the short time that she met them she was able to light them up and give them a voice through her memory of them. Her patience and understanding of the local people was incredible and I spent a large amount of my placement wishing I could interact with people the way she did and I am sure still does.   

Kristine was my team mate along with Makieu (our national volunteer), personally I think we were the best team but I am sure my other Makeni team mates would disagree! These two people taught me the true meaning of hard work, especially when the odds were against us. Makieu lived the furthest away and whenever we needed him he was there to help us teach, translate, guide and give us any support we needed. All of the Makeni national volunteers poured their heart and soul into looking after us and making sure our placement was as amazing as it was. Kristine was amazing, she was never angry or down and worked so incredibly hard, I don't think the team could have acheived what we did without her creativity, passion and hard work. Most of the photographs you can see on my FaceBook page were hers and all the art work for our events were imagined and designed by her. She is one of the team members that I miss the most and despite being 3 years younger than me I believe she also taught me the most about hard work and perseverance in the face of hardship.

How can you pick up the thread of an old life when you know things are no longer the same? If I am honest I don't want to return to my old life, my old mind or my old body. The difference between knowing things will change and understanding that change is very simple, when you understand the change that has happened you know that that change has come from within yourself. What most people find hard when returning home is the fact that nothing has changed, the world you left behind still stands in all its abnormal glory. 

I knew that no one else had the same experiences as me and I am very understanding of that, but it doesn't make turning on a tap, boiling a kettle or nipping to the shop any easier. In many respects life in Sierra Leone is so much more black and white, you don't have a T.V and constant advertising telling you what you should be, what you should do, who you should love etc. You just be what you can with the lot you have been given, as sad as that sounds it is true for the majority of Sierra Leoneans. I talked earlier about the responsibility that comes with power, in my case I would like to alter that slightly and say, with change comes great resposibility. I have changed, I am no wealthier, smarter, or stronger but I have the power of experience and I believe any experience you have whether positive or negative is still an experience and I now have the responsibility to do something with that experience .

If you are not interested in giving money, give your time or your knowledge, read about a particular issue and engage other people about it. You do not need money to have a responsibility to help others, think about it.

*The photos below are of the Makeni team, Kristine's art work for our Community Action Day and Alice and I holding a banner promoting a cleaner environment.