Sunday 27 October 2013

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 :) 
  

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