Sierra Leone and Nigeria

This continuation of the blog is a bit delayed as I am slowly settling into a life of 9-5 office work. Living in Addis Ababa is a daily joy. Yes, there are endless beggars - far more than in any other place I have been to – but one is more accepted and not constantly required to smile and say hello to every passer-by. There are many cinemas and theatres; I can get books from the British Council and the museums are superb. I love my old hotel room where the cleaning lady makes sure that I have fresh linen sheets and towel, new soap and loo-paper and fresh flowers in my three ‘vases’ every day. It is many years since I did not make up my own bed …..


It all seems so long ago…….

Sierra Leone:

Arrival at the Freetown Airport meant getting a helicopter (there is a remote and erratic ferry service to the other side of town) to fly over the mangrove swamps and lagoon to the city itself. Evy and her French Intern, Nico, met me and we negotiated the 3 mile journey south of Freetown to the Environmental Foundation for Africa Offices and purpose-built accommodation unit. It is the worst piece of road I have ever encountered. On average it took 45 minutes to cover the distance and one always emerged shaken to pieces! Naturally, the money for the re-building of the road was allocated a long time ago, but it has disappeared as is so often the case. Some Swiss Bank account and expensive overseas school is benefiting instead. Corruption is so much part of African life that everyone just shrugs shoulders and will probably do the same when the opportunity arrives.
Evy and Nico spoilt me and it was a great pleasure to be able to just walk out of the security gates with the 5 dogs and go for a swim in the sea across the road, or to walk endlessly on the beach or in the many paths amongst grass or cultivated fields in the countryside. One day when our neighbour and I were walking the last mile back from a visit to Freetown, I was just about to use the usual short-cut through the grass when she said that she never used it. I asked why, and she replied ‘snakes’. Just then, in the road, a long snake came slithering past. This is part of living in Africa and one does not jump away. Live and let live, I say. It reminded me of Malawi in 1960 when I was staying on a lake-side beach in a grass hut built for an earlier visit by the Queen Mother. One morning the resident snake introduced itself. Unlike Oscar Wilde, I was not going to succumb to a choice of who has to go. Being a female, it is easier to compromise and I just went for a long walk along the beach to give it some space (as we say these days!) and returned to the hut. We lived together happily ever after…
Rural people are flocking to Freetown and endless ‘illegal’ homes are being built without the provision of the standard infrastructure of roads, water and electricity. The hills are being denuded of ground-cover and erosion is soon a problem. Urban problems are multiplied. Sadly, the need for sand for making bricks is in demand. The lovely beach sand is an ideal and cheap ingredient for these bricks. Over the last few years, endless large ‘sand trucks’ have scooped up the beaches. The result is that the homes, restaurants, swimming pools and tennis courts of the beach owners have slowly but inevitably been undermined by the lack of sand on the beach. They are forlornly abandoned and crumbling into the sea. While I was there, we had a full moon and high winds, so the tide was very high and most of the locally-made beach umbrellas, firmly installed outside bars, were ‘uprooted’. It is a very sorry sight, and although it is now illegal to collect sand, I saw various stealthy removals going on when out walking.
Evy was making a film about the lack of water in Freetown (in our area we were lucky to have it every second day) and I was fortunate to be able to go out with the film crew and see places which no tourist would normally see. In these overcrowded, unhygienic and unplanned environments, it is quite humbling to see how people manage to keep healthy and clean. Water is a very heavy commodity to have to carry over distances in any situation.
Nico had been in hospital with malaria at the same time as I was in Accra and Evy had her 4th bout while I was there. I began to feel weak one day, so went to a pharmacist and told him that I think I have malaria. He loaded me with medicines and sent me home. Next day Evy watched me vomiting and said that it is not malaria, but typhoid. So off I went to the clinic and missed an eagerly anticipated trip to inspect the dwindling water supply in the reservoirs because of the lack of tree-cover on the hills. I was collected from the Clinic that night after having had 4 IV drips. It amused me to observe the way the place was administered: the usual lack of water, paper or soap in the toilets; my separate room with mosquito net dangling from a piece of string with drying washing being used by the nurses as their changing/store-room; the complete lack of contact with the staff unless one called very loudly for attention; the cavalier way veins are probed; the disregard for instructions (I thought I would time a drip after I noticed that the instructions said it should be administered for at a minimum of 30 minutes. It was emptied in 7 minute). Despite our precautions with inoculations at home, typhoid is so prevalent that it is just part of the scene, as is malaria. Both Evy and Nico had typhoid after I left despite the fact that they only drink sachet water.
Freetown is a ramshackle place on hills, full of bustling taxi-life, beggars with amputated arms (the rebels would invade a village and do the usual unspeakable destruction and offer men ‘short sleeves or long sleeves?’ before amputating the arms/hands), badly neglected roads, overstuffed tourist shops where no tourists go, run-down bars and hotels and many buildings still burnt-out or pot marked from bombing. The war with the rebels is still too recent for tourism and the present authorities do not regard it as a potential money-earner. During the war, which was mainly in the north and around the rich alluvial diamond-producing areas, there were all kinds of activities going on. Evy gave me a book (‘Blood Diamonds’) to read and it was disturbing to find out just how many illegal diamonds, which are adorning peoples’ necks and fingers, are the result of unspeakable atrocities. Interestingly, a few months before 9/11, there was an upsurge in this illegal diamond production. It transpires that Osama Bin Laden knew that his assets would be frozen, so he decided to convert his funds into diamonds. The American Embassy is next to the famous Slave Tree in the centre of Freetown. As it has had to do in the peaceful environs of Grosvenor Square in London, it has had to take over half of a very busy street in order to put up barriers around the building. Although there are quite a few high-rise buildings in town, none of the lifts/elevators work and are permanently sealed off. Well, you would not want to be stuck in there when the electricity goes off as usual. At the EFA we had our own power generator.
As Evy’s organization (EFA) is involved in the care of the National Parks, she kindly decided to show me one of her favourites. It would normally be impossible, given the state of Sierra Leone’s roads, to get anywhere near them with public transport. She cleverly negotiated the need to go with the Head of the Biological Sciences Dept. at the University (and his girlfriend) and the PR man from the Tourism Board. Meetings were set up with the local Chieftains who all expect many tourists to soon descend upon their villages. The 12 sq mile Island of Tiwai on the Moa River is a subtropical paradise with 12 species of primate, chimps, numerous bird species, a great variety of plants and the rare pygmy hippopotamus. It was necessary to check the camp-site and research laboratory buildings which had been rebuilt after the war. The rebels had destroyed them and many of the animals, but the guides told us that the animals are increasing in numbers. The relatively short journey of about 140 miles would take up to12 hours. We set off, laden with food, in a Toyota pick-up. Three in front and four squashed in the back. Boy, was it an uncomfortable journey! Late at night we arrived to be ferried across the river. At the campsite our erected tents with foam mattresses were awaiting us on their platforms and there was water in the ablution facilities. The whole week-end was a delight and although we did not see many animals during our guided walk (left rather late in the morning!), one was aware of the fact that they were there. The island is cleverly dissected into a grid pattern with paths at right angles to each other and small tags on the trees at intersections giving one a ‘site reading’. Thus one could not get lost in the thick undergrowth of such a marvelous natural forest. One afternoon there was a meeting with the local Chieftain and I elected to remain alone on the island. This was a good opportunity to wash my clothes. For two hours I walked about naked and must have frightened the monkeys; there I was, with dark brown arms and shoulders and similarly dark legs. In-between my flabby torso is white. As I walked along the paths, I no doubt I looked like a new species of panda to them.
My dark arm against the white torso reminded me of 1952 when I was 12 years old. The Nationalist Government had just been establishing its Apartheid regime and even books like ‘Black Beauty’ were banned. We had moved to a new town and the summer was spent in the local public swimming pool. My skin was very very dark from sunburn. One afternoon there was a prize-giving at school and my mother attended. I had to go onto the platform for something or other and that night my mother told my father about the proceedings. She said about my appearance; “I was ashamed”.
We returned with even more goods piled under the tarpaulin. As we were traveling through the rice-swamps area (rice is a national food), the driver could not resist getting bags of rice and large containers of oil. No doubt we also had quite a few bottles of palm-wine, the local drink. Evy had bought a few bunches of ‘country’ chickens for our own use and to give as presents, so these squawking bundles also added to the inevitable pile.
When it was already dark and raining, we came to a halt as a nut in the engine had come loose. Because the road was wet and potholed, there was no way in which it could be retrieved a mile back in the dark. No suitable nuts with similar thread could be found. Eventually, miraculously, the driver found the nut embedded in the engine! All he needed was a small piece of wire with which to secure it. I produced a paperclip and we could set off again... Evy reminded me that, years ago, Francis and I were driving her and a friend in the streets of London in my little Citroen 2CV. The engine broke down and Francis set to to find the fault. He needed a small piece of wire. Evy produced a hair grip and we could set of again…
Three weeks of bliss had to come to an end and I decided that the hassles of trying to go down the West coast of Africa were not worth it. I have seen enough slave forts and related sites to last me. There is not much more than bad roads and rain to contend with and I am not particularly brave enough to fight endless bureaucracy. A change of scene was called for, with the result that I decided to go east. Ethiopia had always fascinated me with its incredible mountains, the Rift valley, ethnographic (the birthplace of mankind) discoveries, Biblical references and recent (last 1600 years) religious buildings. Addis Ababa has 9 museums…
To fly to Ethiopia involved an overnight stay in Lagos. I had long ago decided that there was no way in which I was going to go to Nigeria. The stories of aggressive demands were too apophrical to ignore. And then I decided that I cannot be quite so prejudiced and that I should give it a chance…
A ticket to Ethiopia with a week’s stay in Lagos was purchased.

Nigeria:

An ex-driver from EFA who had bought one of their old vehicles and was intending to convert it to become a taxi-driver, offered to take me to the end of the bad road on the outskirts of Freetown, although he was not licensed. We left very early with Evy and Nico giving us a push to get started. I suggested to him that he made some more money by picking up some of the many people who were already on the road trying to get to town. Soon we were full to bursting and he kindly let us all off where we could get other taxis. I needed two to finally get me to the Ferry where one had a relatively cheap crossing to the airport.
On the ferry a young man came to me and said that he had been one of those early am passengers. One of those co-incidences I am getting used to…. He said he was seeing off his ‘sister’. In this case, from the church and not a relation. He introduced me to her and her husband. The husband is a Lawyer working on the prosecution of Charles Taylor (ex-premier), in The Hague. She is a medical doctor with a two-month old baby, so was using her maternity leave to return to Lagos to stay with her mother. Dr. Harriett (Hettie) had vast amounts of luggage and I helped her with it and the baby and we had a very pleasant flight to Lagos.
That day her mother had moved into her new house which had taken 5 years to build and which was still not finished. But she wanted to give Dr. Hettie space and I was generously invited to stay.
The house is huge. Built in a north-Lagos area where one had to go through security gates and where every house is behind vast walls with razor wire or broken glass (and has its own security employees as well), I was in awe. The house needs endless things done to it, but at least it is dry and we each had our own bedroom with plug-less basins and Jacuzzi baths. The impressive staircase with marble fittings needs to be finished off, but money is tight and the mother only builds when there is some. The beds were enormous, but this reflects the African way of life, I think. Wherever I have been, people share a floor space or a bed with other members of the family and large beds, if one can afford it, are the norm. In ‘my village’ in Ghana where I had the use of a house, my bedroom was filled with three large double beds and nothing else. But living in Lagos has its drawbacks. We were lucky to sometimes have running water. When it did appear, the security man filled a large plastic drum on the first floor. We could then take basins of water from this for our body and clothes’ washing. I could not imagine the baths ever being filled. Nor is there a regular supply of electricity. Just as one can ‘flash’ to somebody on a mobile telephone so that it costs nothing, but leaves the sender’s number, the Lagos inhabitants are now saying that the Electricity Supplier is ‘flashing’ them to remind them that it still exists. It is erratic and most of the time I was there we sat in the dark. My torches were in great demand, but when I bought some candles, they were rejected. “Mother does not like candles”. So I bought more torches.
The youngest daughter has just graduated and was the Chairman of the organizing Committee for the Graduates’ Dinner-Dance. One of the daughters-in-law had been given the catering contract for over 300 people and throughout my stay, as we had no cooking facilities, mounds of food would appear from the caterers and we would often sit in the dark on the first floor landing eating with our fingers.
The mother is remarkable: She has ten living children and started off selling things in the market to support herself and the children. She has ended up with quite a few luxury coral jewelry shops in Lagos. During her expansion, she flew around the world many times to buy her stock and it seems, was a great character in her flamboyant clothes. Dr Hettie’s wedding photos show her festooned in coral. Each one of the children is either a doctor, mechanical engineer, lawyer or accountant. They live across the globe. It was explained to me that this drive is why Nigerians have a reputation for forcefulness which the other African nations do not have. Judging by my short visit only to Lagos, it may well be true. They do not have the diamonds of Sierra Leone and the maladministration of the oil-fields is very ‘African’, but they have established themselves in many overseas countries and Lagos has a dynamic buzz to it which I did not find in Togo, Ghana or Sierra Leone. How one makes ill-informed judgments!!!
The other person sharing the house with us was David. David is a sweet 8-year old boy, but lacks confidence. His father, a lawyer in the USA, took responsibility for this illegitimate son. However, he was cruelly neglected when his father’s new wife totally rejected him in favour of her own two sons. The grandmother therefore took him into her care. I tried to encourage him to talk and play games, but he was always careful to be there to obey orders. Dr. Hettie said he must work. “Children must work in our society’. So he was endlessly ordered about to fetch water, food, nappies, and lamp or to answer the door. The mother spent two whole days sorting out her clothes. This meant rolls of cloth of the most exquisite designs and the wraps that went with them. Each would be unfolded, admired, the dirt-marks commented upon and then rolled tightly again. I could imagine how she ‘wowed’ the Europeans and Japanese on her overseas trips. Upstairs in the penthouse flat, was the most emormous bed I have ever seen. Five large adults could easily stretch about in it. David was given the task of taking the rolls upstairs and carefully placing them in rows upon rows up and down the bed. Eventually the rolls were piled high on a large sheet on the floor as well. I did a count of what I could see and think there were at least 2000 rolls! During the four days I was there, I went to church (a very large Baptist Church with much waving of arms and singing enthusiastically) on the first day with the mother and she was beautifully dressed. However, she wore the same dress for the next three days. I comment on this, not so much to show how David had to run up and down the stairs all the time, but to remind me about old age and the fact that I will no doubt do exactly the same. One gets into habits and feels comfortable in certain garments. So it is easier to stay in what is familiar. I have told Ingrid to leave me, when I become more impossible, in my own surroundings and no matter how much the authorities think that I would be better off in a clean and sterile Nursing Home, I know that I would rather remain in my familiar, if somewhat unacceptable to others, environment.
One day I took David with me to explore the surroundings of this new house. Each of the palatial houses has a high wall with the usual razor wire or broken glass on top around it. Behind one of the large steel doors we could hear children laughing and obviously kicking a ball. I suggested we make contact. After knocking on the gates, the kids opened it and we introduced ourselves. I explained that David has just moved in around the corner and could he perhaps one day come and play with them? They were very welcoming, but said that they would have to ask their father. Of course. David was very excited, but back home it was a matter of ‘you stay here and you must not leave us alone as there is no one to open the door’. I wonder now if he ever goes out to play (we met up with others too and one day one of those boys came to the door to play and was sent away because David was busy…) or whether any of the family play the card games I taught him or read to him from the books I bought.
Isolated in this vast house with elaborate staircase, Jacuzzi baths and marble everywhere, one was vaguely aware of Lagos beyond. Outside my bedroom window I could look down on the neighbour’s yard. There is a large swimming pool which has probably never seen water and the filthy generator room spews out soot and makes a loud noise all night. Just about as bad as the frogs outside my room in SL! Otherwise I was isolated from the vast city of Lagos with its wonderful bridges connecting the islands and its skyscrapers (I assume the tall buildings all have their own generators). But Lagos is also a city of endless shanty towns tucked in everywhere. From one of the bridges one could look down on the stilt village in the water below and I determined to visit it. The population is vast and the roads are crowded. It is not like Lome with its masses of bicycles, or Freetown with its endless battered taxis, but has reasonably well-maintained taxis and frighteningly athletic motorbikes. These moto taxis have shortened their handlebars so that they can get through even more narrow spaces between cars. Thus balance is a bit dicey, but they are efficient (if you close your eyes!) and I later enjoyed using them very much.
I was short of Nigerian money, so we popped into a taxi and went to the moneylenders. These were supposed to be unofficial, but we ended up in a crowded area where there were rows of tiny booths. Outside each sat a Muslim dealer with wads of notes in his hand and an inviting gesture with his other. “Change here”, was the cry and you did not have a choice to bargain because they all agreed the exchange rate that morning and stuck to it. Later I used an ATM machine in downtown Lagos and it was heaven! To just tap in a number and get crisp notes!!! Up to now, getting money off my card has meant complicated journeys to the right Bank, endless waiting in queues and for officials to make calls to Nairobi, which seems to be the Banking Centre for Africa, and then waiting to get the money after signing lots of forms. After I lost my temper in Freetown when they refused to give me money (Nairobi said I had none) and they told me to telephone the UK from outside, they were surprised to find that they could actually do it themselves and that I could have as much as I wanted….
Dr. Hettie and her family were wonderfully hospitable, but I had a contact who invited me to stay with her. I left the palatial home and went to the airport to meet Kat, who was arriving from Port Harcourt where she had been interviewing rebel leaders, kidnap moguls, oil workers and goodness knows who else. She is a journalist and used to share a student house with Francis at Leeds University. We had been keeping in contact and it was good to know that we could spend some time together. It was utter bliss to go into a flat where the electricity generator took over when necessary and there was always running water and hot showers. The refrigerator was full of ‘Western’ food and the cooker worked! Best of all, books and newspapers littered every room in the flat (bliss, even in the loo!) and there were TV and video facilities and a Broadband computer connection. She shares the flat with another journalist colleague and his girlfriend. I must confess, I was thrilled to be in this atmosphere. Conversation was exciting and ongoing and one night we went to a bar, met up with other journalists and then went to a nightclub where I enjoyed dancing in the darkness to loud music. I think we got to bed after 5am. To listen to Kat deal with incoming news and then to hear her discuss and finally file her copy is quite riveting. There had been further dramas in the oil-rich Delta region and she had to make many calls to the rebel leaders, police and military chiefs and her stringers (“get as close as you can”, “try to find out how many bodies there are”, “do not get shot at”, “I owe you a drink”). I was thoroughly spoilt.
In the bar I met Sarah, a lovely English worker who, from her NGO headquarters in Senegal, had come to investigate urban matters inter alia in Nigeria. She needed to see the area around and in the stilt village and so I was a willing hanger-on the next day when we went there with one of the local journalists from Kat’s office. We drove around, interviewed and were accompanied by the local leaders on walks which took us into the heart of some of these shanty towns. The good thing to know is that, although it all looks like chaos, there is a very organized social system with a hierarchical order of command/responsibility within each small community. We then hired a small boat and set off amongst the houses where people have managed to build their habitation in the relatively shallow water. Women maneuver their boats amongst the houses with their wares and selling goes on just as it does in the streets. The only problem is that there is not a live thing in the water because all effluent is just dumped overboard. It is quite funny to watch little children unselfconsciously expose their bottoms at you while they defecate into the water. You are amongst the turds and just have to accept it. Kids swim in the water and even the smallest are deft at handling a boat. The stilt village is vast, but I do not know its population size.
My ‘fish research’ always means that I am going to places I would not normally go to. I hired a moto-taxi one day and we went from fishing area to fishing area in search of live fish. In one place, an isolated fishing community cut off from the distant skyscrapers, a young boy kindly threw a net especially for us. He would walk into the shallow, polluted and detritus-strewn verges of the lagoon and deftly throw a round net onto the surface of the water. We managed to get a few small fish, but the vast array of different types of fish at the fish market, were too dead for sampling.
I would have loved to spend more time in this dynamic city where the drive of the Nigerians has isolated them from the rest of Africa. They are thought of as aggressive by many and I was under that impression myself before going there. I only found kindness. I left Nigeria humbly asking forgiveness for my prejudices.