The curse…
I need to regulate the company I keep. Because people think I enjoyed Freetown.
It was a completely freeing thing to say finally what had been on my mind since I was born. My curse in this life was to be born Sierra Leonean, and more specifically a girl.
The truth is that there is no “sweetness” to Sierra Leone. Its not a good place. My dearest loves, it is a hellscape. It’s a place where children die and women die, and women have unequal rights, there is insufficient electricity and the worst of all… the people are sick with dependency.
People are looking at you for money. Consciously and subconsciously, if I have you have 5 Leones and I have 10, you are looking to take a minimum of 2.5 Leones from me. If not all 10. The levels of lack in that country are not spoken about and are in fact laughed about.
The saddest thing I have ever seen was in Freetown, the famous Lumley beach… I was in a restaurant called “Pearl” I was with other people, and a child came up to us from the beach side… Asking for scraps from the table because the child was hungry. Poverty… We gave the child food, but I wanted to do more. I had money that was given to me for the meal like a child, so I couldn’t do more. May God help me, I didn’t know how to help him other than give him my chicken.
This is not funny, this is sad, this is disgraceful that it should happen once. But you can bet that child is still hungry, still begging. Children bathing in the street, or washing their clothes by a spring, why do they not have running water in their homes? Oh yeah because they live in a “Panbody” i.e. a one roomed structure made out of scrap metal. In 2024. As if the industrial revolution hadn’t happened. As if the rest of the world isn’t talking about high speed internet, large scale infrastructure, and global warming, when these people are having the same conversations their ancestors 500 years ago had. In fact they had better conversations because whilst they weren’t ruled by the Europeans, they weren’t starving. We forget Africa thrived and prospered before European rule. We had scientists, poets, steelworkers and teachers. Its natural. Yet we have lost everything. By greed.
My heart breaks for Sierra Leone but to be honest it will not be the thing that brings me down in this life.
The truth is you can either live a life in Sierra Leone or a life in the UK. If you have your heart in Freetown but your body in London, your family will suffer from lack of your heart. That was my curse as a child. Constantly trying to get my dad to choose me, choose peace. He loved me, but if I could be in Freetown I would be perfect to him. And if he wasn’t Sierra Leonean a uniquely broken nation… then he would be perfect for me. As it was, we broke hearts like peanuts.
I don’t want my kids to have any association with that Godforsaken country. I want them to learn sometimes people do create their own fate. And Sierra Leone is master of its own destiny.
Infant mortality, illiteracy, sloth, pride and derision (in the form of cussing people) is incompatible with decent life. It’s a terrible place not just because of the open sewers, the lack of electricity, the child poverty. No, they make it inhospitable because no one ever finishes a job, everyone is on the con… why is the land business so horrendous? I will tell you why, because if you buy 10 pieces of land, only one will you be speaking to the actual legal owner of the land, its endemic that you would be conned by someone. Why are we stealing peoples land? Because it’s a high value commodity that is easy to steal. All you need to do is falsify documents… Why is it if someone has a pet chicken people will steal it? Why? Because they are hungry and their hunger trumps your rights. Why do people beat thieves to death? Why is there shards of broken glass on peoples walls? Why are the walls 20ft high and the windows barred? Because theft is endemic. Why is theft endemic? Because people are poor, the kind of poverty that has soaked into their bones and altered how they raise children and make decisions. Choosing an “honest life” i.e. no stealing whilst in the UK has almost an negligible effect on how you live your life. In Freetown it could kill you. You could starve to death being honest. Or your children could, or you could fail to get the medical care you need. All because you don’t steal. The way people live is criminal. Selling maybe $10 worth of merchandise on their backs. As in $10 is their entire stock load. You could buy all their produce for the day for $10. I have seen people trying to sell irons and ironing boards on the side of the road, the same person was selling a kettle too. I have seen people trying to sell “skull caps” (winter, woollen hats) in Sub Saharan Sierra Leone. I have seen some ridiculous things. It is criminal that we don’t know how to plan an economy. Everyone wants to make it big, everyone wants to be a “baller” or a “Businessman” we should be an agricultural and manufacturing nation, instead we have so many people subsistence farming and then calling that “sweet.” My sweet loves, no. Fresh produce is great, but do you know who else has it? Quite literally every nation on earth. Sierra Leoneans act as if Sierra Leone is the only place God made beautiful… Except he made the whole world beautiful. The sun is not a compensatory measure for the eyesore of no residential planning or panbodies or open sewers. The beautiful lakes and rivers we have are filled with rubbish and pollutants because people are too lazy and the government has not provided adequate landfill. We should be making money out of those lakes and rivers. But no. Instead we go backwards.
Do you know what irritates me the most? The “lack of education” narrative.
Apparently if you are illiterate you can’t appreciate beauty. And you know nothing about aesthetics and beauty. This is how we conflate education with intelligence. You don’t need to be able to read or write to see that Freetown is an eyesore. You don’t need to be university educated to see that dumping rubbish in the drinking water is stupid… why? Because you drink from that water???? Why do people not drink the tap water? Because people don’t trust the government with basic needs. There is a multi-million pound industry on water… because the people of Sierra Leone are circa 8 million and they each need to drink 2 litres of water per day everyday. and there are 365 days in the year. That is 5.8 Billion litres of water annually. Then when you think that each might be sold for 2-5 Leones and a Leone is 1/28th of a GBP…. You can see how the government has gotten people to spend the little that they have (National minimum wage means that people earn £28.57 per month) you can see if you spend 2 Leones on water per 500ml, and you need 4 of those to survive, that’s 8 Leones per day. You make 800 Leones per month. That’s 1% of your monthly income a day on water, in a 30 day month that means you are spending 30% of your income on water alone. Then you need to eat… Hence people live in poverty. Horrendous. People have kids they can’t afford… then abandon them. Those children (often born outside wedlock) have a horrendous life. Passed from relative to relative, maybe ward of an NGO so European teenagers can have their “White saviour moment” They have made it next to impossible for the millennial generation to move out of their parents house so therefore there is a generation of men who are useless beyond comparison and therefore are waiting for their parents to die… whilst doing absolutely nothing other than rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of how much they can make out of generations of family heirlooms. Flogging the family silver… The countries mindset is sick. People view those in the West as someone to be conned. I am sick of being told I am welcome here only to be shown repeatedly that I am not. That I am a “Jesse” and that I would be “dealt with” To show that people view me as a money tap not a person. Try being that for a while. Its in fact very painful.
Politicians openly and covertly robbing the country. No shame, no patriotism, only sick as dogs with power. Police=corrupt, army =drunks. No institutions are trusted. And people are mad jealous and spiteful of anyone who isn’t like them. So if you aren’t conning and destroying, you will be conned and destroyed. People have the worst attitude to customer service I have seen. Its not lackadaisical, its openly hostile and rude… You can show up 1 ½ hours late for a job and it not matter. You don’t listen to a customer, you don’t know how to do your job and you are rude and hostile when you are challenged on your poor craftsmanship apparently you need to go to school for 13 years to get an attitude readjustment? Apparently parenting isn’t a thing. A place so hostile makes people hostile. So I want nothing to do with it. Its not fun, its not cute, its not “sweet” The airport? Built by the UN and you need to spend $70 to enter and depart the country by it… classic. Need to pay the West reparations for the stuff the government won’t do. So you pay twice… The opportunity cost of the nonsense and the actual cost. Can you imagine paying $140 for a visa, then $70 for “Airport security fees” and the country looks, smells and acts like I just described???
So no darlings… I didn’t enjoy Freetown.
Yes darlings… Freetown is an eyesore.
Yes I can’t believe I was cursed by association to that Godforsaken nation. It really brought a new meaning to the word “Godforsaken”
No I will (barring showing my kids and seeing my mum for 48 hours this year) go back ever. Its not worth it and it is a matter of deep pain and disgrace to say my ancestors are from such a country.
May God have mercy on them all…
Land that I loved.
Sierra Leone.
Grace and Courage.
Annetta Mother Smith.