A Fire

Rachel Jackson, a friend of mine from the UK currently living in Freetown, writes about life in Sierra Leone:

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I don’t know how to tell this story.

At 9.30pm on Thursday 6th September, seconds from my door, a family of five sat together in their home, made of corrugated iron and wood. Two boys and two young women sat together on a wooden bench, while a third woman knelt re-filling the small generator with kerosene. There was very little room between their house and the next, so the generator sat in the doorway. The woman bent to empty her bottle of fuel, but she did not switch off the generator. A tiny spark flashed, it hit the fuel and exploded in her face. Lighted fuel splashed everywhere, covering the walls and ceiling, dousing another woman’s leg. The three women screamed, the two boys tried to hide. The walls were alight, the ceiling was alight and the only exit was blocked by the unstable, burning generator. The only escape was through the fire. They all ran forward into the worst of the flames.

In a stone house, in the middle of 100 or so wooden shacks, I sat with two friends. We heard the screams. By the time we’d grabbed shoes and water, the fire had spread to at least ten more dwellings and hundreds of people were running, screaming and dragging mattresses, pots, pans everything they owned out of their tiny shacks, desperate to save what little they had. We ran forward, towards the fire, past people running with children and belongings. We were separated; the boys gave what little water we had to men standing on burning rooftops. I ran forward looking for anyone injured or any children separated in the panic. The fire kept growing. I lost my shoes, I barely noticed.

I turned a corner and I found her, the woman with the fuel. She was naked, sat on the floor with people running by her. Her skin lay in tatters around her. She was white under her black skin, burnt to her fat. Her face, her arms, her legs, her stomach. Everywhere. I grabbed at men for help, they kept running. I screamed for my friends. As I turned around a little boy was dropped next to the woman, his legs were white. People kept running. I screamed for my friends. Patrick came and carried the boy away to somewhere cooler and calmer. As the boy lay on the ground shaking, he cried “I don’t want to die”.

I stayed with the woman. I tried to pick her up, her skin fell off in my hands. A man stopped and put her on his back. Thank god, the fire was getting closer.

Another friend was asleep at home, the fire was raging towards our house, so I ran back. I passed Patrick and the boy, lying on the floor, they asked for painkillers.

I woke Joanne by screaming “fire!” and carried on to ransack the house for blankets and painkillers. There was no water. There is no electricity, but the flames lit up the room. My hands were shaking. I paused to lock the door. Looters were a possibility. Should I have done that? The boy was waiting.

By this time, a two year old baby girl is dead. She was trapped in one of the first houses. Later, friends will see her father, crying, inconsolable. But for now, no one has realised.

I throw the painkillers to Patrick and run back towards the fire. I search, but I can’t find anyone else injured. I join Leigh in grabbing people’s belongings and moving them away. The fire is still growing, it’s been twenty minutes. The buckets are running low, there’s just no water.

I run out to the road. I pass a fire engine, finally. It’s stuck in one of the many ditches, too far away to reach the fire. I pass Patrick running back to the house. He’s found a taxi driver for the boy, the driver wants money. I reach the boy, his name is Bassay and he’s gritted his teeth so tightly that he can’t make a sound. His legs are horrifying. I try not to look. I hold his hand. Before we can set off, the taxi driver wants him out. The money is taking too long. A man lifts him, he can’t avoid brushing his legs. Bassay grits harder. He is silent.

Eventually we find a taxi, there’s no mention of money, my skin colour is enough. I don’t mention that I have nothing to give him. My pockets are empty. We set off to Emergency, its 45 minutes out of town. The road is the worst in Sierra Leone. We bump over potholes. I hold Bassay’s hand tightly, I try to keep him warm. He is silent still. A little soldier, but he’s starting to go into shock, he’s fighting unconsciousness. I don’t know what to do.

Suddenly another taxi bumps towards us, they scream that the hospital won’t let anyone in. It’s been a wasted journey. The mass of white legs in the headlights, draped over headrests and dashboard, tells us they’re from the fire. More of the women have been found then.

We head back into town, nearly an hour and a half has passed since the generator exploded. We reach the hospital. The sight is unbelievable. There are three more women with horrific burns, clothes melted to them, the smell of burnt skin. We sit in an office. There is one bed and one wheelchair, the rest sit on chairs. They are whimpering.

No one seems sure what to do. Or is it that no one seems interested? The time ticks by. No morphine arrives, everyone is starting to shack uncontrollably, there are puddles of fluid around Bassay’s burnt feet. I squeeze his hand. I think it’s more for me than him. Patrick is there, he’s paid the driver, he hums to Bassay. We wait. The women are moved one by one. There are no stretchers, their family carries them, skin comes away. An hour and a half after we arrived, a doctor casually beckons us forward.

They scrape off his skin. He cries, he squeezes my hand. There is no one else here for him, his family is burnt. They bring a bowl of dirty water, it has his sister’s skin in it. They wash his legs, he screams. I grit my teeth, I want to cry, but I can’t, not yet. They wrap his legs in the thinnest gauze and a nurse arrives to apply Vaseline. She scrapes the sides, the bottom, the lid. There is little left. There was only one pot of Vaseline, there were four victims. The nurse uses the same instrument on all the wounded. Transmission of disease is not considered.

Finally at 1.30am, four hours after the accident, Bassay and the others are settled into bed. No sheets, no disinfectant, we leave reluctantly. We’ve given the hospital money, but they warn us it’s not enough. We must come back tomorrow.

The fire is out. I fall into bed, too tired to cry.

The next day we go to the hospital, they’re not there. We didn’t come soon enough with the money. They were thrown out. I can’t imagine…they cannot walk. We presume they took a taxi to Emergency. We go there.

We find Bassay and another boy there; Abass. The sign says “25% II degree burns”. They’re being well cared for. I nearly cry right there with relief. The hospital is run by Italians. I feel guilty to be so happy, the Europeans are here, it’ll be ok. My faith in African medicine is being tested. The women are not there, they were turned away. There are rumours they are in a third hospital, it costs 200,000le a night to stay there, that’s around 35pound, no one here has that money. We speak to the family, they have enough money for a week. But they have no house, no food, no clothes, the man we speak to is shoeless.

There is no ending to this story. I don’t know what to do. The woman I found on the floor has 1st degree burns to 50% of her body. She is awake, smiling, even moving. She will probably die. Infection will kill her if she is forced to leave the hospital, which she will do in 3 days time.

We have no money to keep her there, if we used all of our savings she could stay for a month. Her burns are so severe, that given the lack of treatment and sanitation, she will probably die anyway. I’m trying to think positively, it’s difficult. I don’t know what to do. I held her in my arms. She is alive.

This wouldn’t happen where I come from.


On Thursday 6th September 2007 in Freetown, Sierra Leone, twelve dwellings were burnt to the ground. Approximately 60 people were left homeless. A little girl was killed. Bassay, his cousin Abass and his sisters will have to fight to live for the rest of their lives. The people here say that that’s life, that’s Africa. No one knows, no one notices, another fire, another dead child. This note is a small record of all that was lost. It is not meaningless, it was not small, it has not gone unnoticed.

If this note seemed contrived, pretentious, affected…the usual. I’m sorry. I don’t know how to tell this story.

Elections, Round Two

The election run-off seems to have gone peacefully yesterday. The BBC reports (with a less than stellar article):

Voters in Sierra Leone have gone to the polls for the decisive second round of a closely-fought presidential election.

Tensions have been high following the first round last month, which did not produce a clear winner.

The ruling party's candidate, Solomon Berewa, and opposition candidate Ernest Koroma are in the run-off.

The first round was widely praised for being free and fair and a positive step forward for a country still recovering from a decade-long civil war.

The result of this presidential election is likely to be very close and that is one reason why the tension has increased recently in several areas of the country.

At times this has led to violence but only isolated cases. For most Sierra Leonians the number one priority is peace.

from S Leoneans vote in run-off poll


In other news, here's two articles about SL, one concerning investment and the other UK foreign policy:

Returning diaspora help rebuild battered Sierra Leone


Britain has foreign policy fans in Sierra Leone

Africa Working Group

I'm pleased to announce that we'll be working with the African Working Group on Peace and Conflict, an recently established US-based organization that focuses on an exploration of the best policies to create "constructive change and peace-building" in the African world. We'll working together to release a number of the images from the projects this summer in Sierra Leone.

An Election Excerpt

As promised (and a few weeks late, as usual) you may find below a short description of my role in the August 11 elections. It is an excerpt from a report I wrote for Sewanee about my internship in Sierra Leone, so I apologize in advance if it seems excessively self-centered. Enjoy!

Questions/Comments?
Email me at pauledixon@gmail.com!

-Paul

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11 am, August 11. Outside Lumley, Freetown.

The mob pushed in on us.

Emmanuel shoved by, shouting "Snap everything, Paul!" before vanishing into the crowd.

Angry faces stared at us four Westerners - Rachel from England, Joanne from Ireland, Patrick from Australia and myself, a quiet American college sophomore disgorged from the chilly interior of a British Airways jetliner into the morass of Freetown, Sierra Leone a mere two months before. It was my first time existing in the potpourri of countries that make up a vast and complex region of the world commonly known as Africa.

They jostled around us, fighting for the chance to speak. We had only arrived at the polling station thirty seconds before, hopping out of Emmanuel's decrepit sedan that had a tendency to stall when we went uphill, a common occurrence in Freetown, a costal city rapidly sprawling up into the surrounding mountains, struggling to accommodate refugees fleeing West Africa's conflicts. After a decade of war Freetown isn't much besides a gridlock of impromptu football games on decaying streets, but for the human beings, referred to in the sanitary development literature authored by United Nations and World Bank consultants as "Internally Displaced Persons" and "War Affected Individuals," who watched their sisters be raped by international peacekeepers, their parents decapitated and their own arms hacked off with a machete, even the slums of Freetown may seem to be a beautiful oasis of progress.

No one knows exactly how they manage to survive. Twenty years ago the slum-dwellers could eek out an subsistence-agriculture existence on plots of land upcountry cleared from unrelenting jungle, but the pavement of Freetown, a relic of the euphoric development of the post-Independence era forty years ago, allows for only the occasional hillside garden constantly in danger of being swept to sea during the onslaught of the rainy season. Most days the slum-dwellers hawk their wares in the streets - bread and pastries cooked over a charcoal fire, plantains and pineapples, plastic packets of water, imported goods: sausage from Brazil, rice from Vietnam, crackers from Turkey, orange juice bottled in Lebanon but grown in Florida, windshield wipers and car antennas from China, cheese from South Africa, cell phone faceplates from India. The more fortunate shop keepers sit behind their counters, surrounded by an equally global assortment of goods and spend their days waiting for customers listening to battery powered radios and are shielded from the hot sun or pouring rain by a zinc sheeting roof. The slum-dwellers who have some skill spend the day toiling at community cooperatives as carpenters or metalworkers crafting furniture and other household items. Those who know how to drive rent a car from a wealthy family member, neighbor or friend - everyone seems to have at leas one well-off acquaintance - and drive passengers around the city for 800 Leones - the equivalent of 27 American cents. The women, for the most part, do back breaking work cleaning and cooking outside the shacks of plastic refugee sheeting, dirt floors, cinder blocks and zinc sheets that are considered houses while also taking care of a flock of children. The children are sometimes their own, sometimes the neighbor’s who is selling goods at the market, sometimes their 14-year-old daughter's. The children happily play among the rocks and gravel for a few years before they are sent to school if the family has enough money to pay school fees, but if the family isn't doing so well financially or if a brother has taken educational priority over his sister (who is just expected to get married in a few years anyway, so why bother with education?), then the child will be sent out into the streets to beg and sell rice and fish sauce from brightly colored plastic containers. Since there's only so much money that can be made in a country where the vast majority of people live a single US dollar a day, such efforts at entrepreneurship are often futile, so many of the youth take to the streets to play football to a sound track of car horns and Sierra Leonean pop music.

Today was different. There were no youth with their footballs, no sellers hawking their goods or radios blaring music. Instead, the residents of the slums queued in lines snaking across schools, churches and mosques. Some had arrived during the early hours of the morning and had been patiently standing for hours - this was the most important day for their country in the past five years, as their mark on the ballot today would determine the nation's direction, electing a leader to chart a course out of the troubled waters of African politics into a realm of the seemingly unachievable goals of good governance: transparency, accountability, democracy...

As an International Observer, I was supposed to help ensure the elections were the first stop along that journey to good governance - specifically free and fair. Rachel, Patrick and Joanne scurried about, talking to voters, local observers, party officials and polling station staff and recording their observations. I had two cameras hanging from my neck and a notebook bulging from my pocket. Emmanuel, the Sierra Leonean director of the Society for Democratic Initiative (SDI), has been driving us around all day to various polling stations; up until now they had been peaceful, with only a few minor violations of electoral policies, such as seals not be correctly placed on ballot boxes. The Lumley station, however, had hundreds of screaming people outside it surrounding a green SUV.

As observers, we were not supposed to participate in the electoral process, but to simply watch and write down the proceedings. However, now we were in the middle of a mob threatening to attack the owner of the vehicle. We were between the car and the mob, and if we didn't intervene, it would only be a matter of seconds before the screaming mass of people ripped the car apart. We struggled to understand the local language and gradually pieced together the story: the owner of the vehicle apparently had stolen a ballot box from the polling station and had hundreds of empty ballots in his trunk. An lady, her face chiseled by long hours under the African sun, clenched my wrist and pulled me to the back of the vehicle where several young men were preparing to rip the trunk off the car and take back the supposedly missing ballot box. I was between them and the car. They paused when they saw me, as if I would support them in their rather violent solution to the problem. I looked around. Rachel, Joanne and Patrick were on the other side of the vehicle, talking to the owner of the car. I was alone in a sea of black faces.

I wasn't ready for that. I had never been to Africa before, but I had taken some political science classes and read a few books, so I thought I was prepared. I had malaria medicines, extra batteries for my cameras, and a rain jacket for the rainy season. I knew the textbook definitions for the political development catchphrases: good governance, transparency, and accountability. But nothing could have prepared me for that moment, standing alone between an angry mob and a car and its owner. I was only 18, having convinced Emmanuel into allowing me to observe the elections with SDI, thinking I could just take pictures all day and watch from a distance if violence broke out. Suddenly however, a mob of Sierra Leoneans were expecting me to help them. I wasn't sure what to do.

I raised my hands. The mob paused and began to quiet down, waiting for me to issue a decree like a prophet delivering a sermon. I had a young man who appeared to be one of the mob's leaders explain what they wanted. I was probably ten years younger than the majority of the people in front of me, but my pale white skin had thrust me into the spotlight. This was their election, their problems and yet they wanted me to sort it out for them. I thought of what would happen if a foreigner came to my home and observed the elections; that person would be considered an invader trying to influence the democratic process, but I was being treated as a messiah sent to alleviate their suffering. I glanced around, hoping one of the other Westerners would wade towards me. It didn't look promising. I stalled for time by “snapping” a few pictures of the rear of the car; which seemed to satisfy the mob. Two teenagers approached with stones in their hands, ready to smash the windows so they could pull the suspected ballot box from the back of the car. I turned and peered through the tinted glass – but I failed to see any election materials in the car.

I glanced over at Rachel and Joanne, who seemed to be in a similar situation and were talking to the vexed owner of the car. Rachel saw my desperate glance pleading for help and had the owner open one of the doors to the car so she could look for the supposedly stolen election materials, which he adamantly denied having. Joanne and I distracted the people on either side of the car, asking them to explain again the problem.

Rachel couldn't find any stolen ballots, but she did find a box which contained SLPP (the incumbent political party) registration cards, which were perfectly legal to have as they were not “sensitive” voting materials. We explained that to the mob. They weren't very happy about it – most were APC (the opposition party) supporters, but as they calmed down they realized that ripping the car to shreds wouldn't accomplish much. The situation de-escalated. They thought we were saving their elections, and I guess we did calm down the crowd. But we didn't really do all that much besides evaluate the situation, identify and investigate the root cause, and announce our findings– something they certainly didn't need us Westerners to fly thousands of miles to their country to do for them. They could have easily done the same thing, but instead they were ready to turn to violence. Why?

Violence Continues...

"Election clashes in Sierra Leone"
There will be a "peace rally" tomorrow, so the leaders are hoping that will defuse the situation...but I'm not so sure it will have much effect. Either way, I'm not too worried until after the results from the run-off come out...and even then, the daily struggle of life will continue.