SALONE REMEMBERED

Over the years, the diamond industry has had a devastating impact in countries such as Sierra Leone, Angola and the Congo, where profits from the sale of diamonds have been used to fund brutal wars, with disastrous effects on local communities.

Sheherazade Goldsmith

The Ebola virus sweeps across, lifting a person here, snuffing  out a life there.  It no more remains a distant threat tucked away in sub sahara West Africa but has, of late, triggered a shrill pitch of alarm, if not exactly preparedness,  nearer   my home in Kolkata. I follow the news quite closely because once again a tragedy has struck  Sierra Leone where I  had spent about twenty months as a peacekeeper with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Sierra Leone or  UNAMSIL in 2004-06. It saddens me to see the  pictures of health workers, including the familiar Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) or Doctors Without Borders, fight a grim battle even as civic unrest grows following collapse of public health infrastructure.

But I  must pause and explain to you where Sierra Leone is located. I know for sure that for  most

Indians, the bias against dark colour gets reflected  not only in advertisements inserted in matrimonial columns or avoidance of  tea, but also extends to a galling ignorance of the Dark Continent. To many, Africa means  just South Africa. Sierra Leone, however,  is about 6000 kilometres  north west from that country  -  a sub sahara country lying in the western bulge of the continent , west of Nigeria and Ghana and cusped between Liberia and Guniea. Its latitudinal extremes are almost that of Kerala.  For those who cannot fathom how much is 6000 kilometres, let me tell you,  it is  300 kilometres  more than   Cairo is from Kolkata. And for those who didn't read books  and bunked classes to watch films, well, Sierra Leone was  the setting of the movie Blood Diamond, the famous Leonardo di Caprio  starrer which had received an Academy Nomination - a  film about how the RUF rebels collected illegally mined diamond to procure weapons and unleash one of the most barbaric civil wars in recent history between 1991 to 2002.

Oh Salone ( that is how it is called in its Krio), my heart bleeds for you. I remember, on being prodded by my friend Zulfi, I had opted to go on a peacekeeping mission in 2004, energised by the promise of an international experience and loads of money. I reached Sierra Leone, after a shot of Yellow Fever vaccine, and an amazing encounter  at Conakry ( capital of  neighbouring Guniea ) where I found porters jumping on the carousel to grab luggage and stake a claim to transport it. Disease plagued this country even then.  In  2004 it was the triple scourge of Lassa Fever, AIDS and cerebral malaria - I escaped the first two but succumbed twice to the last to be rescued by artesunate tablets.

The  capital ,Freetown, is so named  because after abolishing slavery, the British settled this place in 1787 with 400 formerly enslaved Black Britons from London.The Fourah Bay College is the oldest University in West Africa. The town  is located on the Atlantic and I would watch the sun sink sans a scatter  over  the horizon evening after evening from the Freetown Golf Club where I was a regular. The  town's Lumley Beach is the hub of  many activities, but none more amazing than the frenetic pace at which groups of amputees play football in the morning. By afternoon, it revs up again as a bunch of handsome Lebanese hunks play volleyball and locals and UN officials jog and walk. In the late evening , centring around the many shacks  selling  soda and beer and barbecued lobsters and barracuda , there is much of ear splitting music and merriment, soliciting by prostitutes and  the suggestive swaying and shaking of cars parked by the beach. 

Adjacent to the beach was  the Freetown Golf Club, an 18 hole course with

Browns instead of Greens, whose caddies would break into a jig at the sound of any music. But the Lumley was not a patch on the other three beaches I visited - the Laka, River No.2 and Burrey Town. The water is blue, the fine sand trickles through your toes smoothly as it would  through the neck of an hourglass. Walking in the Main Business District and old bazaar areas was fun- haberdashers, garment hawkers, vegetable sellers sat
cheek by  jowl with lingerie, shoe and toy sellers. The Sindhi and Lebanese Malls were well stocked, one preferred the latter because of the  extremely beautiful women manning the counters. However, the most amazing memory is of the large number of hair- do shops. Sierra Leone women are obsessed with their hair. It is in these shops that the tedious processes of threading, braiding and even beading are done so that the ever changing weaves and wigs of the women continue to fascinate everyone on a regular basis.

However, the  poverty of Sierra Leone was striking - wherever we went in the countryside, small boys

and girls would, at the sight of the ubiquitous White  Nissan and Toyotas of UN, shout, flail their arms and ask for  "Chop, Chop" or food. The number of orphans and displaced children was very large. Disarmed  rebels, most of them who had earlier been child soldiers, still roamed and threatened  to disturb the fragile peace. The  ravages of the decade long civil war still showed - in the thousands of 'uproofed' and burnt houses, dismantled railway tracks, stumps of trees due  heavy illegal logging and poignantly  distressing , the stumps of amputees . The countryside, especially the eastern districts of Kailahaun, Kenema and Koidu were pockmarked with ditches dug to pan diamonds.

Life expectancy was in early 40s when we were there and  healthcare was abysmal. One was legally bound to pay even for injuries sustained during physical crimes like assault and rape- and many a time victims would not press charges because they couldn't afford treatment at government hospitals. The roads would make the worst roads in India appear to be slick autobahns - and I still remember my first journey to Kailahun when it appeared at many stretches that the car was playfully wading on slush.The corruption of its poorly  paid bureaucracy would make its  Indian  counterpart look like the cleanest Scandinavian. People continued to vote on ethnic lines and rogue youth elements were routinely  enlisted by the two major parties  (SLPP and AFC) to intimidate rivals. In the donor dependant economy, the path to recovery appeared agonisingly slow.  But having said all this, I came away with an amazing takeaway.

.

This was the remarkable communal amity and peace. About 60 per cent of it population is Muslims, 20 per cent Christians and the rest heathens - but never has religious strife marred it. It did not inform a single political upheaval nor any civil war atrocity which was more on tribal and regional lines.The people are  intensely religious- the Muslims observed the  Ramazan fast with a severity that was amazing. The Christians of different denominations formed huge congregations in their Sunday best at the different churches . To ensure the success of meetings, they would start by  wonderfully phrased  'silent individual prayers. In 2007 General elections, a devout Christian of the Weselyan Church , and President of the AFC  Ernest Bai Koroma defeated the SLPP candidate  Julius Maada Bio, a Catholic  who  had married a Muslim Fatima Jabbie. I do not know of any country which is so secular- either its government or its people.

In Salone, it  was nice to be known as an Indian. Before the civil wars took its toll, there were a large
number of Indian school teachers ,including a few Bengalis, especially teaching science and maths. Alonwith Lebanese, the Indians, especially Sindhis were the largest expat community, mainly in trade including retail where their malls would sell everything including heeng and paachphoran. My caddies knew the names of children and wives of Dharmendra and had seen most of the Indian movies in the video parlours. There were cricket clubs as well.

The people were particularly  grateful to the Indians who had  initially led the UN peacekeeping army and took on the RUF rebels when they even managed to be besieged in Kailahun for over two months  - only to be  rescued by  a daring Operatiom Khukhri. After India withdrew over its objection to  disobedience  and complicity in the illegal diamond mining trade by Nigerian troops,  the mantle of  UNAMSIL military leadership fell on the Pakistanis . I watched with wistful sadness when  in meetings after meetings,  the credit for a successful UN Mission was  taken  by them even though it was  the Indian army which had engaged and subdued the rebels. 

Of course once I had a surge of  great pride when a local, employed in the National Service with the UN,  related  with great discernment the difference in the impact  of the two armies  on common people.

' How de body Mista Sahey saa, ?' he warmed up as he clipped the seat belt to my right.

I nodded and informed him that I was doing fine after a  biryani lunch at the PAKBATT Kenema camp.

" Indians very clever,' he plodded, " Mista Chukker Vatti taught me Maths  in school."

"And this military camp ye see yonder ," he remarked  pointing to the PAKBATT camp, " long time back, the Indian army used to stay there ."

" Very strict discipline they had. Then one day they just left and the Guinea Army came. No one stayed in the camp- they all came with their dollars and started living with the local girls," he complained.

" Must have been for a short while only Vandy," I said, " for the Paks came in soon thereafter."

" I am sure that would have been  pretty reassuring," I prodded with the hope to hear something bad about the Pak Fauj.

" Sorry Mista Sahey, they were a lot different than you Indians," he readily obliged  me.

" What do you mean?" I asked  with a mocked annoyance.

" You see Mista Sahey, the Indian army people  gave  us so many skills. They taught driving, they taught mechanics , they taught joinery and they also  taught computer. That is how I got a job in the National Service. I am so grateful  to one Bhasin who was my instructor," he explained.

"And what did the Pakistanis do?" I prodded aggressively.

" Aah, they only gave us food. They gave us food outside the camp, they distributed free food in villages and towns, in the schools and in the mosques. " 

" And made us a country of beggars , " he bemoaned,  before settling into silence for the rest of the journey.