A Sad Story

No update on the Ground Pig yet, Abdul Rahman was decidedly absent at 'trap setting' time yesterday - although I am starting to doubt his ability to set the things correctly because each time he sets it the ground pig eats the cassava without setting off the trap!  If we ever catch the elusive monster I will be sure to post some photos.

I feel that I have had a very blessed life with very little tragedy, it was always very sad when a family pet died, but on a global scale I think I have been very sheltered from the storm and have a very different perspective to most people who live here.  This difference is one of the most difficult to overcome and apart from feeling sometimes guilty at how easy I have had it and at times a little silly, it has sometimes made me incredibly sad. 

During our first visit we travelled around in the beloved Defender to several villages to which Winston had affiliations, at each of these villages we would be given a live chicken as a blessing from either relatives or the village chief.  After sometime we had accumulated about three cockrels (they are always cockrels as not to take the egg layers!) tied in the back of the truck, we also had Mama and several brothers and sisters so the vehicle was pretty full.  It was blisteringly hot and as we were making the long drive home the chickens were making a real racket.  I was not dealing with it well, I felt incredibly sorry for these poor cockrels, I was thinking they had been in this hot truck all day with their wings tied and everytime they sqwarked someone would kick them to shut them up.  I began to get really upset and Winston had to stop the truck, everyone came down as I tearfully explained to Winston what my problem was.  Everyone, whilst trying to be sympathetic, was completely perplexed offering even, to kill the chickens now so they would stop making a noise.

In October 2008 when we had been here for about three weeks, I was sitting in Mama's compound with Winston's sisters when an earsplitting scream came from the next compound along.  Of course everyone else ran to see what the noise was all about, I, my English self, sat still not wanting to intrude into what was clearly a personal matter.  After a couple of minutes one of Winston's sisters came back explaining that a young girl's baby was choking, at this I ran to see if there was anything I could do, there were close to a hundred people crowding around the mother and child and I could not get anywhere near them.  After trying to get closer someone came running saying that they were a Community Support Officer (now here that is the term for a senior nurse) so I backed away and returned to Mama's house.  After about twenty minutes someone came to the compound and I asked them what had happened, they said that the CSO had told the girl to take the baby to the hospital after giving no first aid or attempt to clear the baby's airway.  Mama explained that the young mother had been weaning her three month old baby on something called pap (a cornmeal porrige) which involves using your hand as a funnel into the baby's mouth and pouring the pap in.  Inexperienced, the girl had not known when to stop, and the crying baby had inhaled the porrige leading to it choking.

It was 21st October 2008 and the baby died that day before he reached hospital. 

This is only one story and a demonstration of the difference between life in England and life in Sierra Leone, I cried because I thought that the chickens (that I later ate) were uncomfortable in the back of our truck, and this young mother's baby died because neither the mother or the local CSO (a senior nurse!) knew how to turn the baby up side down and hit him on the back, or CPR, something that at least 1 in 5 people in the UK know how to do.  When my daughter was about three months old I took a baby first aid course so I would be sure to know what to do if I should ever be in that position again.

Eleven years of war will certainly dampen a persons sensitivity to death but here there is so much more for people to contend with; illness, lack of medical facilities, lack of money, lack of basic education, dangerous vehicles, dangerous roads, the list is really endless.  Death is also encountered close up here, it happens in closed hospital rooms or closed houses it is a public affair.

My experience here has made me question myself and some of my attitudes, it is easy for me to have such a sensitivity towards the cockrels feelings because of two things I have not been exposed, throughout my life, to death 'close up' and I have never felt truly hungry.

Sorry for the sad story but I think that my blog should be a real account.

The Ground Pig - Part 1

I asked a few people what they thought of my new blog, the major feedback I got was good but the honest feedback I got was that and I quote (Deany) "It's a little bit too much love and not enough Tipper Trucks and Sierra Leone for me" I was also advised that people would want to know more about the day to day experience of living here, so here's the first installment of an unfinished story for you:

We keep chickens in our back garden,  we have 1 cockerel (Buddy), 5 hens who don't have names and 6 chicks.  Here  one of the challenges of keeping the chickens, apart from tolerating Buddy's incessant squawking (I thing he is a little neurotic!) is predators; we have a cat that ventures into the compound every now and again, there are several large hawks (I have no idea of the species but they are large and grey and I am yet to capture them on camera) and the dreaded ground pig!

SK is Winston's brother, he first told me about the Ground Pig (which is pronounced like you are saying it with an 'Allo Allo' French accent), it is basically a very large rat.  It lives in a burrow like a rabbit and is nocturnal so can often be heard stomping around the compound at night looking for food.  SK and Winston would tease me exaggerating the size and ferocity of the animal. Not that it had any effect, I have no fear of rats or mice or any small mammals but I was intrigued, I was determined to get a glimpse of the Ground Pig.

Now we got the chickens about a month ago, we converted an old pigeon house to serve as a chicken house so at night they are tucked up nice and safe and are not really in danger (unless I forget to close the house.)  We made a decision to catch the Ground Pig when our neighbour and helper Abdul Rahman (This is his full name and how everyone addresses him, not Abdul but Abdul Rahman, and the say it really fast so it actually sounds like Adama, which is a girl's name!) was digging a mound for me to plant my tomatoes, a Ground Pig ran out and escaped through a hole in the compound wall.  The neighbours killed it and there was a big hullabaloo because they were refusing to give any of the animal to Abdul Rahman as they themselves wanted to cook and eat it.  They agreed to once I spoke to them (as it is my compound and I am older than all of the people involved they were obliged to share the rat with Abdul Rahman if I asked them to.)

The following day Hadja (Winston's sister who lives with us and helps me survive here) told me that she had heard another Ground Pig during the night scampering around the rubbish heap.  Abdul Rahman went about digging up the animal's burrows trying to find and catch the thing.  He was just putting his arm right down the hole without any regard for his fingers.  I felt it was my duty to warn him about the risk of Rabies, Lassa Fever and any other rat related diseases and received a blank look and a chorus of laughter from both him and Hadja - I think that people here overcome so much that thinking about these relatively remote illnesses (compared to Typhoid, Malaria e.t.c) is just a waste of time to them.  Anyway he dug around the tomato patch to no avail, Plan B, the trap…..

He brought 2 lengths of thick bamboo, 4 thick twigs some string, a pointed metal rod and some cassava (a root vegetable popular in West Africa) for bait. He constructed the trap as demonstrated in the photos:

Abdul Rahman with the materials to make the Congomi trap

One of the flexible twigs is tied inside the bamboo and bent round to create the tension required to set the trap

The two finished traps.

Springing the trap in the evening (once the chickens are in bed so the trap doesn't catch them instead!

The sprung trap: the idea is that you put your bait inside the bamboo beyond the small vertical twig, where there are 2 holes with string coming out of the bamboo to the left of the twigs is a noose, the Ground Pig will, in theory, knock the twig and set off the trap, the small horizontal will be disturbed and the large bent twig will try to straighten and tighten the noose trapping the Ground Pig. 

 See the hole for the Ground Pig to enter.

Well, I woke this morning to find that our crafty Ground Pig friend has foiled our plans (or Abdul Rahman has not made/set the traps correctly) as all the cassava had been eaten but no Ground Pig...the saga continues!



How Did I Get Here...the history

I met Winston at the end of 2003.  After University I was working in a bar to 'top up' the meagre salary I was receiving from the bad, bad call centre job I was doing.  The bar was Po Na Na and I loved working there, they played good music, not just the Pop / 'R'nB' typical of most clubs in Manchester at the time and I really liked the people that I worked with.  Winston was a regular at the club and would come there and just dance, he knew all the staff and one day he asked my friend, whom had got me the job, to introduce us.  After some months of Winston staring at me at the end of the bar we began our love affair.   I love Winston's company, he is unlike anyone I had ever met, with an outlook on life I have never seen before or since, he radiates something inexplicable in any language.

In 2005 Winston and I decided to travel to his homeland, Sierra Leone.  Winston left the country in 1991 and had not see his mother since he was 16, a vicious war had ripped through the country and was just settling down .  My parents were understandably worried about our travel plans, I'm sure that most people that had any media exposure to what had happened would be if their youngest decided to trot off to a recently ceased conflict zone.  However they were supportive and mum, ever the nurse, advised me on jabs and Malaria.  That trip was emotional, we spent about three months here exploring the south of the country in our Land Rover Defender and with several of Winston's long lost brothers and sisters in tow.  Whilst exploring we had decided that we could think about living there for a while, we had big plans though, we were not looking at living a meagre existence in rural Sierra Leone, we wanted to help rebuild the country and set ourselves up for the future at the same time. 

A rice farm on the Mattru highway (Southern Sierra Leone), fenced to keep rodents from eating the crop.

Overlooking the Stadium in Freetown

Winston's beloved Defender.

The Sewa river which runs down to the south of the country.

Some locals in the Jong district offered to give us up to 200 acres of land which was stitting idle, to farm.  Here they were explaining the harvesting process.

Oh Dear!  Driving into a hidden gutter....and local farmers digging us back out again!

We did a LOT of research and found out that in the 1970's Sierra Leone had been exporting rice, now the country was importing 75% of its main staple food and some of that from the USA!  I was dumbfounded, one of the richest countries in the world selling rice to one of the poorest, perhaps this just highlights my economic naivety at the time!  So, we travelled around different rice farms to see what it would take, it turned out a lot!  With little to no infrastructure in the country at the time we would have needed an incredible amount of capital to set up this venture - no decent roads, no tractors, mills and there was just way too much global competition - Vietnam, Pakistan, USA and so on....  The idea was romantic but a little unrealistic.

We travelled back to the UK and began working in Manchester again, I in Social Housing, Winston in IT.  It was back to the grind but all the time we were discussing ideas and plans for our life in Sierra Leone.  We realised that in reality we needed to be on the ground if we were to get a proper idea of where good business opportunities were.  Winston came back in 2006 and spent 11 months here researching opportunities.  He came back to the UK and we set about saving enough money to set up a business in Sierra Leone.

In October 2008 we returned to Sierra Leone and here we are 1 daughter and two tipper trucks later trying to build up our small fleet....