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....