Made in China, Dumped in Africa

Look at the electrical appliances around your home, in fact look at everything, I guarantee that about 90% of what you look at will be made in China.  It is the same here, however the difference is that the goods you have will last at least a year...here, you probably have about a day and even then when it breaks you have no consumer rights, no warranty, nothing... Our internet modem looks like the small mobile 'dongles' you get in the UK it is, obviously, made in China and overheats in approximately 5 minutes so we have to disconnect it, cool it down, and reconnect it all the time (I'm sure you can understand the frustration this causes.)  When paying the 225, 000 Leones for our month's internet subscription I asked the man about our modem to see if I could get a replacement.  He looked at me like I had asked the stupidest question possible and in fact asked me 'what do you mean?' I asked him "if I bought a modem from you and it broke in the same day..." he quickly said, before I could finish "you would have to buy a new one." ..."oh, OK" I replied, that was the end of that!


Take lamps, I mean lights, they used to used the good old hurricane lamps, you would clean the lamp, trim the wick, fill it with Kerosene, light it and away you go.  A long time ago these were English made and as far as I know pretty good quality, by the time we moved here the market was flooded with Chinese made hurricane lamps, these didn't close properly leading to the glass getting covered in soot and they would extinguish with the lightest breeze or movement .  Now you cannot find these lamps anywhere, instead they have been replaced by plastic 'LED' lamps which are quite frankly, a joke.  They are made up of a number of LED lights (the amount varies depending on the size of the lamp) and are battery powered (batteries are a another story!) They seldom work longer than a week and with no waste disposal system let alone the idea of recycling these end up littering the streets and roads of Sierra Leone.

Chinese Lanterns

This follows true for a multitude of things, the markets are full of 'things,' compact mirrors made of wafer thin glass that break in minutes, earrings, necklaces (which turn your skin green), bangles, watches, belts, clothes, underwear, flip flops, batteries that last little more than 2 hours and come apart in your hand.  Then you have large machinery, the mills, cement mixers.....the list of 'Africa grade' Chinese rubbish in Sierra Leone is endless.  That is how it seems to be, China have differently graded export goods; Europe/America grade and Africa grade.  Africa is full with Chinese flotsam.

Jewelery and toys

Hardware goods - all made in China.

Another questionable Chinese import is MSG or Monosodium glutamate for those unaware this is a chemical flavour enhancer often associated with Chinese food.  My personal experience of it is that 20 minutes after I have eaten anything containing MSG I feel like I haven't eaten for a week!  Now although there is nothing solid that says that MSG is deadly it can have some nasty side effects if used to excess, see article:


 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate#Health_concerns.  


Here MSG is seen as a 'super seasoning' and is used liberally - you can also use it to remove rust stains from clothes!

Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) and salt are both used liberally in cooking

Now, I am not so naive as to think that the Chinese have done no good in Sierra Leone, in fact the two countries have a relationship dating back decades and the Chinese have donated and built buildings in the country, they are building a railway, they have rice research farms to find the type of rice which grow best and I am sure they do a lot of other work here but I have to question why and does it justify them using the country as a dumping ground for their own bottom grade goods?


I also have to question myself, if China were not providing these good to Sierra Leone, who would?  However, I am pretty sure that everyone would have got on ok with the old hurricane lamps.