Lion Mountains and a town for freed slaves

Sierra Leone may seem to be a place that God forgot or abandoned. Perhaps you know about Sierra Leone from the movie "Blood Diamond" or maybe you did see something in the news a decade ago about the horrible war. But it didn't start out that way...

Quick history: During the rainy season in 1462, a Portuguese explorer Pedro de Cinta landed near what is now Freetown and dubbed the land Serra de Leão, meaning "Lion Mountains" due to the moutainous topography and the sounds of thunder emulating a roaring lion. Sierra Leone later became an important centre of the transatlantic transatlantic slave trade until 1792 when Freetown was founded by the Sierra Leone Companyas a home for formerly enslaved African Americans. In 1792, John Clarkson led over 1100 black settlers from Halifax, Nova Scotia. The majority of these settlers were former slaves of the American colonies, freed by the British during the American Revolution and forced to relocate after the British defeat. It was the determination of these settlers that caused Freetown to take shape and survive. They christened it Freetown.

Twenty years late in 1808, Freetown became a British Crown Colony and then in 1896 the country became a British Protectorate only gaining independence in 1961. Sierra Leone is very rich in mineral resources and relies on mining, especially diamonds but also of titanium, bauxite, gold and rutile, for its economic base; it is among the top 10 diamond producing nations in the world, and mineral exports remain the main foreign currency earner. However, despite this natural wealth, the vast majority of its people live in poverty-- Sierra Leone ranks 180 out of 182 countries on the UN's Human Development Index (a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, and standards of living for countries worldwide).

And on my daily drive from my simple hotel to the office, I see that 180 ranking- in this capital city- in the lack of infrastructure, the torn up roads, the lack of public sewage and flooding streets, small concrete slab shacks with tin roofs (with rocks holding down the corrugating tin) staggering up and down the hill sides, the mass quantities of people in small spaces, the public open land fill on the edge of a poor neighborhood call Congo Town, etc.













A few staggering statistics:
- 1% of rural households have access to electricity
- 25% of all households have no toilet
- 3% of women and 5% of men have MORE than a high school education
- 82 children out of every 1,000 die before their 1st birthday (the 15th highest infant mortality rate in the world)
- Life expectancy is about 50 years old
- Gross annual income is about $320- a little less than $1.00 per day

These statistics paint a sad picture and while I don't mean to be depressing, it is a depressing scenario. Nearly 6 million people live in this small country that is so rich with minerals. What is happening with those natural resources? I'm not an economist and not a financial expert, but it seems that more could be done to strategically utilize the resources that this country is blessed with, but I'm sure that takes time especially when you are only 10 years out of a war that destroyed your country.

Amidst all of this, it is a beautiful, green lush country with miles of coastline on the Atlantic (when it's not POURING rain :). And, geesh, David Beckham even stayed at my hotel (and has a room named after him)...so it really isn't that bad! More on the effects of war on people (and other positive topics!) soon.



Acknowledgments: Wikipedia entries for Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Human Development Index. www.en.wikipedia.org , 2008 DHS data, and the CIA WorldFactBook.