Blog 2: The Vultures Strike Back.

The pollution and Rubbish problem is unbelievable.

The week started in a peculiar fashion. John had some family matters to attend to and was away for the majority of the weekend. So, I decided that after two weeks working solidly in Freetown I was due a little bit of leisure time. Those who know me personally will know how pale I am and I'll be damned if I do not get some semblance of a tan while I am here, so I headed out to relax under the tropical heat. After dozing off I was woken by a scuffle beside me and thinking it was John mucking about I kicked out my leg – only for what I thought was John to squawk back at me in indignation.

I opened my eyes to find it was only a bloody great big vulture who had mistaken my pale hue for a corpse of some kind. Naturally I felt flattered by mother nature.

After chasing off the vulture I decided that sunbathing could wait for another day. I walked into town for an amble around a market or two but strangely, everywhere was quiet, in some places even deserted. I headed for the Cotton Tree (a 500 year old tree at the centre of the town planted by the first freed slaves who colonised Sierra Leone) unaware of what lay ahead. Coming out of the next junction I found myself confronted by what seemed to be the entire Sierra Leone Army, guns aimed, running towards me.

At that point, I wanted my mummy.

A man grabbed me and pulled me to the side of the road, telling me I was getting in the way of the procession.

'The what?!' I said, staring at him blankly, still wanting my mummy, until he explained it was National Armed Forces Day and that I would have blocked the combat troops demonstrating a drill. Realising I was now stood in a MASSIVE crowd of cheering citizens, I felt a little embarrassed for my alarm. It was an impressive spectacle to see the might of the military stride past but I left soon after that. I find all things army uncomfortable and having studied Sierra Leone's civil war it was all a bit too weird for me.

The following Monday, I went to the SLPP's (the main opposition party) headquarters to see if I could arrange a meeting with a few of their candidates (of the 19 standing) for the leadership of the party. We had to sweet talk a giant thug on the gates by saying we were loyal supporters and I had flown in especially to provide the SLPP with election winning resources – I was, of course, talking out of my arse.

Luckily my arse turned out to be quite the flatterer.

The editor of the party newspaper was very enthusiastic about my project and promptly gave me the numbers to all 19! After watching each of them in turn being interviewed on the TV I decided that Mr Andrew Keili was not only the most capable and promising candidate but also a man who seemed opened to new ideas. Fortunately my prediction was correct and I met him on the Tuesday in his office. Mr Keili has some pragmatic approaches to tackling the rising socio-economic problems that are blighting Sierra Leone and he was receptive to the idea of Open Source. As a result I will be working with his business CEMMAT on evaluating OS for the mining sector as well as the country as a whole. Mr Keili provided me with a number of useful documents which has improved my understanding of the country's problems and I am pleased to say I now have a friend in politics. Mr Keili recommended I speak with the minister of public affairs; Mr Alpha Khan.

Myself and Mr Keili.

It took two weeks for Mr Khan to pick up his phone.

In the meantime I started sorting out my school projects with Extra Mile. Michael Fielding, the director, is a truly dedicated man and it was really nice to see a familiar face. After arranging the various meetings I'll be attending next week, including with the Vice President of Charles Magai University, we went to his beach cottage with his volunteers to relax for the day. The beach itself was astounding; to put it into context, it was the beach where the famous bounty advert was shot.

Jackie in his school uniform. Jackie lives in the Extra Mile compound.

Obviously I was royally sunburnt.

I spoke at great length with a French lady from Handicapped International about the legacy of child soldiers. Thorough psychiatric care is of paramount importance as yesterdays child soldiers become tomorrow's uprisings. I wrote this poem as a result:

Children of the Soil

'Orange tik nobar bon lem' - An orange tree will never bear limes

While young hungry mouths chew bitter pith

not strong enough to pierce its skin

not strong enough to eat their crops

not strong enough to grip their chalk.

Still teething. Still teething.

Mosquito's draw the sweetest juice

without sowing seeds for further fruit

What zest of life

From wilted flowers,

What relieving shade

From rotting seeds?

The Thuglords of this eternal summer

Those weeds to many,

Those locusts, those grazers.

They germinate nothing but herd rusted flocks.

Failed crops. Failed crops. Failed crops.

'No Harvests here. Nothing grows up round these parts.'

Those kids,

They are passion's pips

spat into dust

Those pulped bruised seedlings

Autumns arable chaos

sown into soil to rot in the fields

a crop full of crosses and parasites.

Those Thuglords,

They cast spider-webs for dew drops

that could relieve parched tongues

but instead string them as necklaces

or as nooses.

They feed on nurseries,

on saplings, on futures.

They teach you what it is to be a man

My Belladonna, my poisoned child,

It's the insects that farm this land.

I wanted to immerse myself in the literature and history of Sierra Leone and decided that a book store was the best way of going about it. This seemed logical, until I tried to find a book store. I still haven't found one as such, there are book vendors who sell mostly second hand trashy fiction like 'the Da Vinci Code' but nothing specific to SL. However, in a superb twist of fate, in asking for directions to a bookshop (that later turned out not to exist) I met a young writer by the name of Walter Davies.

Walter turned out to be a member of Pen International, an organisation that promotes writing as an important development tool worldwide. I met with Walter on several occasions demonstrating the system we built for SL and gave him a few useful pieces such as Celtx; the free professional scriptwriting software.

Walter introduced me to Mr Mohammed Sheriff, the president of SL's Pen International division and two time winner of the BBC world service playwriting competition. Mr Sheriff was very positive about using Open Source to help PEN in it's school programmes, as well as for their community of writers, who are struggling to get even the most basic resources.

It was a very productive meeting and I'm pleased to say that I will be setting up Sierra Leone's first ever Poetry Slam as a side project. Mr Sheriff is also going to introduce me to UNICEF as he thinks my project will be of great interest to them. When he said that, I was flabbergasted. UNICEF? Wow.

Myself and Mr Sheriff

Slam Poetry could be a very useful social empowerment tool here. For a start it is much more community focused that written poetry; requiring performance, power and a live audience. Secondly, it's a cheap art form and can be practised and written by anyone, regardless of their background and to some extent literacy. What excites me most about organising a Slam here is that poetry is still seen as a mostly aristocratic pursuit. In England with the likes of Byron Vincent and Kate Tempest poetry has become a cool and popular art form. A poet winning the Slam in Krio would be amazing. I'm confident if it's organised correctly it will be a long lasting event and to ensure healthy competition, I'm putting up the prize money myself.

I didn't get chance to meet Alpha Khan as he was called into an emergency meeting. I did however meet with the co-ordinator of Political Affairs and Mr Khan's right hand man – Mr Agibu Jalloh.

Myself and Mr Jalloh.

Mr Jalloh was American educated and as a result has a thick Chicago sounding accent. He called me Jimmy relentlessly, even after I stressed my name was James. I found him a likeable chap. He is, however, quite formidable and the presentation itself was an intense experience. I had to be very patient as the meeting was constantly interrupted by officials and phone calls. Luckily, he was receptive to the idea and gave me a plethora of useful contacts, including the Attorney General and Minister of Justice Mr Kargo and the Director General of Ministry Human Resources Mr Surror.

I met with both ministers later that afternoon to arrange further meetings and discussions.

Despite the success of acquiring these contacts, the day left a peculiarly sour taste in my mouth.

I had the overwhelming impression that the ministers were not particularly fussed about putting in place policies for the future of their institutions. An example of which was Mr Kargo who said the legal system's IT infrastructure was to be put in by a development organisation, but he couldn't remember which and then promptly left. He had given me at most two minutes of his time.

Still, even small progress can be built on and I have some important meetings with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development, Ministry of Finance and the Registry Office still to come. Fingers crossed!

I also went to the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sancturary, located about 8miles of out Freetown. Seeing wild Chimpanzees was fantastic but being in actual jungle was even better.

John enjoying victory after a 2km uphill trek.

At the sanctuary, I learnt what animals there are in Sierra Leone, something which had being surprisingly hard to uncover.

It turns out the wildlife here is still vibrant and diverse, despite the carnage inflicted by the civil war on the animal populations. The species include: manatees, elephants, pygmy hippos (apparently they are still big, I wanted a pocket sized one!) hawks, leopards, vultures, chameleons, barracuda (had a lovely Barracuda steak the other day) a range of horrendous spiders, pygmy kingfishers, sea owls, bats (you see thousands of them every dusk) monkeys, pangolins and snakes, lots of snakes.

Including spitting cobras. Jesus.

In fact, the only non poisonous snake here is the grass snake, but it will still cause you trouble if it bites you. This is because the locals believe grass snakes only attack witches and therefore, being bitten by one, may cause you to be centre of unwanted magical attention.

John was telling me that when he was last in the provinces he had seen a baby cobra fight with a chameleon. The chameleon turned bright red and scared the cobra away. If I encountered a cobra, I'd probably just cry.

Here's a lovely great big cockroach. They keep turning up dead on their backs around my flat, which is nice.

Cockroaches

Cockroaches

Lumber

Like

Legged

Severed

Thumbs

Ambling round my kitchen

For rice grains and crumbs.

They come to die on my kitchen floor

A spiritual journey

that ends

by the mop bucket.

Floating on tiles for me to find

Come sunshine, come coffee.

I was talking to a local elder about the Leopard Society the other day. I'd heard bits and pieces here and there about the Leopard Society; a cult much feared for their cannibalism and ritual practise in West Africa. He told me how they used to terrorise the British under colonialism, as well as the local villagers, taking travellers at night and plundering sick and vulnerable villagers from their beds.

Whilst many felt this tradition died long ago, he said there was somewhat of a recurrence during the civil war – something Freetown museum confirmed. The museum said a revival during the war was quite likely as reports of cannibalism and maiming had been common across both Liberia and Sierra Leone and that rumours of 'leopard people' were abound. The elder said they were still in practise and warned me to watch out for myself in the provinces; I felt this was a bit ridiculous considering it's been nearly ten years since the end of the war. Many traditions have become purely ceremonial, for cultural reasons, as the majority of the population in the provinces is now Muslim.

Then John passed me a newspaper from late last month. The headline read: 'ritual murder of Fourbah College student'. His genitals and other parts of his body had been removed.

I couldn't find the newspaper article to post up, as many newspapers don't have online facilities, but I found this article on the same murder: http://canvassnews.com/?m=20110308

After reading it, I decided to take the elder's story a bit more seriously.