As part of my MA dissertation research, I spent four weeks in a town called Makeni that is situated in central Sierra Leone. I obviously knew about Sierra Leone’s history of civil war and Ebola so I wasn’t sure what to expect. It was a strange experience really, I’ve never been somewhere that had such a scarcity of ‘things’ nor was so difficult to explore due to its lack of infrastructure. There is such beauty to be found in its landscapes and people I really hope that Sierra Leone’s future is peaceful and prosperous. 

Waterloo junction sweats grease and thick dust;
the Kekes, they dip and then swing round ocadas
dodging trucks as they spew out their dense puffs of grey.
Graffitied, the taxis crawl like kaleidoscope beetles
edging their way through the hot traffic tangle.

The verge of the road is just splintered shop fronts
painted primary bold colours, peddling wares of all sorts.
There’s a boy with a toy made of string, cans and bottle tops
who runs through the car park trailing ash in his wake.

Urban roads of tarmac are quickly short-lived –
beyond the town boundaries it’s red, rock and mud.
It feels medieval out there with wood burning stoves,
women sweep swiftly with brooms of old twigs
whilst beside them palm fences grow grey in the sun.

Back in Makeni, a man walks with painstaking poise with
a basket of shoes perched heavily up on his head;
he traverses the traffic down Magburaka Road and
down here, the verges offer bellies green veg
while the feral dogs lie recumbent in the gutter, roadside
their pus-filled eyes and their open top sores
are just like a devil’s halo that throbs, the flies gnaw
at the wounds like a buffet –
It’s repulsive and shocking but you can’t look away.

The produce is scarce but the cigarettes are cheap
it’s where puppies die hot beneath the tall Kapok trees
while their parents howl and call out at the night;
insomniacs lie restless, soaked in their sweat
as the roaches traverse across sound asleep faces
and the worms make a home in the wells.

The pastor comes back,
He wants just to talk – just to talk?
And then you feel bad for thinking like that.
Abdul waits patiently wanting a job
and the bored khaki soldiers stand guard
beside the banks that don’t have Leones.

Up Wusum Hill, there’s a boy in a tutu following you
who gives a sassy answer or two
when you ask him to go, shoo, go far away.
Mary, so cold who shows strange sweet compassion
to dirty legs sprayed brown by the rain,
she cups her dark hands to help wash them clean,
as a teen, you learn, she got pregnant and ran away
from Kamakwie and suddenly you understand
her moods far more empathetically.

In Freetown the diamond dealers grab your hand at the parties because
you’re an Oporto*, an insipid white alien that everyone wants to point out and shout at
and you can’t wait to leave for where everything is clean, where you’re left all alone,
where the shops are filled with delicious smart things…
and then the guilt sets in because this is a trip, a sort of vignette,
a short-lived dream to be dipped in and out of,
for us it’s a choice but for them this is life.

 

 

*Oporto or ‘white man’ is literally shouted at you by pretty much everyone you walk past. Endearing at first, it quickly becomes pretty irritating!