After an emotionally and physically draining project in Sierra Leone with Matt and Murray I decided to take a well deserved break in The North York Moors National Park with my partner Sarah.

There was only 10 days before my next project started at the International School in The Seychelles and I really needed some time and space to relax and reflect.

We found ourselves a traditional farm house b&b and were so pleased to be greeted by our hosts Anne and Tony with a pot of hot tea and homemade scones with fresh cream and jam upon our arrival.
 
The farm house was just on the edge of Glaisedale, about 9 miles inland from Whitby and perched very nicely in the North York Moors National Park.
The shear scale of the moorland is breathtaking, evoking a sense of natural wonder, freedom and making me proud of being a Yorkshireman.

As Peter Kay once said “it’s nice to go away but its even nicer to come back home”

I’m sitting in a hotel close to the airport with Jon, Murray and Franlkin and we’re biding time ‘til the flight home. I’ve just had a croque monsieur (Laughing Cow with chunks of pork luncheon meat, it was actually quite nice, I must have been hungry).

Last night we said our goodbyes to Barmmy Boy, Alfred Scotland, Memunatu, the cheeky sods Ibrahim and Mohamed (who were looking for some cash), Lam and Blesss who were such good friends.

This morning Sidibay came along to say goodbye – such a nice kid and he’s had such an awful time. He’s a heroic figure.

We’ll keep in touch with Barmmy, Sidibay, Lam and Bless and we’ll keep up contact with iEARN. And of course, we’ll keep in touch with the excellent, earnest, caring Franklin.

We’ve come away with so many intentions. I hope we can keep them all.

I’m ready to go home. I want to see my wife and children. I want my bed. I want some salad that hasn’t been washed in Freetown water. I want a glass of wine. I want cold nights. I want electricity and the internet.

The ten mile ride from the hotel to the ferry (Lungi airport is on a peninsula outside Freetown) takes two hours. The taxi is weighted down with luggage.

We arrive just in time as they close the ferry gates. A terrifying exit from the taxi into throngs of kids wanting to carry our bags. Again, thank God for Franklyn – he yells at everyone and we hurry to the boat – thre guys carrying Jon and Murray’s large, hard Samsonite cases on their heads.

It’s a 45 minute ride. From the ferry, with the mountains behind, Freetown looks pretty much like any port – it could be Cherbourg or Santander.

On the ferry there’s a suspicious surprise in store. It’s the guy who our friend Chris introduced to us one night – he’s called Joseph – the first one who wanted to telll us about his diamond mine…

… so maybe the adventure isn’t quite over. I’ve said all along that the time when we’re most likely to be robbed in this corrupt and desperate country (peopled by a mixture of warm-hearted, lovely funny people and out-and-out pirates), is the only time when we can be truly separated from our luggage – after checking-in the airport.

Let’s see what happens.

Here’s a posting from our fine friend Franklin who has looked after us like a brother. I know he’d want me to edit this at some point and help him to improve his already excellent English, but for now I’ll leave it as it is because I can hear his voice in in his writing.

My experience in Meeting with Jon, Matt and Murray in Sierra leone

Over the week, it has being so wonderful and fantastic for me to met with the above names.
I actually feel motivated, connect, educated and inspired by the their smooth and sound steadfastness. These made a big change in me and impact a positive change in my local community here in Sierra Leone.

I also realised that they are here to help teach us about video and journal articles, and they definitely did that throughout their outstanding devotion.

Their intervention in Sierra Leone allowed a throng of youths to flock in the iEARN centre and I think they have basically reached our needs of expectations that I know can bring us into the lime light of success and open-up new windows and doors of opportunities around the tale-globe.

What makes the work of their visitation in Sierra Leone Viable is that, it’s directly targeting our young people in iEARN Sierra Leone to be able to face challenges in life, solve problems and build their capacity for better and feature leadership potential, well by means of teaching how to use video and editing, as well as writing journals for blog publications.

These can also reach a far effect to capacitate our carrier and play a significant progress in addressing issues of vital for our time example, peace and human rights, conflict resolution, youth employment and sustainability development etc.

We are so excited about our recent progress in learning and sharing the complementary of education through video and journals writings for the blog publications,
In aim, these is all done in order to achieve our best goals in the feature. Reason why because young people are the best investment of these nations everywhere and even in history, so they most remain with education permanently as it’s so paramount in life.

What do they students like to gain from their education is that, learning about important skills that is so educative: such skills are learning our to do documentaries, filming, be poetic in writing skills journals, making new friends all-over the globe, knowing how to contribute to the blog account, sharing the complementary experience of different cultures, dressing, foods, back-ground etc.
That I believe can make a difference of vital learning.

Responsibility: these is a smooth and good task of application that involves patient understanding, caring, considerable, security, timing, devotions and accountability transparency for glaring knowledge. To me, it’s sound incredible, it brings me closer in learning how to become a good father for a home in the future and straight leadership outstanding.

I wholehearted say thanks to three wonderful and energetic parent who have finally distinguish themselves in recognition of the world showing clearly how figure they are, as they have built up a positive profile and presented a clean slate around the globe.

These has projected all-over the world and again these time round turn up in Sierra Leone Freetown.

A note here for our friends and funders, Creative Partnerships Hull.
Just to let you know… in amongst the busy, emotionally-draining, incredible, life-changing time we’re having here – we’re getting on with the nuts and bolts of some of our contract.

We visited Vine Memorial School (twinned with Kelvin Hall) and had a great chat with Veronica (I’ll have to check her surname), the principal there – a lovely, warm woman with a big smile and a great laugh.
She was delighted to see us and send her regards to her colleagues in Hull.

Even as I write, a handful of pupils at Vine are working with disposable cameras to record their daily lives. We’re going back on Thursday to learn more about the school and get some pics.

Our friend Franklin has promised to work closely between us and Vine when we return – so the creative exchange between these schools is all set to develop.

Furthermore, while Murray and Jon are editing over the next two days, I’ll be visiting two more schools to build some foundations for possible twinnings.

On Monday Jon, Andrew Benson-Greene and I had a productive meeting with Tom Walsh, director of the British Council in Sierra Leone.

He was very interested in the work we’re doing, the Hull/Wilberforce/Freetown relationship, and also in the talents of some of the young people we’ve met out here.

He asked us to keep him posted and also promised to help with a public screening of the films in the auditorium at the British Council’s offices in Freetown.

Okay, that’s all from me folks.

Our new base

It’s Tuesday morning now, and I’m sitting in the bizarre surroundings of our new hotel, a series of ‘villas’ and small apartments surrounded by a wall

During breakfast, tiny deer roam around the dining area and come sniffing at your table. Rabbits run around. There’s a pond full of terrapins and some huge black and white birds of prey in cages.

We’ve got air-con, 24 hour electricity, lots of security and fast wireless internet. It’s a small taste of what tourism might become one day – though there are no tourist guests at this place, it’s all NGO officers and businessmen.

The place is owned and run by Lebanese brothers and cousins. One of them tells us that there is a 7000-strong Lebanese community in Freetown. The first group came here in the 19th century. They thought they were heading for the US, but money ran out during the journey and the captain of the ship dropped everyone off in Sierra Leone. It was fifty years before they managed to get word of their whereabouts to their relatives back home.

Outside the compound is the beautiful Lumley Beach, fringed with coconut and palm trees. Looks great, but you can’t walk around without being pestered by amputees and beach-boys, or being glared at by gangs of youths. It’s safe but tiring by day, though put a foot outside the compound at night and you’re in the hands of thieves and prostitutes.

Last night Murray was in the car with Andrew from iEARN, driving along the beach road, when a white guy suddenly ran out from the beach and into the road, desperately waving his arms and chased by some shady figures in the darkness. He missed the car by inches.
When the road is empty you don’t stop to help. It could be an ambush.

It’s exhausting.

But the room is clean and cool and inside the compound it feels very safe.

Monday – the last day of filming

Busy day – Murray was out with Philip’s group making a film about the King Gimi area of Freetown which used to be the slave market. The old shackles are still there on the walls, so is the jetty where the first freed slaves landed when they settled in Freetown. But the place is mired in poverty. It’s a mess and it’s falling apart. This historical area should be Freetown’s pride, a real tourist trap, but instead it’s festering and unsafe for any outsider without an escort.

Jon and I spend most of the day with the girls filming the HIV/Education morality story they have written and rehearsed. They’ve put so much work into it and the acting is wonderfully, comically exaggerated. The production planning too has been very good – locations all sorted, costumes and make-up properly planned.

But they haven’t fully understood what’s involved in shooting a drama – all the different angles, takes and retakes, all the movement – so we all learn together. Most of it’s new for Jon and me too.

The great thing is, we get to see yet another side of life here. We film inside a clinic, in the cemetery and in a small compound of perhaps 10 tiny family houses. Crowds gather, it’s incredibly hot (I’m drenched with sweat). Sometimes we have to shout at people, but we all stay friends.

The last scene we have to shoot is intended to take place in a bar in Aberdeen (not the Scottish one, the Freetown one), so everyone involved has to pile into taxis. It’s rush hour and the light is running out, and we’re all very tired and stressed.

It’s not until we’ve set off that I realise what we’re walking into. The scene features a bad girl (Gloria, a bit of a tart) on a date with a bad kid (played by a girl dressed as a boy). The pair of them get friendly and the implication is that they will later sleep together (Gloria subsequently dies of AIDS).

So what we’re talking about is two white guys filming a scene at night with two black girls who are acting as though they will soon be having sex.

There’s no way we’re doing that. We’ll be lynched.

It takes an hour to get to our destination and when we arrive I have to explain what we’ve decided. We’ve wasted everyone’s time, but I think they see our point. We reschedule the shoot for the morning at the hotel. We’ll talk to the management here and make sure they understand what we’re doing.

The day ends with the best meal we’ve had in a bar which backs onto the hotel, just yards from our room.

We fight off the attentions of more prostitutes. The restaurant even has a couple of them who are an unofficial item on the menu. After the main course the waiter tells us the ladies want to buy us drinks. Naturally, we refuse.

After the meal Murray and Jon head out into the hotel compound to surf the net under the stars. I stay in and read through some of the written work the kids have done – two exercises – “If I was president’ and “My shopping list for Sierra Leone”

If I was president

Jonathan F Marrah

“I believe that information communication technology is the best way to improve the country. Even though they are other tele-communications in our country, but yet still feel they need more improvement.
“Number two point is have transportation. If I was a president in this country I should have improve the way of transport.

How can I improve this?
1- by construction of good road all over the country.
2 – by providing government bus for the nation.
3 – I will make sure that I provide petrol so that people will pay low rate of transport to bring goods from the provinces.
“I thank you.”

Ibrahim Vandi - A/A Secondary School

“…provide things which will make the country become neat and fine like the means of providing electricity, water supply, good schools, good roads, farming, good hospitals, public toilets, dustbin for emptying cabages and all sorts of rubbish, good means of transportation, allow in foreign investors, avoidance of illiteracy, provide good security to life and properties of the citizens, and fight against poverty, the protection of human rights… I must try to live in peace, unity and justice.”

Salim B Yokie – Prince of Wales School

“The first thing is the attitude of the people in Sierra Leone, both morally and spiritually. The immoral of the people in Sierra Leone is very high. Take a look at our brothers and sisters in country, the way the dress and their behaviour is not good. They are polluting the nations and the country at large. What belong to male is female, likewise what belong to female is male in the manner of dressing.”

My shopping list for Sierra Leone

Aiah Samuel Lebbie –
Prince of Wales School

1) I will buy electric powers to generate the entire country.
2) I will buy ships and ferries in order to improve sea transportation.
3) Buying of aeroplanes.
4) I will buy a lot of vehicles that can be in any conner of the country.
5) Building of more stadia as we presently only have one.
6) Improving our airport and build new ones.
7) Construction of roads and mansions.
8) Build of schools and educational institutes as learning brings all sorts of developments.

So these are some of my hopes and dreams about my country Sierra Leone and I hope and believe that one day they will come to pass.

Basiru Adesina

“First of all I must start by saying Sierra Leone is not as it was. The economy has collapsed, sporting activity has deteorated. The National power authority is not as it was, political problems everywhere and also unusual courses arises etc. And so if I was to shop for Sierra Leone it is a very big load for the person who is to do it.”

Bai Bamgura

1) To bring unity among people
2) Better food security
3) To bring peace in the country
4) Better electricity supply
5) Good education
6) Cleaniness of the country
7) Stop violence/corruption in the country
8) Rebuilding of roads
9) Bringing job opportunities
10) The development of justice in the country.

There’s much more of this work, which I’ll post onto the blog at a later date when we return, but that should give you some idea about the earnest and heartfelt feelings of kids here. We’ll do the same exercise in Hull schools when we get back. It’ll be fascinating to compare the results.

In amongst the sheaf of papers, I found a letter which one of the iEARN kids had passed to me, but which I’d not had the chance to read.

It’s cracked my heart open, yet again. I’ll keep his identity to myself for now. Here’s a little of what he wrote.

“I want to go back to school but I have nobody to care for me and my school fees. If I not get my education my eyes are open but I am blind because am not educated.
“Please Mr Matt, help me for my future. I have no father and mother and I am the only son.
“The war affect me seriously. I am suffering of poverty for my education and my living. Poverty is sucking my blood. Please Mr Matt, help me and the Lord will help you.
“From the day I saw you with my eye I always dream about you and I always pray for me and you. MAY GOD GUARD YOU.”

I sleep well, Jon sleeps okay, Murray sleeps badly.
We’re moving on today.

After writing the Saturday blog on the laptop, ready to download whenever we manage to find an internet café, I pop downstairs to check if the hotel restaurant is open yet.

Our lovely housekeeper Good News (what a name) is sitting on a bench outside with her two sons, Mikey and Marcos. As always, she’s dressed in fine Salonian clothing. She comes over and gives me a hug: “Matt, I bring my sons for you to meet.” A shy 15 year-old and an even shyer 7 year-old. I shake their hands and we make the appropriate Salonian small talk. I tell them they have a wonderful mother who has worked very hard to make us feel happy (true). I ask them about school, their favourite subjects, tell them it’s a pleasure to meet them.

Good News tells me the restaurant is closed all day today, and there’s no electicity today either. Bad news.

Back upstairs Murray and Jon are sitting amidst their bags and technical chaos (cables, machines, cameras). We chat again about our decision to move on, check our motives, make sure we’re not being paranoid. We decide we’re not and that we have to move for both our safety and our sanity. You don’t really want to lose both of those things. They’re handy.

I tell them we need to help Good News out if we can, give her a few quid.
Jon (kindly and jokingly, but making a fair point) tells me that I should have toughened up by now and that we can’t help everyone. I know what he means. And I’ve also tried to avoid being the one with cash in my pocket because I can’t figure the currency. 100, 000 Leones (a huge wad of cash) is something like £30. A beer is 2000 Leones. I get confused.

Good News – there has to be good news

The restaurant is closed but Good News tells us she’ll fix us some breakfast. But like most things here, this doesn’t seem to happen very fast. Me and Jon chat with her on a balcony near our rooms. She sits on a chair and leans on the balcony wall, sometimes looking into the distance, speaking slowly, eloquently and clearly, telling us about her life as a mother in Sierra Leone, now and during the way.

She’s clearly in the mood to talk with us. We’ve all become quite close to her during our short stay. She’s so incredibly warm and kind. And people here know that the only ways they can find help are to tell their story and pray to God. They don’t have possessions or currency. Their stories are all they have.

Jon asks if we can film her. We explain that it is so people in the UK can understand what life is like here. She’s happy to let it happen. I’m a little foggy on some of the early details (Jon’s got it on film) but this is what she told us.

Good News

Good News was married to a school teacher and they lived with their children in Sierra Leonian second city of Bo.

During the civil war, when the rebels took Bo, the family fled to a village in the provinces. Good News tells us that the rebels were mad – she calls it physical witchcraft – they would sieze a pregnant woman and tell her that they wanted to know whether the child was a boy or a girl; when the woman couldn’t answer they would slit her stomach open to find out.

Sometimes they would round everyone up, lock them in a house, and then set the house on fire.

Sometimes they would pin people down and drip burning plastic their eyes.

These things happened. They are common experiences.

Once the rebels came to the village where Good News was staying with her husband, children and mother. When they came she fled into the bush, gathering her children as she could, running, fleeing from what might happen. She lost one of her kids, but three days later managed to find him. She also lost her husband and mother, but hoped that they’d be safe.

They hid in the bush for two weeks. The rebels sent troops in looking for stragglers, but they managed to evade them.

When the rebels left the village, Good News and her children went back to look for her husband.
They found him. He’d been killed and left in the street. She cries as she tells us that with her kids she tried to drag him into the bush and bury him. But they had no tools to dig with, the place was dangerous.

Her eldest son said that they should drag him under some leaves and leave him.
She doesn’t get to a point where she can tells us what happened to her mother and we don’t ask.

Good News has worked hard since the war ended. A friend in Freetown offered her accommodation and she decided to try to build a life for herself. She’s got four kids to put through school (remember, you pay for that here) and she explains that she’s not an educated woman.

Maybe not educated, but the strength of her character and her obvious eloquence, intelligence and nobility (like that of so many people here) is nothing short of a miracle. It’s humbled me. It’s also made me realise how powerful is the instinct to survive, and that those who survive best are those who care.

Good News hoped and prayed, she sold mangoes, she attended church and worked to help her brothers and sisters. She never stopped working.

Eventually she got her job at the hotel as housekeeper. She is paid 100,000 Leones a month (about £20) plus tips if she’s lucky. That’s 7 days a week. Her rent is 300,000 a month. The school fees she has to pay are around 20,000 a month. Then there’s food, kerosene, transport. Work it out: Income, say 200,000 (40 quid) outgoings 400,000 (80 quid).

I’ve written that and as I re-read it, it just looks like numbers.

After the interview both Jon and I sit on the balcony crying. This place opens your heart in ways it’s never been opened before.

How can we help?

We speak to Murray. He’s right. When we give her the money we need to make it clear that it’s got nothing to do with the film.

I tell Good News that we’re helping her because she’s cared for us and we respect how hard she works and what a friend she’s been.

So much for Jon telling me to toughen up.

We’re all changed men.

It was intended to be a rest day, but then the production schedule for one of the group’s (leader Philip Adams) films about the history of the city fell behind so we moved it to Saturday, thinking we could combine it with some sight-seeing.
So the plan was to met at 12.

In the morning our gingery friend Chris showed up with two guys who are big stars in Freetown – musicians and performers who have their own TV show and also work with the UN. I’d got writing to do so I left them with Murray and Jon.

The 12 o’clock start failed to materialise. Franklin turned up to get things going but then went to the centre and came back telling us that not everyone was ready. There then followed a long period (hours) where no-one seemed to know what was happening, so eventually we decided to go to a nearby cinema and watch the FA Cup Final.

Wild place. Wooden benches in pitch darkness. The Salonians were generally supporting West Ham (I think Reo-Coker has Sierra Leone connections) - much whooping and shouting, just like home.

After the match there was more too-ing and fro-ing before a plan seemed to be emerging. With Philip and two of the girls, Memunatu and Elenya (I’ll have to check my spellings) we’d go to Wilberforce village where the musician/performer guys live, make a film with them, then make another with Philip looking at the history of Wilberforce.

So we pile into a fleet of taxis and off we go, winding our way up into the hills of Freetown, with fantastic views of the city below.

After dropping off and meeting the performers’ family, all sitting around outside shacks below a big old cotton tree, the filming starts. We move around the village as Jon captures the performer fellas doing a kind of funky Bill and Ben routine. Various takes, crowds gather. I take a back seat and chat with Philip and Memunatu.

Palm wine and courting

To Murray’s complete delight (like he’d finally found the Holy Grail, I’ve never seen him move so fast in all the time we’ve been here) we spotted a roadside stall selling palm wine. Memunatu tells us how people tap the trees and the palm wine comes out naturally fermented. There’s no brewing or additives. Alcohol from heaven, says Philip. It tastes like sweet, rubbery potatoes and vodka.

Memunatu explains that traditionally in Sierra Leone, if a boy likes a girl then he takes her a bottle of palm wine, some kola nuts and maybe a live chicken. Philip says that this practise is slowly dying out in the city, it’s still common in the provinces.
I tell them that in England a boy might give flowers to a girl, though it’s probably more likely that they’d just go halves on a pizza.

Memunatu wants to know if it’s really true that in the UK a girl can ask a boy out on a date and feel no shame. I explain that yes, it’s true and it’s common. It’s clearly an eye-opening idea. In Sierra Leone if a girl were to ask a boy out she’d be marked down as a loose woman with no morals

It’s pleasant at Wilberforce, high on a hill over Freetown, and there are barracks nearby. It’s tidy, a little slower than other places and the air is less polluted. A village atmosphere, people sit around or walk about in the streets, lots of friendly chat, lots of handshaking going on.

After filming we hang around outside an internet café, chatting while Jon uploads the blog. Again, we’ve had to postpone our commitment to Philip – daylight has run out – but he’s a great kid, patient and kind, and Murray promises him the whole day on Monday – which is more than he would have got otherwise.

In many ways Philip, Elenya and Memunatu are just like any well brought-up, bright, young people from anywhere in the world. They watch the OC and Friends and 24 on Sierra Leone satellite TV (placing them in a fairly privileged and small minority), they’re polite and proud, well-dressed, respectful, fun and funny. But they also have incredible physical poise and leadership ability (the kind that is perhaps taught from an early age).

Memunatu tells me that she is now at business school and one days she hopes to run her own business – perhaps some kind of manufacturing business. She hopes to travel and to learn more about marketing opportunities, but to bring her skills back to Sierra Leone.

So often when you speak to the kids here you hear this. Whilst it’s clear from things that other people have told us, and from what we read and hear on the radio, that the ruling classes in Sierra Leone are broadly and deeply corrupt, these kids want to play a role in making their country a better place. They don’t want to escape, they want to make their skills work for their country. It’s a view you’d rarely hear in the classrooms of Hull.

In this country where people have to beg, steal or prostitute themselves to pay for their children’s education, where a source of electricity is a rare privilege, where a real, fair democracy is still a dream, I explain to them that in the UK education is free, prescriptions are free, the old, the sick and the incapacitated are supported by the state. They’re astonished. They can’t believe we have it so good.
When I tell them that in Hull only 38% of the people vote in elections they think I’m kidding them.

Time’s always running out for Jack Bauer, Chandler’s always a goofball, there’s always Coca-Cola.

There are points where worlds come close, so close that you can reach out and touch. But sometimes it’s like being on another planet. As we stand outside the internet café in the darkness, and the stallholders huddle around their kerosene lamps, Philip remembers how he stood almost in this same spot just a few year ago and watched as a young mother ran don the street with her toddler while a Nigerian jet plane bombed them from above. As the bomb exploded, shrapnel hit the child in the neck and she was killed.
We have to move on, explain Philip and Memunatu. We have to put it behind us.

Back at the hotel

Oh, here we go. Back at the hotel. Our nice, safe, friendly hotel.
Once again the streetlife has infiltrated. It’s too complicated to explain, but some dodgy geezer who showed up last Sunday at the beach bar where Chris took us just before we nearly got robbed or arrested, has found us and wants to talk to us.

We beat hasty retreat to our room and try to sift the way through paranoia, scams and general security issues.

We’re three white guys in a black city. We’ve got money and equipment. There are too many links between too many people that we seem to have met in completely random circumstances. It’s like the bush telegraph is working a full pace.

Add in the fact that we’re exhausted, that there’s no air-conditioning, that Murray in particular has been sleeping badly and that the hotel only has electricity for 12 hours of the day (and none at all on Sundays!) we decide that for our own safety, we’re going to move on again.

We were hoping to visit Number Two River tomorrow for a boat ride (relaxation, crocodiles, a waterfall). Instead we’ll be looking for a new hotel.

It’s Saturday morning now. Murray and Jon are sitting outside talking to Chris, who has turned-up again, this time with his beautiful little daughter and a couple of musician guys.

I can hear them chatting, mixed in with all the streets sounds, the hooters pipping, the shouting. I think the plan is to give him a polite brush-off. We’d intended that today would be a day off, but this afternoon we’re having to go out with the kids again to make another film about the history of Freetown – should be pretty interesting, bit of a tour around some of the old areas settled by the freed slaves, see more of the crumbly old colonial/creole houses.

Thursday night I gave the Bob Marley night a miss. I’d got a sore throat and felt completely exhausted so lay on my bed for 12 hours and slept it off – I felt fine again yesterday.

Friday – a day of football

Friday was the turn of our iEARN ‘football’ group to make a film.
A big group of young fellas aged between 14 and 18, but as soon we set off the group somehow swelled to about 30 instead of the planned 19.
Thankfully, our fine friend Philip (his dad’s in the army) used his considerable leadership skills to get rid of the hangers-on.

We’d got a surprise for this lot. Adam Pearson, the chairman of Hull City FC, had donated 20 sky-blue away-kit shirts, and to much excitement (and chanting of Tigers! Tigers!) we handed them out.

The football field was a square of red dust which we reached by winding our way through a cemetery, the guys all trotting along in formation like an army platoon, Jon filming the whole thing. There’s such a strongly militaristic approach to the way people here seem to organise themselves – again, another reminder of the civil war; these people seem to be constantly ready to mobilise, it’s part of their culture.

The game was great. Huge dark clouds over the city but still a crisp bright light. Tigers’ shirt playing against skins – amazing, lean, athletic bodies.
The football is fast and very ‘street’, end-to-end, close interplay. Me and Jon pitch in for 15 minutes. Wow, it’s hot. I do okay, play left wing, set up a goal and manage to make a few decent passes. Toward the end Jon takes a tumble and cuts his leg, so head back to the hotel to clean it up and have lunch.

In the afternoon we head back to iEARN and interview a handful of the footballers about their favourite teams, the importance of football in the lives. And then somehow, out of nowhere, the government director of sport turns up and wants to speak on camera – he’s great, explaining how they’re launching the country’s first ever football development programme across all the provinces and chiefdoms in Sierra Leone. Chiefdoms. Mad.

Then we learn that an interview has also been set up for us next Monday with the Minister for Sport. Suddenly we’re Reuters or the BBC are we?

In the evening the three of us go with Barmmy Boy and Franklin to the National Stadium watch a Salone Premier league game (basically based in Freetown) between the two top teams, St Edward’s and I can’t remember the name of the other.

It’s fantastic. The football’s very similar to the game we saw on the dusty square – very fast, close interplay, opportunistic, all attack. The atmosphere is great – it’s a big stadium, in the round, concrete step-seating. I guess the Africa capacity would be around 50,000, but in the UK it’d seat 20,000. Tonight, I’d guess that there are maybe 2000 people scattered around (these people are poor, football’s a luxury). But it’s friendly, there’s a cool breeze, and on the pitch black hill behind you can see the lights from the few places that are lucky enough to have generators.

In the UK you get a pie. In Freetown there are women with trays balanced on their heads selling boiled eggs, fried plantains, fried fish, fried chicken, beers.
The game ends 1-0 to St Edward. As we leave the stadium in total and complete darkness, we pass street stalls with little, candlelit cabinets on wheels, selling the cold baked bean with mayonnaise and salad sandwiches that seems to be a street staple.

Night-time and juju

Before the game in the evening, but after the day’s filming, we head into town to exchange currency and sort various other bits and bobs.

Freetown by night is wild. It’s teeming with people, dogs wandering into the biggest main road in the country’s capital city, a guy on rollerblades with a thin pink nylon dressing gown flowing out behind him, swooping down the hill racing the taxis. The darkness falls and there’s no electricity apart from the odd few generators in Chicken Champ cafes, people huddle around kerosene lamps selling food and cigs from their little stalls. It’s like life after the apocalypse.
Come to think of it, it is life after the apocalypse.
When the rebels took Freetown they called the attack Operation No Living Thing.

The great thing about the darkness is that no-one can see that you’re a white boy.

We visit Universal Photos (the smile makers for picture takers) to get some disposable cameras developed. There are loads of young guys attached to the show – they’ve formed themselves into an organised guild of freelance photographers. It’s their job to go out and about trying to photograph events, get the pics developed and then take a tiny slice of commission.

Leaving the centre in a taxi always takes ages, people stepping in front of the car, no traffic systems or lights whatsoever, but it’s always an eye-opener and you can stare at the amazing things from the safety of the car.

We pass a secret society troup winding their way through the crowds. People completely covered but for a dark gauze in front of their face, a two headed figure, devils in red, all dancing an waving sticks.
Dark, strange and definitely not to be photographed.

Later, Barmmy and Franklin explain about these so called ‘secret societies’. They practise African black magic, juju. They have invisible witch guns which can shoot a person and kill them – and these guns do work, says Barmmy, they work every time. Stay away from these people.
If you need them to do work for you – maybe you need a neighbour bumping off – then they’ll do it for you. But the price you pay for their services is the sacrifice of one of your own family members.

How to deal with a monkey

Barmmy explains: if you see chimps up a tree and they’re throwing coconuts at you, what you need to do is pretend you’ve got a machete and make like you’re going to chop down the tree. They’ll scatter.

If you see a baboon, and there’s a stick on the ground, make sure you pick up the stick first, if the baboon beats you to it you’ll get a whupping.

Barmmy says people in the provinces get anxious about baboons because, if you’re not careful around them, they’ll slap you - and they’ve got really hard hands.

He says that Sierra Leone is the world’s biggest importer of chimpanzees. He says that if you go to the provinces and ask for a chimp, they’ll give you one for nothing.

He laughs a lot when I ask him where we can buy monkey eggs.

Later, at the footy, he jokingly refuses to eat fried plantain because he says that Bruno, the chimp who escaped from a reserve and recently killed a man, will be able to smell it on him and he’ll attack him while he’s sleeping.

You lucky people are getting two postings in one day. See below for yesterdays news, you might want to read that first…

I’m almost running out of superlatives to describe this place. It’s like every time I post to the blog I’m describing everything as amazing, incredible, unbelievable… sorry about that, but it is.

Another amazing, incredible day. Right now we’re sitting in my room at the hotel. Murray’s sorting his pics on his laptop (if you haven’t looked at their pictures on flickr yet then you should, they’re fantastic and capture the spirit of the place perfectly), Jon’s completely flaked out on my bed. It’s 10 past 5pm and we’re exhausted so trying to get some rest-time in before going out to a Bob Marley Day celebration at the National Stadium – live music, which, judging by what we’ve heard so far, should be amazing, incredible, fantastic etc – you get the idea.

The music blares out of every taxi and van, hypnotic West African ragga reggae… Murray’s planning to buy it all.

Boys HIV Rap

click to start video.

Right now, things are nice. As I write, Franklin’s just turned up and he’s sitting reading the Graham Greene biography I gave him last night. He’s just taken Jon’s shoes off him and made him lie down properly on the bed. Sweet.

Crab Town – the Street-kids film group

Today was the turn of the group who wanted to make a film about streetkids – the hundreds of children who are unsupported by their families (if they have families at all) and who have to make their own way, begging, stealing and prostituting themselves.

The great thing about going out with a group of young people, and putting yourselves at their mercy, is that you become protected. No-one’s going to harm you if you’re with kids. And you get to see things that you’d never be able to see otherwise, things you’d never find. They’re insiders, and because you’ve trusted them, they look after you and return the trust.

So today the kids (age 14 – 20ish) took us to Crab Town and the Clock Tower where the poorest of the poor live.
Crab Town is wharf located just outside of central Freetown. It’s the city dump, basically a huge landfill, but people are living there because there’s water.

Few westerners will have ever seen such squalor.
It’s lively, it’s certainly a functioning community, there are shacks, stalls, huge stacks of firewood (this is one of the places people go to buy firewood) but the poverty is like nothing I’ve ever seen.
The harbourmaster comes to see us, a nice guy (but clearly so poor) – he the community organiser and he tells us how the people have organised themselves and they’re trying to get money to improve their conditions. He shows us buildings (buildings?) they’re trying to build. He tells us a little about life there, introduces us to few locals.

Gangs of barefoot kids four years-old push huge handcarts loaded with wood. Pigs root about at the river’s edge. People look at us blank-faced and wide-eyed.

While we’re filming a government surveyor/housing officer approaches us to ask what we’re doing (this also happens again later at Clock Tower). Again, he’s suspicious because these people, particularly government people, are so keen that only positive messages should be broadcast to the world. We explain that we’re rtying to show that people are struggling to improve their lives – this is becoming the stock answer to these people.

He says that these people have no property rights and no real right to be here, but that as they are here, he’s trying to help them ‘regularise their accommodation’.

You wonder how this chaos can ever be sorted out. How many years of stability and investment will it need before these appalling slum shanty-towns are history?

The kids we’re with conduct interviews with local kids. Jon and Murray film them. We go and buy Cokes. Hey, there’s always Coke. Wherever you are, you’re never far from a Coke. Have a Coke and a smile. It’s the real thing.

The iEARN kids are brilliant. They’re checking for us constantly and looking out for each other too, they carry our gear. Some of the older ones just chat – they just appreciate the fact that we treat them as equals, The younger ones want to be your friend – Ibrahim and Mohamed are two 14 year-olds who live together and look after each other, they want to know everything about my son Barney, they want to write to him, visit him. They really do mean it. And they want me to help them with their school fees – well of course they do. Who else can they ask?

Two of the older guys, Alfred and Philip, are our security. They keep everyone tight, circle the group, look out for everyone. They’ll be OK. Some kids are leaders, some have their wits and humour, some have strength. What happens to the others?
The iEARN kids have all found their way to something that will help them.
The street-kids aren’t so smart, so lucky or so blessed.

Clock Tower

A bumpy ride though the city, music booming, a stream of colour and wonder through the window. West African magic and madness.

Wow, Clock Tower is hairy. The centre of town, just like in any capital city, a congregating point for the poor and the mad – but multiplied, magnified and concentrated like everything seems to be here. Then throw in some of that Salonian ‘everything changes, things are happening, that you know but cannot understand’ strangeness, and maybe you get some idea of what it’s like.

Our kids tell us to be on our guard. They take our possessions from us knowing that we will be the targets, not them.

Clock Tower is exactly what it says – a big old colonial clock tower on a traffic island where streets meet.
Our kids find some street kids for us and Jon get’s his DV camera rolling. Then a crowd gathers, maybe a hundred people. We’re surrounded. On all the travel advice websites everything says avoid a crowd, where crowds gather in Sierra Leone trouble often breaks out - and we’re bang in the centre of one. Our kids get edgy, but they’re cool. They surround us, shouldering the pushy people, pushing people away.

The inevitable plain-clothes government heavy shows up: “What you people doing heah? You BBC? Where you from? What your business.”
I’m getting the hang of it now. Murray and Jon are busy filming so I offer my hand and formally introduce myself: “ Hello, how are you? My name is Matt Stephenson and I am an educator from Hull in the UK. We are making a film about how people live in Sierra Leone and how hard they are working to improve their lives. These young people from iEARN at the National Stadium are learning the skills to make their own films.”

“We must have positive message about our country.” He says. “Carry on your business.”

Phew. Again.

Fagin or Philanthropist?

After interviewing a barefoot little street-boy in ragged shorts, Alfred tells us he has arranged for us to see one of the places where the streetkids live.

Round the corner from Clock Tower we clamber 30 feet down some very steep, dodgy stones (you couldn’t call them steps) into a complex of shacks arranged along an open sewer and we meet an older guy (35? 40?) wearing an old Man U shirt and with a scar on his face. Alfred speaks to him and we’re clearly ok to be there. People shake our hands “Hey, White Boy! How are you?”

It’s like a pirates den. They’re the Lost Boys in Peter Pan. There are kids aged anything from 5 to 20 everywhere, some sleeping, some just hanging around. Eventually, after some negotiating in Krio, an interview takes place, but it’s so heavily accented in Krio that Murray, Jon and I have very little idea what’s being said.

I hear something about “give them some skills”.
Later one of our iEARN bunch tells me that that guy makes his living from the kids. He sends them out robbing, begging and whoring. In return, he keeps them safe, gives them a roof and a community.

I’m not really quite sure what we saw. We’ll get the interview translated soon, maybe that’ll make things clearer.

Back at the hotel, Jon sees a Hull City Council dust cart pass by, But doesn’t have his camera to hand.

Things are happening, that you know but cannot understand.