Lumley Beach
June 2003

I sat at a table outside next to a pair of British men. The menu listed hummus, a variety of Lebanese-style sandwiches, expensive pizza, and a few grossly overpriced local dishes. I ordered hummus, tomato soup, and a Carlsberg, and watched the ocean lap at the shore.

Two young Sierra Leoneans approached the British men and mumbled something. One cradled a baby antelope in his arms. It looked content to be carried.

One of the Brits, a gaunt-faced middle-aged man with sun-bleached hair and a perpetual expression of disdain, spoke loudly to the Sierra Leoneans.

“No, you’re not allowed to sell those here,” he said in a patronizing tone. “You’re not allowed to sell that. I’m going to call my friend, who is a big police man, right now.” He pulled out his phone.

The young men looked bewildered. Another Sierra Leonean had come to the scene. He translated the British English into Krio, a heavily accented English-based creole mixed with French, Portuguese, and indigenous African languages. The young men stepped back, eyes widening slightly.

“I’m calling my friend right now. My friend is a big police man, and you will get in trouble, because you’re not allowed to sell that.”

The translator repeated this in Krio, and the boys hesitated, then left.

Gaunt-face began chatting into the phone, “I’m just sitting at Family Kingdom having a couple of beers.” He spoke a little more, laughed, and hung up. Gaunt-face turned to his friend, a round man sitting with his back to me. “I really pissed those two off, eh, didn’t I?!” He laughed again. “I just can’t go buying everything I like!” He took a spoonful of soup and frowned at it.

I turned my attention back to my table. A fat fly was struggling to pull itself out of my beer. Yuck. I watched for a while, then gently nudged it out of the glass with my knife and placed it on the sidewalk. It fluttered around, struggling to lift its beer-drenched wings. I figured it would probably die there.

My hummus arrived, along with another fly in my beer glass. I looked at this fly, then on the ground. The first fly had somehow recovered and gone; either that or one of the colorful baby iguana-shaped lizards had snatched it up. I nudged this second fly out of the glass as well, and it eventually dried off and left.

A waiter visited the table next door. Gaunt-face complained about his soup. “It tastes like shit! White man’s shit or black man’s shit, I don’t know, but it tastes like shit! Are you going to tell them? I want you to tell them. Tell them it tastes like shit!” The waiter had a half-smile on his face, not sure how to handle this tirade. “Bring us more beers. And tell them the soup tastes like shit!”

My beer glass had captured yet another fly. This third fly I tried very hard to ignore, deciding that Nature must for some reason want flies to drown in beer. I didn’t drink any more beer, but sipped my tomato soup, which tasted all right to me if a bit bland.

A little while later, Gaunt faced hissed “SSSsssss,” to call a waiter over, using a noise commonly made here to get someone’s attention. Without pausing to see if someone would come, he said loudly, “Are any one of you prepared to stand up?” His waiter was already approaching the table. “Ah, there’s one!”

“Problem, sir? Problem?”

“I just want to order two beers,” he exclaimed, exasperated. “Put them on my bill. So I owe you for three Carlsbergs and a half soup.”

“Not a half soup!”

“Yes a half soup. A shit soup. I’m not going to pay for it. Put that on the bill. 'Shit soup.'”

“No it is not a half soup, it is a soup. You only ate half the soup.” The uncertain smile had returned.

The waiter left, returned, and placed the bill on the table. Gaunt-face was clearly not satisfied. “They put the soup on here! I’m not going to pay for that! How can they make it 20,000?” (about US $8) “3 beers and a soup? How can that be 20,000?”

“Call our waiter over and ask him,” his friend suggested.

“I don’t know which one,” Gaunt-face said, as if it were entirely unreasonable to expect him to recognize his waiter. “They all look alike!”

Beach encounters

After lunch, I walked south down the beach. A few little boys tried to sell me bags of chips. A teenage boy walked with me briefly, trying to convince me to take a picture with him. I shrugged him off, not sure how friendly I could be in this new culture. A man jogged over from a stall across the street and said, “I have nice clothing over there, nice African clothing. Not for now, for next time, maybe when you are leaving.” He wore a friendly expression, so I thanked him and said yes, maybe when I am leaving. His beach stall is right near the helipad from where flights go across the bay to the airport, so he probably hoped to catch foreigners looking one last time for colorful gifts as they left the country. “Next time then!” he said cheerfully as he jogged back to his stall.

I was surprised that no one followed me for long, pleading or harassing me as I’ve experienced with street salespeople in many other situations. As a western foreigner in the world’s poorest country—the annual per capita income is about $440, adjusted for purchasing power parity—I clearly had more money than they, yet they accepted polite refusals and simply suggested “Next time!” Their friendliness was refreshing, and I decided not to dismiss their wares so brusquely; I’ve many times refused people before I’m even sure what they are selling.

A few white women jogged by. A man called out to me, “How are you?” He came down the beach toward me from his dark green SUV. I cast him a slight smile and kept walking. “How are you? Are you missing California?” I stopped in my tracks and looked at him more closely. “I remember you. Dallas!” I said. It was the Sierra Leonean just returned from eleven years in Dallas who had been on the plane with me.

We sat down on the beach. I asked, “So how is it to be back here?”

“It’s—it’s a change,” he drawled. “It’ll take some readjustment. But look at this! It's beautiful here. This is the life—beach, bars. That’s what I wanna do. I wanna put up some good bars, let the world know what a beautiful place this is, bring in some tourism. I’m gonna do it right. I’ll put these guys out of business!” Sidiqi gestured toward the half-dozen bars spaced along the beach. “I remember I used to go swimming here every day, before I left. Can’t find beaches like this in Texas. I thought I’d come back after college—I’ve been trying to come back ever since I left college, but because of the war…” he trailed off.

Sidiqi had studied business as an undergrad, and even started his MBA, but decided that wasn’t for him. A few dull years of corporate accounting and he was more than ready to return to Sierra Leone and think about building up some businesses for himself in one of the world’s most beautiful locations. All he has to do is advertise that beauty and convince the world that it is safe to come here.

Female circumcision

Sidiqi ran into an old friend and I kept walking down the beach. For lack of anything else to do, I stopped when I got to the southernmost beach bar and ordered a Star, a local lager. I sipped it slowly and dug my feet into the sand. In front of the bamboo fence blocking off Ramada Beach Bar’s seating area, a teenage boy sat with a small collection of statues lined up in the sand. He didn’t ask anyone to buy; he just sat and waited, watching his potential customers. A couple of men entered the bar area and walked around, trying to sell bead necklaces and key chains and small statues, which they carried in their hands or in backpacks. I bought a key chain: a flat woman’s profile carved out of bone. The key chain is dwarfed by the heavy “bone” house keys I attached it to.

I started talking to a couple of twenty-something men who sat down at the table beside me. Mohammed is a Sierra Leonean who has been living in Philly for the last seven years. Charlie is from Freetown, but he spent a few months in D.C. as some sort of fellow at a democracy institute. Charlie loved D.C. and excitedly described the subway system there and all the troubles he had learning to use it to get from his apartment in Arlington into the city.

Somehow, the conversation switched to female circumcision. I hadn’t even known that it was practiced here.

“There are about fourteen ethnic groups here, and all of them practice it except the smallest group (the Krios),” Charlie explained. “People here don’t want to talk about it. A few people aren’t for it and so maybe they don’t practice in their own families, but you wouldn’t stand up in a village meeting and say how you feel; everyone would be shocked. Most people do it.” They laughed. I think I must have looked horrified.

A couple of weeks later, I met a doctor from IMC (International Medical Corps) at a going-away party for his colleague who was transferring to Iraq. The doctor started talking about female mutilation, as he called it. The term ‘mutilation’ is probably more accurate than ‘circumcision’, which implies the small clipping done to males.

“I see everything,” the doctor said. “In my job, I see everything, and it’s been done to most of them. The girl I saw today, for instance,” the doctor shook his head, “she had no definition, nothing. Everything was gone. The whole clitoris was cut off, from the base, and sewn flat. The outer labia and inner labia had been cut off entirely. There was just nothing left, no chance for stimulation.” He drew in the air as he talked, indicating the parts that had been cut off.

I shivered in sympathy pain.

Next article: Diamonds and reconstruction

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in the personal notes are my own. Facts presented are accurate to the best of my knowledge, but this site should not be taken as an authoritative resource.

Copyright © 2003 Julie Greene