Diamonds and reconstruction
25-27 June 2003

Kono is also a major diamond-producing center. The third largest diamond in the world was discovered there in 1972.

The 6-hour ride to Kono took me east across the country through moist green flora on a bumpy road riddled with potholes that spat red mud onto the car as we bounced through them. Palm trees poked up above the dense bush. Some areas had been cleared for firewood and building materials or burnt to make way for subsistence-scale agriculture. Little of the land was farmed, and where there were crops, they blended in with the trees, which were left standing among them. In a few low-lying areas, mud was piled into walls to create small pools for rice.

A string of villages with names like Magbuntuso, Masíngbi, and Mile 91 punctuated the greenery with their mud-wall houses. Some had rusty tin roofs; others had grass thatch roofs. Some had sturdy plastic tarps with “UNHCR” in blue letters held to their roofs with rocks. Families sat talking in front of their houses and colorfully dressed women washed clothes in no particular hurry or braided each others’ hair. Men and women walked near the villages with large bundles of sticks or metal pans filled with leafy vegetables balanced on their heads. A few of the larger villages had roadside stands selling pineapples, garlic, or small plastic bags of salt.

We came to a grinding halt in the middle of one of the villages. I looked up and saw two infants, barely able to walk, teetering in the road. The driver got out, picked up each infant by the arm, handed them to the man in the passenger’s seat, and shut the door. The babies screamed. A woman came running up to the driver. He slapped her smartly across the face and yelled at her in Krio, saying something about leaving the “pikin (small children)” in the highway. He pulled the children back out and we continued on.

There were few cars on the road besides a few long-distance minibuses (or large vans) crammed with passengers sitting four per row. Bags were piled high on top of the vans. One had a man perched precariously atop the bags. I was afraid he would bounce right off.

We also passed white Landcruisers labeled “Médecins sans Frontières” or “Peacewinds-Japan” or “World Vision” and a convoy of massive UN trucks that threatened to drive us off the road.

Koidu broke abruptly into sight with expanses of reddish-yellow mud that had been turned over and over in search of diamonds. We crossed into town over a river that had been broken into pools and rivulets that wound randomly around the mounds of mud. Hundreds of people sifted through the mud with nothing but their hands and sometimes a pan. A few washed clothing or bathed in the same waters.

I arrived at the offices and met with program coordinators to learn about our activities to stop gender-based violence or reintegrate in communities children who were former combatants and/or had been separated from their families during years of war. Many of these children had spent the better part of their lives in refugee camps in Guinea, Sierra Leone’s northern neighbor. They return to the region in UN vehicles and stay in Interim Care Centers for several weeks while their family is traced and their families and communities are sensitized to their needs and the changes or experiences they may have gone through.

Some communities are hostile toward returning child ex-combatants who terrorized their families during the war. Others are desperate for peace and stability and are willing to forgive the children. Sensitizations are conducted to help communities think about the conditions under which the children were captured and understand the means by which they were held, which was often manipulation and fear spiced with cocaine.

The children face difficulties in reintegrating socially, getting health care, and getting an education. They have been out of the formal school system for years, and the school system in any case was devastated during the war. Teachers and health care workers fled along with other community members as entire villages were burned. Since the war and the reinstatement of President Kabbah, primary education has been made free to all children, meaning that over a hundred kids may be crammed into a recently rebuilt classroom under the control of just one often poorly-qualified teacher.

The braai

As I waited in the office for another meeting, a bearded man passed through and addressed one of the other expatriate workers in an Afrikaans accent: “We’re having a barbeque over at XY Energy tonight. Every Wednesday and Saturday night, actually. You’re invited to join us.” He looked toward me, and added, “You’re all welcome to join us.”

Something clicked in my mind. In line at the airport in London, I had chatted with a young South African who was heading to Sierra Leone on a two-week contract with XY Energy. Later, while waiting for a helicopter to take us from Lungi Airport across the bay into Freetown, he mentioned that he was heading to Koidu, about 400 kilometers away from the capital. I hadn’t remembered that name at the time, as all names were new to me at that time. Later still, on my first day of work, the young man had turned up at my organization with a group from XY Energy and we exchanged a (surprised) passing hello.

I took the barbeque invitation as a sign that maybe there was something to learn over at XY Energy, so I asked a driver to take me there after work. The driver was surprised. What would I want with XY Energy? “I think I may know someone there—is it far?”

“No, not far, just over there.” He drove me across town, past two brightly-colored recently-rehabilitated mosques, and up a dirt road until we came to a police barricade. We had gone much farther than I expected, and my nervousness grew as time passed.

The policemen asked me what business I had there. An appointment? “No, I—I’m here to see a friend.” Why was I here? “To—a barbeque. I heard there might be a barbeque here.” All I could see past the barricade was an open landscape and low rolling hills. “Do people live here? I mean, is this where the offices and the staff quarters are?” I could tell that they couldn’t understand half of what I was saying (nor I them). “I mean, if there were a barbeque, would it be here?”

One of the policemen had moved to the front of the car and was talking into a handheld radio transmitter. The other policeman called to him, “Appointment.” I started to say, well, no, it’s not really an appointment, but he said, “You say you’re seeing a friend; I think that’s an appointment.” I realized he was helping me get in.

Eventually the policemen seemed satisfied with the radio conversation and they handed me a large ledger book for to sign. The radioman asked, “Who exactly are you here to see?”

“John…um… I don’t know his last name.”

“Ah, Mistah John!” he said with a smile. I had a feeling we were not talking about the same John. He probably didn’t know what a common name that is for white people, and I didn’t see any reason to enlighten him.

A policeman, or “grey man” as they’re often called (they are actually uniformed in midnight blue, not gray), climbed in the car to direct us to the staff quarters. We came upon a complex of mobile buildings. I could see a stone wall not far away with a red glow shining through an opening. The barbeque.

A white Namibian man approached me and shook my hand. I nervously explained that I heard there was a barbeque here. He seemed pleased to see me and brought me to the enclosure. We stepped over a black line, which brought power to a single light clipped above the barbeque pit. About two dozen men sat in a large circle, with the barbeque itself stationed like a member of the group. They all looked at me.

“This is Julie, she’s come to eat with us.” Good-natured smiles creased the faces of white men who looked older than their years from time spent working the harsh African sun. I scanned the circle and was relieved to see the face I was looking for at the other side.

The Namibian led me around the circle and introduced me to each individual. Most of them stood up to greet me. I shook their hands and forgot all their names. There was only one black man and one black woman—the only other woman—in the circle.

I got to John and explained to him briefly how it came to be that I was there. “You’re the last person I’d have expected to see here!” he said, but seemed glad to see me. We talked for a few minutes, and then the rest of my evening was spent being passed around for conversation after conversation with several of the men.

I asked a couple of them, “So why are you guys called XY Energy? Do you have energy operations elsewhere?” Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I thought perhaps they might have coal-mining operations or the like.

The men laughed. “Honestly, I don’t know why it’s that name. None of us have been able to figure that out. We just do diamonds!”

They talked about how grand the place would be when operations really got going. Good quarters, real bathrooms with running water (I thought the clean and bright mobile bathrooms, which had hot running water already, were quite nice). The walled enclosure that we were in was just the beginnings of a real bar. They would put in a roof, lights, tables, and bar to come relax at at night. I looked up and thought it would be a shame to block the clear night sky, but then again, a roof is only practical in a country where it rains every day for half the year.

Every once in a while, someone would interrupt to try to convince me to have some food. The barbeque pit was covered with slabs of red meat. Shoot. Of course I knew a proper braai is about as far as you can get from vegetarian. I had made up my mind to not reveal that I was vegetarian, nor that I came from an environmental background, so as not to put up a barrier between these men and myself and inhibit them from speaking freely about their work. I finally accepted the smallest piece of sausage, which I nibbled gingerly. I monitored the state of my stomach, wondering if it would reject the food.

A thin jovial old man saw my hesitation and asked, “Are you a vegetarian? I have a daughter who is vegetarian.” I mumbled my confession and changed the topic to 'Oh isn’t Africa beautiful.'

Don asked, “Is this your first time in Africa?”

“I studied in southern Africa for about three months, mostly Zimbabwe.”

“I lived in Zimbabwe for ten years. My wife is Zimbabwean, from Bulawayo.” He shook his head. “I’ll tell you, I’ve never seen people in such bad shape as in Zimbabwe. I mean, it used to be a functioning economy. One of the best in Africa! People are so hungry—here, people are poor, but you don’t see them starving on the streets. But in Zimbabwe” his fingers encircled his thin arms “they are so thin, just bones, so hungry…” He trailed off and shook his head again.

I thought of the family who hosted me during my stay. Were they still there, in Harare, in the midst of the political turmoil? Were they starving too?

Gesturing vaguely toward town, Don suddenly said, “We know there are several people died there, where we’re going to be mining. But because it’s so tropical here, they’re—it’s not like Egypt or something where they would be preserved forever. In this tropical environment, they decompose so fast…there is nothing left of them after just this short time.”

People shuffled around to get food. I started speaking with another Afrikaner, a farmer from Namibia who had come for the riches. “So… tell me… what do you guys do? Also—I’m just curious—why do you guys keep turning up in our offices?” I softened the last question with what I hoped was a joking smile.

“Well, there’s lots of diamonds here, and now that the region is safe again, we’re going to find them! There is great opportunity here." He paused for a sip of beer. "There was a riot in town, though, on Sunday. We’re looking at your organization to help us sensitize the community to what is going on here.”

Sensitize. There was that word again. Sensitize, in the development context, means convincing the locals to see things your way. In my organization, it often refers to community meetings held to convince people that rape is wrong or that children should not be held accountable for deeds they were manipulated into doing. It sometimes refers to lessons in general, like sensitizations on literacy or carpentry or AIDS.

XY Energy wants to sensitize the community to the fact that they are going to blast the land, despite the people who live there (presumably they will be relocated). They will turn the land back over to the chiefdom when they have extracted all the wealth they can find. No protest can stop that process. The land was legally leased by the chief to the company. Local authorities are friendly with the top executives, according to one of my colleagues in Kono, and they have prohibited people from resisting.

“We’re here for money,” he said. “You guys—you NGOs are here to—” he didn’t seem to know why there were NGOs there. “But we’re here for the diamonds.” I suppose it’s all business. Except for the part about blasting land on which people are living, it is hard to blame a company for mining money. And diamonds are money because of the value consumers place on them. I doubt that any of the individual miners working in the river have ever seen a cut diamond or fully understands the value that much of the outside world places on them.

The man said, “Anyway, we have about seventy workers now, and we’ll have two or three hundred when this thing gets up and running.” He added, “It gives the locals something to do.”

PakBatt

I stayed in a guest “container” at the Pakistani Battalion that night. Guest rooms are operated like a hotel, except that you sign in at the barbed-wire gate with armed Pakistani peacekeepers wearing camoflauge that clashed with their baby blue UN baseball caps. There were a few containers for women sectioned off with fence and green tarps. In front of the entrance was a wooden sign painted with “Gents entry strictly prohibited” in white letters. Husband and wife must rent separate rooms in the respective men and women’s sections, presumably because of the Pakistani’s Muslim traditions. Despite the Muslim influence both among the Pakistanis and in the Sierra Leonean community, there was a Christian church in the compound with a sign indicating that it was donated out of goodwill and in some way related to Ugandan mothers.

The containers are actually individual metal mobile rooms about the size of a small U-haul. Inside each was a cot, a table, a chair, an air conditioner fixed in the window, and electricity powered by a generator, like all power in Koidu as far as I could tell.

I flopped down onto the cot and fell asleep promptly. That night I had swirling dreams of diamonds and Namibians and Castle lager and mud.

Christening in town

After a day spent visiting recently built or re-built schools, health clinics, and wells, along with the Interim Care Center (a carload of small children returning from the refugee camps in Guinea arrived while I was there), I wanted to walk around Koidu. I told the drivers that I was going back to the PakBatt. They insisted that I wait for a vehicle rather than walk the 2 kilometers through town with the ever-present possibility of rain. I protested, but then agreed as I wasn’t altogether certain that I could tell one burnt-out street from the next.

I let them drop me off, and then I started wandering back through town along the same roads we had taken. People greeted me amiably with “Gut aftahnoon” or “Ça va?” Everyone was in front of their house, whether selling cigarettes or bread or cooking. There wasn’t much reason to be inside the houses, I realized, as I passed streets and blocks and neighborhoods of burnt-out shells of houses—just crumbling gray walls. Only a few had managed to repair the damage with makeshift roofs. Here and there people were pasting gray mud-cement bricks into the badly-damaged walls.

I passed one house in front of which several women were preparing food and washing. Two women grasped a tall stone pole and stood pounding the mortar into a large standing pestle, shaped something like two cones with their points melded together. They stopped to smile brightly at me and say hello. A grinning older woman called out to me from the doorstep “’Ow de body?” and then, more slowly and carefully, “How are you?”

Women, in particular, seem delighted to see me. Between the Pakistanis, the former British colonialists, and the southern African diamond prospectors, their experience with foreigners has been dominated by foreign men. I don’t think they call out to the men.

I kept walking and turned right on Main Road. Whereas earlier in the day when I was in search of food, I could find little, now people had appeared in front of the sandal and miscellaneous goods stalls roasting corn on glowing pyramids of coal or meat kebabs on small barbeques. Others were selling loaves of bread, which they spread with mayonnaise and mustard upon request.

I passed the stall where I bought water earlier in the day. Two women had been working the stand. One had asked me, “What is your Kono name?”

The other said, “She doesn’t have one—”

“She has to have a Kono name!” Addressing me again, she asked, “Are you second daughter to your mother?”

“First daughter,” I replied.

“Sia. Then your Kono name is Sia.”

“Sia,” I repeated. I had been christened in Africa.

Next article: Bugs!

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