Notes from

Sierra Leone

Urban Homesteading

6 September 2003

An old man wearing an embroidered black fez hobbled over, grinned, grunted, and offered a calloused arthritic hand as I sat on a bench waiting for young men to bring me ‘manure.’ A family of pigs poked their noses into the trash hills and chickens dashed and pecked. One fat adult pig waddled across a path cutting through the dump and sank blissfully into a deep puddle of what could only be fetid water. A young woman carrying a cracked plastic washbasin on her head carefully picked her way over the mound at the foot of which the pig rested.

I relaxed in the relative peace of the dump for perhaps twenty minutes. Three flat-bedded trucks drove by in that time, each with a rusty metal trash bin held in place with heavy chains. They continued past the woman, past the happy pig and little piglets, and turned a corner disappearing behind a mountain of trash. A small boy stopped across the way and stared at me wide-eyed, finger forgotten in his mouth, dragging a contorted scrap of plastic behind him—a free toy.

I caught sight of the workers trekking back toward me over the hills with sweat dripping from their chins and ‘manure’ on their heads in old 50kg rice bags. A man reached into a bag and let the soil flow through his fingers. “This is fine, fine manure. Look how it is rich! No matter any which thing you put in it, it will grow!” The soil (not manure in the literal sense) was moist and black unlike the typically iron-rich African soil. Pieces of broken glass and bits of plastic were infused throughout. I hesitated at the thought of growing my tomatoes in decomposed trash of unknown origin, but crossed my fingers and told myself that there probably weren’t too many chemicals in the dump. In any case it was clear that my seeds didn’t stand a chance in the nutrient-depleted rocks in my yard.

After some minor haggling between my driver and the worker who looked to be in charge of the manure-selling operation, we settled the price at Le2000 for each monumentally heavy bag and the workers loaded up the truck.

Back in the Land Rover, 500 kilograms of manure heavier, we bumped and banged our way out of the quiet of the dump and reentered the chaos of Freetown.

Postscript: 30 November 2003

I planted half my tomato seeds and all my basil and oregano in manure-filled washbasins on the veranda. With no room left in the pots, I planted cucumber, sage, bok choy, and the rest of the tomato seeds in a 2-inch layer of manure on exposed beds in the backyard.

Two months later, the nursed plants were flourishing and ready for transplant. Unfortunately, the same tomato seeds planted outside had suffered under the onslaught of rains at the tail end of the rainy season; only a few had managed to push up their sprouts, and even those were sorry-looking.

Now, nearly three months after planting, I have a forest of fragrant basil growing in the exposed beds and nearly overcoming the tomatoes, some of which are beginning to put out flowers. Most of the tomato plants, however, inexplicably shriveled to nearly nothing and remain in place as withered brown sticks. The few tomato plants that were originally planted outdoors that managed to sprout have since died, the bok choy were eaten by snails, and the sage sprouted then died. The black soil has washed away, leaving the nutritionally impoverished red rocks.

At first glance, Sierra Leone is fertile and flourishing—but with few edible plants. Outside of rice farming, how can anyone make a living off this land? Even subsistence-scale farming is a constant and nearly insurmountable struggle to ward off the relentless rain and coax nutrition out of nothing but rocks.

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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