Sierra Leone Projects Update, October 2007
We have just returned from Sierra Leone visiting the projects we are running in the east of the country. We are pleased to report that everything is moving along well, albeit a little slowly, but this is not unusual when you work in rural areas of Africa.
To recap, we have embarked on an ambitious project to supply water, sanitation and (part) livelihoods to a chiefdom in the east of the country called Pejeh, in Pujehun District. There are seventeen villages and a total population in the region of 15,000 people. The project has been fully sponsored and also recently Wherever the Need USA, which was formed in 2006 and was given tax deductible status earlier this year, raised extra money that has allowed the original sponsor to consider the request below.
So far we have completed one village, Gbongay, and the water and sanitation elements of a second village, Njagbema. A third village, Helabu, has had its livelihood programme completed and the process of making the blocks for the eco-sanitation toilets is well under way. The water element, wells and rain water harvesting, will be dealt with at the end of the rainy season once the water table has stabilised. During this visit we gave the go ahead for the beginning of the livelihood programme for Njagbema and Koiva, the fourth village in which we will be working. Once block manufacture and water provision for Helabu is completed, the same process will happen for Koiva.
The one major issue we came across was the supply of good quality sand for building. This is only available from the largest local town, Bo, and involves loading a lorry with ten tonnes and driving almost two hours to the village. This quadruples the cost of the sand. The most sensible way to lower the price would be the purchase of a tractor and trailer enabling river sand to be collected from an area much closer to the village. If we were to do this it may also make sense to obtain a compressed earth block machine (CEB) rather than make cement blocks, something we are against because of the polluting nature of cement. We could obtain both items from India, with a tractor (eight tonne pulling power) and trailer (four tonne capacity) costing in the region of £8,000, excluding shipping and taxes. We already know that the CEB machine costs circa £2,000. The problem with the CEB machine is the rigorous testing we would have to go through to ensure the soils/gravel/sand etc. is of a suitable quality to make good quality CEBs. However, there is also a company in South Africa (Hydroform) that makes a similar machine and we are contacting them to discover whether they have any experience of working in Sierra Leone. Their system creates interlocking blocks that require no mortar.
In Gbongay, our original village, we are currently erecting a timber building that will eventually be finished off with mud walls and 'washed' to give a nice exterior finish. Its roof will be zinc sheets (does anyone know a sensible, cheap alternative that isn't plastic?) and there will be a gutter leading to a 3,000 litre rainwater harvesting tank. This design, based around a traditional model, has been built to show an ecological and reasonably cheap alternative for housing, costing in the region of £500. It may even be possible to use an amended design for a school. It would certainly be better than the cement blocks from which most schools are built. Apart from being a template house and a possible example of an affordable school construction, the building will also be used by visitors/representatives who want to view what we have completed and check on the progress of ongoing work.
We visited the Blind School in Bo and spoke to its founder Paul Trye. Paul has been blind for fifteen years and started the school thirteen years ago and now has some 60+ young people who use the 'facilities', about half of which live in very cramped dormitories. To their credit the Government try to help and have recently completed a perimeter wall that provides a little more security, but the underlying fact is that the place is run down and desperately short of money. Our good friend Bob Parfitt (from our Balkans humanitarian aid days) has said he would like to get more involved and hopefully will be able to generate more detailed reports and in turn the necessary funds.
We spent extra time in Freetown meeting with an excellent NGO that works in the north and east of the country, the MP that represents the area to the east in which we already work and one of the UN people involved in the special court sitting to try those involved in the 'rebel' war. Without question they all said that the work we are doing is creating the foundation from which communities can grow. For our part we could wish for nothing more. We spent one enforced extra day in Freetown due to a car breakdown – don't get me started or else it will take up the rest of the report!
As was said at the beginning the projects are going well and Sierra Leone is truly a wonderful country. The real issue is the infrastructure. It takes seven hours to drive from Freetown to Bo, a distance of about 200 kilometres. Because a new road is being built that will become the main highway to Liberia, no repairs are being carried out on sections of the existing road that are repeatedly damaged by vehicles and the weather. In the eighteen months since we have started visiting the country the road conditions have steadily become worse. We are repeatedly told that in a years time the road will be finished and the journey to Bo will take three hours. Our experience tells us that it will be a while beyond that. Infrastructure – utilities, employment, road building – needs to be strengthened or else the country will never step beyond the poverty trap it is in. We were told that the amount of money needed to provide for a family of four is in the region of £6 per day (£2,200 per annum). The average annual income in Sierra Leone is £300. That is a lot of families who fall very short of £6 per day.
The stark reality was highlighted on our journey back to Freetown. At seven thirty in the morning there was a young boy, perhaps six or seven, standing absolutely still, waist deep in fetid water. He was waiting for a fish, his still hands poised above the motionless water. Success would mean breakfast. Failure a few more hours of hunger. He, and likely his brothers and/or sisters, would have to repeat this process every day. Personally, we would rather his family had gainful employment that provided his breakfast and allowed him to spend his time at school. This is our endeavour in the work we are undertaking.
Click here for updates of our work in Sierra Leone
• May 2006
• October 2007