Kailahun Field Work

The past few weeks have been wonderful, exciting, frustrating, exhausting and many more adjectives. I am based in Kailahun Town, Luawa Chiefdom, but I have been constantly on the move. Where to start? The first two-weeks were dedicated to sensitizing and mobilizing the various communities were work would begin. Peter, Sheku, Robert and myself have spent between 8 and 12 hours per day on two Indian motorcycles on what are arguably the worst roads in the country. Potholes, bumps, rocks, craters, log bridges, gravel, ferries, ditches filled with muddy water and the occasional flat tire have been our traveling companions. However, I must admit I have LOVED every minute of it. You can’t help but smile when you meet the world on the back of a motorcycle, when you see acres of burning brush, the sun setting on the dusty road, or when you enter remote villages nestled between tall mountains and are met with a chorus of high-pitched voices screaming the word “Pu-mui” (Mende for white man)!

The seven chiefdoms we have been working in are Upper Bambara, Kissy Teng, Kissy Tongi, Dea, Penguia, Malema and Luawa. One notable development is that the project has been scaled down. Fambul Tok was geared, originally, to operate at the chiefdom level, but it was made clear throughout the visits that a sectional approach would be more beneficial to the communities. Chiefdoms are too large of an area to facilitate reconciliation at a community level. Just to give an example, Kissy Tongi is divided into five sections Toli, Kundu, Konio, Lela and Bumasadu. Each of these sections contain anywhere between 5 and 15 villages, all of which are several miles apart. The distance and the road conditions make centralizing a program in the chiefdom headquarter town untenable if the objective is to galvanize communities.

A bit about the work:
During mobilization and sensitization, we met with various stakeholders in each community. In some places this has meant large open-air town hall meetings in the Court Barrie (a compound located in the center of the town/ village that is used for public gatherings), in others we convened with various chiefs (Paramount, Section and Town) and other community leaders. Our goal at this point has been to explain the project and its aims, inform the communities of new developments in the program, and clear up any misunderstandings. We constantly stressed that this Fambul Tok is their process, and its success is dependant on their level of involvement. In order to promote local practices of reconciliation, Fambul Tok challenged each section we are working in to organize a two-day reconciliation ceremony. Communities at this stage formulated plans, fixed dates and organized a budget. Dialogue ensued on what the communities themselves could provide and what assistance Fambul Tok would make available in order to fill the gaps. The next step was disbursement. Once the dates were fixed and sufficient mobilization was in place, the Fambul Tok contribution was then released to community leaders. This was done in a cash payment, which allows the communities to procure the necessary materials locally. Communities usually requested things such as rice, palm oil, goats, fowl and sheep.  Zinc and other building materials were requested when the ceremony involved rebuilding a “Togomando” or ancestral home among the Kissy.

Some of our findings:
The response has been favorable across the board, and most if not all of the communities we approached have embraced Fambul Tok as a timely and important development. Through our discussions communities expressed their desire to restore their ancestral practices, which were abandoned due to the war and religious intolerance. They were waiting for an opportunity or an incentive to restore lost practices, and Fambul Tok is providing that spark. During these visits it also became evident that the biggest challenge to most of these communities is basic livelihood provision. Despite the efforts of the National Commission for Social Action (NACSA), international donors and civil society groups, reconstruction, food security and development has not been forthcoming in some of the more remote areas of Kailahun. The rhetoric has been that with peace and reconciliation development will follow, but it’s not clear to me that the relationship is quite as linear as we hope.

Questions and Challenges:
There have been a few questions and challenges that have been raised throughout our fieldwork. One challenge has been the shortage and capacity of Fambul Tok staff, particularly on the ground. The state of the roads, the language barriers and the distance between communities has often left the team overstretched. Although we have worked restlessly, it has been impossible to cover as many communities as we would have liked to. On account of this, sensitization results vary according to the activeness of the local contact persons and the number of visits made by Fambul Tok staff to the section. For instance, in some communities, excombatants associated reconciliation work  with possible prosecution. We tried to allay their fears, and reassured them that Fambul Tok’s aim is not retributive, nor is it associated with the Special Court.  Another problem has been communication. Cell phone coverage is fairly non-existent in most of Kailahun, save for a few key towns. This has not only made following up on the chiefdom executives and the reconciliation monitors difficult, but it has also restricted the lines of communication between the Freetown office and the field.

Lastly, sustainability remains a huge issue, one we must stress if we are to create a structure that will endure beyond the length of the project. For one, I believe more capacity building of the district/ chiefdom executives and contact persons needs to take place. At the momment, it is not quite clear what these executives are actually doing and what has occured with the reconciliation monitors since the training in Bo. If this is the structure that is to remain in place, more work needs to take place to ensure they are brought into the fold. Since, we are in the pilot phase of Fambul Tok, I believe this sort of constructive criticism is essential if we are to fill these gaps in the programming.

Ceremonies:
The program launch took place on the 23rd of March, to commemorate the start of the war. The launch site was changed from Kailahun Town to Bomaru, Upper Bambara Chiefdom due to several factors. For one, the war began in Bomaru and it remains one of the most remote and disaffected communities in Sierra Leone. It is less than two miles from the Liberian border. On the part of Kailahun Town, its residents had expressed that an electoral dispute between the Paramount Chief and his brother posed the biggest obstacle to reconciliation. To this date, not enough progress on the mediation efforts has been made. Because of this, management decided that starting at Bomaru would be not only more fitting, but also more symbolic. This proved challenging because for one we were unsure how Kailahun residents would react to the sudden change, also Bomaru is a much smaller community and it was unclear how we would accommodate the Fambul Tok team, observers and assorted media. Originally, we had hoped to bring representatives from other chiefdoms to witness the first ceremony. Alas, this proved logistically difficult due to the size of the community.

Anyways, the launch in Bomaru was a huge success in terms of turnout and participation. The residents of Guma section gathered in Bomaru and conducted a two-day ceremony. They welcomed John and the crew at the bottom of a large hill and sang and danced as the vehicle made its way into the village. During the first night community members assembled around a bond fire and shared stories about the war. Emphasis was placed on encouraging perpetrators and victims to come forward and reconcile. Initiates to the women’s Bundu society and masked Mende devils danced to beat of drums (is that very Africanist of me?). The film crew also returned to shoot the ceremonies. During the Bomaru launch, their presence felt a bit intrusive, particularly when you are urging perpetrators to come forward to make public confessions.  To their credit, during the next three ceremonies their presence felt to me a bit more organic.

Day two in Bomaru involved more dancing, and the climax of the two-days took place as the community made their way through the bush to a specific sacred site where a large rock stood. The women, all barefoot assembled behind the rock and the men kneeled in front. Next, the section chief poured libations and prayers were offered,  while a fowl was sacrificed. Food was later prepared for the community and more festivities followed. Shortly afterwards, the team returned to Kailahun town to prepare for the next two ceremonies in Kissy Teng chiefdom.

More to come about other ceremonies… (I will add pictures to the post when I have better internet access)

Attn: 3 Week Kailahun stay

I will be unable to post for the next three weeks. This morning Robert (fellow intern) and myself are on our way to Kailahun, where we will conduct interviews and visit all of the chiefdoms. I promise to have tons of stories and anecdotes in late March!

Manjama Institute of Agriculture: Making Palm Oil (Photo essay)

In the previous post I mentioned Manjama Institute of Agriculture (MIA) in Bo because it happened to be the location of our training. But apart from being a guest house and a conference venue that offers catering and accommodations, Manjama is also farmer field school, which trains over fifty students per annum. MIA has been in operation since 1985 and teaches much needed skills in agriculture, animal husbandry, carpentry in addition to providing micro-credit services to farmer groups.

The following is a photo essay, documenting the palm oil making

Stage One begins with the extraction of the oil from the palm fruit

Stage two entails filling the concrete tub with water and washing the pounded palm fruit. The seeds are pounded down in a pestle to extract yet more oil and the oil itself rises to the surface.

In the third stage the oil is poured into a large metal drum that sits over a fire. Cooking the palm oil is the final process.

The palm oil is now ready for retail!

Catching up:

I know, I know… There haven’t been very many posts (or rants) in the last two weeks, but I’ve been working in the provinces and Internet access has been minimal. Lets recap, last post I was on my way to Pujehun and Bonthe for two district-level consultations.
Here’s a bit on that trip:

Miriam Abu, Mustapha (the driver), four-journalists (Sheku, Aki, Solomon, Abu Bakkar) and myself boarded the Toyota Prado for a three-day, two-district trip. We set off on the road to Bo, and then as usual, we spent the night at Salmin’s guesthouse. Bo is basically the half waypoint to any place in the east. At dawn, we ate Salone sandwiches, composed of 5-block Fullah bread (1-block = 100 Leones), sardines, margarine, warm mayo and several slices of luncheon meat. The Pujehun and Bonthe consultations were held at Barri Islamic Secondary School in Potoru, and Tihun village. In both of these settings we began by affixing the Fambul Tok Banners to nearby trees, arranged forty-fifty wooden chairs into a large circle as the participants began to trickle in on the back of okada’s (motorcycle taxies).

All of the consultations are structured in more or less the following manner. The facilitator first introduces the chairperson for the event, who in turn presents all of the members of the high table (a traditional authority i.e. section, or paramount chief, a spokesperson from local government, a religious leader, and two representatives on behalf of women and youth). We then move to a general introduction of participants, followed by Muslim and Christian prayers. Next, all of those sitting at the high table provide five to ten minute statements. There is usually a short tea break at this time, then a facilitator sketches out the overall project framework. As I’ve said in previous posts, Fambul Tok stands for family talk and it’s designed to be locally owned, and community driven. We begin with a conversation about reconciliation and an open forum to discuss ongoing disputes at community levels. The conversation begins with the participants defining reconciliation, forgiveness and identifying barriers to sustainable peace in their communities. We then move towards identifying possible solutions and existing peace building structures that can assist in mitigating and resolving conflicts. Each consultation is organic in the sense that the issues discussed and proposed solutions are slightly different in each case. Lastly, all of the participants (2 representatives from each chiefdom) select a district executive, bearing in mind the proportional representation of women and youth.

Group Work

After two-days in Freetown, inevitably we were off again to Bo for a one-week training for the Kailahun District Fambul Tok Executive. The training was held at Manjama Institute of Agriculture, and was facilitated by Amy Potter (Associate Director for the Practice Center at Eastern Mennonite University), Ebun James (Council of Churches, Sierra Leone) and Francis Onyekwue (Forum of Conscious). This five-day workshop introduced the representatives from Kailahun to the Truth, Justice, Mercy and Peace model of reconciliation. We discussed trauma and its long-term effects, as well as the various approaches to restorative and retributive justice. The training also involved numerous focus groups, roleplays and other team building exercises. This workshop aimed at building the capacity of the 35 participants (Peace and Reconciliation Monitors) to serve as catalysts for peace in their communities. The idea is that this district executive will coordinate the various reconciliation activities taking place at chiefdom levels.

Kailahun District Fambul Tok Executive & Facilitators

Pujehun and Bonthe, Fieldwork:

On Friday we left for Pujehun. The consultation took take place on Saturday at a small town by the name of Potoru. Originally, the forum was scheduled for a week ago, but the organizers postponed it, because they felt there were not enough representatives from some of the more remote chiefdoms in the district. A lot of human rights initiatives and/or development projects in Sierra Leone begin and end in Freetown, or perhaps they might even extend to some of the district capitals. They tend to measure their success by the numerical turn out, or the number of events and focus group discussions held. They distribute t-shirts, a square meal, perhaps a banner or two and are on their way. This has been a recurring problem, particularly since donor savvy civil society organizations are often able to market their projects when their “results” are easy to quantify. It’s pretty seductive if you are a donor, wouldn’t you say?

What I find incredibly exciting about Fambul Tok is that the organization is committed to serving precisely those communities that are so often underrepresented. The concept is to provide an open forum where dialogue and peace building can take place. In my opinion, Fambul Tok promotes an incredibly powerful idea, that essentially war-affected communities themselves are endowed with the necessary tools to mitigate and resolve local grievances. What is oftentimes missing, are the necessary resources to carry out local practices, or to bring outlying communities together. Placing these communities at the helm of the reconciliation process seems like a given, but this has not been the case in praxis.

In every community we have come across in our consultations the response to the ongoing work of the Special Court and the late Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been similar. In terms of depth and impact, despite the sheer amount of resources allocated, participants complained that these initiatives have failed to bring about reconciliation, particularly at grassroots levels. This is not to undermine the work of the court or the TRC, for a long time I have been a proponent of transitional justice, and ultimately the court’s most important legacy might be to create a buffer against impunity at all levels of society. However, one can make the case that the sheer amount of resources committed to the facilities, logistics, outreach, consultants and countless international staff, and above all DUE PROCESS in a country with a dearth in both physical and social infrastructure, a country with clearly limitless needs and limited means is ethically untenable. As for the TRC, its recommendations have yet to be implemented, but one can only really blame the lack of political will on the part of the previous, and perhaps the current government. Most importantly, rural communities in Sierra Leone, the same communities that bore the brunt of the conflict, have not embraced these initiatives.

(I will conclude my rant here… more to come about the actual consultations tomorrow…)

A bit about the work:

In response to Ethan’s comment, I am staying at a house just off Spur road. The place has five rooms, most of which are self-contained (bathroom within). It is a palace, compared to the cramped one-bedroom my mother and I share back in New York. When you rent a house in Sierra Leone, it is completely barren. The organization has been furnishing the house piece by piece. First we brought in the beds, then a gas cooker, curtains, a fridge, a television (to watch Nigerian soap operas), and finally a fan! The place is incredible and we actually get electricity more than a few hours per day. The National Power Authority has been quite reliable lately for large parts of Freetown. You can attribute this to the APC government’s initiative to bring in ten Megawatt Power Plants from abroad. This is supposed to be a temporary solution until the hydro-electric dam is completed. We shall see when the utility bills reach the majority of users though.

For the meantime, I am the only inhabitant of this giant space, but that will all change come March, when the documentary crew returns. Yes I neglected to mention the documentary crew, I will explain… Fambul Tok’s partner organization in the states is called “Catalyst for Peace”. This organization supports ongoing reconciliation efforts in post-conflict African settings. The organization is providing funding and logistical support, while the film crew is documenting the process.

I begin my day with 5 block bread (500 Leone), laughing cow cheese spread, and a cup of tea with far too much sugar and powdered milk. (God I miss freshly brewed coffee!) I then take my daily dose of doxycycline, chug about a liter of water and head for blue bell to wave down a cab or a poda-poda. One cannot talk about working in Freetown without mentioning the traffic. In the early mornings and late afternoons gridlock is incredible. It takes about an hour or more to reach work from my house, or vise-versa. It is not just the volume of traffic but the narrow roads, which contribute to the congestion. The Forum of Conscience office is a two-story building on Fort Street, near circular road. Once at work, I select five or so local newspapers to read. Their spin varies, but I find the Standard and Concord Times to be better in terms of content and presentation. I then move to a cup of nescafe and work on one of several reports.

FOC has several ongoing programs, including a security sector, police and community engagement program. Although I mainly work within the Fambul Tok community reconciliation initiative, there is a constant trickle of people involved with one of the other activities. All of the staff is Sierra Leonean with the exception of myself, and Rebecca a German student, which is coordinating a cross-cultural learning program between university students from Munich and Milton Margai College in Freetown. The German students are part of an organization called Commit and they arrive sometime in March to meet with Sierra Leonean counterparts. They will then visit secondary schools across the country to conduct workshops on the importance of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report and seeing its recommendations implemented.

Friday we leave for Pujehun and then Bonthe for two district consultations.

More to come soon…

Second Update: The Process of Banking in Sierra Leone

The bright idea was to open a savings account with one of the local banks, for one I would be able to better manage my money and I would be relieved from having to worry about “tief-man” discovering secret caches of 100-dollar notes tucked away in my luggage. My organization suggested the government’s financial institution, Sierra Leone Commercial Bank. The SLCB building in downtown Freetown is the home of eternal queues (sort of like Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s novel Wizard of the Crow), but we will get to the queues.

First, as a foreigner one needs to have two sponsors in order to open a savings account. In addition, one requires two passport photos and a photocopy of your passport. For the photos you make your way to Lion Photo on Siaka Stevens and Bathurst Street, and fend of the two-dozen or so amateur photographers that are hustling for customers (changing money on the black market is a similar experience). Now back to the bank…

After filling out the necessary forms and waiting on several long queues, you are ushered into a back room where half-dozen people are waiting for a lone secretary. Her desk is raised about two and a half feet off the ground, she seems regal, slightly disinterested and speaks to you in a very low voice. The woman or “auntie” places your’s name on the list to obtain a bankcard and you are asked to return in a few days. When you return to retrieve your newly laminated credential, you are sent away for another day. Now if you wish to deposit in another currency vis-à-vis dollars, euros, pounds, etc you must make your way to the foreign exchange department. Once you’ve lost a few thousand Leones to the official exchange rate, you have successfully made your first deposit!

Several days later you decide to make your first withdrawl. After making your way into the air-conditioned heaven of SLCB, the queuing begins. You first wait on a queue to check your balance. Twenty-five or so people crowd around a teller, which first collects the bank cards, hands you a green withdrawl slip and writes your balance on a strip of paper. The next endless queue begins at the opposite end of the bank. Since SLCB is the government bank a bulk of the customers are police officers, teachers, correctional officers and other civil servants. It is the beginning of a new month and everyone is collecting their monthly salary. Despite the long wait and the obvious frustration written on my face, most Sierra Leoneans are warm, good-spirited, and incredibly patient.

Several times on the line you are greeted, “Eh boh, ow di bodi,” (How is everything) “Tell god tankie” (Tell god thanks) “Kusheau” (good work). The idea of having to spend three-quarters of your day making a simple banking transaction is hard to swallow. Thankfully, or perhaps regretfully there are ways to circumvent the unnecessary red tape. In Sierra Leone as in most developing countries there are ways to get around the tediousness. In regards to banking what occurs is someone introduces you to a bank manager, and a daylong process becomes a fifteen-minute affair. There are no bribes involved, it’s all about whom you know. Sort of like some of the posh parties in New York that if you know the right people queues cease to exist. But, what can you do, you are an expat, it is impossible to make your experience genuinely authentic.

First Update

I began work on the 20th, after having a day to settle in and visit old friends in Freetown. The city has changed somewhat, new buildings have sprouted up, there are more street vendors about and the cotton tree is barren in leaves, but full of giant fruit bats. It took a full day or so to get my bearings, I even wandered about for an hour or so looking for the FOC office on Fort St by Circular Road. Downtown Freetown is bustling, and can get a bit confusing, particularly during rush hours.

The next day we left for Kailahun, which is in the far east of Sierra Leone. Kailahun is bordered by both Guinea and Liberia to the east, and Kono and Kenema districts to the west. It is remote, disaffected; resource scarce, and its roads are notoriously bad. This is the district where the war started, and the Revolutionary Armed Front held their main base throughout the war. It is a blighted place, the roads are in disarray and the scars of the war are visible in most standing structures. It is now harmattan, seasonal winds blow south of the Sahara and cover the leaves and the corrugated tin roofs with a brick-colored layer of dust. John Caulker was emphatic that Kailahun should be the focal point of Fambul Tok’s pilot projects because of its long history of neglect, and the lack of reconciliation.

We had prepared a consultation, or a Fambul Tok (Family Talk) on Monday afternoon in Kailahun. The consultation was held under the canopy of a giant palm. A circle of wooden chairs was formed for the fifty or so participants, one representative from each chiefdom in Kailahun district. Men, women and youth where amply represented and all contributed to the debate. John presented the program, fielded questions, then engaged the community in a fambul tok. Fambul Tok is theirs, the ownership is theirs, FOC is only here to help facilitate the space for reconciliation. The response was incredible, people spoke of the need take up local practices that have been neglected since the war. They spoke of unproductive fields, restless spirits and accidents on the roads and attributed them to the lack of reconciliation. Several ex-combatants spoke about their desire to seek forgiveness and reconcile with their communities.

Introduction

Hello, My name is Mario Patiño and I am a fourth year International Studies major at the The City College of New York. In two days time, I will fly to London, Gatwick, and then I’m off to Freetown Sierra Leone. It’s been a few months since my last visit, and clearly I couldn’t stay away. Last summer I interned with the Center for Coordination of Youth Activities in Freetown, where we organized around the upcoming elections, and worked towards ensuring a successful and nonviolent outcome. From July-August 07, CCYA held voter education programs, focus groups and a National Youth Dialogue Conference to promote nonviolence during the electoral process. The elections were a remarkable success, and my experiences in this amazing country were incredibly fulfilling.

Over the spring I will be interning with Forum of Conscience, a grassroots organization that is implementing a local reconciliation initiative called “Fambul Tok”, krio for family talk. I will be based in Makeni, but most of the work will be conducted in rural areas across various districts. This blog is to document my experiences in Salone. I will mainly speak to the research and work I will be undertaking, but also expect to be peppered with a few anecdotes.

More to come soon.