Nenya.net: Pics from travels round SL

Friday, February 02, 2007

Pics from travels round SL

The main trunk road to Kailahun- without the major potholes going up to the car's windows that we encountered later on this road!

Back to Bonthe and a large mud hut dwelling typical of those in the villages on the 'main roads'. It's nicer than many houses in east and central Freetown to the extent that it is a fairly deceny size and has some land surrounding it, although much of the land is does not look like it's being put to productive use. There's a lot of debate over land issues here- some people say that almost no land is being used productively because it 'belongs' to the paramount chief and/or to all people in the chiefdom ie is communal land and it's too uneconomical to work round or through the system in order to make it productive. However, there's another view that says all land that is productive is used somehow because people are good at finding ways round the system and therefore any land that hasn't been cleared and used is deemed as unproductive. I'm not sure about this and I'm definitely not convinced with the idea that there's so much land in SL that's unproductive, because (and again i'm only commenting on the land closest to the main roads to towns and hence to the major markets) that would be a huge amount of land that's unproductive and given the rainfall and lush greeness of the savannah (for want of a better word), I'm somewhat sceptical about the latter viewpoint.