Food, fuel and tourism
I took a week off recently to be a tourist in Sierra Leone (it helped that I had a friend from school coming over to visit too). SL is beautiful- look at any pictures that you can and a beautiful country to be a tourist in. We spent time at the beaches, lazing at a couple of pools, tramping through the bush, visiting the Chimpanzees, and going to Banana islands just off the tip of the peninsula. We also went to the National Museum and spent time ‘discussing’ prices in the craft markets.
The infrastructure in Sierra Leone isn’t really set up to receive tourists, from the airport itself (which has improved markedly while I’ve been here), the chaos of getting out of the airport, picking up luggage and getting over to Freetown itself are probably worthy of a short story. Despite making arrangements for my friend to be met at the airport, booking them onto a bus that would bring them to my door; it took as long to get from the airport to my house as the flight from Heathrow to Lungi took! Arriving at 2:30am in the morning (after having gotten to Sierra Leone in the early evening) is not a way to encourage people to come and visit a second time and may make some travellers prefer to turn round and go back home). The situation has eased slightly since my friend arrived; the hovercraft has begun operations again, which saves a bit of time getting over from the airport, but still means it’s a bit of a hassle.
I have expounded before about the beauty of SL, its beaches, the mountains, the views etc, so I won’t do so again except to say that it is gorgeous and currently fairly unspoilt by any developments, so now is definitely a good time to come and see it.
The food and fuel price rises that have been going on throughout the world continue to impact Sierra Leone. One of the figures I have seen recently (tho’ I can’t vouch for its accuracy) says that the average monthly wage in Sierra Leone is about 150,000 Leones (just over 26 GBP and 50USD). A large sack of rice (that might feed an average family for a month) costs about 120,000 Leones. This means people having fairly small portions (especially considering the amount of hard labour in a hot climate that people do here). On top of this, most people would also want to purchase salt and chillies (the latter being an integral part of the Sierra Leonean diet) and would have palm oil splashed (less and less liberally) over the top. If you add in a smidgeon or protein (which most people can’t afford), then you’re getting closer to a balanced diet. In order to pad out the rice and make it last longer, many people will add cassava, sweet potatoes and garri to their meals, although the nutritional balance stills needs improvement. But this is just food- so basically, a wage (and many people here are more likely to be casual workers and so may not have a definite wage coming in every month) would cover enough food for the family for the month. The other costs that aren’t met are: rent, clothes, school supplies, any emergency medical treatment, travel, fuel and anything else- I’ve tried to only mention the essentials here. It’s in places like Sierra Leone that the rising food prices push more people back into poverty as they grapple with trying to balance getting enough nutrients with all the other essential expenditures- I haven’t even mentioned the issue of getting clean water here or disposal of waste.
Life at the ground level in SL is tough, really tough. I was chatting to a friend involved in children’s medicine here- they are seeing more and more children who are malnourished and as a result open to many other types of infections. What makes it even more heart rending is that the medical facilities in SL are so needy that some children who in the West would be in high dependency units being treated as outpatients here.
It’s an age-old cycle and breaking it is really hard (ok- I know it's really simplistic, but it shows basically how the cycle can work):
- First, you don't get enough to eat (or a balanced diet with a good nutritional intake) for whatever reason (too many mouths, prices are too high, money needed for treating a family member in hospital etc.)
- Then you become ill (meaning more money needs to be spent on medical treatment if possible)
- Because of the illness you are unable to work/or at the very least your productivity goes down (since in many situations in the developing world your wages depend on how much you produce e.g. breaking stones, carrying headloads, picking/tending agriculture etc)
- You receive lower wages
- You are unable to buy as much food/ have a nutritionally balanced diet
- You don’t get enough to eat,
- You become ill…
And the cycle goes on, as I said, this is a really simplistic version and lots of other factors can play into it. One of the other variants (which can be added into this cycle) is the education of children- you want to educate them so that they have a better chance in the future; but if they don’t have enough food then they can’t concentrate in school, so they don’t do well and not only do they not go up the economic ladder, but people feel it’s a waste to send children to school. Or, due to the need to earn more money for the family to survive now, children are taken out of education so that they don’t have opportunities to learn/improve in the future. It’s a difficult cycle and very hard to break out of, but it is possible, with the right resources in the right places at the right time.
This is already turning out to be pretty long, but I’ll quickly mention about fuel prices. All fuel prices are set by the government at the same level; the cost has gone up about 80 pence per gallon (4500 Leones) since I’ve been in SL and although the fuel prices are much, much lower than in Europe, this is a pretty big increase for everyone here to try and manage. It’s an inconvenience for those who can afford it but a real problem for those who can’t. Small shops that rely on small (and highly inefficient generators) in order to run their businesses when there’s no national power (NPA) are struggling even more than they used to and people who have generators in their homes may now find it difficult to have light at nights when there’s no NPA. This doesn’t so much impact the very poor but does mean those who thought they’d slowly worked their way out of desperate poverty are being pushed back into it. The other area where the fuel prices impact people are the costs of the taxi’s and podapodas (minibuses); these run on (semi-)set routes for a fixed cost, you can go further in the podapodas but you can usually get the taxi’s to deviate from their routes to drop you at a specific point. Lots of people in Freetown use both taxis and podapodas to get to and from work each day, but the cost in fuel means the set cost of a journey in a taxi or podapoda has now increased (there’s no meters and if you’re going in a taxi off a set route you need to discuss vigorously about the price). When I arrived it was 800 Leones per journey, it is now 1000Leones per journey, which again isn’t that much from a Western perspective, but is a huge increase for people who rely on this cheap transport to get them around, since there’s no public transport system here so an increase in the cost of travel of 25% in less than 2 years is pretty huge.
Labels: beach, chimps, food, fuel, power, roads, taxis, tourism, traffic
Traffic, roads and speed-bumps
Well, life has been a bit busier recently, but that’s not what I’m going to write about today (well, not much at any rate).
Infrastructure is big on the agenda at the moment- and it really needs to be. First of all, power- I know I’ve griped about this before, but it remains an issue. What is brilliant is actually having light in my bathroom (but only on the generator because usually the NPA current as we now get it is too weak to turn on a fluorescent strip light). The generator at work seems to be having issues as well, so no air con on in the office, which makes it really uncomfortable to work in as we don’t have fans to keep the air moving, so it’s somewhat stifling.
The roads- these are getting continually busier and there’s probably several reasons for this- firstly, the roads and many cars remain in a bad state of repair- most of the repairs done to our (few) tarmac roads involve filling in the holes with stones and earth- a good temporary solution, but not good over the longer term. One of the major arteries from the West to the centre of the city- Spur Road- has 5 sets of double speed bumps, 4 single speed bumps and 1 dip (helps drainage across the road in the rainy seasons); now this certainly helps slow the traffic down, it also seems to have managed to cripple 3 vehicles in 3 weeks, one of which was left half way over one of the double sets of speed bumps for about 4 days. All of them had broken an axle and (as far as can be said for cars), looked extremely ‘uncomfortable’. Spur Road is busy enough daily anyway, particularly since the VP and President are currently not living at their official residences- I’ve heard it’s due to the redecoration that’s being undertaken- this means they drive in convey with a police escort up this hill/road every morning. Now most people can understand that the VP or President, as representatives of the people of SL, should have priority over the traffic, however, there’s a great deal of annoyance over the taxi drivers and other cars that ‘join’ the convoy in order to jump up the and past most of the other traffic- I’ve seen it lead to several near misses and given that the health system isn’t wonderful and you need to send money for fuel for the ambulance before an ambulance can come to pick you up, it’s best to avoid travelling up Spur Road when a cavalcade is likely to sweep past.
Right, second reason is that a lot of people have come back after the elections- now everything’s happened quietly and calmly and there’s been a transfer of power, those who were able to afford to leave the country over the election period are now back and driving again. Related to this is the third point, that now there has been a successful election with no real problems, people are slightly happier about investing in new vehicles, or bringing more/newer vehicles into the country, so there’s more cars about that be can and therefore are, being driven.
On a slightly lighter, but still traffic related note, the taxis…., well there’s a lot I could and won’t say about the taxi’s (and their drivers) here, although at only 800 leones (40cents, 18pence) per journey it’s a fairly cheap way of getting around. Normally, unlike in London, the cabs are recognisable by having red letters on their number plates (denoting it’s a commercial vehicle) and having a yellow stripe down the side of the vehicle, making it easy to distinguish it from private vehicles. Also (though this next method isn’t 100% accurate), if the vehicle approaching you is a car and is not a Mercedes or a 4x4 (BMW’s, small sports cars and Lexuses- or are they Lexi?- are extremely rare here, tho’ there are a few about, none of which of course are taxis), it’s 9 times of out 10 going to be a taxi. Admittedly there are a few diplomatic vehicles (thought very few) that are ‘normal’ cars, but these have special diplomatic number plates, so it’s fairly obvious that they aren’t taxis. Anyway, someone has been importing London taxi cabs and there are now 4 London cabs driving round Freetown and are being used as taxi’s here- was a strange sight to see one here- and in deference to the local law of the yellow stripe, none of them are fully black.
Labels: power, roads, taxis, traffic
