By Umaru Fofana
On the edges of Freetown is the beauty of the Atlantic Ocean – gold and white sandy beaches compete and empty themselves into the blue of the sea.
But on the edges of that ocean and beneath the veneer belies the ever-increasing filth that comes gushing from communities perched further up the foot of the mountain overlooking the shores and beyond.
It is the mountain after which Sierra Leone derived its name. A mountain left behind by a volcano that erupted and larvae that oozed out of it to set up Freetown as we know it today – mountainous and beautiful. But even that beauty does not eclipse the ugliness and stench.
Like the larvae that snaked their paths to set up the semi-island we now call Aberdeen, the filth is creating its own communities. And government after government have turned a blind eye to the eyesore that these slums have become.
As a journalist I have reported from the largest slum in Asia – in Mumbai – and from the largest slum in Africa – in Nairobi. Save for their sheer sizes – space and population – which obviously reflect the population densities of both countries and the injustice of some literally living an utter gutter life while just a few metres away others live in skyscrapers, what obtains at Freetown’s slums makes those of India and Kenya look like recreational parks at par with Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch.
In a vast swathe stretching from Portee to Mo Wharf in the east, to Magazine Wharf, Mabella, Saw Pit and Susan’s Bay in central Freetown, and a condominium of make-believe shelters at Kroo Bay, Congo Town and Murray Town, there are clogged-up gutters of filth and piles of filth enough to cause another health disaster. This is fertile ground for cholera, which kills more people and spreads faster than does Ebola.
A visit to some of these slums last week left me wondering why people in those communities bother to vote at all. Unashamedly some so-called authorities parade as representing the interests of these people who inhale one disease or another every minute every second, while their own kith and kin live in affluence farther and further afield. Here pigs fight with children for control of their habitat. Yes, this is a habitat not for human beings but pigs. Yet for generations humans have been allowed to compete with perhaps the filthiest animal created.
Right down at Magazine Wharf, I saw a crossed rope. It is supposed to be the barrier between homes in Ebola quarantine and the rest of the community. A woman, an Ebola survivor, looks at me and my cameraman and yells: “This gutter is really disturbing us.” She points to the sewer ceaselessly splattering down human excreta. Some of it piled up behind her window as pigs play their usual game in and with it. Several other windows apparently to rooms too hot to keep them closed, are open for what you would think is fresh air. But you know the air they get inside. The stench is poignant in the early afternoon hours that I visited. But residents say that smells like a roses flower.
“Come here in the evening or at night when the sea breeze is blowing and feel sorry for us,” another woman tells me.
Here every line on the Ebola protocol is being breached. A woman busies herself selling cookery. Plates and spoons are not properly washed with water not properly collected. “Our children fall sick everyday,” someone who looks like a child herself says to me. In fact she’s a mother of two and looks like less than 18 years old.
At some point the stench gets too poignant for me to ask those in the quarantined home any questions. I keep my mouth sealed. When I manage to get my face mask on I do manage to shout out to ask what her elected representative had done. “Nothing but lies,” she says. “So so lie lie” in her Krio words.
It is all too easy to blame those who live in those areas. But what has ever been done by successive governments to address this ugly situation? Nobody who lives in any of those slums likes it out there. Truth is, and we all know this, alternative housing for them is a headache. In a country where landlords and landladies see themselves as lords and demigods and behave as such at will to their tenants for property that lack the most basic facilities, you bet people living in those communities mostly unemployed families will have no choice but to stay put.
Life’s challenges won’t get any easier, we know, but they become more intricate without a proper planning beyond political point-scoring – whether you are governing party or opposition. Saw Pit slum, for example, has around 15,000 inhabitants with only two toilets. This, in the heart of the capital city, just across the street from the business district. I will not mention the lack of proper drinking water. Or even a school. Or a health centre.
In that mess run playing children who have no idea what they have been born into. They squat in the mess to ease themselves – often barefoot. Nearby, mothers cook. A few metres away, fathers bathe in the open. Not far away, brothers abuse substance – mostly marijuana. You begin to wonder what the kids will grow up into.
A boy, 4 – possibly 5 years old – struggles to walk up the alleyway in running trousers amidst a running stomach in probably the most rundown part of the community that I saw. No shoes on, and from a pile of a big mess. He straddles waiting for someone to help him out. He gets up again and walks into one of the shacks since none comes forth.
Nearby is a place meant to serve as office space for the police “to maintain law and order” – at least for the boats that ply the water to and from riverine areas on the other side of the ocean. The men and women in blue sit in filth and in the open. One of them laments pitifully to me about their condition.
Come election time the corrupt in and out of power will stream down and inhale the poignant smell for a short while if only to canvass for vote. As they return they begin to tittle-tattle about the people for their plight which they have sentenced them to. Never again will they see them until at the next election cycle.
Sadly, however sad the above situation is at Magazine Wharf, things are hardly better at the other slums. And they are mushrooming. It seems the leaders enjoy it this way – it becomes easier for their own children to replace them. In the forwarded words of a senior citizen friend of mine: Never underestimate the power of stupid people, in large numbers.
© Politico 04/02/15
