blood diamonds. . . and electricity
today was our first day in the town of Koidu in the district of Kono, after a six hour drive from Freetown yesterday. . . this is the center of Sierra Leone’s diamond mining industry, and it was at the heart of the civil war, a resource-rich area which the rebels finally took over mid-way through the conflict. . . this is the place that made the words “blood diamonds” and “conflict diamonds” infamous. . . as Chief Kabenda, the paramount chief here, told us today: “this war came for kono. It was a senseless war because of diamonds in kono.” I wanted to come here last year, when i was working in sierra leone for international medical corps, but the roads were so bad – it was the middle of rainy season – that it was impossible to get here from where i was, farther east, in towns where the war began.
Angie and Claire wrote an op-ed piece to submit to the Christian Science Monitor and the Boston Globe – it’s about post-conflict justice, based on the news today (Wednesday, june 20) that the special court in sierra leone has handed down the first judgments from the trials of the three groups responsible for the fighting in the eleven-year war here. The judgments today were historic – the world’s first-ever convictions for solicitation of child soldiers. . . angie and claire’s op-ed piece notes the importance of these verdicts – but contrasts these legal results with the ongoing need for reparations for victims of the war. (check back here to read the op-ed piece at a later date. . .)
They wrote a good editorial – and we set off to email it. . . and found ourselves in a classic dilemma in this part of sierra leone. . . the internet server at world vision, one of the ngos working here was. . . down. We quickly set off for irc (the international rescue committee) to see if we could wheedle five minutes on their computer (there are no internet cafes in koidu, i should point out). Their administrator graciously tried to help us – but to no avail. We couldn’t get our com puters to work on their server. . . so we set off for the offices of undp (united nations development program) where we were greeted quite kindly by the security officers, who said we could use the computer, but. . . . the electricity wasn’t on. (there is still no electricity in koidu, five years after the end of the war – if you’re fortunate enough to own a generator, you get power for a few hours a day. . here at the guesthouse where we’re staying, uncle ben’s guest house, we get electricity from 7 pm to midnight). So, here we are at the guesthouse (i’m writing this offline), having dinner – heading back off to the united nations compound, where they promised us that the electricity will be on at 7pm.
If you’re reading this, it’s a good sign – it means we actually found an internet connection that works!
p.s. – for any of you traveling to sierra leone, we heartily recommend uncle ben’s, one of the first places we’ve been able to support a business that is owned by a sierra leonean. The food is amazing, the staff is delightful, and in the morning, we hear birds, the roosters, and children laughing.
pps — yay. electricity is on at the united nations compound, and the internet is working(altho my email server isn’t!). . . when we head back to uncle ben’s, we’re going to sit outside and take in the huge african night sky. . .