BottomLine

By Isaac Massaquoi

I was returning home from work one evening driving in monsoon-type rain in the middle of July. I was with an East African researcher whom I was taking home for dinner with my family. It was on the eve of his departure for home after two weeks in Sierra Leone. He was here to do the Sierra Leone side of a research project on the “Institutions and people that drive change in Africa”. I was his local contact and we became friends as we collected documents and interviewed people across Sierra Leone.

By Isaac Massaquoi

If Operation WID hasn't collapsed already, then it's in deep trouble and may need a significant dose of effort, sincerity and political commitment, more structured and profound than what was required to restore New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

By Isaac Massaquoi

By Isaac Massaquoi

As with every other important issue in Sierra Leone, public reaction and media treatment of the Auditor General’s report has followed what I call the established pattern. Once the report was released opposition politicians, including those who lost heavily in the last elections turned their political graves into battle trenches from which they launched attacks against the government.

By Isaac Massaquoi

I wonder how many of us ask questions about the sort of meat we eat daily – that takes in our meat burgers, even at some of the best restaurants in Freetown, the roadside roast meat we casually pick up on evening stroll from one of the many selling points around Freetown these day, or the “goat soup” people eat at Moyamba Junction and Matotoka every hour.

By Isaac Massaquoi

By Isaac Massaquoi

Towards the end of last year I accompanied my cousin to the main government road transport bus terminal in Freetown. She was returning to Monrovia after three weeks and I had told her on the eve of her departure that she would be on the Express Service, meaning that she could get to Kenema in good time to be able to connect with vehicles plying the Kenema-Gendema road. It’s a journey that even the drivers who undertake it almost every day absolutely dread.