By Isaac Massaquoi
Let's be honest, it's not always that we read about a place like Gendema located on the southern tip of Sierra Leone, on the border with the sister republic of Liberia in our mainstream newspapers. I cannot remember the last time Jendema received the odd presidential or some high level ministerial visit that normally guarantees some coverage at least on the state television. It's not only Gendema that is isolated in this way; there are many others places like that in Sierra Leone.
In the last three weeks or so, though, Gendema a normally sleepy town which wakes up only on Saturdays as a market day - when Liberians and Sierra Leoneans assemble in the town to trade, was thrust into the headlamps of national publicity; for the wrong reasons I dare say. Journalists from the local and international media have been to the area; the UN, PPRC and politicians from the most dominant political parties in Sierra Leone have flown into Gendema. My sources tell me that a flight like that on the UN helicopter would normally cost anything between fifteen and twenty thousand dollars. So what is really happening in Jendema to warrant this attention?
Journalistic ethics demands that I make the following declaration before proceeding beyond this point: I am a citizen of this great country - Sierra Leone - a descendant of Sorogbema chiefdom, Pujehun district. My home villages of Pelewahun and Sembehun lie between nine and eleven kilometres respectively, west of the troubled community of Gendema. Put simply, the political questions, disturbances, beatings and arrests are all happening in my backyard. I have followed all of this from far away Freetown where I receive numerous telephone calls from relatives and friends who've urged me to do something to help restore the peace of Gendema.
I have been very clear with them: apart from talking about the issues with one or two friends in government, writing in Politico newspaper and sending a few pennies to relatives fleeing the disturbances in that war-scarred corner of Sierra Leone to buy food and medicines, there is nothing more I can do besides praying for God to take control, like my late mum would always say.
Now, I am going to disappoint anybody who expects me to join the argument about NEC's interpretation of the phrase 'ORDINARILY RESIDENT' required for those wishing to register to vote in November that has been the cause of all the argument and arrests by not going that way for now. The issue has become an unbelievable political football and I will allow the politicians to play their game. Imagine this for now: you are a resident of Gendema - with all that comes with that. You wake up one morning and see in your backyard, bus - loads of people, originally from all over Sierra Leone. Upon inquiry, you learn that they were assembled and transported there by the Sierra Leone embassy in Monrovia to register, vote and so help elect your local MP and Councillor. How will you react?
Let me tell that police officer friend who met me in Kenema about twelve days ago and broke the news of the arrest of some local people of Gendema, an area Politico described last week as an outpost of grinding poverty and desolation, with a broad smile, dismissing the people's complaints I put to him as 'baseless allegations', that the day will come when, as Nasio says 'the truth will reveal things that are hidden and... Every eye shall see.'
The real question, I think many descendants of the area and other Sierra Leoneans who care and are prepared to look beyond political facades and spin-doctoring that politicians feed our people with when they go looking for power, is what elections have meant to the people of Gendema and the whole of Sierra Leone in the first place, apart from putting people in office and continuing to cry about corruption, neglect, marginalisation and the complete lack of social services and general development - all issues which underpin the so-called social contract.
Those of us, who live in big cities like Freetown, understand how to bring pressure to bear on governments and threaten their political survival every five years and so we receive almost all of what the governments are able to provide in the area of public utilities.
Today we enjoy a reasonable supply of electricity, at least in my own area of Freetown, roads are being rehabilitated and some public transportation system is beginning to emerge for which I am inclined to congratulate Bockarie Lewis Kamara, one of the few diasporans who hasn't quite disappointed the people. But the sad reality is as soon as you drive about fifty kilometres outside Freetown you begin to feel the WE and THEM development pattern that our governments have adopted since the British left. Gendema is more than four hundred kilometres from Freetown. I leave the rest to your imagination.
Unlike many other districts in this country, Pujehun and her people have suffered from political disturbances always brought upon the poor people by the unbridled ambitions of their own children in their desperate bid to please their political masters in Freetown. The much talked about Ndorgbowusui issue of the 1980s which I consider a localized, grassroots resistance against political oppression orchestrated mainly by the late Francis Minah is a case in point.
The then Vice President considered himself the ultimate political mainstay of the district and therefore tolerated no opposition from within. As he moved to consolidate his hold on Pujehun by crushing MannahKpaka and his small band of dogged opposition figures, the people were compelled to resist. The Vice President lost touch with his base so badly that when the political tide turned and he found himself framed for 'coup plotting' he had to fight alone. The rest, they say is history. Peasants like Sullay and Barbadie Rogers who led the resistance were eventually freed from jail by Joseph Momoh after many years.
The district has remained backward as its politicians continuously quarrel about everything and eventually mortgage their huge political bargaining chips for small positions in government or contracts. They remind me of the day Judas Iscariot sold out for thirty pieces of silver. So this is the Pujehun district or Gendema town that has found itself at the centre of the current political storm. Using a vehicle five times stronger than those used in the Paris-Dakar rally and driving at rally pace, you need four hours to get to Gendema from Bo. Throughout Sorogbema, the people use Liberian currency and do all basic shopping in Monrovia which is just about two hours away on very good road.
I have had to constantly argue with relatives each time I travelled to the village and gave them Leones. They will tell me how the value will fall after conversion. I was shocked to learn not too long ago on a similar visit that even for small transactions like buying salt or Maggie, they use Liberian liberty dollars. These are common problems in border communities, but Liberians insist on their own money when you walk across the Mano River bridge. You see how cut off these people are from whatever we are doing in Freetown? And we wait once every five years to descend on them, register them and bring them out to vote and then leave the area to return after another five years. Who is really fooled by all this?
And let me make two points: one, the largest section in Sorogbema is called Massaquoi (one). The land area stretches from Gendema on the border with Liberia to the banks of the Moa River on the south-eastern flank - there is no government-assisted school or health clinic. This has been the case even before the war. Children spend the whole week in places like Fairo to access school and heavily pregnant women have to abandon their homes just to draw nearer to the same town in preparation for labour. When people fall suddenly ill, they have to be carried on hammock for miles just for a community health nurse to take a look at them and then several miles more on rugged road to see a doctor in Pujehun town. This is the reality of Sorogbema. When you visit the place you will come away with the conviction that the people there are as resigned to fate as Osama Bin Laden was when those US Navy Seals appeared in his bedroom in Pakistan.
Two: the last three governments in this country have been trying to construct a very important bridge linking the town of Jijama to the main road leading to Sulima. The job is still not done. That bridge is important to unlock the prison yard that is Massaquoi (one) and create easy access to the outside world. The last time I visited, 80% of the work had been done four years ago. I completed my investigation into this bridge two years ago and I was assured by the SLRA that the work would be complete by now. Nothing happened. I plead with you to watch this space in the coming weeks for details of my investigation.
Every time I visit influential friends to talk about things like these, they ask a very cynical question: are you thinking of running for office from that area? For them everything is about elections. I have always told them, there is life outside active politics, that's where I belong.
I once raised the problems with Minister MoijuehKaikai when he was in charge of the south and to his credit he put me in touch with a senior official in the ministry of health on phone. I was left surprised that the man didn't appear to know the true situation in the area. He gave me some statistical figures that inform the location of health posts which I didn't understand. We were talking about an area almost the size of Freetown, though sparsely populated by about fifty thousand people. So what was he telling me? I also called the attention of the District Council Chairman SadiqSillah. But as you can imagine, he probably is only interested in those fanciful, feel good projects in the centre of Pujehun town like that District Council hall with countless split unit air conditioners and plasma television sets which to me represent a Pleasure Island in an ocean of poverty and despair.
When I declared my overwhelming interest in this story from the outset, it was for you to understand the general drift and tone of this write up. These are facts that can be checked any day with those whose names I have mentioned or the situations I have described. I wanted to put these on record and not allow them to be swept up in the current political push and pull.
The late OluAwoonor Gordon was a great journalist. Who will deny that? Some of us will forever remember him. Every time he was confronted with discussions about tribalism, his reply was this: 'there are two tribes in Sierra Leone: The corrupt political class and the exploited masses.' The ordinary people of Sorogbema and indeed the whole of Sierra Leone belong to the second tribe and they are the ones I am interested in.
