By Umaru Fofana
The walls are bedaubed with bloodstains. Completely covered by them. Almost fifteen years on, the stench of human blood still fills up this building. Darkened further and made more acrid by filth and neglect. This is the aptly named Slaughter House in the headquarter town of the eastern Sierra Leonean district of Kailahun. The district where the first shots were fired for the onset of a bloody war that was to last for a decade and claim tens of thousands of lives. More than one decade since that war ended poverty is escalating here. The much-vaunted Agenda for Prosperity is nowhere near here.
At the height of the war in the 1990s, in the heart of Kailahun town, the hearts of innocent men and women were forced out inside this house. Revolutionary United Front rebels butchered their victims here. Eleven years since the war ended, Kailahun town is quite quiet. Like those bloodstains that refuse to efface, the relics of the war are all over this place. Neglected. Impoverished. Decayed. Deprivation caused by depravity.
The perpetrators of the orgies of the war roam the streets even as I write. Freely. Survivors of their carnage and the families of their victims look on. Deferentially Indifferently. No revenge. No avenge. No justice. No malice. Such is the legendry nature of the spirit of forgiveness of the people of this district. “We have to move on”, a commercial motorbike rider, who said his siblings were slaughtered inside the Slaughter House, told me. As a former rebel, also a bike rider, looked on, looking pokerfaced.
Inside the Slaughter House dozens, some say hundreds, were slaughtered. Here blood followed blood. Men, women and children were bludgeoned to death. Here where one’s gorge still rises. Time may not have completely healed the wound but it has certainly eased the feud. The Slaughter House still brings back sad reminiscences. But it does not conjure up raw emotions let alone feeling of a fight back. However residents of Kailahun are unhappy. And openly so. They believe and complain, perhaps rightly so, that their district is neglected. It may have been long periods of neglect but both the older and younger generations are making comparisons. Yes, comparisons with the past. But also comparisons to other parts of the country they say are blossoming.
With the country’s development strategy almost entirely mineral resources based, things can only fizzle for Kailahun whose people sizzle in rain and in sun to make ends meet. Poverty is bad. Despair is even worse. Here they are combined and are staring at the people in the face. This place does not have iron ore, the new kid on the country’s minerals block. Nor does it have offshore oil potential. Alternative economic policies, if they exist in some other parts of the country, have not reached here yet. This, despite the real future of this country’s prosperity – agriculture – being seated right here, while the leaders are ensconced in Freetown which is less than 300 miles away but takes forever to travel the distance.
The central government says its real priority is agriculture. Kailahun should be leading in this regard. It has arable land where even the proverbial stone can germinate. Mining or the production of biofuel has not deflowered it. It has abundant rainfall and adequate sunshine. It has green. Yes, green in the Sierra Leonean political lingo. But also green the vegetation. Or could the former green be taking a toll on the latter green and the growth of this district? Just maybe! But even the Green Government before the current Red One did not help matters here. The reality in Kailahun town explains the feeling and the reality of long neglect and abandonment so ubiquitous in the rest of the district.
The key concern of the people here is the condition of the road network – both into Kailahun town and within Kailahun district. The age-old decrepit state of the roads here begs for attention. This is a place where it rains for between eight and nine months in a year. That may be a blessing, as represented by the fresh fruits and coffee that are spotted all over the place; and some cattle being grazed. They are sold for next to nothing. Organic foods everywhere.
But the long rainfalls also mean a curse. Alongside long years of neglect, the downpours have made the roads awful. Grade them today and leave them unpaved, invite dust or mud tomorrow. Kailahun competes with its neighbouring Kono district as candidates for the worst road network in the west Africa sub-region. And even at that, the Pendembu-Kailahun road I drove on and is clearly almost impassable for all but 4x4 vehicles is the bypass one. Bad as it may be – takes days for trucks to cover a distance of just about 35 miles (Daru-Kailahun town) – everyone here says it is three or more times better than the main road. This is the bypass!
The most immediate concomitant effect of this is that fresh fruits and vegetables rot here most times. They could have been sold and the money used by parents to tend to their children and educate them if only they could take them to outside markets. But transporting them to relatively lucrative markets in Kenema and beyond is like the proverbial passage of a needle through a haystack. And bringing in badly needed goods from Freetown and other parts of the country is an expensive venture that skyrockets the prices of essential foodstuff and other goods.
The district headquarter town road development is epileptic at best, if not downrightly nonexistent. The 10-kilometre road project for every one of the nine districts (excluding Bo, Makeni and Kenema which are also provincial headquarter towns) has stalled here for over a year, I am told. Worsening an already bad situation. Sources say the contractors abandoned the work because they were not paid. An official explanation is so far impossible to come by. Officials seem scared or hesitant to talk. Consequently, there is the thick red tropical dust in the town when it is in the dries. And the thick muddy roads and pits when it rains. It may sound trite but it is still correct to say this place is the wretched of the earth. A catch 22 situation for residents of this otherwise very beautiful place.
Hardly does anything move in Kailahun. Education may be doing terribly badly nationwide but here it faces even huger challenges. Some parents of kids in the school-leaving SSS 4 class have been bombarding me with phone calls on knowing that I am here. They simply want to know why their kids, they say, cannot write the exams starting this academic simply because they did not get five credits at the BECE, an exam they sat to four years ago and in which they were required to get an aggregate score to be admitted into senior secondary school. This has caused huge confusion. I am still investigating this as well as school authorities charging an extra Le 25,000 per pupil in addition to the official Le 90,000 which should be a composite fee.
Kailahun was arguably the hardest hit during the war. While Kono may have been battered the most, it was perhaps not as affected by capital flight as Kailahun has been. Remember the international market that used to flourish in Koindu? Those days may just never come back again. The authorities – led by the central government – therefore think a strategy for Kailahun where there are no minerals, before the former rebels and their victims unite to wreak havoc if only to make ends meet. And get us all into the mire they have been left in.
© Politico 14/11/13
