Warning: this post only contains information, and no photos. If you are uninterested in context and background, feel more than free to revert back to the previous post, which I have made dense with photos.
We started our internship with Heifer, and are currently in the midst of our first week of field work (which has given me a ton to talk about), but before I put up what I can only imagine will be an extremely long blog post about our week in the Port Loko district, I feel the need to provide you with a little historical and political background and context, because that helped me appreciate Heifer’s role in the development process here. Also, let me preemptively say that I actually find all this stuff incredibly interesting, because it is, but I fear that I will depict it in such a boring way that you will not think it’s interesting at all. Also, the facts and details I am about to provide you with are all things I have heard from people here or quick little fact sheets I have gathered here, and in no way should be considered to be academic research. Alrighty then, here we go.
History: The Portuguese were the first Europeans to explore Sierra Leone (and named it), but Freetown was given to the British in 1787, which they used as a home for blacks discharged from the British armed forces and also for runaway slaves who had found asylum in London. In 1808, the entire coastal area of Sierra Leone became a British colony, and in 1896 the rest of the country became a British protectorate. Sierra Leone gained its independence from Britain in 1961 (so we have seen tons of signs and banners up around Freetown celebrating 50 years of independence). Also, a fun fact about diamond smuggling in Sierra Leone - It was only after achieving independence that diamond smuggling because a huge political and economic problem, and is partly what triggered the civil war.
The civil war started in March 1991 (after two decades of political and socio-economic mismanagement), and lasted for 11 years (2002, for you non-math majors, like myself). Comparatively, this is fairly recent when you think that the war ended less than ten years ago. Over the course of the war, half of the population was displaced, 75,000 people were killed, and there was a massive depletion of social, human, physical, financial, natural, and political assets. The armed militia (the RUF) ended up occupying about 2/3 of the country, which caused a lot of urban migration to the city (so the population of Freetown tripled), and it still has not recovered from this, because people never went back to the rural areas.
The war was (obviously) bad, but thankfully ended with the help of ECOMOG (which was largely made up of Nigerians troops) and a tiny bit of help from the British (they helped in one military operation, but that operation is considered the most successful British military operation in modern British history, and is called Operation Barras, but I think everyone knows that I don’t think too highly of the British and I don’t want to give them any praise or credit). Anyway, immediately after the war Sierra Leone had a really successful disarmament program and started holding democratic elections. Post-conflict reconstruction and development is a long process, and Sierra Leone only started to undergo this process in 2002.
Current Context: Sierra Leone faces many problems today. Here are some stats that are really demonstrative of where the country is: 60% of the economy is donor dependant. Of a population of about 4,950,000 people, 70% live below poverty level, 53% are without safe drinking water, only 69% attend primary school, there is a 29% adult literacy rate, and only 45.5% of the population has access to medical services. There are incredibly high levels of maternal and infant mortality rates (Kelly actually looked into this and told me that Sierra Leone doesn’t perform C-sections, which is a big contributor to this problem). A (slightly) good statistic is that only 1.7% of adults are infected with HIV/AIDS, however many other diseases are more prevalent (including malaria, TB, and a recent surge in polio). In terms of employment, 58.8% of jobs come from crop farming and 20% come from retail and service. There are also significant inequalities in income distribution, as well as poor economic and social infrastructure.
The biggest challenge today is that growth levels are weak; but even more significantly, the types of things that trigger growth (economy, infrastructure, etc.) are not even in place to take off. Another challenge is that Human Development Indicators are too low and human capacity is very weak. The Government has an initiative called “Agenda for Change” and has been working to encourage growth by developing a more enabling environment for both private and public sector activity. Its priorities include enhancing national electricity, developing a national transportation network, enhancing production in agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, and sustaining all of these areas for the future with a strong emphasis on human development and basic service delivery. Alie told us that the biggest noticeable change regarding development that the government has promoted has been the construction of many more paved roads all over the country; this can be good, but the detriment to this is that there are a lot more car accidents now that are killing a lot of people.
Heifer’s Role in All This: Let me give you some history of Heifer, since I work for them now and I want to stump for them, I guess. Dan West, who was actually a Christian missionary, started it in 1944. (Time for a side piece, which I hope doesn’t turn too much into a rant. I have nothing against religion, or against missionaries, but generally I do have some issues with religiously based development initiatives, and the attitudes behind them that poor black people in Africa need to accept Jesus into their lives before they deserve anything that actually benefits them, like medicine or quality education or capacity building. I get especially frustrated when I hear all-too-often of many Christian-based development organizations that cut programs or funding if people demand ridiculous things like condoms to stop them from getting HIV and AIDS. Sorry for the rant, but the reason I’m thinking about it is that I would purposefully never work for a religiously based development organization. I don’t think that their work is bad, but I strongly believe in a separation of church and development, so at first I was a little worried about Heifer, but that is not the case at all. Heifer does consider itself to be a faith-based organization, but it is extremely secular and operates based on the needs of the people and not their religions, nor does it push any kind of religious agenda, which I appreciate.) Sorry for that aside, but continuing on with Dan West, he was a Christian missionary working in refugee camps after World War II, and his job was to hand out glasses of milk to families every day. One day he had the idea that instead of giving people a glass of milk every day, they should give the families a cow, so that they can produce milk for themselves and maintain a level of independence and self-worth. It is capacity building at its simplest, and the idea was a good one. Since then, Heifer now operates in 128 countries, has helped 13.6 million people, and Sierra Leone is its youngest country to date.
Heifer actually had a presence in SL back in the 1980s, but had to pull out when the war erupted in 1991. The current Heifer SL operations are still fairly recent, and only began again in 2008. Now, Heifer aims to improve the livelihoods of people in rural areas, and to do it in a sustainable way. SL lost a lot of human, social, natural, physical, and financial capital during the war that will take a long time to regain. I could get into each of Heifer’s specific projects and programs, but I feel like I will probably do that more once we actually get into the field.
No comments:
Post a Comment