Sierra Leone: Mudslides and Death in the News Contrast with My Delightful Summer Back in 1963

Yesterday morning I woke up eager to get to my laptop and work on the short book I've almost finished. African Summer: A Crossroader in Sierra Leone is Book 2 in my memoirs, which have the series title Moved by Curiosity. (Book 1 hasn't been started yet but it's about my trip around the world when I was 19.)

But before I settled down yesterday to work, I discovered that once again the people of Sierra Leone were having a hard time. After a devastating civil war that lasted about a decade, and then the Ebola outbreak which killed thousands more recently, this small country (about the size of West Virginia, I think) was suffering again. Floods and massive mudslides in the capital city of Freetown had been killing hundreds of people overnight. Freetown gets an average of about 20 inches of rain in August but this year has been a whole lot wetter. Freetown is set in hills, and the roads and houses are often built inadequately to handle even their ordinary rains, let alone what hit them this week.

I haven't heard back from my friend in Freetown yet, and I pray that she survived. Knowing her, she is probably out working like a maniac to help those in need. Isa Johnston and I became buddies back in 1963, when we were both members of an Operation Crossroads Africa work camp in Moyamba, a small town. We stayed in touch by letters (computers, let alone email, didn't exist back then, nor did cellphones) and we managed to see each other once when we were both in Europe at the same time. Then we lost touch. Only a few weeks ago, while doing research for this book, did we get back in connection. 

She had been head of Habitat for Humanity in Uganda for some years. A few years ago she returned to her hometown of Freetown, where she is running a similar program. This page tells you about the work of that group.She is most of the way down the page, being hugged by someone who is enthused about getting a house. Hard to believe that Isa will be 80 this month. Hard work suits her!

Anyway, my little book tells about that long-ago summer. Here I am at work with others on the school we built:

And here is part of a chapter:

Wherever we went in Sierra Leone, people might be dancing. Sometimes it was to High Life, the music genre popular there at the time, and sometimes it was to American rock and roll. It wasn’t to the Beatles... I didn’t hear of them myself until I was back in college later. Sometimes the music was live but more often it was recorded and someone was keeping an eye on a record player. We might be pretty worn out after long hours at the work site, but we still did a lot of dancing. Even klutzes like me.

I loved one Saturday dance at the Court Barrie, a large space with a cement floor, a roof overhead, and walls that went up a few feet. That night the place was packed with people of all ages, from white-haired oldsters to toddlers. We moved around the barrie much as skaters move around a rink... well, not that fast! But there was a delicious sense of flow as we all danced in unison. I watched one old lady dancing, her arms and legs moving in a lively manner, while she held a sleepy toddler under one arm. I guessed he was her grandson. A special bonus that night was that when I walked home with a couple of other Crossroaders, it was the clearest night I had seen in Moyamba, with countless stars sparkling overhead.

Some evenings we walked to the only nightspot we found in Moyamba, the Comfort Bar. It was someone’s home that they had remodeled to have a space for dancing and a cooler with beer and soft drinks. You could get snacks too, and there were chairs and sofas for lounging around and talking. One time, we danced for a while and then several of us got into a discussion of juju or witchcraft. One of the African Crossroaders said that she believed in some of it. Another African Crossroader called it all nonsense but admitted to believing in horoscopes.

One evening at the Comfort Bar, I got to talking to a Sierra Leonean man who was a school administrator of some sort. He had studied in England for several years, and there he became convinced that every white person hated all black people. He did not know what to think of Crossroaders.

“When I heard of your group, I thought you must be a propaganda team sent by the American government,” he said to me.

I was shocked and tried to assure him that we weren’t. I started telling him about the picket lines I had been on the previous year in my hometown of Washington, D.C., demonstrating against an apartment complex that wasn’t integrated. I got quite indignant as I talked.

He passed me his beer. “Here, have some,” he offered.

I didn’t much like beer and I had a moment of concern about germs but I took a small swig, handed it back, and went on about how that apartment complex was deliberately breaking the law. I was practically ranting. He just smiled. 

I saw him at the Comfort Bar a few other times, and I made a point of introducing him to other Crossroaders and getting conversations going. As he got to know us better, he pointed out that even if we really did not dislike people with dark skin, there were very few white people who didn’t. 

He told me that his offering me the beer had been a test. He didn’t expect that I would drink from a bottle an African had been drinking from. I decided this wasn’t the moment to admit that my concern was about germs.

He said to me, “You and your friends are just grains of sand.”

I tried to deny that, but what did I know? Never had I felt my privileged position in life more keenly.

Now, once again, I feel my privileged position in life.