The story of one man’s efforts to heal the people of war-torn Sierra Leone using photography is told through his lens.

Maurice Henri, founder of Cameras for Healing, will show his pictures in London and make two presentations about his project during tomorrow’s annual Stan C. Reade photo day from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Through Cameras for Healing, Henri works with a psychologist to help victims of war and violence and ex- child soldiers in Sierra Leone plagued by emotional trauma.

Henri teaches them the basics of photography and gets the participants to take pictures of anything appealing to them.

After five days, he asks them to document a day in their life.

“(Due to) trauma . . . they cannot express themselves. The camera becomes the tool of self-empowerment to give them a voice. It’s an emotional response through visuals,” he said.

In Henri’s first workshop, the soldiers and their victims started out on opposite sides of the room. By the end of the week, they became friends and worked together.

“They were actually forgiving each other and hugging each other and crying together.”

One woman, who was held hostage for nine years in a small room with no light and repeatedly sexually assaulted, told Henri his workshop changed her life.

“She had a total fear of men. For two days, she sat and stared at the floor. I’ve never in my whole career of 20 years seen such sadness in one face,” he recalled.

“She gave me a hug and thanked me for allowing her to smile for the first time.”

The participants are continuing to do assignments and working together to help others.

Henri, who funds Cameras for Healing himself, will work with those participants again on his next trip to Sierra Leone in November and will also offer the program to new groups.

The Moncton, N.B. native will also make a presentation to the St. Thomas photo club on Tuesday evening while he’s in the area.

—

IF YOU GO

What: Cameras for Healing presentations

When: Tomorrow, 11:15 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.

Where: Elsie Perrin Williams Estate, 101 Windemere Rd.

Admission: Free

London Free Press – Today – Cameras empower Sierra Leone victims

Kate Smith walks the virtual streets of Sierra Leone, via an art installation combining contemporary art with social commentary and history at the Museum in Docklands until November 1 2007.

A ’still’ of the still from ‘Rush Hour’. Courtesy of the Museum in Docklands.

The new exhibition at the Museum in Docklands is billed as a multi-sensory experience. It is simple in set up: three large screens show a busy city street in Freetown, Sierra Leone, with a ‘talk radio’ voice over. But one artificial element makes this compulsive watching.

The video opens upon a curious stillness. A camera moves down the African city street during rush hour, but something is amiss. Whilst a radio crackles with music, jingles, news and debate, everyone here is rooted to the spot, caught in mid-stride, mid-gesture. We are looking at a snapshot moment from everyday life.

But this is no simple photograph. With a voyeur’s license we travel around the frozen urban scene, wandering amidst a population caught in stasis.

Then, suddenly, an unexpected blink disrupts this petrified landscape. An involuntary glance meets our eyes and turns hastily away. An arm moves slightly. Small movements betray life within this unmoving terrain.

The people of Freetown are not the still subjects of a photographic record, but subjects standing still for a carefully choreographed freeze frame performance.

The video gives what no conventional travel dialogue, or news report could bring. We see minute details of everyday life – the juxtaposition of a sharp suited businessman holding a state of the art laptop; rundown shops with chatting groups frozen on the street; a family bunched into a car, the city’s fashion choices, the even, appraising glance of 150 people.

The radio phone in soundtrack gives a feel for where Sierra Leone is at today. It was appropriated in 1787 as a safe haven for Africans liberated from slavery, but many of its first residents were brought reluctantly from Britain and subsequently died. Hence the idea of reparations for slavery are hotly debated, the dialogue moving between English and Krio.

The country is both the world’s greatest exporter of diamonds, and the second poorest in the world. War, which so often afflicts countries rich in resources, came in 1991 and lasted a decade, killing anywhere between 50,000 – 200,000.

Which makes all the more striking the energy and vibrancy – even in stillness – of these Freetown commuters, and the art piece intervention impels us to imagine ourselves too as inhabitants of that city. This looks like a hopeful place.

Courtesy of the Museum In Docklands

The film was made by David Matthew, a London-born journalist, and Paul Howard, a visual artist.

Whilst in the city, they took samples of posters from across the capital. These are displayed to the side of the screen, many for local family drama films, or for religion or business: “Sierra Leone’s Hotest new movie Street Life” “The Return from Europe” “My family is covered with the blood of Jesus” “Africell Scratch And Win”.

With democratic elections coming up on August 11th, a magazine also asks “Election 2007 – how safe are we?”

This immersive, nuanced experience stays with you for far longer than any conventional exhibition could. It is great to see so many threads of history brought together in this simple, imaginative way.

Rushing In Slow Motion: Sierra Leone Comes To Museum In Docklands – 24 Hour Museum – official guide to UK museums, galleries, exhibitions and heritage

An important document of the tragic 10-year-long war in Sierra Leone exists and yet, until now, has had no international recognition.

It is a collection of poems produced by a group of Sierra Leonean writers who met regularly throughout the war.

They came together, wherever and whenever they could, to share their writing and also for companionship in the direst of circumstances.

One, Oumar Farouk Sesay, recalls that at the time, every individual in Sierra Leone was confronted with his or her own mortality.

“No-one escaped,” he says.

“Status did not matter. I began to realise that soon we all would exit and then I began to consider what would be left behind. This is why I wrote My Will.”

Dark days

The 10-year war was marked by horror difficult to comprehend.

Some of the atrocities included mass rape, brutal amputations, and the widespread use of child soldiers – many of whom were abducted and forced to commit these atrocities against their own families.

In the early stages of the long war, the physical fighting was one stage removed from these writers, as the capital Freetown was not affected.

But in the latter stages of the war Freetown was invaded and ransacked by the rebels.

This put the war on these writers’ own doorsteps.

Dark days followed. All of the writers encountered violence.

One, Tom Cauuray, remembers being stripped naked by a group of rebels in the centre of town.

He says they were ready to kill him, accusing him of being Nigerian; the rebels had a particular hatred of the Nigerians, who made up the West African peacekeeping force, Ecomog.

Mr Cauuray describes how a group of evangelists, who happened to be passing, called on the rebels to pray and as the rebels were distracted, and some of them prayed, he escaped.

Aftermath of war

Five years after the war ended, Sierra Leoneans are trying to move on – but are still reeling from the war’s dire effects.

Kosonike Kosso Thomas sums up the tension of the war’s aftermath in the poem Trying To Forgive.

In their poetry, the writers all contemplate the way that poverty in the aftermath of war is restricting the lives of the population.

Mohammed Gibril Sesay’s short poem Where Will Our Child Lie deals with this.

He says that a poem is “a rainbow,” and about “controlled emotion.”

“You can tell the individual has experienced pain but right now it is not overwhelming him,” he adds.

“The poet is in the driving seat of his emotions.”

Oumar Farouk Sesay believes that most Sierra Leonean writers feel an immense responsibility to their country, and want to use their words and their voices to tackle fundamental and ethical issues and problems in their country.

“We are the voice of the people,” he says.

“We try to articulate what the illiterate in our society would like to say if they had our access to the written word.”

MY WILL – OUMAR FAROUK SESAY

When I die
Don’t bury my poetry
In the prison of your
Shelves under your beds.
In your cockroach
Infested boxes for mice
And cockroaches to dine.
Don’t pluck the pages of
My poetry to wrap crumbs.

TRYING TO FORGIVE – KOSONIKE KOSSO THOMAS

I hear your plea but now I’m losing
The spirit to forgive,
Just when it moves through me
And enters right into my thinking lobe.
I sense it fail to instruct the bits in me
Which respond to acts of love,
And keep me trying to forgive.

WHERE WILL OUR CHILD LIE – MOHAMMED GIBRIL SESAY

Headside-footside-jamming-wall
The bed
Is workbenchwide
The room twice that
And my woman pregnant
Where will our child lie?

Link to BBC NEWS | Africa | Sierra Leone’s poems of war

IFJ(International Federation of Journalists) Africa statement on the World Press Freedom Day.

Impunity should no longer be tolerated when a journalist is killed, attacked or threatened.
Dear Colleagues,
Today, May 3 is World Press Freedom Day. The entire world commemorates this day to reflect on the magnanimous work done by the media and moreover to reassess the trials and tribulations that the media had gone through within the past year. In Africa, it is sad to note that press freedom is constantly under attack and hence continuously violated. Violent attacks on the media, arbitrary arrest and detention without trial, utilisation of draconian laws to imprison journalists, impunity and bad working conditions are the main factors that continue to confront journalists and media workers in the continent.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation, (UNESCO) theme for this Year’s celebrations is: “Press Freedom, Safety of Journalists and Impunity”. Such a theme comes at the right moment, because of the increasing number of journalists assassinated throughout the world. The International Federation of Journalists (FIJ) had indeed recorded at least 155 murders and unexplained deaths of journalists and media workers in 2006, which makes it the worse year of all.

African Governments Urged to Conduct Independent Investigations to bring Journalists’ Murderers to Justice.

In Africa, some of our colleagues will be taking part in this year’s celebrations with very nostalgic feelings. We wish to express our sincere condolence and solidarity once again with their families and friends for the lost of their dear ones. Last year, among the nine (9) journalists killed in Africa, five (5) of them were assassinated and the others were killed in road accidents while on assignment.

The murderers of Martin Adler (Somalia), Bapuwa Muamba (Democratic Republic of Congo), Madey Garas (Somalia), Mohammed Taha (Sudan), Godwin Agbroko (Nigeria), are still at large.

This year, (2007) we already count 6 of our colleagues who have been killed. Among them 3 were cowardly shot. These include Ali Mohammed Omar (Somalia), Samuel Kwabena Enin (Ghana) and Edward Chikomba (Zimbabwe).

We reiterate here our call to the governments and the judicial authorities of Somalia, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, The Gambia and all the other countries where journalists were assassinated, to conduct independent investigations to bring the perpetrators of these heinous crimes to justice.

Impunity should no longer be tolerated when a journalist is killed, attacked or threatened. Very rare do we see trials conducted against the “killers of journalists” which end with the conviction of the perpetrators of these heinous crimes. At best, it is often some henchmen who are convicted as it was the case after the assassination of Carlos Cardoso (2000) in Mozambique and Frank Kangundu and his wife (2005) in DRC. The perpetrators are still protected by some governments or very biased justice systems. In Burkina Faso, in the trial of the murder of Norbert Zongo, (killed in 1998), the court withdrew the case in July 2006 and exonerate the only person accused in this case.

Road accidents represent the other major reasons for the death of journalists in Africa. The managers of media companies must make sure that journalists go on assignment under the best conditions of safety and insurance. It is unacceptable that so many journalists continue to lose their lives or are wounded in car accidents without insurance and social security.

Similarly, journalists working in conflict zones or in dangerous areas must have suitable protection and considered as civilians and neutral parties by the different forces. Resolution 1738 of the United Nations Security Council of December 23, 2006 which protects the journalists in conflict, says that, killing a journalist can be regarded as a war crime. The IFJ welcomed the adoption of this resolution, which it campaigned for with its member trade unions and calls for its strict application in Africa.

Draconian laws continue to be used by governments to muzzle the press.

In Africa today, a lot of journalists continue to languish in jail because of the draconian legislations adopted by the states which continued to be utilised in kangaroo courts. The IFJ calls on the Members of Parliaments and the civil society of Africa to raise their voices for the suppression of all undemocratic laws on defamation and those laws that are meant to curtail the freedom of the press. It is the ardent belief of the IFJ that journalists should not be imprisoned for their work. Media self-regulatory bodies, made up of media professionals should be established and empowered so that they can take the role to monitor the work of the media and to ensure that those who work in the media are guided by the ethics of the profession.

The IFJ welcomed the release of 8 journalists in Ethiopia, on April 9, 2007. These journalists are among the journalists arrested in the crackdown of November 2005 and charged with genocide and treason. We call on the Ethiopian justice system to release the remaining journalists who are still in custody, as no serious reason requires their continued imprisonment.

Eritrea had not made any positive move concerning fifteen journalists held incommunicado and in difficult conditions. These journalists, including the Swedish-Eritrean, Issac Dawit, are arbitrarily held since 2001 when all the independent media in the country have been shut down.

In Zimbabwe, in addition to the arbitrary and brutal arrests of journalists, torture is also used by the security forces. Journalist Gift Phiri, of the Zimbabwean newspaper, was kidnapped on April 1st from his house by the police force and severely beaten while in detention. In the same vein, journalists’ equipment continued to be confiscated and destroyed during their arrest.

The IFJ is hereby engaging its members unions and associations to be more active in defending the improvement of the living and working conditions of journalists, the fight for press freedom and the safety of journalists.

A free press and a constitutional guarantee of the freedom of expression constitute a fundamental element of democracy.

Photo: Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary.

Link to The Patriotic Vanguard

Ghanaian High Commissioner to Sierra Leone, Dr. Mokowa Blay-Gyamfi Wednesday donated a large quantity of books and reference materials to the Sierra Leone Library Board.

Blay-Gyamfi recalled that during her school days, there were no computers which means that the materials donated will equally be useful to students and pupils who register with the library.

“The teachers were expecting us to read wide in order to expand our knowledge,” she said.

Dr. Blay-Gyamfi called on the Chief Librarian to encourage children to develop the culture of reading as it will help to widen their knowledge.

She however pledged her country’s continuous support for the government and people of Sierra Leone.

Receiving the items, the Chief Librarian of the Sierra Leone Library Board, Victor Coker said he was very happy to receive the books from the Ghanaian High Commissioner and promised that they will be utilized judiciously.

Link to allAfrica.com: Sierra Leone: Ghana Donates Books (Page 1 of 1)

When Landri Taylor was 20, he became interested in tracing his people. Of course, when he was 20, he also met Alex Haley.

The author of Roots was teaching at the University of California at Berkeley – where Taylor was a student.

As the younger man would later recall, “It was meeting with him that motivated me to go to Africa and learn more about Africa than was available in books.”

So off he went during summer break, meandering through Senegal, Gambia, the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Cameroon, Zaire and Kenya. Soon, what was just supposed to be a lark became a “revelation.”

“When I first got there, I felt like I was just an American traveling in foreign countries – like white students going to Europe for the summer.

“But by the time I left, it was a totally different feeling. The people I met embraced me and welcomed me in such a way that I felt I was coming home.”

Indeed, as he coiled his way near Sierra Leone, so many people looked like him – bone structure, eyes, noses, ears, height – that he became convinced “my people must have come from here.”

Thirty-five years later, he learned he was right.

When last year’s DNA test indicated his mother’s line had begun with the Mende people of Sierra Leone, Taylor didn’t feel joy or revelation so much as “confirmation of what I had felt in my heart all along.”

“To tell you the truth, I would have been very surprised if that had not been the case,” he said.

Still, something was different.

“I felt proud of that fact that now I could pass this information along to my kids,” says Taylor, 56, vice president of community affairs for Forest City Stapleton.

All during their growing-up years, his three children had heard stories of their father’s watershed trip to Africa, including his suspicions of their origins.

Now that those suspicions have been confirmed, the Taylor children – all adults – feel a subtle but welcome shift.

“It’s definitely important to know how it all started, how it all came about,” says Kristol Taylor, 25, the youngest.

“I definitely thought it was cool they could somehow link him back that far.”

Her father hopes that someday his children can experience what he did those many years ago.

“I can tell them all that I can tell them,” he says, “But until they’re there at ground zero, crossing the Gambia River, feet on the dirt, looking into the eyes of generations of people – people that can tell you about 500 years of history – well, you just can’t explain that to someone.”

You just can’t explain the joy of knowing just how deep your own roots grow in the soil of the time.

James Island is in the middle of the River Gambia, about two kilometres south of Jufureh and Albreda. On the island are the remains of Fort James. A Dutch nobleman, James, Duke of Courland, built the fort in about 1651. The English captured it in 1661 and the island became known as Fort James or James Island, after James Duke of York. The fort was used as a trading base, first for gold and ivory then for slaves like Kunta Kinte portrayed in the movie “Roots”.

Resources: Alex Haley Foundation

Link to Rocky Mountain News – Denver and Colorado’s reliable source for breaking news, sports and entertainment: Local

Black Man’s Grave: Letters from Sierra Leone is the first book to seriously examine the causes and conduct of Sierra Leone’s horrific decade of civil war and tells the story of Sierra Leone’s chaotic descent through the eyes of those who struggles to survive it. Based on years of correspondence between residents of the small northern village of Fadugu and the book’s authors both former Peace Corps volunteers in Fadugu, the book provides a grassroots view of the forces that finally exploded in grim profusion.

The cast includes Sierra Leone’s “bif man”, Siaka Stevens; RUF leader Foday Sankoh, whose grandfatherly demeanor belied the viciousness with which he sought to impose his “revolution”; and one who aspired to the bug man role, Charles Taylor from next-door Liberia. Taylor’s support for Sierra Leone’s rebel war expanded from initial hostility toward Stevens’ handpicked successor into a commercial venture that supplied arms in exchange for diamonds. In an offshoot of that unsavory trade, links between Sierra Leone’s Diamonds and al Qaeda have been traced. The revelations of Black Man’s Grave help us understand the frustrations that simmer throughout much of the third world and threaten a peaceful future for all.

Authors

GARY STEWART has written over 50 articles and reviews on Africa for such publishers as the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, West Africa, Option, The Beat, Folk Roots, Take Cover, and New African. He is the author of Rumba on the River (Verso, 2000) and Breakout: Profiles in African Rhythm (University of Chicago Press, 1992). He served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Fadugu from 1968 to 1970.

JOHN AMMAN writes about the American labor movement and is a co-editor of Surviving the New Economy (Paradigm, in press) and a contributor to Under the Stars: Essays on Labor Relations in Arts and Entertainment (ILR Press, 1996). He has lectured at Cornell University and is currently a business representative for International Cinematographers IATSE Local 600 in New York. He served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Fadugu from 1979 to 1982.

Black Man’s Grave: Letters from Sierra Leone

By Guy Stewart and John Amman

Paperback 5.5″ x 8.5″, 224 pages;

Includes map and 12 photos; notes, sources, and index

Price: $14.95; Distributed to the trade by Biblio Distribution, 1-800-462-6420

More information on the book is available at Cold Run Books

Link to allAfrica.com

Oprah Winfrey’s book club, on hold for nearly a year, will have a new selection later this month. Meanwhile, another industry sales maker has announced its latest pick.

Starbucks, which has sold nearly 100,000 copies of Mitch Albom’s “For One More Day” at its coffee houses nationwide, will soon be offering “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier,” by Sierra Leone native Ishmael Beah.

“The commitment we have is to provide our customers with the opportunity to discover quality books,” Starbucks Entertainment president Ken Lombard told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “It’s going to be an approach that will provide opportunities for well-known authors such as Mitch Albom as well as an emerging author like Ishmael Beah.”

Beyond the Starbucks endorsement, Beah’s book has virtually nothing in common with Albom’s. “For One More Day” is a sentimental novel by a brand-name author about a son and his late mother. “A Long Way Gone” is a debut book about Beah’s years as a child soldier during the civil war in Sierra Leone, in the 1990s, when his parents were killed and the author was carrying a gun by age 13.

Beah, now 26, fled Sierra Leone in 1997 and a year later emigrated to the United States. He graduated from Oberlin College in 2004 and lives in New York.

“This is a marvelous chance for any writer. I am pleased to work with Starbucks to share my story,” Beah, whose book will be published in mid-February by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, said in a statement issued by Starbucks Corp. “I look forward to bringing this message to readers across the country.”

“Instead of picking a big best seller, they’ve chosen something totally new and totally out of the blue,” Farrar, Straus & Giroux publisher Jonathan Galassi told the AP. “It’s a very courageous choice.”

Starbuck’s Lombard said that Albom’s book had sold more than 92,000 copies at Starbucks since coming out in October, but declined to say how many copies the coffee house chain had ordered. Neither Lombard nor Galassi would comment on how many copies of “A Long Way Gone” would be shipped to Starbucks.

Beah’s memoir, which already features blurbs from “A Perfect Storm” writer Sebastian Junger and Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll of “Ghost Wars,” will be released in mid-February and will be backed by an author tour at Starbucks stores in 10 cities. Starbucks will donate $2 to UNICEF from each sale of the $22 book, with a minimum donation of $100,000.

“UNICEF played a key role in the rehabilitation of Beah,” Lombard said of the United Nations Children’s Fund.

Starbucks also sells CDs and DVDs and officially launched its book promotion last fall with the Albom novel.

On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Winfrey said that a new book club pick would be made later this month, the first since last Jan. 16, when she selected Elie Wiesel’s “Night.” Her pick before Wiesel was James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces,” which Winfrey chose in September 2005, only to learn in early 2006 that substantial portions of the memoir had been fabricated.

Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir, also released by Farrar, Straus, had been decided upon before the allegations emerged against “A Million Little Pieces,” Galassi confirmed, adding that at least 1.5 million copies of “Night” had sold because of Winfrey. Publishers are usually alerted several weeks in advance that one of their books has been selected.

Source: Starbucks to Sell Memoir on Child Soldier

The Hollywood movie “The Blood Diamond” about gem smuggling in Africa could hinder Sierra Leone’s postwar recovery as its struggles to legitimize its vital diamond exports, officials in the West African state say. The Oscar-tipped film, which has taken in $18.4 million so far in the United States, stars Leonardo DiCaprio as an ex-mercenary involved in gem smuggling in 1990s Sierra Leone. It plays out against a backdrop of the former British colony’s 1991-2002 civil war, fueled by the trade in illicit stones and notorious for mutilations meted out by RUF rebels. 

 ”I am worried the film may be detrimental to the industry in Sierra Leone,” said Mohamed Swaray Deen, minister of mineral resources. “People need to know that when they are seeing atrocities, the country has moved very, very far away from the pictures they see in the movie. But the consumer might be affected by this.” Diamonds have the potential to transform Sierra Leone, which has the world’s highest rate of child mortality. Currently, the government relies on aid for almost half its budget — much of it from former colonial power Britain. Sierra Leone’s war helped prompt the U.N.-organized Kimberly Process launched in 2003 to ensure “blood” or “conflict” diamonds are not sold on the black market to buy weapons. Kimberly has kickstarted the industry in Sierra Leone: diamond exports boomed from $10 million in 2000 to $141 million last year. The government receives 3 percent of exports, worth $4.23 million last year. Since 2001, the government has set aside a quarter of gem revenues for the Diamond Area Community Development Fund, which fosters development in mining areas. “A lot of development has taken place since the war and the movie needs to include this,” Deen said.

SHOT IN MOZAMBIQUE, SOUTH AFRICA Other officials expressed disappointment that producers of the $100 million Hollywood film opted to shoot on location in Mozambique and South Africa, rather than coming to the impoverished West African state. “I wish at least it had been filmed here,” said Cecil Williams, general manager of the National Tourist Board. “Much as it is negative about our country it could also have portrayed the beauty of Sierra Leone,” he said. “We have a unique landscape, and the presence of a large film crew would have provided economic benefits.” Sierra Leone has much to offer tourists, ranging from pristine beaches, jungle and animal species including threatened chimpanzees, rare birds and the pygmy hippo. Before the war, there was a thriving tourism industry, with 98,000 people visiting in 1990. Latest figures from the U.N.’s World Tourism Organization show that Sierra Leone received only 44,000 visitors in 2004, many of them expatriate workers.
Five years after peace was restored, U.N. troops withdrew successfully at the beginning of 2006, and a U.N. Special Court is putting on trial those accused of the worst atrocities.
Presidential elections are planned for July and the country is trying to portray itself as open for business to lure desperately needed investment.

” Perception is a very powerful thing. In seeing that film you will believe the war is still happening here,” said Williams. “We brought in five journalists from Hungary to showcase the country but prior to them coming two backed down because of what they thought might happen to them here.”
“When people meet me for the first time they expect my hands to be chopped (off),” he said in reference to one of the brutal practices common during the war.
“Sierra Leone is now a safe country but it has become synonymous with war.”

LESS THAN ONE PERCENT

“The Blood Diamond” has prompted a charm offensive by the international gem industry to prevent consumers deserting a multibillion-dollar trade. An estimated 65 percent of stones are mined in Africa.
Conflict diamonds now account for less than 1 percent of gem sales, down from as much as 15 percent in the mid-1990s.
Some small scale diamond smuggling continues in West Africa, but only in war-torn Ivory Coast can “conflict diamonds” still be said to exist, experts say.
A U.N. report in October said diamonds were being smuggled out of the rebel-held north of Ivory Coast, in violation of a U.N. embargo, generating between $9 million and $23 million.
Experts say some smuggling persists in Sierra Leone, but the very low tax rate encourages traders to go the official route.
“It’s very difficult to say what the rate of smuggling is now,” said Deen. “But if your legal exports are increasing in the way they are, then you can say your illegal exports are at least decreasing.”

Source: Sierra Leone frets over Blood Diamond image | Entertainment | Entertainment News | Reuters.com

«What’s the use of money if you can’t do good things with it,» asks Sierra Leonean businessman Adonis Abboud behind his characteristic smile and loud necktie. Abboud, a well-known personality in bustling Freetown, is owner of the local DSTV cable franchise as well as the private radio station, Capital Radio, which revolutionizing the airwaves with West Africa’s first traffic and weather reports. With a head for business and a heart for Sierra Leone’s children, Aboud has forged a new ethic into local commerce.

«Ask yourself this: if you had a hundred dollars less and helped save a child, would you be any worse off?» That’s the key to Pikin Bizness, Adonis’s greatest contribution to his adopted country – he immigrated from Lebanon 30 years ago. Pikin Bizness, or children’s affairs in the local kreo dialect is the non-profit organisation Aboud founded to save Sierra Leone’s chronically ill or orphaned children.

Polio, malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, you name it, and Abboud’s outfit is making contributions.

Pikin Bizness is funded by local donations, benefit functions, and gifts-in-kind from local businesses, such as Yazbek Travel agency which has shared travel costs with SN Brussels in bringing three children with heart disease to Belgium and France for emergency heart operations.

In 2005 Pikin Bizness joined forces with the socially-conscious advertising agency AnglophoneMedia, which operates in Paris, Dakar, and Boston. Its first project was to find help for six year old Abubacar Jalloh, the Freetown boy born with a hole in his heart and who had six months to live. A local newspaper article in The Exclusive ran a short story and AnglophoneMedia picked it up. Soon, ministers and ambassadors were all saying «something must be done.»

An Aviation without Borders volunteer escorted the frail Abubakar on the SN Brussels flight to Brussels with connecting service to Paris and Aboud’s Pikin Bizness providing support. The boy arrived just hours in time for a life-saving operation at the Hospital Necker by Mecenat Cardique’s famed Dr. Francine Leca, who has operated on over 1000 children from around the world.

«One at a time,» that’s how we save them, commented Aboud. Pikin Bizness and AnglophoneMedia now have a list of 150 children in urgent need of heart surgury. The social scene following the civil war in Sierra Leone is constantly improving, but the country still does not have a single sonogram machine, and German-trained Dr. Olu Black is the country’s only cardiologist.

Five year old Zogie Ighobor was the second child to be saved with the help of the Pikin Bizness/AnglophoneMedia network, operated on in September at the European Georges Pompidou Hospital for acute pulmonary stenosis in association with the dynamic La Chaine de l’Espoir, directed by the celebrated humanitarian Dr. Alain Deloche and Professor Daniel Sidi.

A seven year old orphan named Linda, the third Sierra Leonean to benefit from Abboud’s advocacy, returned to Freetown in November with a repaired heart valve, and according to Pikin Bizness a two year old also with a life-threatening hole in his heart is next in line to be flown to Europe.

«Saving a child is the greatest means of restoring hope to an entire country,» commented Zogie’s relieved mom, Mary, who works at the UN court in Freetown.

When little Abubacar Jalloh arrived at Longy Airport in Sierra Leone he was greeted as a local hero. Aside from a new lease on life, apparently during his six weeks of recovery in a retreat near Versailles, Abubacar even managed to learn French!

Courtesy of David Applefield