Paradise Discovered In Sierra Leone

Civil war tore the nation apart for 11 years, but the beau­ti­ful beaches that were once the set­ting for the Bounty choco­late bar adver­tise­ments are now back on the tourist map. Its mountain-backed empty beaches are so pris­tine it was once the set­ting for Bounty bar’s “Taste of Par­adise” adverts, but many peo­ple may be more famil­iar with Sierra Leone as the set­ting for a bru­tal civil war. For 11 years, this small west African nation tore itself apart as attack­ers ampu­tated vil­lagers’ limbs with blunt machetes, small chil­dren fired off Kalash­nikovs they could barely lift and an esti­mated one in three women were raped.

Seven years after the end of the war, how­ever, the unlikely prospect of tourism in Sierra Leone is back on the agenda. And well it should be.Few peo­ple know about Sierra Leone’s sweep­ing many-coloured beaches, its swim-perfect seas and glo­ri­ous rainforest-mountain back­drops. They don’t know you can dine on fresh-grilled lob­ster and refresh your­self with a cool beer beside the ocean. They don’t know about the country’s threat­ened pri­mates and rare exotic birdlife, or that it is home to the region’s high­est moun­tain. They are unaware that its cap­i­tal is one of the safest cities in Africa and that peo­ple dance with a mes­meris­ing lust for life until after dawn. Or that, despite the decade of war, the nation’s tenac­ity, affec­tion and spirit is what really defines it.

Born of the efforts of three waves of freed slaves from Britain, Canada and Jamaica in the late 18th cen­tury, the country’s cap­i­tal, Free­town, was named for being a sin­gu­lar province of free­dom in the midst of a flour­ish­ing slave trade. In part because of this dash­ing his­tory, its poverty and its hor­ren­dous war, Salone (as it is affec­tion­ately known) con­jures up a spe­cial sort of love – it is love against the odds, hol­i­days against the grain, belief in the face of dis­be­lief.

Cecil Williams is among those who have been valiantly work­ing to bring that belief to light. He became head of the national tourist board in 1991, the year the war started, and watched as the num­ber of vis­i­tors plum­meted from close to 100,000 a year to almost zero. Now the num­ber of arrivals has edged up to 4,000 a year, but most are vis­it­ing friends or fam­ily, or are more likely con­sul­tants than care­free hol­i­day­mak­ers.

“Tourism is still vir­gin here,” Mr Williams explains. “But there’s great enthu­si­asm and peo­ple are start­ing to come. We could have 10,000 tourism jobs in the next five to seven years but it depends on gov­ern­ment sup­port – at the moment we are grossly under-funded.” Another acolyte of tourism’s uphill strug­gle is Bim­bola Car­rol, 32, who left Sierra Leone in 1997 when Free­town was under fire. Just over a year ago he gave up a nine-to-five job in Lon­don to go back to his home­land to start up a tourism busi­ness.

“I always saw myself return­ing,” says Mr Car­rol, who is one of an esti­mated 50,000 in the dias­pora who have returned since the war ended. “It’s down to Sierra Leoneans to rebuild Sierra Leone. We have a respon­si­bil­ity to give back to our soci­ety.” Today he employs four peo­ple and runs the pop­u­lar, information-packed Visit Sierra Leone web­site, which he started in 2004, as well as organ­is­ing trip itin­er­aries. “It was only two years after the end of the war and at that time no one was talk­ing about tourism,” he says. “But I had a much longer-term view about it: Sierra Leone hasn’t received as much credit as it deserves.”

Tony Blair, who sent in UK troops in 2000 to help bring the fight­ing to an end, is among those hop­ing to gen­er­ate just this sort of credit. This week the for­mer prime min­is­ter has been wan­der­ing up and down the fine city sands at Lum­ley beach – a long strip that brings together Freetown’s fish­er­men, jog­gers, lovers and sun­down­ers. He’s been hang­ing with beach entre­pre­neurs, watch­ing the day’s catch come in and see­ing with his own eyes the tourism poten­tial Sierra Leone’s pres­i­dent, Ernest Bai Koroma, hopes to trans­late into jobs and eco­nomic growth.

“There’s no doubt­ing they could trans­form this into a huge tourism mag­net,” Mr Blair said in an inter­view dur­ing his visit. “It is heav­ily depen­dent on donor aid and the coun­try needs to be released of this.” Britain, the for­mer colo­nial power, today gives more money per per­son to Sierra Leone than any­where else – an amount set to rise to £50m next year. Yet the west African coun­try remains bot­tom of the UN Human Devel­op­ment index, invest­ment shy, with more than 70 per cent of its peo­ple liv­ing below the poverty line and the world’s high­est mater­nal mor­tal­ity rate. Unem­ploy­ment is wor­ry­ingly high, par­tic­u­larly among poten­tially volatile young men.

Sup­port­ing tourism may pay div­i­dends: the indus­try will earn sub-Saharan Africa $66bn this year – account­ing for 6.7 per cent of the continent’s GDP and directly employ­ing 3.34 mil­lion peo­ple. In Sierra Leone, the World Travel and Tourism Coun­cil says the coun­try already earns $90 mil­lion from travel and tourism and is likely to grow at 5.8 per cent a year for the next decade.

Mr Blair, who has placed nine experts from his advi­sory group into Sierra Leone’s gov­ern­ment to help improve decision-making and boost busi­ness, says he is pin­ning his hopes on a Novem­ber invest­ment con­fer­ence to drum up much-needed inter­est in the sec­tor. His father used to teach at the uni­ver­sity and told him about Sierra Leone as a boy.

He said: “The poten­tial is obvi­ous absolutely every­where but now it needs real invest­ment. It’s crit­i­cal to pro­vide the infra­struc­ture – the air­port, port, mak­ing sure the nec­es­sary roads are built.” But the coun­try offers some­thing else – extra­or­di­nary nat­ural beauty, and heart.

In research­ing the first-ever guide­book to the coun­try, peo­ple will­ingly offered me help, advice and dis­played a reas­sur­ing devo­tion to their land. When I thought it might be pos­si­ble to scale the famed Mount Bin­tu­mani from the east rather than the west as every­body seemed to do, I turned up unan­nounced at a nearby vil­lage where elders pointed out the mountain’s mag­nif­i­cent sil­hou­ette and showed me the way. Keen to reach the vine-covered crum­bling remains of a slave cas­tle sat snug on Bunce Island in the mid­dle of the Sierra Leone River, I watched its elderly care­taker gin­gerly bail out water from his leaky canoe.

The country’s her­itage is both mov­ing and hor­ri­fy­ing: the dilap­i­dated slave fortress is thought to have sent 50,000 slaves mostly to north Amer­ica, through­out 140 years of oper­a­tion, link­ing black Amer­i­cans more closely to Sierra Leone than any other African coun­try. Among them is US actor and Grey’s Anatomy star Isa­iah Wash­ing­ton, who traced his DNA to Sierra Leone and has since donated money to his­to­ri­ans devoted to bring­ing life on Bunce Island to light.

There are an esti­mated one mil­lion Sierra Leoneans liv­ing abroad who send back $250m every year. And while per­sonal links are likely to form a strong link for many vis­i­tors, there are already some trav­ellers with no ties at all who are dis­cov­er­ing the charms of the coun­try. “We wanted to go some­where before all the tourists got there,” said Claire Thomas, 33, a Lon­doner who hol­i­dayed in Sierra Leone ear­lier this year with her boyfriend.

The cou­ple stayed on an exotic island filled with fresh figs, guavas and star­fruit, spent the night in an eco-lodge at a chim­panzee sanc­tu­ary, swam beside the fine white sands of River No 2 – the set­ting for those Bounty adverts – took a boat trip down a mangrove-lined river, watched tai­lors, veg­etable grow­ers and bak­ers at work, and even found peo­ple will­ing to accom­mo­date their vegan diet – impres­sive in a land where meat, fish and diary prod­ucts are prized pro­tein.

For Ms Thomas, who works for a devel­op­ment char­ity, it was also a chance to con­tribute some­thing mean­ing­ful. “We wanted to give some­thing back rather than giv­ing aid,” she says. “I just thought it was amaz­ing, I was really sur­prised. It was really peace­ful and relax­ing and we didn’t even get one mos­quito bite. Every­one was so gen­uine and friendly and I felt really safe.”

Ms Thomas, part of a first trickle of tourists, booked her trip with one of one of two UK tour oper­a­tors who are tak­ing a chance on this post-war west African state. “I came into tourism not to book flights but for eco­nomic devel­op­ment,” says Judith De Witt, direc­tor of the UK’s Rain­bow Tours, which offers week-long trips to Sierra Leone from around £1,500. “Sierra Leone was sta­ble but wasn’t get­ting the kind of cov­er­age it deserved. It reminds me of the good old days of Mada­gas­car.” Now, finally, Sierra Leone’s chance may be com­ing.

Kat­rina Man­son is co-author of the Bradt Guide to Sierra Leone, pub­lished on 15 May