A boat to Bunce Island.

My final day in Makeni was mostly spent elsewhere. We planned a day trip to Bunce, the countries single UNESCO noted historical site, and as it was away on the coast a number of hours driving was involved. We cosied up to Kieran and had him bring his monster 4 by 4 which made things easier, things were then made more difficult by Michael managing to get us lost (and there aren’t many roads in Sierra Leone, so it’s quite impressive he did) but an enterprising hitch hiker managed to put us right so we eventually arrived.

Bunce Island is not far from the coast (you could probably swim the distance if you really wanted), but obviously a boat is required (especially as that particular strait isn’t the most pleasant) which you have to get from Loko. Before we can do this you need to pay your respects to the chief of the village; in a country that’s ostensibly a democracy, large parts of the power still lie with hereditary tribal chiefs - want a good reason why Sierra Leone’s so fucked? That’s a one right there.

Fortunately he was away so we weren’t forced to be polite to the self important little twat. There was however some kind of gathering in the village centre, and as we drove through a rather large crowd were staring at us. Not that I’d say they were being openly hostile, but sometimes people glare and it isn’t necessarily because they’re about to give you flowers. But it was ok, we weren’t chased by any rabid women (my least favourite of the rabid genders) from a secret society, as apparently happened to poor Saahil.

The fishermen tried to completely rip us off, but luckily we had Michael, who seems to have become truly Salonian in his attitude to money and haggling, and their demand for two hundred thousand Leones was smartly reduced to a far more reasonable forty thousand. And then we were off.

Glance at any of Sierra Leone’s (somewhat limited) promotional literature for tourists and they’ll tell you the island caretaker - who acts as its tour guide - has lived on the island all his life and never leaves. This is a bit of a lie, it used to be true but his family got too large (multiple wives and kids numbering in the double figures is not an uncommon experience here) and he now lives in the village. But he came across with us on the boat, and showed us round.

The island was the centre of the British Slave trade in that area, slaves were brought to the island (bought from the local chiefs, presumably the ancestors of those still in charge), they were kept there and tested to make sure they were fit enough, and then they were sold to traders. Tested is a very innocent word for a sadistic regime which involved starving slaves for a number of days and then seeing if they were fit enough to do horrendous exercise. If they were unable to do this their throats were slit and they were dumped in the sea. There is a graveyard, we saw it. Only high up British officials and collaborators went in there, with some delightfully carved dedications to their good and noble lives. Just lovely.

The site itself is the remainder of the fort, which was extended and remodelled a number of times over the years as the British, Portuguese and French - among others - captured and recaptured it. It’s in ruins now, and mostly overgrown, and is quite inappropriately beautiful; all the more so as it has a slightly desolate and raw feel, a little bit eerie even. The guide showed us around, he only spoke Krio, and did so in such a thick accent I really couldn’t understand a word and Michael was forced to translate. He certainly had passion for it, but to be honest I’d think I would have preferred just to see it myself in my own time as the tour felt more than a little whistlestop, and I didn’t really learn anything I didn’t already know.

We saw it all however, including the ‘guesthouse’, which is a rather grandiose title for the hut where white men with the money could spend several days having purchased a slave lady or two to keep them company. Not to mention the pens they were kept in, in the cellar / dungeon. Nice, eh?

Afterwards we returned to the mainland and took a little detour to see the old railway docks. These are currently guarded as the government hopes to reopen the railway lines at some point (though let’s face it, it isn’t happening any time soon) and they need to stop people plundering what’s there for scrap, but we pretended we were from a company making an inspection and because we were white - and in a four by four - they let us go straight through.

Bit sad, but that’s how things work in Salone, it’s a country with little to no tourism, and so white people are associated with the UN, or America, or with aid agencies, and thus are important. At least that’s why I’m assuming it is, this also sits uncomfortably with the fact that most Salonians you speak to, certainly those with little education, believe that white people are naturally cleverer than black people. This can be understandable, if looked at from the point of view that people could very well want to believe this as it gives a reason for the current state of Salone and much of Africa (when compared to the west) that makes it not anyone in Africa’s fault. People here have access to international media, they see the rest of the world, and they see Asian countries with similar pasts prospering where they aren’t.

There’s surprisingly little belief that occupation is the cause of current problems as it is well remembered that when Britain withdrew from the country there was electricity, running water, railways and many other mod cons now lost on a large scale. Sadly the country has been in a decline since, and then the war destroyed much of the remaining infrastructure and the country is now dependent on aid, unable even to feed itself; sixty percent of its food is imported using AID money, and as any history student will tell you, if you want to maintain stability you need to keep people fed.

The railway docks we visited were the biggest evidence I saw of this decline, they are totally deserted and as they were left. The old buildings and machinery sit around rusting rail tracks that lead to large machinery at the water’s edge. There are even the rusting wrecks of ships lying still in dock, it’s like a nightmare of the English old north as remembered by Margaret Thatcher and her cronies.

The whole experience was actually rather sinister, unlike Bunce which feels right in its deserted state, the docks just felt wrong. It almost felt like standing in a calm before the storm, it wasn’t hard to imagine the hordes appearing from the buildings or over the crest of a hill. One too many late nights on Resi 4 methinks.

Our journey back was faster now we knew the way, though still overly bumpy (roads here are very sketchy in places, as will come as no surprise I imagine) and then we were back and it was my last night so we joined everyone in Ibrahim’s for a goodbye feast of hummus and meat. This isn’t the actual dish, you just get served a plate of hummus with a token attempt at salad (they aren’t big salad eaters, the Salonians) and a plateful of pitta bread. But what you do then is go to one of the roadside meat guys at MP Junction which is just round the corner, and they serve you up a number of skewers of meat, fried with onions and pepper. And it goes together really, really well. There’s nothing compliments a nice vegetarian dish better than meat.