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| A VIEW FROM THE PLANE |
In 2009, when a friend of a friend invited me to visit her country in West Africa, I stumbled over both feet to get on the plane. I didn’t know much about Sierra Leone outside of its association with the Blood Diamond conflict but I quickly learned that along with being one of the poorest countries in the world it was also still considered dangerous and undesirable.
A place where people lived on a dollar a day and barbaric practices like female genital cutting were as common as Sunday service. I would be living in a beautiful house that was caddy corner to a shanty town. And as American as I felt, physically there would be little distinction between me and the local population.
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| A VIEW OF FREETOWN THE CAPITAL CITY |
When I told a few associates that I would be travelling to Africa, initially, many did not believe me. Considering that I as a Black American have no family on the continent of Africa, it struck my friends and associates as odd that I would be travelling there on vacation. "Why Africa?" they'd ask. But my question to them was: If I were Chinese or Hispanic, would you question my travelling to Asia or Latin America?
It was to this day the best experience that I have had abroad. I would find out that in addition to a dark past, that Sierra Leone had a rich cultural history. Not only was it one of the African countries drained of its inhabitants during the transatlantic slave trade but it would also be one of the first African countries to accept the returning freed slaves. But these slaves would go on to become one of the most prominent tribes (Krio) in the country present day.
