Beyond the Vapour Trail Read online

  ‘Quick!’ One of my colleagues grabbed my arm. ‘Grab your things! We need to go into the back room quickly.’

  The whole room erupted into panicked movement, and people were scrambling from the open room towards a small room at the back as the mob hit the building. They spilled around the perimeter until they quickly surrounded us on all sides, banging on the walls, yelling in a cacophony that morphed into a chant. Enraged faces glared at us through the windows. The noise was deafening.

  And this is precisely what I thought, in order:

  Well, they certainly didn’t do their homework about this village.

  I don’t want to go into the back room and be dragged out. I’d rather walk out calmly and look them in the eyes.

  But rule number one is to do what you’re told by local staff. So we pushed into the back room.

  It was a small storeroom – stacked chairs, a table – and we had to cram in, toe to toe. One of our colleagues came in, squeezed past everyone, crawled straight under the table in the corner and stayed huddled on the floor. We could hear the mob pour into the room behind us, and the whole building began to shake with chanting, yelling, stomping and other sounds. I had no mental script to understand this, no explanation, just sensory input. What were these men doing here? Why were we a target? I looked for cues from the local team, and standing crowded face to face in this small back room all I could see was that they were terrified.

  And they didn’t know either.

  What I had suspected about the violent history of this village was barely half the truth. During the war it had been a stronghold for the RUF – the Revolutionary United Front rebels. People had been tied together with ropes here and forced to mine for diamonds, just like in the movie Blood Diamond. There was a lagoon nearby where hundreds of bodies had been thrown. There was a lot more that happened here during that time that I won’t mention. But importantly for this story, during a campaign they called ‘Operation Leave No Living Thing’, the RUF forced fifty-four people into a building and set it alight. One man escaped and survived, although they then mutilated his hand trying to hack it off.

  I didn’t know anything about this at the time.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  Samuel shrugged and shook his head. One of my colleagues looked at me. I could see it in her eyes. What I should be feeling.

  ‘I don’t know.’ No-one seemed to know why we were being attacked.

  And it was strange, my lack of any sense of fear. I wondered what was wrong with me. This wasn’t courage. Was I so jaded that I had lost touch with my ability to respond emotionally? I stood in the room trying to understand why fear wasn’t kicking in – and whether some so-called courage is really just a form of dysfunctionality. Were war heroes the ones who were disconnected, a faulty amygdale that didn’t send the correct chemical cues for flight? I began to think my emotional disconnection was a hangover from my years of depression. The faces of my colleagues told me I was out of touch – some were shaking, some were in tears. The mob were in the room we had left, immediately behind us. The deafening chanting continued for fifteen to twenty minutes without any break – an angry voice or two, others responding in unison, and the chanting, thumping and yelling in response. It was as though they were building up to something. But no-one had tried to enter the room yet.

  Suddenly the door behind us burst open. But it was one of our own staff. Strangely, he was out there with them.

  ‘What’s happening? What’s going on?’

  ‘Stay here. I think it will be OK, but just stay here,’ he said to us.

  He left again. The sounds of stomping, chanting and angry voices continued behind the door, very loud. I had just arrived in Sierra Leone after a long flight, driven for eight hours and arrived in a place I barely understood, and no-one seemed to know why we were trapped here. Eventually, after about another ten to fifteen minutes the noises began to change, and it was clear the group was leaving the building. The door opened, and two of our staff ushered us through. It had been at least half an hour since they had first hit the building.

  ‘Quickly, quickly. To the vehicle.’

  I grabbed my case and was first out, because strangely I wanted to face them. There was a mob outside, a different group of people, headed by an older man. They formed a pathway to the vehicle, and were pointing towards the road and yelling at us to leave. I didn’t know the language but the gestures were unambiguous. Angry faces, angry voices sending us away. The old man, clearly in charge, looked hostile. I walked slowly past him, looking him in the eye, unwilling to rush on his account. I don’t know why. We got into the vehicles, and drove back to Koidu town.

  It was only as we drove that the story was told.

  CHAPTER 3

  PORO

  This was a poro that had raided us. A secret society.

  That was why most of the local Sierra Leone staff didn’t understand what was happening. The poro is tribal, and they are not tribal people. Most of our staff were from the city, the descendants of liberated slaves from the Americas. Not from the local tribes.

  Sierra Leone began as a British colony in the 1790s for freed slaves. It had been set up by Wilberforce and the abolitionists from England to resettle the ‘black poor of London’, who were mostly African Americans freed during the War of Independence. But most of these first settlers died from disease or in warfare with local tribes. Then in 1792 a settlement of black people from Nova Scotia arrived and formed a new town, which they called Freetown. Thankfully these people from the Americas brought with them spices from the Caribbean – it’s a part of Africa where the food sings with flavour. You definitely should order fish in Freetown, adorned with herbs and spices like it’s a king dressed for pomp and ceremony.

  Not all of Sierra Leone is made up of resettlers. The original tribes are still there, further inland. In the surrounding areas live groups such as the Mende, who introduced the culture of poro when they moved into the area about a thousand years ago – and the Kono people. We had been caught up in Kono tribal business.

  Three of our local team were Kono, and in their youth, before they went away to university and careers, they had been inducted – and abducted, because that’s how induction into a poro happens. When the mob appeared these local staff were able to give a secret sign or password that identified them as being on the inside. As we drove away from the village they explained to us why this had happened.

  A couple of days before we arrived an elder had died. The local poro really loved this man. Typically, the young men go on a rampage for five days to celebrate his life and to grieve. They drink, they chant, they … well, rampage. They do whatever they want. They do random things. But there are strict rules. Normally they wear masks in public. No-one can observe them. So when the poro is active no-one is allowed to move around the village except the members. And since the poro is only for males, it particularly means women are not allowed to wander around. As soon as the men draw near, they hide inside their huts or houses.

  The head of the poro is the permanent chief, and since typically here a chiefdom is forty to a hundred villages, he was away. In his absence they had to report to the chief’s speaker, a man they didn’t particularly like. The speaker found himself in a predicament. People don’t die at convenient times, and he had already organised a meeting with our NGO in this same village this week which he didn’t want to cancel. So when the death occurred, he told them that they were only to rampage for three days and to stay away from this building.

  Well, this angered them. There was a group of strangers in an open room, with women present, overlooking their village. So after three days of alcohol and chanting and bravado, there was only one place they wanted to be. We were in it.

  When the group attacked the building, our three local staff members stood in the way of the mob to stop them breaking into the back room. Over the noise of the chanting and yelling they negotiated. The chief’s speaker stood with them to block the mob’s way. Eventu
ally it was agreed that they would leave us alone if we left the village. And the speaker was the man who stood outside when we left and angrily ordered us to go – probably because he had lost face.

  The next day the village apologised, but our team decided to complete the workshop in Koidu. Our team wanted a more formal response from the village, to make sure there was accountability. Three local politicians visited us to apologise. One of them spoke to me and I told him that I understood. When you bring together young men with emotion, alcohol and testosterone, things sometimes get out of hand. In Australia we call them football trips.

  In difficult situations, should you go with your instincts, or make rational choices? My instinct was to not hide in the back room. I wanted to calmly look them in the eye, to face them. But I always do what I’m told by my national colleagues. My instinct would have been disastrous – to look at the faces of men in a secret society, already in a pitch of enraged indignation.

  Worth noting.

  In 2014 I was back in West Africa and had breakfast with Samuel. I asked him what happened in the village afterwards. He told me we were working very harmoniously there to this day. When the chief returned and learnt about what had happened, he was angry. He levied a fine against the poro and wrote an official letter to us. We were just part of a clash of tradition, awkward timing and the speaker’s poor decision.

  Samuel talked about our different projects that operated in this and villages nearby. The difference made by even simple interventions, like women’s savings and loans schemes, for instance, was being felt. Women spoke about now having money for the hungry times, or said that they could now send all their children to school. It’s not that families didn’t know the value of education; when cash is tight and your children are hungry today, the choices become clear. Most of us don’t ever have to face that kind of decision.

  Samuel also enthused about our children’s clubs, Pikin Tok (Children’s Talk), aimed at helping children learn life skills and to participate in their society in meaningful ways. Children in the Pikin Tok group decided to raise two issues of great concern and sensitivity – so sensitive that my nontribal colleagues from Freetown would not be able to discuss them with the community. The children brought these issues to the chief. The result was that in his chiefdom, no girl would be subject to FGM (female genital mutilation) and no boy abducted into the secret societies until they are an adult, at eighteen, and make their own choice. The chief listened, and made a decision.

  Sitting with Samuel at breakfast listening to his enthusiasm for the work, I wondered what he himself might have seen during the war. I told Samuel what I had thought when Ambrose shared his story back in 2008: that I couldn’t understand how they were able to keep going when they had been through so much.

  Samuel looked thoughtful. ‘I come from a poor family,’ he responded. ‘And now God has given me the opportunity to make a difference for children who live like I once did. When I think of those who didn’t survive: my friends, my family, my brothers and sisters … and yet I am alive. In a war anything can kill you. A bullet. Hunger. A bomb. A building collapse. Sickness. Anything. So you must be thankful. And if you have something in front of you to do, you do it with all of your heart. This is what keeps us going.’

  CHAPTER 4

  Lesotho

  I don’t really travel to many dangerous places, and most places aren’t as risky as they sound. I mean, people get attacked every week in my city of Melbourne. But if you’re not in certain places at the wrong time, it’s a really safe city. My work is also in development, not relief. Relief is the rapid response to emergency situations that might be caused by earthquakes, tsunamis, or displacement of people because of conflict. That usually means the world’s hotspots. That’s not what I do.

  Development focuses on the constant, day-to-day poverty of the world’s most vulnerable. Their experience doesn’t get headlines, it doesn’t go away. Poverty just sits quietly over their lives: the landlord, defining the limitations of their world, deciding what they are allowed to hope for or dream, every single day. Development means sitting down with these communities to explore the causes of poverty and to pursue their dreams for a better life.

  One of my earliest experiences in development was in Lesotho.

  When I visit a strange place, it’s often in an email home that I tap my impressions into words.

  From: Brett Pierce

  Sent: 19/05/02

  To: Kathleen Pierce

  Subject: From the dark continent …

  To you.

  Flight

  Had lots of space - I think the girls who assign seats must like me – well, at least I like to think that’s why. Watched Beautiful Mind again. I think you’d enjoy this film. Made me start to see mathematics in life, so I came up with my own theorem:

  SA = HT x AC.

  -which means that Stewardess Attractiveness increases in direct proportion to Hours Travelled and Alcohol Consumed.

  Africa

  Hazy, hazy Africa! It’s a feeling, not a place. It’s invigorating and mystical. The light is different. The skies are so blue today, untroubled by clouds. There’s a kind of red haze everywhere over everything - it feels like you only really enter Africa as your plane descends into it … before that we are just spirits hovering over it.

  To Maseru

  The little bus at Joberg airport took us past all the huge jumbo jets, turned up its nose at large jets, smaller jets, big planes, smaller planes … (they were getting smaller and smaller!) and finally selected this … angry mosquito! At least that’s what it sounded like. Why do big planes seem safer when they weigh so much more?

  Maseru (‘Muh-SE-ru’ – capitol of Lesotho – ‘LeSOOtoo’)

  Looks like you’re inside a washed-out Tom Roberts painting under a harsh sun – dry grass and rugged rocks over pink to orangeish soil, and everything cradled within a high bluff on all sides with hanging boulders. Houses about the size of public toilets, and made of concrete bricks. But delightfully scattered, not ordered. People everywhere – it’s election week! Last election there were riots, burning and looting and the army was called in. See what happens on Saturday. I like action, strange hey.

  Going out to the project tomorrow. That will be more rural and fascinating.

  You

  You. Hey you. How are you travelling? A gentle kiss from me upon every bruise you feel deep inside.

  Love you,

  Brett

  Arriving in Maseru, taxi drivers were all around me like seagulls at the beach, but I waved them off in an uninterested manner and waited to be picked up by someone from my organisation. No-one came. I sometimes get hazy on arrangements, so I opened my laptop to check and saw that I would be staying at the Sun Hotel. I looked up at one of the waiting taxi drivers, who now added a self-satisfied, vindicated expression to his cheery manner.

  The hotel was big and had a casino attached. The same appreciation of mathematics that I recognised in A Beautiful Mind on the plane also meant that gambling was simply not one of my vices. That night instead I tried to connect to the internet. Unsuccessfully. Dial-up, no wireless: it was 2002, after all. It just wouldn’t connect.

  Next morning I decided to order breakfast. An extremely deep African voice answered, slowly, with a question tone.

  ‘He–llo?’

  ‘Hello, room service?’ (Complete silence on the other end.) ‘I’d like to order breakfast, please.’ (Silence.) ‘I’d like some orange juice …’ (I waited, no response.) ‘… Scrambled eggs, bacon and tomato … and coffee with milk, please.’

  Finally he broke his long silence. The same deep voice, the same slow question tone.

  ‘He–llo?’

  That the breakfast arrived at all was clearly an educated guess on his part. He obviously had no idea what I had said. Not one of the things I had ordered was on the plate. And disappointingly, I had to begin the day with weak tea instead of the strong coffee I craved.

  No-one came to pick
me up to go to the office, so I called them.

  ‘Ah, yes, Pierce? Someone was there already for you, but you weren’t around.’

  ‘Um, no, I have been waiting at the front since seven-thirty.’

  ‘OK, we’ll send someone.’

  But no-one arrived. I called the office again.

  ‘Which hotel are you at?’

  ‘The Sun Hotel.’

  ‘Which Sun Hotel?’

  Ah! So tiny Maseru had two large hotels with the same name. Not particularly helpful.

  … Tony (WV [World Vision] guy), Sebongile (she’s evaluation officer for WV Lesotho) and I spent the day mapping out a plan of action. Tomorrow we will be in the project and spend time sitting and hearing from people. I love that so much! I want to get photos of the kids – they are just so beautiful – their smiles are like the sun coming out.

  The following night I began to work out tricks with the internet. Back in 2002, the phone systems in some hotels could be quite antique when you dialled out. I remembered someone had told me that a comma inserted before the phone number created a delay from your modem that could allow antiquated phone systems time to whirr, click, or whatever they did, and respond. I tried it. Dial tone hum. Pause. Those musical tones of numbers dialling: jot-jit jot-jat-jut. Nothing. After a long time of fiddling, inserting more commas (they were free, after all), I succeeded. Unless you’ve travelled with dial-up and have been completely locked out from the world, you may not know the absolute delight of hearing pong … tang … dwiddly-dee dow dong, ping hang sing … a long hiss … and you’re in.

  The next morning I solved breakfast, too. Without commas. You see, Lesotho’s border on every side is with South Africa. It’s a country inside South Africa. They didn’t find it easy to understand an Australian. But surely they would know the Seth Efrican eccent. I called room service. Slow, deep question voice.