Sierra Leone's tourism potential

Having been in Sierra Leone for two weeks and finding myself more or less settled into life in Freetown, this weekend seemed like a reasonable time to explore beyond the city limits.

Along with four of my fellow JHR colleagues (well, three plus Patrick, one of my roommates, and the honourary JHR family member pictured above), I headed to River No. 2 yesterday, a gorgeous beach on the Freetown peninsula hyped as the country’s most beautiful.

We piled into a van for the hour-plus drive across the abhorrent roads that dot the Sierra Leonean landscape. Along the way, we passed stray dogs, goats and chickens – all commonplace here – as well as young children attempting to collect road taxes at makeshift roadblocks, which our driver James bypassed using a series of loud honks and the occasional yell to encourage the children’s acquiescence.

Still, the sight was simultaneously amusing and concerning – amusing because it was innocent enough, concerning because it could quite easily escalate to something that’s not.

The behaviour of these young kids, often not even 10 years old, was clearly learned, an emulation of rebels and soldiers collecting taxes to allow for safe passage. In a situation where endemic poverty could conceivably spark instability, it's concerning to think that such young children have internalized the message that taking over a public road by force somehow grants them authority over it.

(Bonus points to anyone that can guess what song popped into my head when I saw these roadblocks.)

But I digress. We reached River No. 2 without much difficulty, taking in a scene of awe-inspiring beauty in spite of periodic rain and generally overcast skies. The confluence of white sand beach with lush, mountainous forest is a sight to be seen.



I dined on a delicious, freshly caught lobster and took my first ever dip in the Atlantic Ocean. But we spent a good chunk of our day on a gorgeous three-hour river tour. Though my hope of spotting the region's crocodiles went unfulfilled, we did see a couple small monkeys and flying fish.



The tour ended at a small waterfall (above) before we turned back and picked up three local kids collecting oysters from the river to bring the small canoe’s crew to nine (below).

All in all, it was an amazing day that really highlighted for me the country’s enormous potential for a tourist industry. While the purist in me would love to see the country’s sparsely populated beaches remain unspoiled, Sierra Leone desperately needs job creation and an influx of money, needs that could both be met by the numerous tropical beaches that dot the western peninsula.

All that stands in the way are perception and infrastructure.

Save for a reasonable road from Freetown to Makeni, infrastructure is essentially non-existent. The drive to River No. 2 would’ve taken about 15 minutes on Canadian roads, but instead turned into a 2.5-hour roundtrip adventure not for the weak of stomach.

Paved roads in even this one small segment of the country would open up comfortable modes of travel to the many (at least seven) beautiful beaches on the coastline. And with daily flights out of Heathrow, Sierra Leone isn’t exactly a difficult location to travel to.

The other major impediment would require less money, but more work to address. The vast majority of people beyond the African continent know precious little about the small West African nation. And the 2006 release of Blood Diamond did little to help.

True, DiCaprio and co. brought a cursory knowledge of the country’s existence and the violent, decade-long conflict that tore it asunder from 1991-2002 to many people that would not have otherwise known about it. But it also inadvertently reinforced a prevailing notion that Sierra Leone is a lawless and unsafe place to visit.

Basically, SL is battling a public relations nightmare. While the country is rightfully identified as one of the least developed corners of the globe, I’ve seen little evidence to suggest it is unsafe.

Certainly, for rich Westerners looking for a beautiful beach, there’s no reason they couldn’t be just as safely transported from the airport to the resort and back as they are in a place like Cuba – a Cuba for Europeans, if you will. They just need someone with a little vision and capital to get the ball rolling.