"We'll never forget J6 in this country"

"All you need to know about the war is that I once saw a woman forced to throw her own baby into a wood chipper."

I've been unable to shake that image for nearly a month now. One of the reporters Craig works with in Makeni gave him this terse yet profoundly perturbing response when Craig asked him about the war. Besides making me feel sick to my stomach, though, I think it highlights an interesting dichotomy within Sierra Leone.

The country can be seemingly divided into two camps: Freetown and 'not Freetown'. Even members of the expat community have a tendency to define themselves either in line with or in opposition to the country's capital city. The provinces and Freetown present very different living experiences and unique challenges.

The provinces are a much simpler lifestyle, without the traffic and constant bustle of life in the capital, but also lacking the amenities, with power and running water an extreme rarity. They rely on provincial chiefdoms perhaps as much as the central government, which is based in Freetown along with most of the services the West would classify as essential.

Often times, foreigners living in the provinces will denigrate us Freetown folk as not getting the authentic Salone experience. Given that about 1/3 of all Sierra Leoneans live in Freetown, I find this complaint a tad simplistic, but nonetheless take their point that my lifestyle is less divorced from the one I'd have back home than it would be if I lived in the provinces. This blog, for example, would be a near impossibility outside of Freetown, due to limited Internet access.

And while, to some degree, you could argue that one's life experience in any country is profoundly dependent on whether one lives in a rural or urban community, I think the disparity here is more pronounced, and not solely owing to the fact that extreme poverty tends to highlight instances of lack. The history here is important.

Sierra Leone gained independence in 1961 and it marked the first time both the provinces and the Freetown peninsula were viewed as a cohesive unit.

Freetown was founded as a home for freed slaves in 1787 and became a British Crown Colony in 1808. The rest of the country didn't fall under the British until much later, as a Protectorate in 1896, which, if my understanding is correct, implied that it was more loosely tied to the Brits. They took an interest in its protection, but imposed less of a colonial administration than they did in Freetown.

The trickle-down effect of this complex relationship persists even today, with Freetown residents betraying a much more obvious Western influence in their lives and modes of thinking, while those in the provinces are informed by more traditional structures. Practices like FGM/C, for example, are more widely practiced in the provinces, while many in Freetown mirror the moral objections of the West on this matter.

The civil war is no exception to this rule. The reluctance of Craig's colleague to discuss the war, I think, is a function of the fact that he lives in the provinces and, as such, experienced the horrors of the war exponentially more than those who live in Freetown. In fact, in my experience, my friends and colleagues in Freetown have been remarkably forthcoming in discussions surrounding the war.

A few weeks back, Sheik and I got to talking about Sierra Leone's past and he didn't seem to have any reservations on the matter. In fact, I barely asked any questions, as he quite willingly set off in reminiscing about the war.

Reminiscing. That's his phrasing. It would have to be, as I'd never think to ascribe a word with connotations of fond memories to describe a day like January 6, 1999 - or, as Sheik calls it, J6.

"We'll never forget J6 in this country," he says, and proceeds to explain his experience of the war. It's a little surreal to see him laughing and smiling as he retells the tale of how he and his brother would go out every night as part of a Civil Defense Unit, hopelessly naive about what was taking place in their country.

They thought it was "fun", he explains, and enjoyed yelling things like, "Halt! Where are you going?" to people in the streets. For teen-aged boys, instilling fear had its appeal. The magnitude of the situation was miles over their heads.

According to Sheik, many people in Freetown didn't really believe the war was happening until it hit the city - in itself a function of the cavernous gulf between Freetown and the provinces both mentally and physically, in a country where few people have much mobility.

"When people from the provinces talked about the rebels, we would ask, 'Do the rebels have tails?'," Sheik explains.

"And then they showed us their tails."

With the January '99 invasion, Freetown was sheltered no more, as rebels entered the east end beginning at 1 a.m. on the morning of the 6th and did battle with Nigerian-led ECOMOG forces. Sheik's commander was killed in cold blood, shattering his naivete and sending him sprinting for home with his brother.

Sheik was lucky. No one in his family was killed, in part due to the benevolence of a mistress of one of the RUF commanders. She lived with his family briefly and took a liking to him. He even traveled around with the RUF for a week, seeing the devastation of his city. It was this woman's insistence that some of her family lived in Sheik's neighbourhood that kept it safe from much of the violence. Her help was not reciprocated.

When this woman opted not to return to the bush with the rebels, she was killed in a show of mob violence by the very community she'd protected. The way Sheik tells it, she survived six bullets from rebel guns and didn't die until a mob beat her. His retelling reflects a very real belief in magical protection from enemy bullets, granted through the pronouncements of tribal elders, though my logic dictates that the bullets just took a few minutes to prove fatal.

Obviously, then, the people of Freetown had very real experiences of the war. Yet ABJ is similarly forthcoming in describing the intersection of his life with the conflict. He speaks openly about his experience of being abducted during his rapping days by the West Side Boys, a particularly debauched sub-group of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, who he escaped after a couple weeks.

The best explanation I can muster for this fundamental disparity is the extent of their experiences. Freetown is haunted by January 6, 1999 and the surrounding days. But Makeni, and other towns like it, are haunted by the entire decade-long conflict.

Makeni was a major base of operations for the RUF rebels. The city's slew of ocada drivers are almost all former combatants. When I was up in Kabala, I spoke with a young man who said that anytime he travels through Makeni, he refuses to stay the night.

Kari, Craig's roommate and fellow JHR volunteer, has been out of the country for the last three and a half weeks, having returned to the States for the holidays with a brief stop in Senegal. During that period, Craig spent a lot of time in Freetown, in part because of some freelance work he was doing for CBC Radio and in part owing to his holiday plans. But I suspect there was more to it.

On numerous occasions, Craig has openly spoke of his unease regarding his living situation. Makeni has a haunting history. It's probably best not to think about what kinds of unspeakable horrors may have taken place within the walls of his compound - from gang rapes to tortorous dismemberment. Needless to say, I wouldn't want to be alone there either.

Today is the 10-year anniversary of J6, the day when the war finally made its horrific presence felt in the capital. It's been an appropriate day to reflect on the incomprehensible recent past of my temporary home of Freetown, and of Sierra Leone in general, and remind myself that in light of what these people have had to overcome, even the smallest success stories are, in a way, miraculous.

For more information about the attack of rebel forces on Freetown, I suggest checking out a difficult-to-watch but worthwhile documentary called Cry Freetown, which features live footage of the attack by a Sierra Leonean filmmaker who risked his life to capture the abhorrent images of his home country's war.