Friday, March 17, 2006 [ Entry by: Tiffany Franke ]

Our Sierra Leone contingent takes one last picture in front of CARE's Freetown office.

It seemed fitting that we were meeting with the American Ambassador to Sierra Leone Thomas Hull as a cap to our visit. Considering that most of us in our Yale contingent are American, gaining the perspective of our government on foreign relations within the country proved very interesting. We were immediately impressed by the Ambassador and his long-term commitment to working in Sierra Leone. He first came to the country as a Peace Corps volunteer after graduating from college several years ago. In our conversation, he touched upon many of the issues we had been seeing first-hand over our time in the field.

Ambassador Hull talked about his views on Sierra Leone’s many challenges, about various projects of priority being facilitated with the help of the U.S. embassy, and about the American basis for involvement. Indeed, there have been many U.S., Sierra Leone ties, dating as far back as the slave trade- New Haven and Freetown are even sister cities, after all, as the famous Amistad ship landed not far from Yale’s campus in Long Island Sound. A great number of paramount chiefs have been educated in America, and several familial ties between Sierra Leone and the U.S. Even though Sierra Leone was a British colony, Liberian connections have prompted American involvement over the years as well. Despite these loyalties, American companies are hesitant to invest in the country due to poor infrastructure, an unstable government, and the virtual absence of industry.

The U.S. Embassy has been working with groups like CARE on various projects, however. We learned about the Integrated Diamond Management program which tries to ensure that the communities where diamonds have been found and mined actually benefit from the precious gems’ legal trade. The training of Sierra Leoneans to actually cut, value, and brand the diamonds in Sierra Leone may help with this process. This program also hopes to help cut down on diamond smuggling, a problem that remains in the country even now that peace has returned.

We prepare for our helicopter ride over Freetown bay.

As for the country’s primary obstacles, Ambassador Hull feels that democracy and good governance must be practiced for any semblance of progress, and this will take increased decentralization of power into the local communities, such as those we had been visiting outside of Bo, Makeni, and Kabala. Somehow, the government must act fast to create opportunity for the large quantity of unemployed youth in the country today. It has been especially hard for ex-combatants to find work since the end of the war, and Hull estimated that there are currently 900,000 children who are not living with their parents.

Although Sierra Leone faces many obstacles, Ambassador Hull was optimistic about the speed of recent reconstruction and progress, and adamant about the importance of the aid of groups such as CARE in this process.

After our meeting, we said our farewells to the CARE Freetown staff. In only the span of two weeks, they had come to feel like old friends, and we had some surprisingly teary goodbyes. I still remember looking out the helicopter window, the blades whooshing overhead as we crossed Freetown’s massive bay, at the haze over the gray afternoon waters. I couldn’t tell where the bay ended and the sky began.