The first time I visited Sierra Leone was in July 2010, I was there for a month, it was a crazy time, I admit, mostly due to the fact I was there completely by myself surrounded by a group of people who pretended to be my friends, while the whole time they were plotting to get money from me in different ways to enrich themselves, a fact I chose not to accept because I was very keen on seeing the real Sierra Leone and get past the money grabbing techniques and manipulations.
I was adamant on my desire to travel deep into the bush to meet the real people of Sierra Leone and to see for myself the real possibilites and real opportunities that exist behind the shrouded mist and behind all the false promises and fake smiles of people who only see a white man as walking wallet for them to ask for handouts in different ways, even a blind man asking you for some coins isn't always a blind man, if you know what I mean.
Most of the time I was there that month I was travelling all around the country, I went up north to the Northen Province and visited the chiefdom of Koinadugu, I went to a village called Dalakuru where I met the Paramount chief and were shown where Russian people are digging much gold in the hills of a place called Lake Sonfon - a beautiful place, nice people, and the gold is being snatched under their noses while they are starving, the people there are very poor, the access to the place is very bad.
I remember we were in the SUV and there was a bridge to cross made only from two shoddy tree trunks that were laid down between two sides of a chasm, which were right on top of the lake, and the stream was very strong, crossing those wooden trunks was a bit scary to be honest, and I was very proud of the driver for being able to cope with the situation, those Toyota Land Cruisers are a must if you go around the bush, a normal sedan just wouldn't make it in one piece, our driver Ibrahim might have been a real bastard dissapering at night to sleep with all the town's Kolonkos (prostitutes) but was right on the money when it came to the driving part, really did his part for a spankin 100$ a day, around 400k Leones, the local currency.
We went around for few weeks, going from the Northern Province down to Kono the diamond mining district, where I was shown different types of diamonds which were extracted from the grounds of Njiama chiefdom in Kono, I was also taken to the actual site where they allegedly found the stones, they offered me a program where I will locate an investor for them from Israel, my country of origin, so that we can allegedly expand the ongoing mining operations and start new ones on other productive lands as well after the rainy season is over and the massive rains have ceased, the rainy season is from July to November, something like that, very heavy rains, the heaviest i've seen in my life, it doesnt stop pouring for days, you can say it rains cats and dogs and maybe some cows too, even the size of the drops are massive, not to mention the thunderstorms, the thunderstorms I've seen in Sierra Leone are the craziest I've seen anywhere in the world,
It is said that the Portoguese explorer who discovered the coasts of Sierra Leone first named it The Lion Mountains (Sierra Loa) due the fact it sounded to him like lions were roaring on the hills when he saw the lightning flash on the mountains and heard the massive thunders, I try to imagine him on the boat sailing those turbulent seas in the middle of a thunder storm, with tremendous ligthing bolts hitting the mountain side on a dark night, must have been quite an experience, brave man.
All in all in Kono I gathered information and decided I will go back home to Israel and find an investor who will agree to come back with me and help me fund a diamond mining operation, in Kono, hiring some local people and getting a mining license for a good piece of land, offered by the locals. I said goodbye to everyone and went straight to Lungi airport where I boarded the plane back home, only to spend the next 10 months looking for someone who would be interested to make the investment, in the end I found a gambler who gave me 10,000$ cash in 100$ bills, a plane ticket back to Freetown, sending me there by myself thinking I will manage to get things organized by myself, I failed to do so because I was being tricked by the people I had met on the previous trip, they were just planning to take the money from me and send me back empty handed, when I found out their true motives I bailed out on them and was now completely on my own, alone in Freetown, with 2000$ (what I had left after all the handouts) and a dream, to somehow succesfully build a business in Sierra Leone in mining and exportation of rough diamonds, a dream which became a nightmare.
