‘LOST FREETOWN’ Timecoded Script.
| Timecode | Transcript |
| 10:00:01:18 | Title: Brightstar Media Presents |
| 10:00:09:14 | VO: Standing at the western tip of Africa, Sierra Leone is one of the world’s most beautiful countries – and one of it’s poorest |
| 10:00:17:20 | Now, five years after the end of its brutal civil war, the country is facing a new threat |
| 10:00:27:20 | Urban migration and uncontrolled development threaten the city’s resources, and the people themselves |
| 10:00:39:15 | Synch: The laws are just in the books, they are not executed, no-one to execute them. If we don’t empower these people they will destroy the environment, and the environment will destroy the country. |
| 10:00:53:01 | Synch: What are they going to do for water? I mean if this forest is gone, that’s the end of it. |
| 10:00:59:16 | Synch: It’s an environmental disaster, and in a few years we will see how that comes to pass. |
| 10:01:06:15 | Title: LOST FREETOWN |
| 10:01:15:04 | VO: After ten years of civil war, peace has come to Sierra Leone. But for many people living in Freetown, life remains a daily struggle for survival, with vast slums sprawling around the city. |
| 10:01:34:08 | Title: Henrietta Cole, Gender and Housing Consultant. |
| 10:01:34:20 | Synch: People living in slums lack security of tenure, lack access to basic sanitation, basic amenities, usually overcrowded and the places they occupy, the homes, are badly put together. |
| 10:01:49:14 | If you accept that definition, then it’s obvious that ninety per cent of the population of Freetown live in slums. |
| 10:01:58:00 | Title: Olu Gorden, Journalist |
| 10:01:58:00 | Synch: Yeah we have come a long way, but it’s been so much sacrifice for so little ground gained. There’s no attempt to preserve the old listed buildings, no attempt to preserve the planning that went into Freetown. It’s a dump. |
| 10:02:12:13 | VO: Standing at the foot of the city, the Kroo Bay slum bears the brunt of many of Freetown’s environmental problems. |
| 10:02:23:17 | Title: Kroo bay slum, Central Freetown |
| 10:02:38:20 | Synch: Freetown has enlarged, there are many more people in Freetown… |
| 10:02:43:00 | Title: Lynette Palmer, Family Physician |
| 10:02:43:02 | ..So we have a lot more debris, there are no more dustbins all over the place as there used to be. So this has caused all this dumping into the gutters and all this filth coming down. You can see it’s a good breeding ground for mosquitoes, there are signs of urban philioriasis. There’s also malnutrion because of diarrhoea in the under fives… malaria… worms. |
| 10:03:07:00 | This area could be cleaned up and you know, health education is done. We can actually minimise our malaria in the under fives, diarrhoeal diseases like cholera outbreaks, and a lot of the other infectious diseases. |
| 10:03:25:15 | Title: Saidu Turay, Kroo Bay Resident |
| 10:03:25:10 | Synch: - Five or ten years back, these houses were not in this area - Okay - But because they constructed houses and shacks all along this drainage system, and these people don’t have toilets… |
| 10:03:39:00 | Synch: - So this is not just a dumping site of refuse, it’s also a dumping site for waster material, faeces, soil…. - Yes, everything - …From people all living around the area. |
| 10:03:49:05 | VO: Although lack of santitation is a problem in Kroo Bay, much of the waste comes in from outside, washed down by heavy rains. |
| 10:03:58:10 | Synch: This refuse, it’s not from the Kroo Bay community, it’s all from Freetown, so yes we can clean it up but we also have to sensitise the whole community to stop dumping things in the gutter, because even if you clear it up it will keep coming down, so we have to stop that also. |
| 10:04:14:01 | Synch: We will remove the garbage from the gutters today, then the next morning you will find another one there. So if this project is supported continuously, with youths offered incentives, then that will help to minimise the problem. |
| 10:04:31:00 | Synch: I would recommend that the government gets some sanitation engineers, someone with the know-how to do environmental health clinics, to actually look at this problem, not just for five minutes or for the short term but in the long haul, how it could be cleaned up now and how we could have a continuous process whereby it does not happen again. |
| 10:04:52:00 | Of course, improving on the sanitation in the Freetown Area , because if sanitation is improved in Freetown we will not have all this waste coming down into Kroo Bay. These here are a result of all the filth that comes right down from the Freetown area. |
| 10:05:08:00 | All these children are going to pass through this debris, walk through, you see them holding onto the filth for support and climbing through. They are all affected. |
| 10:05:18:00 | Synch: - Does this cause flooding in the rainy season? - That is one of the major problems we are having. |
| 10:05:27:20 | Title: Yatta Aruna, Kroo Bay Resident |
| 10:05:27:21 | Synch: What she says happens is that during the rainy season, pieces are broken off the huge mass and they actually come down this way, and because they get stuck in the middle the water actually rises up an floods all of the houses on this side. And she even says that last year two people were killed because of that kind of flooding in this area. |
| 10:05:48:00 | They actually have to move from their houses during May and June when the rains are very heavy, because they know the tendency is for the place to flood. So they move to houses further up, maybe with friends or relatives, and sleep there at night. |
| 10:06:49:00 | Title: Dr. Paul Tengbe Dept. of Geography, FBC |
| 10:06:49:00 | Synch: In most developing countries, people are moving from the rural areas into the cities. But in the case of Sierra Leone, what has accelerated the process was actually the war. |
| 10:07:03:00 | Title: Prof. Ogunalde R. Davidson IPCC Working Group |
| 10:07:02:00 | Synch: Around the hills of Freetown, you see how populated those places are? Those places were not as populated before. My feeling is about two million people in the Freetown area. At least two million. |
| 10:07:16:00 | Title: Manilius Garber Architect |
| 10:07:15:00 | Synch: I think the entire building code has been blatantly ignored, the entire building code no-one has regard to it. Financial attraction seems to outweigh any modicum of sensibleness, people doing things properly. |
| 10:07:28:20 | People wanted to sell the land at any cost, total disregard for whether there was a masterplan or not. For instance, nobody is supposed to build on the beach, but if you go down Lumley Beach you will find that there are a number of buildings, temporary or not, that have been put on the beach. There are obvious environmental problems with that. |
| 10:07:53:05 | VO: In the rush to grab land for building, it is Freetown’s hills that have been most seriously affected. |
| 10:08:03:00 | Title: Eugene Cole EFA |
| 10:08:02:15 | Synch: This are was actually being advised to be left under its natural land use. When the American embassy came to establish here, we had a rush of people coming to do construction here. |
| 10:08:20:15 | And that of course has been very indiscriminate – no road construction, no other service provided. When you ask the officials, nobody seems to know the trend of what is happening now. Nobody seems to know who is authorising all this sale of land and construction that is going on. |
| 10:08:40:15 | There were vast lands that were left as reserves, as water catchment areas and so-on. So, all these people saw was land where they can live. It’s not about forest here or catchment there, it’s about where can I live. |
| 10:09:00:00 | Synch: The character of the site of Leicester Peak has completely changed. It is almost totally without vegetation, almost. The stone outcrop of the hill has been broken to provide aggregate for building construction. So you have an eroded, denuded site. |
| 10:09:23:00 | Some of the rocks will obviously slide down the mountain, there might be land-slips. There is now a mish-mash of development going on – everyone needs water, everyone needs septic tanks. How these things are going to work within that kind of development which is not planned – it’s hard to say. |
| 10:09:51:00 | Whatever was planned for Freetown did not take into account the kind of population we have now. That’s why we have problems with all the services, all the utilities. They can’t cope. |
| 10:10:04:02 | VO: Without proper protection, Sierra Leone’s environment is the first victim of this building boom. With no effective sewerage system in the hills, the city’s groundwater becomes polluted. The position of landfills close to the sea also poses a threat to the environment. |
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| Title: John Kamara Ministry of Lands |
| 10:10:21:00 | Synch: Presently in Freetown we have two dumping sites, one at Kingtom and one at Granville Brook for the east. Those dump sites are wrong located. They are located within the city limits, they are located in water bodies, close to the sea, and as a result of that you have a lot of contamination of the estuaries, which are very sensitive areas. |
| 10:10:50:00 | Title: Aberdeen Creek |
| 10:10:59:10 | Title: Okoni Williams Dept. of Oceanography, FBC. |
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| 10:10:59:00 | Synch: Well, over the years we have been monitoring the creek, and what we have noticed is that over the past ten years, the bird diversity has dropped. Birds depend on the fish, and the fish breed in those mangroves. And what has actually impacted on this is generally the human activities. |
| 10:11:26:02 | Because of the deforestation in the mountain region, when there is downpour of rain, you have all this debris coming down, so siltation has also occurred. You also have the building of settlements – people reclaim land to build settlements – and that has also greatly impacted on the ecology. |
| 10:11:46:07 | Apart from depositing a lot of rubbish, they also deposit sewerage, and these things do impact the ecology. |
| 10:11:58:06 | A lot of people depend on the fish, they depend on the cockles and lobsters that they get from this place. If that declines further, obviously it will impact on the economy of the people in the area. |
| 10:12:28:04 | Title: Sam Jones Local Resident |
| 10:12:31:11 | Subtitles: - Over here, I see people and they throw out their rubbish. - It’s because they don’t have anywhere to throw it. |
| 10:12:36:03 | - So, in the entire are that’s where the rubbish get’s thrown out? |
| 10:12:41:18 | - That mean’s that where they live is also where they throw their waste. Don’t they feel the effect of that? |
| 10:12:47:20 | - When the water is full, he rubbish is carried away. |
| 10:12:51:03 | - Where does it go? |
| 10:12:53:00 | - It goes out into the sea. When the water’s full it carries it all away. |
| 10:13:01:06 | - But it has to go somewhere. |
| 10:13:02:18 | - Yes it goes and affects some other place. |
| 10:13:04:20 | - So you don’t care about that? |
| 10:13:06:10 | - No they don’t care about that because the government is unable to provide. |
| 10:13:15:06 | - Don’t you think it’s better for the community to come together, gather everything in the one place and burn it. |
| 10:13:23:00 | - Yes it’s important for them to gather it and burn it. But some people are afraid to light a fire because of the breeze. |
| 10:13:32:18 | Synch: There needs to be a system of ensuring that human excreta, sewerage in general, the deposition of rubbish, should be controlled. The government do have very good policies, but they are not being implemented. I think the government should look at those policies, review them in light of the current problems we are having at the creek, and see what they can do. |
| 10:14:00:12 | The thing is, if you stop it now, you will be able to see future development in terms of restoring the ecology of the creek. But if you don’t, then the situation will deteriorate further. |
| 10:14:19:04 | VO: Pollution and soil runoff are not the only dangers Freetown’s coastal environment faces. Along the city’s beaches, the need for material to fuel the building boom has led many unemployed people to take up sandmining, destroying ecosystems and damaging waterfront properties. |
| 10:14:43:18 | VO: But perhaps the most dangerous effect of Freetown’s growth can be found back in the city’s hills. |
| 10:15:00:02 | Title: Bala Amarasekaran Tacugama Wildlife Sanctuary |
| 10:14:58:20 | Synch: Yes, so we’ve been here for almost eleven years now. The sanctuary was founded in 1995 – this was where it all started, this is the original place where the whole thing started. |
| 10:15:17:10 | I think that, as you know, with the war situation we had, everything stopped for many many years. So I think now Sierra Leoneans have this confidence to build back, they have this confidence to do something. Before everyone was worried – whether it’s worth investing here or anything like that. So I think suddenly there is this thirst where everyone wants to build – people even want to come back to Sierra Leone who’ve left. So there is this huge demand land. |
| 10:15:51:07 | If you’re going to allow people to build all the way up to the forest boundary, and if you don’t monitor these forests – because the forestry department is very weak on the ground. They’re very thin on personnel, they won’t be able to monitor, so that is going to be a huge problem. |
| 10:16:07:01 | Chimpanzees are considered to be highly endangered – Sierra leone has lost most of its population over the years, because as we continue to destroy the habitats, we are basically destroying the wildlife in it. |
| 10:16:21:19 | Sierra Leone has lost basically 97 per cent of its forest cover, there’s only secondary forest scattered here and there, maybe some primary forest in the Gola area, but apart from that there’s nothing left. |
| 10:16:39:15 | All these people, all this development, there is need for fuelwood and energy and things like that, and in a country like this we don’t have power most of the time. Most of the destruction is not done by the immediate village community – sometimes people come from far away and they have no regard, they just destroy everything and busloads of charcoal or firewood goes away from the area. That is where the problem lies. The local community, I think we have educated them enough that they are not doing it on a commercial basis. |
| 10:17:11:20 | If they’re doing it for their own use, I don’t think anything is wrong with that. I think that’s how they’ve lived since their forefathers times, I don’t think anyone has a problem with that. It’s only when you commericalise it that it becomes a problem. |
| 10:17:29:21 | It is also a catchment area. I mean there’s no point opening all these areas, all the way up to Regent, for development. What are they going to do for water? I mean if this forest is gone, that’s the end of it. There is absolutely no water. There’s no way Guma Valley water company can pump water from Mile 13 to Leicester Peak here. It’s not going to happen. |
| 10:18:02:18 | VO: Without trees, rainwater drains away, causing soil erosion, siltation along the coast, and flooding in areas such as Kroo Bay. But forests also form part of the water cycle, and ensure good rainfall. Without them, water simply drains away into the sea. |
| 10:18:22:23 | Lying in the hills above the city, the Guma Dam supplies Freetown with drinking water, relying on the surrounding forests to keep it full. With a growing population to support, and the forests growing smaller, the danger to the city’s inhabitants is growing. |
| 10:18:45:16 | Title: Joseph Musa Guma Valley Water Co. |
| 10:18:43:22 | Synch: The dam, the capacity that was set up in the fifties when it was completed was to service at least 300,000 people in the city. Today we are talking about a population in Freetown of at around 1.9 million. The capacity of Guma has been stretched. It is the same dam that was constructed in the fifties that we are still operating on. |
| 10:19:23:22 | Title: Bolla Parker Freetown Resident |
| 10:19:21:23 | Synch: Right now at my own house I don’t have water and haven’t had for a month, not a drop. And these are the people in the area, they come in here and just cut the pipe, and once they’ve finished getting what they want they just move on. They don’t have running water in their compounds, probably, so they just decide to come down here and cut these pipes. |
| 10:19:46:00 | Synch: We have limited supply and yet people are in the habit of interfering with our system. We have used all the different methods of sensitisation- we’ve gone on the radio, we’ve had outreach programs whereby we’ve gone into some of these communities: this is treated water which is good for you, take care of it, if you see a pipe wasting report to so-and-so number of so-and-so address. People still do it with impunity. |
| 10:20:23:00 | What we are experiencing now – there is a change in what we call the weather pattern in this country. Freetown used to have six months of intensive rainfall during the rainy season, and we have six months of dry season. Today that has changed. We have more of dry season than rainy season. We at most three or four months of rainy season in this country. |
| 10:20:52:20 | All those small streams that cause runoff to the reservoir and the dam, they all cease to exist. They dry up. So no water runs down the hills into the reservoir – the lake. These streams were sourced from the forest area, and when you look at the Freetown peninsula today, most of the forest cover has been cleared off. |
| 10:21:21:18 | VO: In 2006 a combination of increased demand for water, and destruction of the forest cover, led to crisis in Freetown, as the rains came late and the Guma dam fell to its lowest levels since records began. The government was forced to ration supplies, leaving the city’s poorest residents struggling for access to drinking water. |
| 10:21:44:00 | As the city grows and expansion continues, this situation seems certain to get worse. But the country as a whole is rich in resources and, despite it’s crowded capital, does not have a high population. With proper management and awareness, it might yet be possible to reverse the damage being done. |
| 10:22:07:05 | Title: Geert Cappelaere UNICEF |
| 10:22:05:22 | Synch: Further migration into Freetown is simply not sustainable. This country has wealth in every single district. So what we have to do is help people tap into that wealth, help to ensure that in every single district you have the means available, that you have basic social services available, but which makes it very attractive for people to back to the rural areas, and to make a decent living. |
| 10:22:37:00 | VO: Sierra Leone also boasts incredible tourist potential, with pristine beaches, wildlife and scenery. With proper management these resources could create jobs, while encouraging people to protect the environment. |
| 10:22:59:09 | Title: Eddie Nasser Freetown Businessman |
| 10:22:50:20 | Synch: They used to come to Number Two, they used to come to Tokey, they used to come to Turtle Island, all over the beaches. |
| 10:22:56:16 | Title: Lord Mo Headman, Banana Island |
| 10:22:57:00 | Synch: They used to come and not even touch Freetown. Directly to airport, airport to Tokey or Lakka, or to Saint Michael Lodge… |
| 10:23:06:00 | Synch: All this was done by the French people… |
| 10:23:08:20 | Synch: All by the French, the French are more into tourism than anyone else that we know of. We have enough to offer but we do need help to promote it and put it to a good standard. And most of all we need good management. |
| 10:23:25:03 | VO: Lying off the coast of Freetown, the banana islands show how it may be possible to improve people’s livelihoods without damaging the environment. |
| 10:23:37:10 | Title: Gary Walker Independent Consultant |
| 10:23:33:00 | Synch: When I first came, the idea was a lot of excitement that someone has come to help them develop the area. So they offered to cut down the trees and burn the area so that I’d have a nice large empty area on which to build something. Then I tried to explain that what we wanted to do was preserve as much of the environment as possible. Slowly I think they understood this. |
| 10:24:01:12 | Well by ecotourism we mean a way of developing a place to make it attractive to paying tourists which enhances the environment and doesn’t destroy it. I chose this approach because I believe it’s the most developmentally sound and will lead to better protection of the environment and economic sustainability. |
| 10:24:22:20 | VO: Unlike many other development projects, Gary Walker’s draws its support and funding from the people themselves. |
| 10:24:30:05 | Synch: The majority of the investors are Sierra Leonean, they’re in the UK for the most part. So far we’ve created sixteen full-time jobs at the guest house. People also benefit because guests come, they want to rent paddle canoes and go out with the local fishermen for the day – so instead of having to fish all day and make five or ten thousand leones, they can make thirty or forty thousand leones by taking guests out and the guests are doing the fishing. If the people of the island don’t take ownership of this facility, and feel like they own it and are responsible for it, then when I’m gone it won’t be maintained or managed. This is a chance to make something that will last for generations, not just for a few years. |
| 10:25:14:00 | So we are dealing with the delicate problem of how do you bring relatively affluent individuals into an area of enormous poverty, and allow those individuals to generate income and livelihoods for local people, without creating more problems than they solve. |
| 10:25:35:18 | I see this as an example of sustainable rural growth in an impoverished country, without damaging the environment, that could be replicated around the country. I think the country has enormous tourist potential. I think the physical beauty of the country is unrivalled anywhere in West Africa, and I think anyone coming here would agree. |
| 10:26:03:10 | VO: The challenges facing Freetown are immense. But with the country finally at peace, there are also new opportunities – to balance increased prosperity with a sustainable future, to manage the country’s growth in a way that does not destroy the environment and jeopardise it’s people. With these goals in sight, there may yet be a chance to restore the balance, and make Freetown the city it’s people deserve. |
| 10:26:39:07 | Title: Lost Freetown |
| 10:26:43:18 | Credits. |
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