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The Student
Back to Reality in Sweet Salone
Dale Barnes, Student of Mechanical Engineering,
Manchester University, UK
Preconceptions
26
When I first saw Sierra Leone on the placements list I immediately
thought of the last time I heard of it on the news a few years back.
I remembered something about an horrific war and I knew it was
somewhere in Africa but I had no idea where. Then I continued
looking at the other placements available.
In fact I did not even apply to go to Sierra Leone; I applied
for places like China, Canada, and Ecuador. In the end I did
not succeed in any of my Applications and a couple of weeks
afterwards, I received an e mail saying that there was still a
place available in Sierra Leone, working in a rutile mine if I was
interested. The obvious clichés of war and poverty popped
back into my head for a moment and then I thought to myself,
I wonder what it’s really like Someone was going to snap up
this placement and have a guaranteed once in a lifetime epic
experience so why not let that person be me So I e mailed
straight back the affirmative, even though I still had no idea
where it was and no idea what rutile was or what I was getting
myself into. That is where my experience began.
It did not take me long to find out that it is in West Africa, in the
middle of the tropics, just east of Guinea, at the bottom of the UN
Development index and that I would be going in the height of one
of the warmest, wettest wet seasons on earth. I then found out
I would need a dozen injections, a backpack full of emergency
medication and a lot of pens. Almost every time I mentioned
“Sierra Leone” to anyone I got this confused raised-eyebrow
look of disbelief. I think at this point most people would have
been having second thoughts but after weeks of preparation
I finally got there. I was an employee of Sierra Rutile Ltd one
of the world’s largest rutile mining Companies in Sierra Leone,
West Africa.
Learning to weld
My practical experience at the mines was excellent. I felt like
I learned the real hands-on practical skills that a Mechanical
Engineer should know, but they do not teach at University like
how to tell if a machine is running properly by feeling it, listening
to it and understanding it, how to machine your own spare parts,
how to weld and how to improvise using minimal resources. I
also learnt a lot about how not to do things, though in a country
like Sierra Leone, with no real safety regulations, the wrong way
can sometimes be the only option.
A unique cultural eye-opener
In terms of my cultural experience in Sierra Leone, I was
completely overloaded and taken aback. Every single day I was
there at least one thing happened that was completely strange
and unbelievable and would never happen at home. I learnt bits
of Krio (pigeon English) and Mende (a local tribal language) to
help me converse with the locals and for many of the people I
spoke to it was the first time they had heard a white man speak
their own language, which they and I both found incredible. The
Sierra Leonean people are incredibly friendly as it is, but as
soon as they heard me speak their language that was it, instant
hilarity, rapture and applause. The best was when I would walk
through the local village and as usual, I would get swamped by
local children shouting “White man! White man!” in Mende and
asking for pens. Sometimes I would shout back at them “Mende
man! Mende man! How are you” also in Mende and they would
go wild with laughter. I even met one girl who had never seen a
white man before and she thought I was a monster.
Into the unknown
As soon as I stepped off the plane onto the rough, cracked
tarmac of runway at Lungi airport, looking over at a burnt out
husk of a military plane on the other side, out into the hot and
choking humidity, everything was different. From that moment
onwards for three months, everything that I knew about culture,
society, my way of living, my language, everything, would be
completely turned on its head. The first few days were the most
nervous, dazed, two days of my life. I had never experienced
real culture shock until then. Everything was completely new.
It is impossible to explain the feeling I had in those first days,
though I would come to be very jealous watching other students
go through the same experience upon arrival.
Nat Horton, one of my mentors