Day 20 - 22nd March Diamond mining and a female Bundo mask ceremony

Photo above - Mende village Bundo mask ceremony. More Photos below

Diamond mining in the jungle

If it's possible it seems to be getting even hotter and more humid here. Anyway, we press on and maximise our time here. This morning we drove a few miles out of town to see some diamond ‘miners’. We met with a couple of brothers from a local village at the side of the road. They work with a small team of other villagers to search for diamonds in the earth a few feet beneath the ground.

They took us a few hundred yards into the bush to where they are currently working. They dig a small hole a few feet deep about the size and depth of a paddling pool. This fills with water from the water table. They then dig through the mud at the foot of the pool and sift it. They found a diamond about a month ago, hence why they are still working the site and not looking for another. They work 6 days a week, from 8 until 4. The brothers will pay a daily rate whether a diamond is found or not. When a diamond is found and sold at the local town, the money is split betwern the brothers, the team, and the landowner. A hard way to make money!

Another lovely village visit

Next we visited the village that the miners come from. I feel like I am repeating myself, but the welcome we got was so friendly, and everyone was so pleased to see us, it is so amazing. It was quite a big village with about 250 living there, and 3 or 4 village shops. The best selling product other than food is batteries for torches, as there is no electricity here, although individual families do sometimes have small solar panels to charge radios, torches etc

Mad Dutch and Englishmen....

As we got back to our van on the main road, we met a middle aged man and wife from the Netherlands who had cycled from their home to her in Sierra Leone! They had intended to go all the way to Abidjan in Cote d'Ivoire, however they have been struggling with the heat, so they are now cycling to the nearest airport to get a flight back. Mad!

Diamond dealers in the town

Next we headed back into the town of Bo to visit a jeweller that buys diamonds from the miners we saw earlier. As it was Sunday, it seemed they did not have any diamonds on the premises, then from somewhere, a dealer appeared with four rough diamonds, that he said were worth about 300 USD each. One was a yellow diamond. Sierra Leone is if course where the film Blood diamond is based, although it was actually filmed in South Africa.

More evidence of poverty in the country

Afterwards we retired to the hotel for some lunch. The hotel is actually a compound surrounded by four high walls topped with razor wire and glass, and with a permanent security team. I have to say that in the town earlier whilst we waited in the street for the guy from the diamond place, I sensed a slight bit of discord from some of the passers by. Clearly they know you have money, because you are here in their country, and when you have nothing, you are going to be attracted to people who have. A guy helped us reverse the van out into the main street by waving us on and putting his hand up to oncoming traffic, but when we did not give him anything, he started ranting and banging on the van.

In our current hotel we have quite a few mini power cuts, and the hotel has to have a back up generator. And we are in the second largest city here!

Mende tribe Bundo mask ceremony

At about 3.30pm we headed out of the city, taking a 30 minute drive to a small Mende tribe village to see a female Bundo masks ceremony, unique because usually the mask ceremonies are done by men. As we entered the village the drums and other percussion were already underway, and as we walked into the village, they and a mask dancer came to greet us along with loads of villagers. We went to the village square, a dusty open space with shade from the sun. As we sat down, more and more villagers young and old came out. These ceremonies are not performed very often, and the villagers were as rapt as we were.

The ceremony was quite similar to what we have seen before, but was still very enjoyable. It is part initiation, part warding off of evil from the village. Apart from the masks, there were various individual and groups of villagers who did a bit of dancing. Some of the villagers were doing a dance almost like break dancing. At the end anyone could get up and do a dance. As we left the villagers followed us to the van, and it was obvious that one of the masks was getting a bit frisky! He ended up getting in the van, and had to be forcibly removed by the leader of the ceremony, a woman as it happens.

Finally we drove off without any masked interlopers, but still with the drummers playing on the roadside! Tomorrow we drive almost due west to the coast of Sierra Leone, and then take a boat over to the Banana Islands.