De Bodi Fine

Welcome to Sierra Leone!  How de bodi? De bodi fine?

As an update I thought I'd post some pictures on here.  These first few were taken at a beach outside Freetown where the River Number 2 feeds into the Atlantic. It's a beautiful place - it made me feel like I had been dropped in the middle of Jurassic Park.  It was also strange and nice to have such a picturesque paradise almost completely to ourselves.

I don't live in this paradise, but the view isn't too bad from where I stay, either.  Here's the view of Freetown and the Atlantic from the porch of my house:

So I'm working with the Mining & Extractives Program at a Sierra Leonean organization, and last week I went out with a group to visit mining sites in the areas outside Freetown to look for evidence of child miners there and document our findings.  It's illegal in Sierra Leone for children under the age of 18 to mine, but we found several there - most of them were there with their family members, who said the children were mining because they were poor and needed the money or the kids had been chased away from school for lack of school fees.

Here are some photos from the site visits:

A child miner with his grandmother at a granite mining site

 The boy in the center is 6 years old, working at this mine with his family members pictured here

Sand miners bringing sand in on boats

Poor fisherman with his boat at a sand mining site

Child miner breaking rocks

So things are going well so far.  I'm enjoying the rainy season for the most part because it cools things down, although it does turn everything into one big mud puddle.  It's also mango season, and I'm trying my best not to be too much of a glutton!  Internet is very slow here, which will make updates a bit difficult to get up, but I'll try to post when I am able!