Before Before — A Story of Discovery and Loss in Sierra Leone, By Betsy Small (Sierra Leone 1984-87)

Imprint: University of Michigan Press

Open Access : 9780472904907, March 2025

Paperback : 9780472057290, March 2025

Hardcover : 9780472077298, March 2025

Available at University of Michigan Press, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other bookstores.

A Place to Be Young

In 1984, I left home for Sierra Leone, a place I could not find on a map. The Peace Corps sent me to improve rice yields in swamps. I had never even seen a rice plant, yet they assigned me to labors that traditionally belonged to men. There, in an old agricultural world that separated me geographically and historically from the America I knew, I first encountered our two countries’ interwoven stories of rice and diamonds.

For two years, I worked as an agricultural extension agent in Tokpombu, a remote rainforest village, home to forty rice-farming families, both Christians and Muslims, living peaceably along a barely passable dirt road. This narrow opening at the edge of a dense forest canopy had become the main artery connecting foreign mining companies with illicit diamond diggers. Tensions were brewing then between the traditional way of life and the seductive but ultimately undeliverable promise of the diamonds. Elders yearned to maintain the old ways, with its honoring of ancestors, ancient kinship bonds, oral histories, and cultural practices. Young rice farmers dreamed of so much more. The allure of the mining life enticed them away from their family farms, which had relied on their labor for generations. Amid skyrocketing inflation, rampant corruption, and a national debt crisis, Sierra Leoneans were losing all hope. In Krio, the country’s lingua franca, farmers lamented, “Ohl ting bin swit, but now e poil.” All sweet things are now spoiled.

Somehow, this community still clung to the belief that their post-colonial country would one day resolve its problems. Everyone hoped that Sierra Leone would become a nation where the rule of law balanced its ancient traditions with a Western-styled democracy, which would vastly improve their lives. Despite the country’s socio-economic failures, both young and old dreamed of prosperity in Tokpombu.

In 1991, four years after I left the country, the region where I had lived became ground zero for one of the most brutal and vicious wars of the late twentieth century. Tragically, it reminds one of the complicated history of Sierra Leoneans who endured the scourge of the Middle Passage and used their rice-growing know-how to create the most profitable industry in early colonial Georgia and the Carolinas.

For the next eleven years, a complicit international community––spanning London, Brussels, Antwerp, Johannesburg, and New York—fueled civil chaos and aided rebel and government soldiers by enabling the swap of unregulated stockpiles of Soviet weapons for diamonds. Those diamonds traveled through Tokpombu and arrived on the doorsteps of Manhattan’s jewelry stores, a short drive from my hometown in Connecticut.

Glittering diamond rings, presented in iconic robins-egg-blue boxes, were slipped onto the fingers of yet another generation of newlyweds who would never know the human cost of these stones. As civil unrest persisted in Sierra Leone, the global diamond market flourished. The industry limited public knowledge of an ongoing system of abuse and violence through a marketing campaign that obscured the ethical sourcing of the diamonds. Because the true origin of a diamond is indiscernible, there can never be any guarantee of an honest diamond purchase. Ultimately, the romantic fantasy of modern love had no room for the reality of the plight of one of the poorest and war-torn regions on earth.

Sierra Leone is often portrayed as a place of misery: Ebola, environmental catastrophes, and alarmingly high maternal and infant mortality rates. Horrifying images of the war linger too: nine- and ten-year-olds high on brown-brown (cocaine laced with gunpowder), brandishing semi-automatic weapons manufactured by Western countries and retrofitted for children were splattered across newspapers. In February 1999, the New York Times Magazine titled its cover story, “Sierra Leone Is No Place to Be Young.”

The machete-wielding and gun-toting boys who were kidnapped and swept up in the violence had been my friends and neighbors. These victims/perpetrators belonged to the trusted community who had generously welcomed me and accepted me like family. These were the very same boys who had helped me gather wood for my outdoor kitchen, as they had done for their mothers, and cleared away the tall grasses in the rice swamps where we worked, as they had done for their fathers. These same boys would take time in their day to split open a fresh pineapple with their farming tools and invite me to the cool shade of their front porch to share in the sweetness.

I could never have imagined how Sierra Leone’s unresolved geopolitical complexities would eventually explode. I only knew that because of my immersion there, I had gained a valuable perspective on the obligations of friendship and love. My friends’ departing words were, “No forget we.”

In late November 2013, I returned to Tokpombu accompanied by my teenage daughter. There was no better way to honor this community than to introduce my child to their children––face-to-face. Lilly happily danced among the same women who had taken me under their wing decades ago, which brought tears. It was a lesson of giving and receiving that I had not fully grasped, but somehow trusted, and had now closed a circle. By then, the war was over for as long as it had lasted. Former child soldiers were reintegrating into their families and communities where unimaginable atrocities had occurred. Decades after the violence, post-conflict work continues. But Sierra Leone’s eleven years of civil chaos and terror confirm to me that wars seldom resolve the deep and tangled roots of the past.

At one time, Sierra Leone served as the central port from which enslaved Africans were sent to America’s southeastern colonies. Notably, enslavers fetched higher prices for farmers with rice-growing expertise, and there is considerable evidence showing how their influence in those colonies transformed the economic, social, and linguistic structure of American culture.

Additionally, descendants of those captives who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War were granted British citizenship in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital city. But these formerly enslaved and now repatriated Africans (also war veterans) had weak connections with Sierra Leone’s rice farmers, who resided in the country’s interior. Their integration in the country depended on becoming part of governing class that would serve the interest of the Crown. Sometimes, what are considered conclusive resolutions can create new problems. The unforeseen and tragic consequences of violence persist.

Powerful governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), human rights activists, and religious groups have never fully disentangled the particular disaster that befell Sierra Leone, despite there being no ostensible ethnic, religious, or ideological dynamic. These miscalculations swept blameless souls into excruciating depths of despair. Scholars still debate how Sierra Leone’s war could have escalated so horrifically. No meaningful consensus has yet emerged to explain the depravity of the violence or why the world failed them so miserably.

Some of Tokpombu’s surviving elders ascribed the war’s origins to the tensions between young and old. The youth blamed their elders for colluding with the country’s greedy and unscrupulous politicians. Years of empty promises had left a new generation disaffected and adrift and with little formal education.

The underlying reality of Sierra Leone’s prolonged war reveals a troubling pattern: The West has often turned a blind eye to Africa’s struggles. Many have perceived the brutality as something only Africans (“those people”) would inflict on one another. Such racism––the tendency to dehumanize others–– is painful to look at, but look we must. The degree to which U.S. official policy failed to reckon with Sierra Leone’s culture, history, and people, despite our close historical links, has consequences for our collective future. This connection remains especially relevant today. It still amazes me that the people of this small farming community embraced me, a stranger, into their lives and taught me how to listen, learn, repair, and renew. These lessons can feel out of reach in today’s siloed, polarized, and incendiary discourse.

In Tokpombu, the farmers worshipped differently from one another, yet they managed to settle their differences respectfully. Muslims attended church with their Christian friends and neighbors on Sundays. Christians joined Muslims when they broke fast during Ramadan. They celebrated one another’s weddings, occasionally intermarrying, and they mourned together at funerals.

I am still moved by the memory of weekly gatherings at the village court-barrie (town hall), where elders took turns discussing community affairs. Every attendee was called upon to stand and speak, and always with enough time to air their grievances. The goal of these gatherings was often to restore harmony among the group rather than assign blame.

Arguably, many of the country’s grievances were manipulated for greed-driven political ends and to a nightmarish effect. Yet repair and healing, not from outside of Sierra Leone but from within, is still possible and stands as an example.

Whether one prefers to be buried the Christian way––in a coffin, or the Muslim way––wrapped in a shroud, or according to any other traditional custom, “Nar di same dawty dem get foh ber we all,” the farmers told me. All of humanity is buried in the same earth. “Dis nar we mortalman problem,” they said. This is our dilemma.

While the government spends nearly one-fifth of its foreign reserves on rice imports, Sierra Leone’s diamonds are currently the third largest exporter in the country. Clearly, modern history has left its imprint on the landscape, and economic and political frustrations remain as pervasive as ever. Sierra Leone’s peace is a daily struggle, now further exacerbated by an unprecedented and jarring disruption in international aid. The well-established assurance that has been cultivated by years of dedicated service by individuals, including the Peace Corps, risks sowing new seeds of mistrust by a generation who never experienced the horrors of the so-called Blood Diamond War and has little attachment to America’s soft power.

Even so, I know the farmers of Tokpombu and others like it will continue to abide by each other’s deepest need for connection and healing––to survive with the same hope we all seek––to make the world safe enough to slice open a piece of fruit in a shady spot and to share its sweetness with an unlikely friend on a sweltering day–– a place, in fact, to be young.

About the author

Betsy Small served in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone (1984-1987). For over three decades, she has worked with divided communities in the U.S. and abroad, which inspired her to write Before Before: A Story of Discovery and Loss in Sierra Leone. Betsy holds masters degrees from Teachers College, Columbia University and North Carolina Central University. Throughout her career, she has been a teacher and counselor for families and youth in various settings. More recently, she has served as Executive Director for Creating Friendships for Peace collaborating with teams of peacebuilders in Israel, Palestine, Cyprus, and communities in Northern Ireland.

See her website at: https://www.betsysmall.com.