by Brian George
70 Million Leones (US$6000+)
Well, it was 70 Million Leones the currency of Sierra Leone, but still a hefty sum over there at the time. Let me tell you the full story.
I met Anna at a networking event in London for entrepreneurs, and we shared the same surname, Taylor. Anna was born in the Gambia and spoke about 7 languages fluently, she was about fifty years old, and her birthday was the day before mine, apart from the skin color we had much in common. We also used the same French bistro in Berwick Street Market, Soho in London. She lived close to the Café du Marché, and we often met to discuss business opportunities. I used a table there as my office when in London.
She had a large property in the Gambia that she was trying to sell or get the funds to renovate and rent as a small hotel. She had just returned from a trip there and to Sierra Leone; she was excited about a proposition from the government in Freetown. To cut the story short, we decided to form a small partnership with a colleague of mine, and I went to both the Gambia and from there onto Sierra Leone with her. I’ll write about the Gambia another time.
We flew into Lungi, where Sierra Leone’s old airport is based across the Sierra Leone River from Freetown. Because of her government contacts, we were given a sort of VIP welcome by the Chief of Lungi and waited in the business lounge until our bags were cleared for us. It was a nice gesture, but I don’t get any ideas about any luxury; it was separate from the main area is probably the best I can say about it. The furniture was old, of mostly dark wood and tatty leather, with no air conditioning in the sweltering African heat. After a while, our bags appeared, and we were also greeted by Thomas and a pal, the young man from the Trade Ministry who was to be our guide while there.
Once the introductions were done with, we were taken out to an official taxi, a beaten-up old Toyota 4 x 4, and crammed in with the driver and our baggage as he drove at breakneck speed along the potholed road to catch the ferry across the river. I’m not sure if they were potholes from an old road or bomb craters from the civil war that had not long been over. A few years previous, Tony Blair had authorized a squad of British Paras to exceed their UN mandate and sort out the ragtag army of child soldiers from Liberia that had surrounded their camp in the jungle at the gold fields, where they were on a peacekeeping mission. They had brought peace to the country and the UN had been re-educating the poor kids and assisting the government since that time. Blair was a local hero, not least because his father had also been a professor at the university there. I carried a photo of me shaking hands with Tony in London just before he was elected, during my time as an activist for his party, which helped my business with the SL government people.
We pulled up about 100 yards back from the ferry ramp, alighted together, and waited while Thomas went to the ferry office and purchased the tickets to cross over to Freetown. It was a disturbing experience for a Westerner because we were immediately surrounded by limbless beggars in all manner of rags, wheelchairs, or on crutches, it was a pitiful sight and one that we just could not give to, not having even a small amount of currency at the time.
The civil war was noted for its particularly cruel treatment of villagers wherever the invading army went. They would round up the people and ask the question, “Short sleeves or short trousers?” The outcome of their choice was to have either an arm or leg chopped off immediately! This left many limbless people throughout this poor country. There were many gathered at the ferry terminal, as it would always get relatively wealthy people going to or from the airport, but there were many of these unfortunate people everywhere I went in Sierra Leone.
We boarded the ferry, which looked like it had also been a victim of the war, with dents and bullet marks on the hull. We found a few seats away from the filthy diesel exhaust smoke, and the contrast as we crossed the river in the afternoon sun was quite pleasant, almost as if the sea air was cleansing us from the squalor on the bank behind us.
When we got to the Freetown side, the 4 of us climbed into Thomas’s old silver Mercedes it was beginning to get dark as he drove us through many back streets to avoid the evening rush hour traffic, but we hit another pothole at speed, and blew a tire. We were in a back street in Freetown, and there was I dressed in a suit because Anna told me that would give a good impression, holding the rear end of the Mercedes up, along with Thomas’s pal, all our luggage on the road, while Thomas changed the wheel, there was no jack or wheel brace. I showed him a trick I’d learned somewhere, and we cut the seatbelt fitting from its belt and used that on the wheel nuts, hitting it with a hammer until the nuts loosened. It was a long process, and I was jumpy as cars flew by full of youths, music blaring and hollering. I felt very conspicuous, the affluent-looking white businessman, surrounded by Africans, in a particularly notorious city, on a back street that I knew not whereas cars flew by honking horns at us. My old East London self-preservation awareness took over, and I made myself as invisible as I could be, moving to the inside wheel arch and ducking down until we were ready to re-load and go on our way.
We had not reserved any hotel relying on Thomas’s advice, and he took us to one in a nice area by the sea, where he and Anna negotiated at the reception for two apartment-style rooms on the upper floor of a 2-story block. Anna explained that we should never take a ground floor flat, something to do with various insects, snakes, and other wildlife, and the fact that she had been attacked once by a monkey! The rooms were pretty rough, the wiring for everything was exposed and dangerous, but it had a large bed and a dusty mosquito net, which by that time and after the travel, was good enough until the morning. Thomas left us to our own devices and gave a time to collect us the next day. There was time for a quick change of clothes, into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, and Anna and I found the bar/restaurant close to the reception.
The bar was like a small church hall in size, brightly painted with Formica-topped tables, and plastic garden chairs, certainly the cleanest building on the whole site. It had a chequered black and white tiled floor that made it look like a London Pie and Mash shop. We took a seat, ordered some beers, and relaxed. There was another table occupied by four men of Western appearance, and they asked us where we were from and what business. We didn’t let on, just said we had some dealings with the government; they, in turn, didn’t give much away. One of them was another Londoner who was selling containers of second-hand clothes to the local market. The other 3 were Lebanese and owners of the hotel. I learned that there were many Lebanese businesspeople in Sierra Leone, tough Phalangist refugees from their own civil war of a decade or so previous.
In the daylight, we saw the ramshackle state of the Family Kingdom Hotel in more detail but knew we would be moving on in a couple of days. It was billed as a 4-star hotel, and they charged $125 per night, if that was 4-star, I wondered what the lower ratings would be like. It was dingy with used furniture, unsafe wiring, shower fittings hanging loose, and generally filthy.
We had been invited by the Trade Ministry to supply rice, the staple part of the local diet. I had contacts in Thailand as suppliers, which all seemed promising until our meetings exposed the deeper situation. The Lebanese had a stranglehold on rice importation and had been controlling the pricing. They had a monopoly on supply to the market in Freetown and were manipulating the going rates by keeping it in short supply and holding the bulk offshore, only bringing rice into the country in quantities that kept the price high. I visited their warehouse, saw the sacks, and noted where they had come from. The minister wanted competition, but I realized very quickly there would be problems, possibly quite violent ones, from these hardened businessmen.
We investigated the local market and the port distributors and got one on our side who also worked for the Lebanese and hated them. We found a warehouse that could be leased in the port area and sought out the security costs. I was from a tough east-end background, but when I weighed it all up, the competition here could end up in a real range war of Al Capone proportions. These guys were already fully armed, and we might have the locals on our side, but I was an obvious outsider, and could we afford to build in the cost of real hardened mercenaries as security? It was a scary prospect.
Anna, however, was an African and very positive, but she had another business reason to be there. She had been trading gold to her daughter in Rotterdam and wanted an export license for that business. She was intent on going up-country and purchasing a mining plot. Something that it was deemed too dangerous for me to tag along and would probably increase the price if they saw a white European bidding.
We had sorted out the costings for the rice business, and I would make out a report for my colleague back in London about financing that, but I had my doubts already. Anna had arranged for her daughter to send funds via Western Union to purchase the mine and some gold ready for export. We were recommended to visit a good bank that could handle foreign currency and had an appointment with a Nigerian bank to open an account, initially for placing Anna’s currency to purchase gold and for any later business that we may carry out. We had a pleasant meeting, and everything was put in place quickly; a very nice young lady assistant was allocated to us who became a part of our entourage and came to the next accommodation that we had relocated to, for dinner.
Our new lodgings were in a large house with an attached apartment block, run by a nice family that Anna had met on a previous trip. It was high up above the city and had a more pleasant atmosphere. We were soon contacted by gold traders, and I saw some really dodgy characters visit, but Anna took it all in her stride, laughing and joking through it all.
We had this joint sales patois of introducing ourselves as brother and sister because of our same family names. The name Taylor is quite common out there; indeed, the warlord president of Liberia that was eventually jailed for life at the international court at the Hague was Charles Taylor. Because of our obvious difference in skin color, that sales talk worked every time, causing mirth all around.
I joined Anna in a meeting at the Minerals Ministry, where they went through the process of form filling and getting official approval for her export license, followed up by a meeting after work, where the official was passed a sealed envelope under the table to finalize the deal!
Once Anna had the call to say that the money had been sent, we went to the Western Union shop to collect the 70 Million Leones, which at today’s rates is just over $6000, but it looked too enticing whatever the value. I volunteered to be the security guard and put it all in my backpack, it was heavy enough, and we walked the few streets to the bank. I was flanked by Anna and our driver, Sylvester, hardly enough to deter any muggers, and I still stood out on the streets there. There was no need to worry, and we laid it all out in the office at the bank, ready to open Anna’s business account. Once the account was open, the money was deposited, and she had the details, she could transfer from London without a problem.
All in all, it was a terrific time, a real eye-opener, and one that, despite my eventual pulling out of the rice deal as too risky, I used much of the experience there and in the Gambia as part of the adventures in my second Dream Team novel titled “Face and Honour.”
I made some friends who still chat on the phone today and tried to get me involved in various businesses. The distributor at the port and another guy in the Ministry of Trade call regularly.
We did some tourist things also, and I enjoyed the Beef Jollof and rice dish at a big restaurant. It was still a nervous place with us coming behind large army trucks full of Kalashnikov-laden soldiers, I wanted to take pics but never wanted to make them jumpy. In the banking area of the city, there were many such soldiers on guard. The only occasion where I felt in any danger was when some obviously drunken guy saw me getting out of the car and started hurling abuse, asking if I was American or British a little too forcefully, but Sylvester stepped in between and strong-armed him well away.
At our hotel up on the heights, a South African white guy came from the local prison each day along with a large black warder. He was serving a sentence for gold smuggling, and they let him out during the day when he came to our hotel for a good lunch and a few beers and returned every evening.
We were visited by some Liberians who wanted to sell Anna some diamonds and gold, but they were too risky to deal with. How they had heard on the local grapevine about Anna, we did not know.
When it was time to head back, we were seen off by our Trade Ministry contact, Thomas, who ensured we were safely at the airport, ready for our flight back via the Gambia.
