Freetown, where preachers feed on the poverty

Times Online news reporter Hannah Strange is spending a week in Sierra Leone, an African country still racked by the aftermath of a brutal civil war in which tens of thousands were killed and a third of its total population displaced. Here is the first of her daily diary entries:

Six years on, the scars of the civil war that brought Sierra Leone to its knees have faded little. Freetown, once known as the Athens of West Africa, remains little more than a giant slum, a mass of makeshift shacks and crumbling concrete blocks sprawling over the hills that rise steeply from the shoreline.

The poverty is overwhelming: from the overcrowded, rusting boat that is now the only way of travelling from the international airport at Lungi to the capital since the alternative helicopter plummeted into the Atlantic along with the Togolese sports minister several months ago, to the sleeping bodies that line the city streets as bare market stalls sell nothing by candlelight.

The capital is a city – if it can truly be classified as that – of destitution, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and religion, the latter as visceral as the humid, tropical heat.  The streets are an alphabetic mish-mash of international aid agencies - the WHO, the UN, CARE, Christian Aid – almost every other vehicle is a white jeep.  The few other roadworthy cars belong to government ministers.

The cars also belong to the city’s other powerful grouping, the entrepreneurial preachers who feed on the city’s despair.  For, saving souls is big business in Sierra Leone. A country with a majority Muslim population of 55 per cent, Christianity has been growing since before the civil war, between 1991 and 2002, but in its wake has recruited thousands of new converts, swelling to a point where any visitor would assume it was the dominant religion.

Freetown and much of the countryside is dotted with half-finished churches as missions from the United States descend en masse to bring relief – and faith – to the impoverished. On the boat from Lunghi to Freetown, I meet a group from the Jefferson Baptist Church in Oregon who are on their way to build their eighteenth church in the country; when they finish they plan to build more. The attached schools are attracting thousands of families drawn to the free education – the Imam of western Liberia apparently sends his children to one just inside the border.

One of the Oregon group tells me how they gave “the Jesus video” to a local who converted at once – and shortly after screened it at a mass service, saving 3,000 souls in the process.  These vast services, modelled on the televangelist megachurches of the US Bible belt, are a phenomenon that is sweeping the country. Freetown is awash with banners advertising the next event – there are several, some festivals lasting several days, planned for the next week in the capital alone. Held in the city’s football stadium or in fields surrounding the city, they attract crowds of thousands – but they are not popular with everyone.

Some residents tell me that they are held by evangelical pastors who have broken away from their original organisations to form their own splinter groups, capitalising on the market for salvation amongst the traumatised and impoverished populace. They are in it purely for the profit, I am told, charging their congregations hefty fees to attend and requiring generous donations to “the bank of Jesus Christ” in exchange for pseudo-miracles and the promise of forgiveness.

The rise of Christianity is evident in the banners that adorn almost every vehicle, proclaiming “Thanks to God” (A.D. Tours), “God bless the owner”, or in one rather peculiar case “The more you hate, the more God bless.”

Luckily, there are few frictions between the two major faiths, I am told. For most, religion is not a matter of competition, but of finding a path to a better life, and in this the two groups are united. “God loves Islam too,” the banners declare.

Comments

[Dero Lewally]

I visit Freetown every year, its not an accurate account of our city. But I dont care what any one says, I grew up in Freetown till I was 13 then on to the UK. There is no were else in the world like Freetown. By Gods grace our beloved city will be a shinning beacon again as it was in the past. God bless.
Dero Lewally.

[Adam Jackson]

I agree with Patrick. There is much squalor in Freetown. There is also a great deal of light, and I found it to be an extraodinary city, awash with dignity (I was there for two years, leaving only late last year). More time would help you see this, Hannah.

[Daniel]

Let them have faith. They have little else.

[Patrick Skarpetka]

This is an extremely unfair picture of Freetown (I have been there on multiple occasions) It is a heart breakingly beautiful city, and heart breakingly ugly in equal measure. Let us not forget that even in the most squalid conditions one can have dignity. Can your diary begin to reflect that? Perhaps it will in time when you come to understand Salone in greater depth.

Mi sehf na tire of peskoh dem uhsehn tok na salone but noh sabi salone.

[Steffy]

Wherever there is real need religion will be there feeding on it.