This post is a shout out to the community I did my bike PhD fieldwork with – and a call to action to help them when they need it most.
Regular readers of this blog know that earlier this year I went to Sierra Leone, West African to do my fieldwork. My research partners with bicycle NGO Village Bicycle Project and I worked alongside Karim ‘Stylish’ Kamara (VBP Country Manager).
I returned a week before COVID lock down and quarantine was made mandatory (phew!!). Since then I have kept in close contact with Stylish and many of the amazing people I met in Lunsar.
Since my return, I have been worried about Stylish and my Lunsar friends – dreading the arrival of August because of that is when the seasonal torrential rains come.
As well as being an incredible bicycle advocate and business man, Stylish is also very active supporting his community in a number of roles and ventures. Some of these ventures are bicycle-related, others are not.
This post looks at one of Stylish’s most significant community program that occurs outside of his role as ‘The bike king of Sierra Leone’ – yet one that is arguably just as important – his annual August Nourishing Young Minds and Bodies in Lunsar.
August is the most difficult month in Sierra Leone
The rainy season in Sierra Leone runs June – September. August is always the most difficult month. Every August, there are devastating rains, storms, flooding and landslides and thousands of the most vulnerable lose their homes, crops, livelihoods and sometimes lives. Schools, markets and health services shut down and people are forced to stay home because it is too dangerous – people and children get swept away and killed.
Last year, there was a particularly devastating mudslide in Freetown that killed many living in shanty towns and locals called it ‘the day the mountain moved’. These communities are still rebuilding even now as the rains come. The video below showing the build-up last year gives a sense of the gravity of the situation.
August rains often constrain access to essential services due to flooded streets and bridges, debris blocking roads and poor communication networks. A lack of electricity means the full impact on the most vulnerable families is not known until much later. This year preparations are more acute given additional COVID lockdown.
Every August many schools in Lunsar shut down. This means kids are missing out on continuing their education and often they fall behind.
In an account on Study, Read , Write, but most importantly: Listen, traveller Zoe details her experience being in the rainy season in Sierra Leone. Her experience highlights the impact torrential rains have on locals and slum communities, especially in regards to sewage, electricity and health via spikes in malaria and other diarrhoeal and vector borne diseases.
Nourishing Young Minds and Bodies in Lunsar
Last August, Hellen Gelbrand set up a Go Fund Me: Nourishing Young Minds and Bodies to help Stylish run a month-long feeding and schooling program for 100 local kids. This meant kids got a meal for lunch (for most it was their only meal of the day) and were able to continue their studies.
Hellen writes ‘August is the hardest month in Sierra Leone, well into the rainy season with dwindling food supplies in subsistence farming communities. It’s especially hard on kids. In what has become an annual program, Karim Kamara, a young Sierra Leonean, is planning a month of extra schooling and nutritious meals for 125 students at the King Kama primary school in Lunsar. Five teachers, including head teacher Mr. Alie F. Kamara (no relation to Karim), will be employed to teach the children—many of whom are orphans, and all from poor families where one meal a day is the norm for August.”
The 2020 Nourishing Young Minds and Bodies program starts this week and needs your help to raise $3, 100 to make this program happen.
This program is a remarkable example of a grassroots community-driven initiative made possible by Stylish – a person whose first love is bicycles, but who saw a need and took action to make positive change for those who need it the most in his community.
Husband and I have supported this program and we are rallying others to do the same.
Please give generously and support Stylish and the children of Lunsar.
