Sierra Leone

Arrivals lounge at Freetown Airport

View over the Atlantic from the house

Time to "take me one snap" in the morning water run

Three football players leant against the wall getting ready for their game.

In the barbershop the team get ready for the day.

A coffee seller kindly bought me a sachet of water as the heat 

of the day started sapping the spring in my step.

Emmanuel jumped onto the back of a pickup 

truck for a photo in his Sunday finest.

After the nether world of the Kroo Bay slum the road peels away
 towards the cotton tree where the first slaves found their freedom.

Another Sunday service as the bike trailer 
gets fixed for the working week in Kroo Bay

Mike Thompson and his son working by the 

road collecting sand for someone's house extension.

Under the cotton tree Namibian tourists helped me

out with a photo.

Passing traffic as a cargo ship 
temporarily dominates the horizon 

Burning Rubber

Tininga Medical Clinic to receive a new Maternal Waiting Home

We eased past the lopsided car that was packed with passengers as it jolted along the road. The jagged chasis was listed over what was left of the tyre as it slashed and burned around the rim of the wheel. "...These people - ruining their wheels..." said Sam exasperated...

Adolphus (left) with a Pharmacist Maxford

With Engineer Adolphus Gwaikolo and Logistician Sam Endee and we were visiting villages to select locations for medical facilities before preparing the tender information and newspaper advert for their construction.

The irony that we were traveling through what was once the largest rubber plantation in the world was not lost on us. Sam described how his father had risen up the plantation career ladder to be in charge of over 200 people. before surviving in his old age on the pittance of a pension the Firestone Company managed to provide for him.

Amos Z. Boyer (left) discussing plot options with
community members and health workers.

In each village we would seek out the local elders.

At Worhn Clinic, Amos Z. Boyer, the District Commissioner took the lead thanking everyone from God, President Sirleaf, Margibi County Health Offier to the Birtish people for our auspicious meeting. With the impromptu committee of men, we sucked our teeth and lined up the plot by eye against the papaya tree that everyone agreed was the boundary line.

In White Plains (which was neither white not plain) Mrs Massaquoi, the Chief's Wife, led a gaggle of ladies through the unruly undergrowth. We surveyed for the ideal position between the sheltering banana trees until amongst spontaneous dancing, the plot was finally approved. It was satisfying to see what a difference it will make when the clinic relocates and expands from its current home in the outhouse of a derelict house.

Mrs Massaquoi celebrating site selection at 3rd
attempt with staff and community in White Plains

Driving back to Monrovia we passed through villages where mansions were the only remaining monuments to the plantation owners who had pillaged the land to take profits back to America. In many of the clinics the wells hadn't made it through the dry season and women filled the corridr floors waiting for treatment. Gleaming churches of every denomination stand guard up the road against the oppressive poverty of the huts that people call home. The dried up swimming pool outside the house of an old presidential henchman used to house crocodiles apparently. The Chinese  Government had just finished a colossal new university; some mining interests were rehabilitating a railway line to reconnect rich mines of Bong County with the ports of the city.

Half build Taylor era Radio
Station in Monrovia

I arrived back at the hotel to find the security guards listening avidly to his mobile as Martin Luther King proclaimed once again that he has a dream. They mouthed the words in unison and nodded approval to the unshackling of slaves. An unfamiliar but strangely recognisable speech from Charles Taylor followed. I was tired, and didn't have the strength to ask about how the two were linked.
In a bar a week later, an oversized man in black polo neck and light grey suit finished up his plate of chicken wings. Senator "Do you know who I am?" Marias. was also the former Interior Affairs Minister under the Taylor government.

Monrovia city centre

The Senator sees the Premier League as England's greatest export and Liberia as it's own closest ally. He earnestly wishes that his people will have diverse opportunities in rural agriculture, back in the hinterland where they came from, easing pressure on a Monrovia that foreign interests have left bloated.
After a Google search it turns out that he's also been under investigation for murder recently, and was directly implicated  in a 2003 massacre of 369 people in the town of Glaro.

Old habits die hard it seems. Earnest wishes, whatever they are, might have to wait.

New Chinese made University

Beach in Monrovia

View across the bay from
Anglers Restaurant

Proposed site at Tucker-Ta

The love of liberty brought us here...

The sun was just coming up as I filed through the customs in Monrovia airport. The cast had changed since my job in Nepal. Square jawed, weathered expatriate engineers of the extractive industries and UN Mission in Liberia peacekeepers had replaced the square jawed familiarity of mountain tour guides of the Himalayas. The funny looking little man in a suit with an unfeasibly bushy goatee was a - presumably senior - representative of USAID. The goofy looking Slovenian with a goatee was the lone tourist in search of surf.

Everyone else was decipherable only through the statistics I had gathered in the weeks before my first paid assignment for Save the Children. Fourteen years of civil war had left this resource endowed nation in tatters. 4 million people - half of whom live on under a dollar a day watch as the nations wealth is stonen from under them. Returned slaves of the USA once led the coast to superficial prosperity. But subjugating the interior, they carved out the division that led to 250,000 dead, Blood Diamond, Charles Taylor and Naomi Campbell.

Temporarily, there was nobody there to meet me at the airport. Friendly drivers offered me their phones to make a call. Back in Africa - I thought to myself in the relaxed familiar conversation about early mornings, football and taxi driving.

The road from the airport was unusually smooth. Chinese built, I later learned, along with the rehabilitation of a decrepit railway-line to link up a once looted mine in Bong county. Everything looked delapidated . Literally war-torn. The tops of concrete walls seem frayed by the endless spirals of razor wire that protect the ports, barracks, law courts and NGOs. 

The recruitment queue outside the army barracks had been there for days. Young hopefuls with not many choices dream of a chance to get off the streets. A gaggle of thirtysomethings stranded in their wheelchairs at the roundabout could probably testify to their unpalatable options. But implausibly, the war in Mali has become an attractive career choice in a country with 80% unemployment. 

Arriving at the Save the Children office I was briefed, greeted and welcomed by inspiring Liberians who had lived, suffered and worked through unimaginable security threats. Good humour seemed everywhere as I dutifully ordered-in the Liberian Chicken from the takeaway lunch menu. "Prabably not much different from English Chicken" offered Samuel over his shoulder. 

It was comforting that he wasn't far wrong.

Make my classroom safe!

"What would you rather do?" I asked Suman Ghimire, the Head of the District Development Office. "Build one new school block or retrofit three so that they're safer in an earthquake?"

He squirmed, citing the technical nature of the question. Face contorted, he looked out the window of his office at the haphazard construction of the District Capital, Ilam. Eventually he responded, knowing it was not the right answer. "I think I would build a new one"

This is part of the challenge we face. I've been working with four junior engineers from the Department of Urban Development and Building Construction (DUDBC) to develop a design for making schools safer. It needs to be both cost effective and robust enough to at least not collapse.

Retrofitting should cost 30% of rebuilding according to government guidelines. It has to be an excellent solution to be attractive to people like Suman. There's little point in fixing a few buildings if after we leave nobody deals with the other 90% of school blocks that are death-traps. We'll have to demonstrate its value and ease of construction to convince him.


There is no construction code of practice for doing this. No engineer could sign-off a building as "safe" after adding bandages to a mud and stone building. You just can't tell the weaknesses in the original construction. The only viable strategy is to make a significant improvement to the safety of the building.

So a pragmatic solution is needed. With the tiny funding that local government receives and the skill base in the district, there's no way that they could knock down and start again with hundreds of vulnerable buildings. Disagreeable choices are  written in the expression of Binay Shrestha the regional chief engineer at the DUDBC as we discuss a way forward.

Thankfully, I think we've got there. Thanks to Binay's support a set of design principles that we've developed has been agreed by the DUDBC. It's the first such document for this kind of simple building - I'm relieved. The methodology has been shown to resist earthquakes in other countries so I'm as confident as I can be that it works.

At any point, this could have disappeared into a world of engineers' hand wringing and academic research. That's for another day. The first step is to run some pilots and work with the schools we've got. Hopefully, somewhere down the line, funding will be made available for research that pave the way for codifying this practice. Or something better.

Holiday Photoblog - Pokhara, Annapurna Base Camp and Kathmandu

Nobody want to read a florid description of another persons holiday. So here's a photoblog that'll hopefully tell the story a bit better.

Morning view from Raniban Retreat above Pokhara

Sun rises over the Peace Pagoda

A boat ride away, Lakeside in Pokhara town

Paragliding above Lake Phewa  on New Years Eve

Kat (I think) - looking for a thermal in the lake

Spiralling upwards with massive Egyptian Vultures 

Above Sarangkot

A break for nuts on the way up to Annapurna Base Camp

Annapurna South (left) and Machapuchare (right) as the sun set in Chongqing halfway up to the base camp (middle)

Kat intrepidly leaving Machapuchare Base Camp on day 4.
The sun was just hitting Annapurna South up ahead

The monument to fallen climbers at Annapurna Base Camp. "Mountains are not the stadiums where I satisfy my ambitions, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion" wrote one of them on the plaque - well said...

Kat... praying presumably...

7,000 and 8,000 metre peaks in all directions

Heading down a bit light headed and very very chilly

AVALANCHE!!! eeek

Making rice noodles in Ghandruk (pot noodles are easier...)

A day's rest, eating rice noodles mostly.

Euphoric... shortly before getting lost in the mountainside...

Back in Pokhara

A lovely couple of days' rest and (and home cooking) in Furse Khola Farmhouse with Douglas

A quick visit to Pashtupatinath in Kathmandu before Kat flew out

Expensive expenses

"Will you get your expenses today?" I asked Anil, a government engineer who I'm working with.

A rye laugh and a non-committal shake of the head indicated an angry no. My heart sank as another day's work was lost in unreasonable bureaucratic assault course of per diem recovery.

Nupu, Bishal, Shyam and Anil on the way to Taplejung

Anil, Bishal, Nupu and Shyam have been contracted (paid for the the UNDP) to help develop designs for our programme of earthquake resistant school retrofits. They had just come back from two weeks in the mountains of Taplejung District assessing school buildings and understandably didn't want to have to battle the powers that be.

This is a big opportunity to show their worth and break in to the employment ladder. They need some technical support but are young and keen.

I asked if they would be willing to stay on through January and February until the project was up and running. A non-committal wobble of the head indicated enthusiastic agreement.

"But we want to go for government service exams" said the Bishal the unofficial spokesperson. "we have requested January off to study."

My heart sank another notch in my chest. But it was understandable, the government offers safe continuous employment, a nest in the branches of power. And being from Kathmandu, they spoke the right language, were from the right castes and had the right connections to make it there.

But even for qualified engineers, the choices are few. The competition runs into the hundreds for every job that comes up, let alone the plum jobs at International NGOs with their reliable benefits decent salary and skilled workforce.

Which is part of the problem. Donated money can't yet be trusted to go through the government system, so it's bypassed - sucking skills with it.

It's a difficult balance with lots of history, NGOs (staffed almost entirely by Nepalis) fill gaps for peoples lives that would never otherwise get filled and create demand for better government. But the very existence of NGOs weakens the civil service, leaving provincial offices unable to organise even the payment of expenses.

I suppose at least this time, that particular trend doesn't look like it'll be reinforced.

Schools, Skills and Study

Sanjib, the headmaster of Diyalo Secondary School in Ilam surveyed the new school block he was building next to the one he was just finishing with funding and technical support from Save the Children. The building site looked smart, I asked him if he would be transferring the same earthquake resistant practice on the new school:

“Definitely” he replied “same materials, same techniques, but better this time”.

He had learned from some mistakes but knew from the buildings that had collapsed that it was worth the extra investment.

Save the Children construction at Diyalo School
with the next building in the foreground

Since the earthquake, Save the Children have rebuilt 36 school blocks using the standard government approved design. A small proportion of the buildings that were damaged, but hopefully by spreading the work across a wide and difficult geographic area, we have also spread a message about safer building.

And that message is important. In Pakistan in 2005 over 18,000 children were killed when poorly constructed schools collapsed during an earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter Scale.
Seismologists say that Nepal gets an earthquake 10 to 100 times the strength of that every 80 years. The last one was in 1934.

The important thing is that we build on the local way of building so that the good practice can impact more deeply into society. Stone and mud is cheap and abundantly available so it's the building material of choice for single storey buildings.

To support projects like this across Eastern Nepal, the UN Development Programme has trained over 900 masons in the region to include the vital earthquake resistant features that prevent or at least mitigate collapse.

Vertical reinforcement at wall junctions
are encased in  concrete

It's not hi-tech. Simple things like steel reinforcement encased placed at the wall junctions with concrete poured around it and reinforced concrete stitches at key horizontal levels will go a long way to making a wall safer.

There are other materials available, but bamboo takes a level of skill that isn't widely available, besides being poor acoustically and thermally. Timber houses are the traditional way of building, but it's discouraged these days as deforestation is causing more and more landslides.

We had learned the hard way that it wasn't easy to get permission from the forestry commission to cut down trees for the 5 inch timber cross sections needed for our roof trusses. The steel alternative needed repairing after it got bent and battered as it was trucked to the road head and then carried for two or three days to site.

It's not easy building to a decent quality around these parts. But everyone acknowledges that we have raised the bar in terms of construction standards. The plan is that when the next quake comes  buildings and people will be better prepared.