Document(s) 9 of 13

Capacity building … requires outsiders who can listen to voices that have been excluded for centuries from informed participation.

—THE AUTHOR

Editor's Note: In 1996, the fifth year of the country's rebel war, I visited Sierra Leone on behalf of CARE Canada to examine relationships between international humanitarian agencies and local nongovernmental organizations. What I found was not encouraging. Most large, international, name-brand NGOs were there, delivering food, running camps for refugees, and trying to keep alive whatever development programming was possible. Local organizations played a very small part in their efforts. I was told that there was virtually no local capacity. There were tales of theft and corruption, and because the needs were great and urgent, there was no time to rectify the situation. Thus the international NGOs continued doing what they had always done—ministering directly to those in need.

Members of local organizations told a different story. Many of the organizations had been actively involved in the search for peace, and it was an undisputed fact that civil society organizations—women's groups especially—had taken to the streets at the most critical moments of 1996 to demand, successfully, that the country's military regime hold elections and hand power to a civilian government. Sierra Leonean organizations acknowledged their limited capacity for humanitarian assistance, and they acknowledged problems of probity, but they asked why, after five years of war, the international agencies had been unable to build any capacity or to find ways to ensure the honesty that seemed to be so problematic.

This chapter deviates in style from others in the book. Like other chapter authors, Thomas Turay began with a plan for the chapter, one that

he took with him to Sierra Leone in November 1998. He intended to complete the chapter within a couple of months while he gathered background material for a doctoral dissertation and conducted peacebuilding workshops on behalf of a Canadian NGO. His plans were changed dramatically by the January 1999 rebel invasion of Freetown. Trapped for several weeks, Turay then stayed longer until he could make contact with his three daughters—the eldest eighteen and twins aged sixteen—trapped behind rebel lines. In order to raise the money needed to bribe rebel fighters at the many checkpoints between Freetown and Makeni, he took short-term capacity building assignments with a variety of Sierra Leonean NGOs. The ironies trip over each other: aiming to write about capacity building, Turay became a practitioner. Planning to study international humanitarian agencies, he represented one himself until the invasion occurred, when he suddenly became "a local." Studying war, he became its victim. Desperate to find his daughters, and a witness to murder, his belief in peace was put to tests that nobody should endure.

Because of the way events unfolded, it was decided that he should scrap the outline he started with, and, instead, tell the story of his year in Sierra Leone in the first person. The fundamental theme of the book— building local capacities in a complex emergency—emerges in some ways much more clearly than it would have if the chapter had been written as originally intended. We believe that the convictions Turay articulates about the difficulties of capacity building amid collapsing structures and communities has special relevance and urgency.

—IAN SMILLIE

Introduction

I understand capacity building as a process through which the people of a given society are motivated to transform their physical, socioeconomic, cultural, political, and spiritual environments for their own well-being and the advancement of their society. Capacity building is about empowering people to take control of their lives. It enables people to rediscover their strengths and limitations, and the opportunities to develop their fullest potential. The process enables people to build self-confidence and self-respect, and to improve the quality of their lives, utilizing their own resources, both human and nonhuman. Capacity building provides opportunities for local organizations to establish networks at both local and international levels. Capacity building is also a process of creating opportunities for people to be creative and imaginative, to dream, and to be able to live their dreams.

Like most African countries, Sierra Leone after independence replicated the growth-oriented development paradigm it inherited from its former colonial master, Britain. This paradigm, which measured only growth, did contribute to some economic development, particularly in the first two decades after independence in 1961. The development honeymoon, however, was short-lived. The events that unfolded in the wake of the rebel war that began in 1991 made the country worse off socioeconomically, politically, culturally, and spiritually than ever before. Rampant corruption, the mismanagement of public funds, a plundering of the country's natural resources by politicians and senior civil servants, and exploitation by external agencies all contributed to this predicament. By 1999, about 90 percent of the rural areas of Sierra Leone did not have access to basic education, safe drinking water, motor roads, basic health facilities, or improved agricultural services. During the colonial and postcolonial periods, politicians and policy makers maintained an urban-centered approach to development. In addition, successive governments ignored the socioeconomic, political, cultural, and spiritual capacities of the rural people. Simply put, rural Sierra Leoneans have for decades remained the economic producers, while urban Sierra Leoneans became the consumers.

After independence in 1961, the country had only two "democratic" elections—in 1967 and 1996. Political pluralism died in 1978, when then-President Siaka Stevens declared a one-party state. In 1980, the country hosted an Organization of African Unity (OAU) summit. Millions of dollars were wasted in the process, and the country never recovered. Despite the intervention of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the economy continued to fail. Today, in spite of its vast mineral resources and fertile agricultural lands, Sierra Leone is the least-developed country in the world according to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Human Development Index, a position it has occupied for several years.

The outbreak of the rebel war in March 1991 added insult to injury. Ostensibly fighting for a return to democracy, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) waged war on a military government by attacking civilians. Its trademark became the brutal amputation of the hands and feet of the innocent, many of them small children. A return to democratic rule in 1996 actually worsened the war, and the only thing standing between the government and military defeat when I returned to Sierra Leone in November 1998 was a West African peacekeeping force, the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring and Observation Group (ECOMOG).

My Background

I had taught in Sierra Leone for a total of eight years between 1970 and 1985 in elementary and secondary schools. My undergraduate qualifications include a higher teacher's certificate in rural science from the Milton Margai Teachers College, Freetown (1976), and a bachelor of science degree in agricultural education from the University of Sierra Leone (1983). Between 1977 and 1986, I did a lot of work with the United States Peace Corps. During those ten years, I served as language and cross-cultural instructor and cultural coordinator, and it was through this experience that I became interested in community development work. Upon graduation from the university in 1983, I decided to go back to my village, Mapaki, to establish the Mapaki Descendants Farming Association (MADFA). Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Development and Peace (Canada), CEBEMO (Holland), and Bread for the World (Germany) eventually funded MADFA, which later became a model for the country.

By 1985, I thought this was the kind of thing I wanted to do for the rest of my life. At that time the Diocesan Catholic Development Office (also known as Caritas Makeni) needed a lay worker who would be responsible for its agricultural program. I was persuaded by the bishop to give up my role at MADFA and to serve the entire diocese; I became director in 1989. Around then I started to become critical of my own role and the role of the church in development. I felt that we were not reaching out to the people who needed us most. In fact, I kept saying that the people who needed us most didn't even know we existed. As a church, we needed long-term strategic planning, but we didn't have anything like that.

When I raised questions, they said, "Why don't you come up with something?" So I organized some conferences and seminars, involved community-based organizations to get their input, and we developed a three-year strategic plan as a pilot program. Quite a lot of it had to do with training and organizing, because one of the things I had seen was that people did not recognize their own capacities. A group, for example, would write a project proposal for a cassava farm and garri processing, then spend months or years trying to get overseas funding, when it had all the resources it needed. It is important to create awareness in order to help people examine the abilities within themselves, the capacities they have, the local resources, skills, and knowledge.

In 1992, I went on leave and received an award from the Points of Light Foundation, a U.S.-government program that took people from around the world to the United States for a month of reflection. While I was there I attended some seminars and conferences on change. I knew that I was trying to change myself but I didn't have the tools or the knowledge. The month in the United States helped. I had been thinking of establishing a peace institute, and when I went back to Sierra Leone, I saw my new role. I didn't call it a peace institute at the time; I called it a development-education center. The idea was to strengthen civil society groups, community groups, and the church. I invited some people I knew and trained eight of them in different aspects of development. I didn't call it peace training and conflict resolution, but I was starting to deal with those issues.

We were registered as an NGO in Makeni and called ourselves the People's Animation Center, now the Center for Development and Peace Education. Our approach from the beginning was simple: I said we are not going to ask anybody to give us money. Sierra Leonean NGOs usually begin when they hear about an NGO elsewhere. They say, "Let's form an NGO." They write a proposal, get funding, and, when the money runs out, they have a problem. I said we would start by selling our skills, and I resisted writing a proposal for grants. We began by getting contracts from Sierra Leonean NGOs, and then a U.S.-based foundation gave us a contract to do a needs assessment in three organizations it was funding. Based on our recommendations, the foundation asked us to do training. Then, in 1993, the International Fund for Agriculture and Development (IFAD) revived an integrated agricultural-development project. IFAD needed an NGO for parts of the program, and we won a contract to provide training to two hundred farmers' associations.

Some time later, wanting to upgrade my skills in adult education, I applied for and received a Commonwealth Fellowship that took me to Canada. Not long afterward, the IFAD project ran into trouble. The rebels invaded the north, and because our program had a $24.5 million budget over seven years, it became a target. Everything came to a standstill in 1995.

My Return to Sierra Leone

In 1998, I went back to Sierra Leone with four objectives. The first was to conduct two peacebuilding training-of-trainers workshops and to establish a microproject fund for victims of the war in Bo District. I was to do this on behalf of a Canadian NGO, Partnership Africa Canada (PAC). My second objective was to collect data for my doctoral dissertation, titled "Approaches to Conflict Resolution in Urban Secondary Schools in Sierra Leone: Implications for Building a Culture of Peace." Since I knew that the provinces I had intended to study were now dangerous rebel territories, I decided to concentrate on Freetown, where it was relatively safe at the time. The third objective was to write this chapter, although the intention was to produce something quite different from what has emerged. And my fourth objective was to visit my family. As it turned out, the events that unfolded were very different from my expectations.

The PAC Workshops

The PAC workshops were organized by a Sierra Leonean NGO, the Network Movement for Justice and Development (NMJD). NMJD was established in 1988, with headquarters in Kenema and branch offices in Bo and Freetown. It is one of the very few local organizations specialized in training community-based organizations in various aspects of development. It was also one of the few local NGOs that provided humanitarian assistance to Sierra Leonean refugees in Guinea.

At first, I was nervous about whether what we were going to do was relevant. I thought the Civil Defense Forces (CDF) would resist talking about nonviolent approaches to the conflict, about conciliation. At the time, those words were taboo. You couldn't use the word mediation or talk about dialogue, because the government was not prepared to accept that, and people who talked that way were seen either as rebel collaborators or even rebels. We had that kind of difficulty, but the participants were interested in learning new ways of looking at things. I remember coming out of one workshop with people saying they were for the nonviolent option in dealing with the former combatants, because they realized that war was not going to solve the problem and that violence was not helping anybody. It was clear that the participants recognized that no sustainable development process could take place without peace.

There were, of course, certain capacities that were not strengthened. The duration of the workshops was inadequate and most participants had little theoretical background in approaches to conflict resolution and peacebuilding. None had any previous training-of-trainer experience in this area. Against this background, it could be argued that a three-day workshop is too brief to develop a solid conceptual framework on approaches to conflict resolution and peacebuilding, and to transfer the skills necessary for training others. And, to be honest, a few participants attended the workshops mainly in the hope of receiving a project grant afterward.

The January 1999 Invasion of Freetown

I left Bo on December 20, when the rebels invaded Kono District, less than 100 kilometers away. The Council of Churches wanted me to stay for its Christmas party, and my idea was to go home after that to Makeni. Having been there at the beginning of the war, however, I knew how fast and how far the rebels could go, and I felt it wasn't safe to go to Makeni. So I went to Freetown. At around 2 a.m. on January 7, news came that the rebels had invaded earlier that night. I was staying in the west end of the city, and I called my brother, who lived in the east end. He said, "They are right here—they are in front of my door and we can't get out." And then the phone was cut off.

The rebels were driven out by ECOMOG forces after about three weeks, but not before burning the east end of the city, killing at least 6,000 people, and kidnapping about 2,000 children. The first time I went out was on January 28—I went as far as the stadium while the rebels were still at the east end of Freetown. At that time more than 40,000 displaced people were camped in the stadium. I was shocked by what I saw. Most of the international humanitarian agencies had evacuated to Guinea, and the only NGOs providing food—the small amounts that they had—were the Methodist Church and the Council of Churches. There were no expatriates. But the local organizations had only leftovers. There was a lot of food, but it was locked up, and the international NGOs, the World Food Program (WFP), and others had all gone away with the keys. Eventually they came back, but the situation was far from normal. I was completely cut off from my family, which was behind rebel lines in Makeni. I had no idea how long the situation would last, and I was running out of money. I was angry, frustrated, and disillusioned, but I had to do something, so I started doing what I knew best, working with local NGOs.

I must have had a dozen or more assignments in the months that followed. For example, I cofacilitated three workshops for different local organizations on the training of trainers for disaster mitigation and preparedness. The participants included church and community leaders, leaders of community-based organizations (CBOs), teachers, women, and youth leaders from the organizations' target regions. In July 1999, the director of Caritas Makeni contracted me to conduct a participatory peacebuilding needs assessment in three Sierra Leonean refugee camps in the Forecariah region of Guinea. The contract had two main objectives. First, it aimed to assess the needs of refugees in three camps, and then to assess the capacity of the organization to promote a culture of peace among refugees. Second, I was to train the staff in conducting participatory needs assessments on their own. Third, I was to help develop a peacebuilding project proposal for refugees in the three camps.

I spent about a week in Forecariah working with the field staff. Few of them had even basic training in trauma healing and peacebuilding, although some had very good backgrounds in community animation. The organization had done a lot of sensitization among the refugees; however, it had very limited financial, material, and technical support from international NGOs. This weak institutional base created frustration among the field staff, because they could not make much difference in alleviating the refugees' appalling conditions.

Between April and September 1999, I also assisted three local Christian organizations to develop short- and long-term strategic plans. This was done through workshops and informal sessions. Participants who benefited from these workshops included church leaders, heads of government departments, and program officers. Generally speaking, I observed that most church institutions and organizations depended heavily on external support. They had a very weak financial base, and their capacity to mobilize and generate local financial and material resources had not been fully tapped. It was therefore encouraging to see these three organizations developing long-term plans with an emphasis on sustainability and self-reliance.

Between September and November 1999, I worked with three other organizations on conflict resolution and peacebuilding. All three had highly trained professional adult educators and trainers in various aspects of community development. However, they did not have trainers grounded in the theory and practice of conflict resolution and peace-building. It was against this background that they requested me to train their trainers in this critical area of their work. It was encouraging for me to see at least one of these organizations, the Centre for Development and Peace Education (CD-PEACE), putting into practice the knowledge and techniques it had learned. Later in the year, this organization was contracted by the Family Homes Movement (a local NGO providing humanitarian assistance and vocational training to former child-soldiers) to train its workers on approaches to peace and reconciliation. The organization was also invited to participate in a training and reintegration project for Paramount Chiefs, the traditional rulers of the country.

Another job involved facilitating a one-day workshop organized by the National Commission for Democracy and Human Rights (NCDHR). The purpose was to train representatives from civil society groups who were selected by NCDHR to participate as observers in the Lomé peace talks, to take place in June and July. Even though this workshop was short and poorly planned, it enabled participants to explore the meaning and principles of interest-based negotiations. World Vision played a very important role in this process by covering the cost of airfare and accommodation for the civil society representatives. Neither the government nor the UN Observer Mission in Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL) was enthusiastic about encouraging civil society participation at the Lomé peace talks, for fear of resistance against accommodating the rebels in a power-sharing deal.

While the peace talks were going on in Lomé, the United Nations Humanitarian Assistance Coordination Unit (HACU), based in Freetown, set up a committee comprised of representatives from various local and international NGOs. The main purpose of this committee was to provide feedback to UNOMSIL and government representatives on the reaction and mood of civil society toward the peace talks. HACU invited me to join this committee because of my background in negotiation and mediation. I felt that HACU did a good job bringing together representatives from different backgrounds to brainstorm how the government should deal with issues such as power-sharing with rebels, a cease-fire before the rebels' withdrawal from strategic mining areas, and whether to give the rebels a blanket amnesty.

HACU's initiative provided a forum for local and international NGOs and civil society groups to make informed contributions to the peace process. I saw this information-sharing as an essential ingredient of local capacity building. The unit also gave constant feedback to the committee on how things were going at the Lomé peace talks. There was transparency and accountability, and discussions were held in a frank and democratic manner. There was great respect for diversity in perceptions, understandings, and interpretations of the various elements and approaches to the peace process.1

International Humanitarian Organizations

My initial shock when I arrived in Bo after a four-year absence had to do with the proliferation of international NGOs. When I left in 1994, Oxfam was not in Bo, nor were many of the others. Now there was Oxfam, Action International Contre la Faim (AICF), Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), and Africare, to name a few, as well as several church organizations. I saw NGO vehicles everywhere. World Vision had a fleet of vehicles and bikes. It was difficult not to notice them. If you went to the Black and White Restaurant, you could see dozens of vehicles parked outside at lunchtime. The presence of many international NGOs and few local NGOs was in my opinion a sign of weakness in the local capacity building processes that many international organizations claimed to be enhancing.

Time and circumstances do not allow me to go into a detailed and comprehensive assessment of international humanitarian approaches to local organizations. My comments are based on what I saw, heard, and observed before and after the January 6, 1999, rebel invasion of Freetown. Let me start with the local capacity building approaches of some of the organizations that impressed me the most.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) was deeply involved in strengthening the capacities of local organizations assisting former child soldiers and other children affected by the war. UNICEF not only provided financial assistance to local NGOs, it supported the training of Sierra Leoneans in child protection, trauma healing, family tracing, and reintegration of former child combatants. The organization financed the production of posters carrying messages of peace and reconciliation, and messages decrying the use of children as soldiers and other forms of child abuse. The relationship among UNICEF and local NGOs, government ministries (especially the Ministry of Health), and other international NGOs was very cordial.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) also did a lot in local capacity building, supporting the reconstruction of educational institutions. It collaborated with the Sierra Leone chapter of the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) to develop a training module for education, culture, and peace, with a focus on trauma healing, conflict resolution, the role of women in conflict resolution, and fundamental human rights. World Vision developed a Seeds of Hope program that taught local NGOs and CBOs improved farming techniques such as pot vegetable production. This type of innovation was very timely. The Jesus Healing Ministry, the Community Animation and Development Organization (CADO), and the International Islamic Religious Organizations (IIRO), which benefited from the Seeds of Hope project, felt that they strengthened their capacities to improve food security in their target areas.

What I also found encouraging was an increased awareness of the need for both international and local NGOs to develop short- and long-term strategic plans for the postwar period. For example, I worked as a resource person with local organizations such as the Council of Churches in Sierra Leone, NMJD, the Baptist Convention of Sierra Leone, the Methodist Church of Sierra Leone, the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), and the Christian Extension Services to develop long-term strategic plans for these organizations. Participants in these sessions included senior staff members, church and community leaders, and policy makers. Some international NGOs both inside and outside the country provided financial assistance for this kind of capacity building.

Some international NGOs also provided training for local organizations on various aspects of the Disarmament, Demobilization, and Rehabilitation (DDR) process that emerged from the Lomé Peace Agreement signed early in July. But this program depended heavily on donations from the international community, and the inadequacy of financial and other logistical support contributed to its slow pace. There were times when the ex-combatants would accuse both the local and international humanitarian agencies of mismanaging funds meant for them.

The DDR program however, provided unique opportunities for the local population. Many industrious Sierra Leoneans set up new businesses such as food processing, petty trading, and small construction companies. The program also created opportunities for local organizations and groups to diversify their development interests. For example, a study done by Sierra Leonean organizations revealed that half of the local conflict resolution and peacebuilding organizations had been established between 1991 and 1999. This was encouraging, because Sierra Leoneans need their own capacities to analyze, design, and implement programs to meet the challenges of the war.

While there was collaboration among some local and international NGOs and community-based organizations in capacity building, it was also obvious that there were tensions. I observed a lot of mistrust between the international "food pipeline" agencies and local organizations. The local organizations in my opinion were basically errand boys—their main role being to distribute food and take insults from hungry and angry internally displaced people who frequently accused them of misappropriation. When food supplies dried up, the local NGOs that had been engaged in such food distribution became redundant and became targets for accusations of fraud.

The only international NGO I saw seriously engaged in strengthening the capacity of local organizations in disaster mitigation and preparedness was Christian Aid (UK). But merely training local people is not enough. If, in the midst of an emergency, persons cannot apply their knowledge because they lack the logistical support and resources, the training becomes meaningless. This is what happened during the January 1999 rebel invasion of Freetown. Local NGOs were left on their own to cater for the needs of the thousands of internally displaced persons, and they lacked the capacity to do so. International NGOs with the resources fled when they had wind of the rebel invasion. Most fled to Guinea, and while some made provisions for their local staff, many others abandoned them and closed down their operations.

Between February and September 1999, several newspapers carried articles about local NGOs that had been accused of misappropriating relief food and nonfood items. For example, the Standard Times (September 3) carried an article alleging that rice meant for the Civil Defense Forces (CDF) did not get to them. In another article, The Pool (September 3) reported that some senior and junior World Food Program workers were accused of siphoning and selling relief food items to market women. In a similar story, the New Tablet (September 10) reported that some parliamentarians and Paramount Chiefs had been accused of stealing used clothing sent by the Kono Descendants Union in the United States.

Such reports were common, especially the first few months after the January invasion of Freetown. During this period nobody seemed to trust anybody. For example, when the Relief and Development Department of the Evangelical Fellowship of Sierra Leone (EFSL) reported that 122 million leone (about U.S.$4,700) from the income-generating credit fund had been burned during the invasion, the beneficiaries accused the ESFL of foul play (New Sierra Leone, February 15). To curb the incidence of such alleged corruption, some international NGOs simply decided to handle the distribution of relief supplies entirely by themselves.

Internationals were also accused of corruption. In Bo, for example, many Sierra Leoneans I met were baffled by the multitude of international NGOs operating in the Southern Province. Some were believed to be trading in diamonds, while others were accused of supporting the rebels. In the wake of the rebel invasion of Freetown, both the government and ECOMOG accused the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) of providing communication equipment to the rebels. This led to a subsequent expulsion of the ICRC from the country for several months. Whether any of these accusations were true did not really matter. There was a cloud of doubt among many Sierra Leoneans about the intentions of some international NGOs, especially those operating in the diamond regions.

The influx of expatriate staff among the international NGO community was another issue. I had no problem with international NGOs employing expatriates for expertise that Sierra Leoneans could not provide. But I felt uncomfortable when I saw that many qualified Sierra Leoneans who could do some of the jobs much better were being left out. A related issue is the huge salary gap between expatriate and local staff. This issue has been present for many years. I recall my days at Caritas Makeni, when one of our overseas partners assigned a so-called agricultural technical expert to work with me to develop long-term agricultural programs with our target communities. In spite of the fact that I did most of the practical work and was in a real sense the expert, my counterpart was paid three times my salary and a lot of fringe benefits. This kind of situation was still prevalent among some international NGOs during my visit.

Another issue that created a lot of suspicion among the public, the government, and the international humanitarian agencies had to do with transparency and accountability. The government's desire to address this issue was articulated by the Minister of Development and Economic Planning, Dr. Kadie Sesay. According to the Herald Guardian (November 22, 1999), Dr. Sesay required all international NGOs to register their budgets and their areas of operation with government. Dr. Sesay also demanded that international NGOs report to her ministry for evaluation, and said that failure to do so would lead to expulsion. One reason for this was the failure of many international NGOs to pay customs duties on imports that were not duty-free (Herald Guardian, November 22, 1999).

Both the international humanitarian organizations and local NGOs were ill-prepared to cope with the immense humanitarian problems caused by the January invasion of Freetown. This led to great tensions and mistrust between local and international organizations on the one hand and between the local organizations and the direct beneficiaries on the other. The death of some personnel—both expatriates and local people—and the wanton destruction of some of the offices and property of several NGOs as a result of the rebel war caused much institutional trauma. Some NGOs would never recover from the loss.

Family Matters

I was challenged during some of the peacebuilding workshops I facilitated. Some participants questioned the relevance of the nonviolent approaches to conflict resolution and peacebuilding they had learned during the workshops. They asked me questions like, "How should we deal with these rebels who have done such barbaric things to us?" Others asked, "If it were your daughters whose hands were amputated, would you forgive and reconcile with such killers?" These were tough questions, especially for a father with three young daughters trapped in rebel-held areas.

On the first Saturday in February 1999, I decided to go into town from the west end where I had stayed during the invasion. When I got to Congo Cross there was a long queue at an ECOMOG checkpoint. We all had to pass through with our identity cards, and while I was there they spotted someone who was not well dressed. A woman pointed to this fellow and said he was a rebel, saying, "I saw him at the east end of Freetown, and he burned our house." The ECOMOG soldiers pulled him out of the queue and shot him fifteen times. Then they picked people from the queue to take the corpse to the ocean two hundred yards away. I prayed that they would not pick me. It was the most horrible experience in my life. I lost faith in many things at that moment, and I was quiet for nearly two weeks. But, in a way, it helped me. I later shared it in some of the workshops with others who had similar experiences, and talking about it became part of my own healing.

When the rebels invaded Makeni, my family managed to escape, living between villages and the bush fifteen miles northwest of town for about three weeks. They ran away with nothing but the clothes they wore when the rebels attacked. They lived on wild fruit and the support they received from people in the villages they passed through. During this period they managed to send me a letter through a relative who escaped and traveled by bush path for nearly a week before he reached Freetown. In the letter, which I received just before the invasion of Freetown, they explained where they were and what they were going through. I managed to raise some money and gave it to the same relative to take back to them. He left Freetown, and I never heard from him again. The rebels invaded Freetown the next day, and we were cut off.

I tried again in May. That was when everyone was talking about the negotiations in Lomé and there was a lull in the fighting, so I sent someone else with Le80,000 (U.S.$60). He never came back. It was a racket. If you wanted to get your relatives into Freetown, you would negotiate with someone who would promise to go and get them. It was mostly a scam, but you couldn't give up. Someone would introduce you to a man, saying, "He has just brought ten people in; he is trustworthy." But after the second attempt I was more cautious. I did not have the money, and some attempts were fatal. I knew a case in which everyone in the family was lost in the attempt.

I did not hear from my family until mid-August 1999, until my wife's younger brother was able to travel to Freetown. The family was safe, living in my late mother's village about twenty miles southeast of Makeni. But they had lost everything we had worked for over the decades. Our house was completely vandalized by the rebels and damaged by a fragment from a rocket-propelled grenade.

Now I negotiated with the fiancé of a cousin who had just brought in twenty people. This time we had to calculate everything very carefully. To escape from Makeni, you had to go to the truck park to get a rebel pass that would allow you to recce, a word meaning you were going to search for food. Then you would negotiate for transport and pay. And at every checkpoint you would pay more—Le4,000 per checkpoint. There were dozens and dozens of checkpoints, and we had to calculate all of them. I wanted all the small kids to come out with my three daughters—eleven people in all. The total was about Le600,000 (about U.S.$400). So I gave him the money. And he got there.

My daughters and the others left very early in the morning, and the only transport available at the time was a tractor. So they took the tractor with a small trailer and went about seven miles from Makeni, and then they got stuck because they were using palm kernel oil instead of diesel. The tractor broke down, and they were immediately abandoned. They had paid the money, but from that point they had to walk. It was life or death, and it was the last chance. They walked for two days and two nights—sixty miles—and on the journey the rebels took everything from them. By the time they got to the ECOMOG lines, they had nothing. They couldn't pay for transport, so they slept there and finally ECOMOG gave them a lift to Freetown. It was the third week of September, almost a year since I had arrived to give peace a chance.

Conclusions

Throughout my visit to Sierra Leone, I was repeatedly challenged by former colleagues who said, "Why are you coming here with this white man's stuff—nonviolence, peacebuilding, and so on?" They thought I was from a new planet; they thought I had been brainwashed by what they called the "white mentality." This sort of comment reflects a shortcoming in attitudinal capacities as much as any other. Developing human capacities must include the emotional, intellectual, psychological, cultural, spiritual, and social needs of people. Capacity building must therefore be based on the lived experiences, aspirations, resources, needs, visions, and limitations of the local people. It is about assisting the marginalized and oppressed in society to take ownership and control of their development process. Local capacity building is about empowering people to make a difference in their own communities.

Capacity building must address people's ability to ensure food security and other basic needs, to gain the knowledge and skills necessary for improving the quality of their lives, their environment, and their society. The process requires outsiders who can listen to the voices that have been excluded for centuries from informed participation. This is the challenge facing many African countries, but especially Sierra Leone today. In order to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century and to participate meaningfully in the globalization process, indigenous African capacities must be understood and developed. This will be extremely crucial for sustaining long-term peace in a postwar Sierra Leone.

A few international organizations have done a lot to strengthen the capacities of a handful of local organizations during the rebel war. However, much more needs to be done by the internationals to support long-term local capacity building. My general observation was that suspicion and mistrust between international and local organizations increased during the 1999 rebel attack on Freetown. There was more competition than cooperation regarding who was doing the most humanitarian work and who was seen to be doing the most. There were more short-term projects than long-term strategies. Some international NGOs behaved like tourists. They flooded the country when times were sweet and they disappeared during rough times. (In addition to January 1999, most had disappeared between May 1997 and February 1998 when the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council took power, and they disappeared again in May 2000 when there were rumors of an imminent RUF attack on Freetown.)

Local capacity building should include the creation of well-equipped, local development training and research centers. Expatriates skilled in special disciplines should be encouraged to work with local counterparts, rather than sending Sierra Leoneans away for training. This approach means fewer job opportunities for expatriates. It also means more power, control, and ownership of the development process by local organizations. But with most local organizations still largely dependent on international agencies for their daily bread and survival, I do not expect this to happen soon.

Participatory research into local capacity building issues is almost nonexistent in Sierra Leone. Virtually anybody can claim to be a trainer or adult educator in one field or the other. There are no standards for the competencies required of trainers and adult educators. Many Sierra Leoneans, having participated in short trauma-healing or peacebuilding workshops, immediately assumed they were expert trainers in a very complex field of study. In the future, much more inquiry should be encouraged into the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities inherent in local organizations. The government, perhaps through the Ministry of Education and with collaboration from the Sierra Leone Association of NGOs (SLANGO), should work toward developing a policy and standards on the competencies required of trainers and adult educators.

Let me conclude by emphasizing that for local capacity building to be effective in the long run, there must also be peace, the rule of law, democratic governance, political pluralism, a stable economy, and transparent and accountable political leadership. The basic needs of people must be met. There must be mutual trust and respect between international and local organizations engaged in capacity building, as well as between the government and NGOs. Unfortunately this is not yet the case in Sierra Leone. The reign of terror and the jungle justice that the rebels established in Sierra Leone has made the process of building local capacities a dream that is yet to come true.

Editor's Epilogue

I had occasion to visit Sierra Leone again in October 2000, nine months after Thomas Turay's ordeal ended. The NGO world was buzzing about a new NGO policy that had been introduced by the government the previous month. The policy aimed to give clarity to the term NGO and to re-register all local and international organizations in the country. Local NGOs would be required to have at least three full-time staff members, an easily identifiable office, a postal address, and a bank account in Sierra Leone. International NGOs would be required to show proof of their legal status in their home country, to have ministerial approval of their programs, and to limit their administrative costs to 20 percent or less of their overall budget. Each international NGO would be allowed up to three expatriate staff, with special permission required for more than that number. All NGOs, local and international, would be required to submit quarterly bank statements to the government.

While some of the new regulations seemed unduly bureaucratic and even draconian, they contained elements not often found in government regulations. For example, one specification was that "programme formulation must be done with the full participation of the specific target group, and confirmation of this should be evident in the submitted programme."2 And, "All NGOs must have commensurate numbers of national staff at senior management level with enough authority to ensure continuity of programmes, even in the absence of expatriate seniors. This will also assist in promoting the transfer of knowledge and capacity building."3

Among international NGOs, reaction to the policy was almost universally negative. "It came out of the blue," said one director, who believed that local NGOs had encouraged the government to crack down on the internationals. "Why didn't they discuss it with us first?" Clearly, the new policy had not come out of the blue—it represented long-held frustrations of Sierra Leoneans, now in their tenth year of a brutal war, who simply wanted to take greater ownership of the relief and reconstruction process themselves. An explanation for the nationalistic tone in the regulations could be found in the preamble: "The January 1999 crisis saw a mass exodus of expatriate staff of international NGOs. … [B]uilding national capacity has to be urgently undertaken."4

Many international aid workers make the mistake of thinking that the world they find in a country like Sierra Leone began on the day they arrived. They are not very interested in the history, past relationships, past frustrations. The new NGO policy in Sierra Leone will inevitably be amended over time, but perhaps its original shock value will have served the purpose of conveying a message about local empowerment that was long overdue.

—IAN SMILLIE

Notes

1. For a detailed discussion in the Humanitarianism and War Project's series on HACU and the efforts of coordination in Sierra Leone, see Marc Sommers, The Dynamics of Coordination, Occasional Paper no. 40 (Providence, R.I.: Watson Institute, 2000).

2. Government of Sierra Leone, Policy Regulations on the Operations of Non-governmental Organisations (Freetown: Government of Sierra Leone, August 2000), 5.

3. Government of Sierra Leone, Policy Regulations, 10.

4. Government of Sierra Leone, Policy Regulations, 1.

Document(s) 9 of 13