Conversations with a Sierra Leonean cabbie

Taking a cab hungover to work the other day, the cab driver and I are listening to some call-in talk radio show when some all-too-typical idiot calls in to essentially say "The people in New Orleans it's their own damn fault for not leaving when they were told to."

The cab driver, who I soon learned was from Sierra Leone, laughed, turned down the radio, and told me his own story about being told to evacuate.

Apparently the Sierra Leone Army, which he was later to serve in, used to come into his town and tell the residents they had three days to evacuate because the West Army was coming in and their town would soon be a battleground. "How do you evacuate when you have no money and no place to go?" he asked.

Once, he recalls, the Army evacuated a major city of 65,000 people for 3 months to fight.

This guy was fascinating, telling me war stories about planes landing full of guns and leaving full of diamonds, generals and warlords being paid in diamonds, Sierra Leonean prostitutes hired by the army to have sex with enemy warlords and kill them afterwards in their sleep.

"We didn’t start any wars," he told me. "The wars have always come to us." He says the "credo" in the Sierra Leone military is that a general cannot use his men to save his life. He must "smell the war." Literally be at the front.

Oddly, given what perceptions of brutality I had, is the main thing he had to say about the guys he knew in the army were how funny they were. "Those guys are hard core, but funny. Really funny." And then he just cracked up to himself presumably remembering some joke.

He said he was going back in the Spring to make a documentary about the untold stories of Sierra Leoneans fighting for the British, that the British conscripted Sierra Leone warriors to fight in WWII and in the bush in India. That there was a famous Sierra Leone fighter pilot who shot down German planes.

He says it’s much calmer (not sure about this ) and a gorgeous country (this I believe). Hope he gets to make his film. Of course I can't remember the guy's name now. But if a documentary happens to come out about the untold story of Sierra Leone fighters in the British military, I'm gonna assume it's the same.

The moral to the story: if I hadn't had so much to drink the night before, and I'd taken the bus, I never would have had such an interesting conversation. So drink up!