Africa 24 (feature news)

There are no more many palm trees left on show on the vast lands on rural Waterloo.

These palm trees, which used to provide employment for Sierra Leonean residents and Liberian refugees by 2002 in Waterloo, have repeatedly been cut down by people to make homes.

Reflecting on activities by people on this large palm oil farm, a resident recalls his experience back in the years between 2000-2003.

“Imagine where there used to be people who come everywhere to cut down the ripen palm trees heads, but now this place is almost a city.”

He listed out the places dominant for palm oil trade such as: “Banga Farm, Refuge Camp, Lumpa and Kamajor Bridge area.”

Mr Ibrahim Conteh said the palm trees, grown in the ’80s by SI Koroma (former vice president of the Republic Sierra Leone), were a means of survival for many people who had fled the twin wars – Liberia’s and Sierra Leone’s.

“Waterloo has really expanded,” said Mr Conteh.

Conteh was roughly in his early 40s when he came to live in Koya Rural District in the early 1960s.

“I had lived in Waterloo here as a young man but returned back to the province and the war brought me back again to live in Waterloo for the second time,” he said.

He said he used to have many friends in Lumpa which now falls under Western Area Rural District, and it is about 22 miles away from Freetown.

Conteh went on to share his experience during the reign of Late President Alhaji Ahmad-Tejan Kabba in the 2000s while he was staying up around Morabie community.

“I remember how beneficial those many palm trees were to people in the 1990s and 2000s. I used to come often as far as Lumpa area to a Fullah friend who was having many houses and a vacant plots of land,” he recalled.

Conteh, who is now 65, said at Lumpa, that is back off Yellow Mosque, at Five-Five area, and in Waterloo township, land was used to be sold by owners at much cheaper costs or it could even be given to someone free by some certain good-hearted individuals.”

That was 25 years ago when these communities: Banga Farm, Liberia Refugee Camp ( which is now called Kissy Town) Lumpa and Fulla Town, Bassa Town areas, were not as pupulated in those years like they are now.

Banga Farm was a warehouse where palm trees cutters and red palm oil producers stay in the afternoon or sleep.

The place earned its name for conducting palm oil farming activities by a mix tribes of people.

It used to employ many youth, adults and children who usually came from Refugee Camp and these people were both Liberia and Sierra Leonean refugees.

Red palm oil, then, was sold cheaper per gallon and pint as compared to today’s prices which often fluctuate in the markets influenced by the rising inflation and high cost of the US dollar exchange rate in the country.

As houses are being built, ever since, year-in and year-out on Sierra Leone’s palm oil farm, many Sierra Leonean residents who had fled the country’s Civil War from the provinces and those refugees from Liberia who’d escaped the war too became seriously affected as their livelihoods became threatened to a halt.

This partially gave cause for many to return to Liberia and Sierra Leoneans to the provinces after the two wars ended.

The ones, today, who still endure life’s difficulties at the new Refuge Camp by Kissy Town are left with lingered hopes and are being trapped in poverty.

The palm oil trade is gone and there is no alternative hope of a similar economic means of survival.

Now, these residents are further affected by the country’s bad economy especially with the rising inflation which continues to blow up commodity prices in the country’s markets.

“I am living here while my family relatives are in Liberia. We do talk on phone quite regularly. It’s is because I have used to live in Sierra Leone with my children and husband and so I can’t return to Liberia anymore,” says a Liberia Christian mother who refused to identify herself, citing mainly for political reasons from her home country Liberia and even while living in Sierra Leone.