About twenty miles from the Liberian border, in the remote south of Sierra Leone, stands the source of the nation’s power. It’s a strange cluster of granite boulders, hidden deep within a jungle of childhood fantasy — monkeys, butterflies, parrots and pineapples, and you may only approach it barefoot. “This is Kute Wulehun,” whispers the tall man who has brought me here.
He points to a low tunnel through one of the boulders with an altar-like rock at its entrance. “Politicians put offerings on that stone then crawl through the tunnel on their hands and knees,” he says. “If their gift has been taken by the time they return, they will be elected. If not …”
“Which politicians?” I ask.
“All of them — even the president,” he says. “If the demon dwarfs withhold their blessings, your political career is doomed.”
I look at the faces of my companions: the tall man, my guide, Peter Momoh Bassi, and two eight-year-olds who have tagged along. All stare back, deadly serious. One of the kids looks ready to scarper.
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“Imaginary demon dwarfs, right?” I ask Peter.
“No, real ones,” he replies, pointing at a cleft in the rock. “They live in that cave with the poisonous porcupines.”
It’s not the average holiday conversation, but then there’s little that’s average about a holiday in Sierra Leone. This is the bewitching west African nation that survived civil war and ebola, and now wants to transform itself into an African version of Costa Rica, with added enchantment.
It’s not often that a new destination enters the tourism market, and it’s rare to see one succeed. Over the past quarter-century I’ve reported from hopefuls including Nicaragua, Haiti, Venezuela, Myanmar and Mozambique — all of which had big dreams of direct flights and deep-pocketed investors but ended up disappointed.
But then none of the above had Idris Elba on side. The actor, whose father was born in Sierra Leone, has just announced plans to turn Sherbro Island, off the southwest coast, into a tourist resort and special economic zone, powered by “Afro-dynamism and eco-principles”.
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Sierra Leone has the beaches, surf and forests to rival Costa Rica and more impressive wildlife, with pygmy hippos at the Tiwai Island reserve, elephants at Gola Rainforest National Park and chimpanzees in the Loma Mountains and Tacugama sanctuary south of Freetown. Its back story is better too, but its tourism infrastructure cannot compete and, despite Elba’s enthusiasm, the first purpose-built megaresort in west Africa is a long way off.
In the meantime, tour operators including Explore!, Intrepid, KE Adventure and Steppes are developing itineraries aimed at travellers looking for more than a lounger beside a pool.
Rudimentary accommodation is one challenge. On a week-long tour that took me east from Freetown to Guinea and south towards Liberia, via the diamond-trading city of Bo, the only rooms that came close to western standards were the Radisson and the Country Lodge in the capital, catering to luxury-loving NGO workers; the Australeone guesthouse, which has brought the Bali vibe to Bureh beach (room-only doubles from £35; instagram.com/burehbeach); and the Place, which does a reasonable impression of a four-star Caribbean resort on Tokeh beach (B&B doubles from £133; stayattheplace.com).
Further challenges include a lack of direct flights, frequent power cuts and a greedy airport with a “Presidential” terminal, a “Ministerial” lounge and passenger fees of £120 per arrival, but no road access to Freetown, forcing passengers to travel there by boat. But the positives still outweigh the negatives.
Freetown is a benign bedlam — a full-volume city where magic carries more weight than logic. At King Jimmy Market they’re hawking coconuts, Sim cards, fried fish, pots and pans, bananas, Thermos flasks, timber, plastic buckets, ropes, knock-off trainers, pineapples, cutlasses, Jesus T-shirts and antiques with an enthusiasm that makes the Chandni Chowk of Delhi look restrained.
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The dark arts are available on the wharfs, where shadowy men will sell you a death certificate for a fiver and deadly curses for as little as £7. My scepticism over the lethal power of a shot from an invisible witch gun is accepted by smiling locals as the naivety of a dumb tourist.
Bullets from the kind of weapons that you can see, on the other hand, can be stopped if you have the right charm, Peter explains. We’re visiting the horrifying Peace Museum, dedicated to the memory of the victims of the ten-year civil war, and Peter has just revealed that he served as a child soldier, kidnapped when he was 11 by Revolutionary United Front rebels. He points at a pouch-like artefact in a display case. “I wore one like that for protection from enemy fire,” he says. “I never got shot, so it must have worked.”
We take a dugout canoe across the wide Sierra Leone River estuary to Bunce Island, where the remains of the 18th-century British slave station radiates such malevolence that even the jungle won’t take it back. Here, men, women and children were bought cheap from local traders, whipped into shape then shipped to the Caribbean and the Carolinas.
Some made it back. After the American War of Independence, escaped slaves who had fought for the British began arriving in London as refugees. The solution to that problem from the Conservative government of the time was to ship them to the Sierra Leone Colony. “It was necessary they should be sent somewhere and be no longer suffered to infest the streets of London,” said William Pitt the Younger, the prime minister.
Such distaste for humanity, it seems, isn’t reciprocated. On Tasso Island, a short boat ride on from Bunce, the cries of “apato”, or “white man”, echo through the cotton trees as kids come running in the firm belief that if they can touch my hand they will one day travel to England.
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Life here is peaceful, with thatched villages of mud-brick houses, trees heavy with mangos and a spring guarded by a crocodile. Men fish, women farm, children go to school and, as night falls, families gather around fires to quiz their elders on the secrets of a happy life, or watch football on TV.
With Peter and our driver, Jibril, I follow fast roads to the eastern provinces, crossing rivers where locals sieve sand in search of alluvial diamonds. The stones go for up to £1,600 a carat, so a few specks can be worth a decade’s wages.
The bigger mines are hidden from the highway, their approach roads and perimeters heavily guarded. Along with the diamonds, gold, iron and bauxite make up 80 per cent of Sierra Leone’s exports, but somehow their GDP contribution is just 15 per cent.
It’s drier and cooler inland, the landscape a mixture of dry savannah and montane forest. Outside Kagbane, four hours’ drive from Freetown, we pass a column of immaculately dressed schoolkids, each with a bundle of firewood balanced on their head. “Home economics class today,” Peter says. They clearly teach them well. Sierra Leone’s food is superb, epitomised perhaps by the delicious cassava leaf sauce, prepared with fermented sesame, goat meat, smoked barracuda, peanut butter and coconut oil and served with nutty, locally grown rice.
Thirty miles further east, at Kabala, we arrive hoping to find papayas, but instead find witch jars in the trees, threatening bellyache and ill fortune to anyone who steals the fruit. Anyone, that is, but initiates of the Poro secret society — immunity to some of the effects of witchcraft is one of the many membership benefits of a clandestine organisation that’s at least a thousand years old, with millions of adherents across west Africa.
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It’s hard for outsiders to find information on Poro, but a doctor offers me a small insight. “It’s not like joining the scouts. You are kidnapped, taken into the bush and schooled in the traditional ways,” he says. “This includes the understanding that there are powerful forces beyond the visible realm that affect all our lives, for good and for bad. I am forbidden to tell anyone what happened to me in those three weeks in the forest, but I can recognise fellow members in any village, town or city in Sierra Leone.”
As we climb Gbawuria Hill, a popular venue for occultists, we meet a witch on her way down. Her name is Marie Koroma and she has been picking magic herbs that when boiled into a tea can fix anything, she says. I invest 30p in a bundle of the herbs in the hope that they’ll cure my dodgy knee, but the resulting concoction tastes too toxic to do any good. Jibril, who has backache, happily takes the bottle from me.
I return to Freetown to spend my last afternoon walking on its beaches. River No 2 is the beach from the old Bounty ad, but the John Obey and Bureh beaches are better — the former wilder and more beautiful; the latter with beach bars and surf shops. A 20-minute boat ride away are the Banana Islands, with basic rooms and a castaway vibe.
Leaving Sierra Leone is like waking from a dream, the threads vanishing like wisps of smoke as you return to the real world. It’s not for everybody — if you need a Nespresso machine and an international menu you’d best wait for Idris to open his Sherbro Island resort. But for even the mildly adventurous I can think of few destinations as beguiling, friendly and seductively strange — yet with such ease of exploration — as Sierra Leone.
I bid farewell to Peter and Jibril at the ferry terminal. The latter looks taller, slimmer and more bright-eyed than I remember, and he announces that the witch potion has worked wonders for his back. “That’s the thing about magic,” he says. “If you don’t believe in it, it doesn’t work.”
Chris Haslam was a guest of the Sierra Leone Tourist Board (tourismsierraleone.com). Ten nights’ full board on a private tour visiting Freetown, Bunce and Tasso islands, the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, the inland provinces, Tiwai and the Banana Islands from £3,992pp, including flights and transfers (rainbowtours.co.uk)
Three more trips to lesser-known African destinations
1. The Gambia
Ngala Lodge is an all-suite boutique hotel in a former colonial mansion on a bluff above the best stretch of beach in the Gambia. The King visited in 2019, and while the sands might remind you of Anguilla, the suites of some hotspot on the Platinum Coast of Barbados and the vibe of one of the more exclusive landings in the Grenadines, the price is astonishingly more akin to a Balearic package deal.
Details Seven nights’ B&B from £1,299pp, including flights and transfers (gambia.co.uk)
2. Sao Tome and Principe
The twin islands of Sao Tome and Principe comprise Africa’s second-smallest and perhaps least-known nation — a volcanic, Jurassic Park-like destination of bird-rich rainforest, golden palm-fringed beaches and superb diving and snorkelling. This 12-day private tour covers all of the above, staying in a family-run beachfront hotel in Sao Tome and a Portuguese plantation house and the newly refurbished Bom Bom beach resort in Principe.
Details Eleven nights’ half-board from £2,997pp (reefandrainforest.co.uk). Fly to Sao Tome via Lisbon
3. Lake Malawi
Nicknamed the Calendar Lake — it’s about 365 miles long, 52 miles wide and fed by 12 main rivers — Lake Malawi is often seen as a handy add-on to a safari when it should be a wonder in its own right. But the idea that you could come to Africa to spend a week or more snorkelling, kayaking, sailing or swimming here (much as you might at Lake Como, for example), rather than rushing off to pap the wildlife, is finally catching on. This seven-night trip gives you four nights in the driftwood fantasy of the Kaya Mawa lodge on Likoma Island and three at the film set-like Blue Zebra lodge on Nankoma Island.
Details Seven nights’ all-inclusive from £3,760pp, including flights and transfers (cedarberg-travel.com)
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