The hard wood trees are being hauled out of the forests and squared into 12” x 12” and 7 feet long timbers, piled along the roads and then during the dry season they are sold to truck owners who will bring them to the port in Freetown or out of the country to Guinea. The young men who load these trucks get paid about .50 cents or 5,000 Leones to load the 200 -250-kilogram timber and the same to off-load. A truck needs a crew of 6-8 to do the job. Stories have it that many are taking various drugs to accomplish this back breaking and hernia causing work. On our way out of town we encounter trucks coming towards us, some vehicles barely drivable. I remark about one particular vehicle saying, “We will see that one again.”
We spend the day in two remote villages, meeting with teachers and community leaders discussing the need for a school building, support for their emerging village schools, teacher training and sustainability. There is an enormous desire for education and what it might promise their children for the future, a life beyond the subsistence farming they are engaged in. Sadly, farming as a livelihood is low on the scale of desired occupations and when asked, the village children will tell you how they want to be doctors, nurses, lawyers and presidents. I find it difficult to look the children in the eye as they eagerly speak about a future that will be almost impossible to deliver. However, the need for literacy is immense and that is a possibility with support and training.
By late afternoon we are ready to make the bone jarring trip back to Kabala, hoping to get off the roads by sundown. With just 12 miles to go before reaching there we are approaching one of the longer more challenging climbs and see a timber truck nearing the crest of the hill ahead of us, and like a movie playing out before us, we see it stall and begin moving backwards towards us, stopped at the bottom. The truck then suddenly jackknifes and the timber load explodes in all directions as it turns over on its side and comes to a halt and is obscured in the dust. My first thought is that there is no one alive under that load of logs. JT and I are out of the pickup and running up the hill to see what we can do.
Even before the dust clears I hear what I think is a baby crying but see nothing yet on the debris scattered road. Then a young girl on a cell phone, clearly in shock but seemingly uninjured. She tells me that sound is a baby goat caught under the timbers somewhere. Slowly it becomes clear that there were six young men in the truck with varying injuries. Three are bleeding from head wounds and for the others it seems internal. Broken ribs or more. We carefully load the seven into and onto the pickup, including the injured and crying goat, and make the still long rough drive into Kabala where we bring them to the government hospital that is ill equipped to receive them. Two of the men are in rough shape from my estimation. We get home just after dark, stunned by what has just occurred.
The next morning we visit the hospital and four of the six are sitting up in beds and two still in extreme pain needing more skilled medical care. When we visit again in the afternoon it seems they have made plans to send one to Freetown for further attention.
Three weeks later the whole incident still looms large in my memory of these two weeks in the country. There is so much wrong with this situation. The reckless, poorly paid work to earn just enough to eat for that day. The destruction of the forests and the beautiful hardwoods being plundered for someone else’s gain. The unemployment that leads to this kind of risk taking. The poor medical system. The terrible road system and the grinding poverty that seems to change only marginally from one visit to the next.
As JT says, we were there at the bottom of the hill for a reason, waiting to take these young men into the hospital and I believe that is true. But many more questions persist.