Faces on the Journey

I just returned from another trip to Sierra Leone—the country ranked dead last by the United Nations in several startling categories: least developed, life expectancy, and infant mortality. Sierra Leone is where Ruff&Cut diamonds are mined under best practices, third-party witnessed by Amnesty International, the SL Mining Union, and the World Bank (among other organizations that have visited our site). I have been involved in Sierra Leonean socially responsible diamond- and gold-mining for the past four years. My partners and I brought a different model of doing the business of mining diamonds, alongside a new kind of investment strategy that I call “community development capital.” Over the last four years, we have built schools, covered markets, roads, and bridges; we have also provided scholarships and micro-loans, and we support an orphanage. I am a social venture capitalist/entrepreneur. Social VCs invest in and build companies that desire to profit while making the world a better place.

As I prepared for this trip, I was expecting it to be the most difficult one so far. Door to door, it’s a 36-hour journey each way, and this time I’d be doing both legs practically back to back. Add to that the extreme nature of the Sierra Leonean climate, and you’ve got the makings of a very challenging expedition. So I packed some clothes, gathered my iPods and reading materials for the trip, and reminded myself that my life is not remotely difficult compared to the lives of the people I was going to visit.

As fall moves into winter, SaLeone (as many locals call the country) is on the cusp of turning from the monsoon season to the dry season. For the past five months, it has poured with rain there every day, and the average rainfall is the highest of any African nation at 195 inches per year. I arrived at the tail end of the monsoon season, and got to experience my first white-out caused by torrential downpours. The rain makes the roads particularly treacherous, and what is normally a four-hour drive from the capital Freetown to the mine site became an eight-hour endurance test. As you brace for every pothole, car-sized dips in the dirt roads, and broken pavement, your body is tossed around the inside of the four-wheel-drive like a buoy on a stormy sea. I literally wear a cushioned neck brace for stabilization.

The driving conditions were only one reason why this trip was so difficult. To make things even tougher, there was no rest time scheduled in and the already short trip was cut even shorter once I arrived. I flew overnight from NYC to London, took a shuttle to another terminal, waited four hours before boarding a flight to Sierra Leone, flew for another eight hours, waited two hours to retrieve luggage and get transport to a hotel, and then finally slept for a few hours. When I awoke, we embarked on the challenging nine-hour drive to the mining site. I attended meetings, ate dinner, had a few drinks, and slept for a few hours. The next day involved another treacherous one-hour drive on dirt roads in muddy conditions, followed by a second round of meetings, plus time spent photographing the mining site. It was then decided that I would travel back to Freetown the next morning and return to NYC immediately for an important meeting. I ate, drank, played my guitar for a couple of paramount chiefs and the governor of Kono, slept for a few hours, and then did the whole trip in reverse, all the way back to NYC.

My journey, eventful as it was, is not the real substance of this Blog, however; rather it belongs to the people and ideas I encountered on the way. Cultivating business in what the UN describes as the “least developed” country in the world has brought me into contact with an array of spectacular individuals, and they are my inspiration. I’d like to share a few of their stories with you.

First, there’s Dr. Paul Farmer (pictured lower right), a medical anthropologist who has transformed the treatment of infectious diseases in the poorest countries on Earth. A few weeks before my trip, I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Farmer at the annual holiday fundraising event of Kageno, a NYC based nonprofit founded by Dr. Frank Andolino. Dr. Farmer consults and supports, Kageno which is now operating three multifaceted and innovative community development projects in some of Kenya and Rwanda’s most severely impoverished communities (www.kageno.org). I have read his books and the amazing book on his work by Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains. I brought that book with me on the trip and reread several dog-eared pages I found particularly inspirational. My playlist for the outward journey included Bruce Springsteen’s 9/11 CD The Rising. I am always so moved by these songs, especially Missing You, the song about the one who left for work the morning of September 11, 2001, and never returned.

When I arrived in Freetown, I met up with my friend Buzzy (pictured on left with teachers from School Twinning Program). Buzzy and I have been friends for four years. I love this man—he is the epitome of everything that’s great about the Sierra Leonean people. Buzzy has helped me immeasurably over the years as a facilitator to properly establish our business in-country. Buzzy is 40 years old, college educated, and he witnessed horrific atrocities during the war. Two of Buzzy’s sisters were able to become US citizens via the War Refugee Act. Buzzy continues to help me on many projects. I truly treasure our friendship.

On this trip I also met Larissa (pictured on lower right with women from the Women's Forum on Mining), a Canadian who competed with hundreds of applicants for the opportunity to volunteer in the Kono Region of Sierra Leone. A designing goldsmith at eighteen, her love affair with the art, science, and craft of jewelry started early. Several years into a promising career, however, she began to feel torn by the inherent conflicts and disparity between source and shopper in her chosen field, and her lifelong commitment to the global social and environmental justice movements. Larissa competed for and won the six-month volunteer placement offered by the Canadian International Development Agency to work with One Sky: Canadian Institute for Sustainable Living and the Conservation Society of Sierra Leone. Coordinating community-farming cooperatives, she is working to restore to productive use land that was ravaged by years of indiscriminate alluvial diamond-mining and civil war. The coops have recently become largely self-sustainable, and consequently the project is now moving toward more advocacy and rights-based training for all stakeholders, from police, paramount chiefs, and parliamentarians, to diamond miners, dealers, and diggers, as well as communities affected by the diamond-mining industry.

Then there’s Daniel Chen, our country manager and an incredible human being. Following a career in the Israeli military, he entered the field of mining logistics, and prior to Sierra Leone he managed a gold-mining operation in Nigeria. Daniel is responsible for all our school and infrastructure projects. Under his supervision, in approximately six weeks we can build a state-of-the-art school for about $30,000. Daniel was also the driving force behind our decision to support the St. George Orphanage. He said: ‘I simply could not ignore the abject poverty and orphaned kids. We had to do something.’

Ann Marie is a flight attendant with British Midland Airline (BMI), which offers flights from London to Freetown several times a week. BMI’s policy is for crewmembers to spend their stopovers on the Lungi Peninsula, where the airport is located (Freetown is a further helicopter, ferryboat, or hovercraft ride from the airport.) Lungi is very short on creature comforts—it’s not on the power grid and doesn’t have running water. Ann Marie has begun working with the Lungi Community Center. She has coordinated her UK neighbors and friends to donate lots of needed things, and on each trip from London she brings a huge box of items for the kids and community. During her stopovers, she spends time tutoring, teaching dance classes, and reading to the children of Lungi.

The last encounter took me all the way home to NYC and amazingly left me feeling more and more inspired instead of exhausted. This encounter was with Greg Mortensen, the guy who inspired the New York Times bestseller Three Cups of Tea. I did not meet him; I just read the book from cover to cover during my thirty-six-hour return journey. With each passing hour I gained more energy. With each passing page I was motivated to accelerate our work in Sierra Leone. Read this book—Greg Mortensen and his work are a true inspiration.

When I finally arrived home, I checked my email and this is what I found:

Mr. Watson

My name is Kelli. I am from Denver, Colorado, and am a sophomore at Pepperdine University. I am in the middle of switching majors and really trying to figure out what direction life will lead me. I feel I am being pulled in so many directions as far as majors go (and am somewhat conflicted on the subject) but really want to do something of substance, something to really make a difference in the lives of those struggling more than I can possibly imagine.

I recently read about your involvement with Target Resources and your new collection, Ruff&Cut, in Elle magazine. To be honest, I'm not sure what the purpose of this email is, but I read the article and was moved to contact you for one reason or another. I'd love to hear from you, whether in regard to professional or collegiate advice or anything (donation, volunteer, awareness, etc.) I can do to help your cause. Please let me know.

Again, please know that I greatly admire your compassion for the people of Sierra Leone and your determination to do whatever it takes to make life better for them.

Thanks,

Kelli

Happy New Year! May we all do a few little things in 2009 to make the world a better and safer place.

Highest Regards,
Wade