Visible Memories

by Matthew Boyle (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

I didn't expect to find Sierra Leone

In this small village of makeshift houses straddling a dirt road, all of the doors were wide open. The houses, the gates, the village shop; each was open to anyone whom might happen to pass. This enclave of openness was situated within a stiflingly thick jungle composed of trees that would not even let a ray of sunlight pass. Animals ambled past and fruit, swolen with juice, slumped on the stalls of vendors. As Dr Patric navigated with nimble hops a pond of orange-brown water erected by the rain and led me to his house, I noticed a poster on a faded wall with figures whose basic shapes seemed to have been drawn by children on it. On closer inspection, these figures were all in excrutiating pain, violently pictured in inhuman bodily positions – tormented faces probed back at the viewer. Bodily fluids emanated from the figures: blood, sweat, vomit, faeces. Written above them was one word in scratchy red block capitals, the word which has come to be synonymous with death in this country, “EBOLA”. The poster to me seemed redundant, if any of these symptoms were present in the UK it would warrant a doctor’s visit. Apparently, at the time these symptoms were so common anyway that people had to be encouraged to seek help. To be in the land which had seemed so far away on the news broadcasts six months ago, to be in the place where Ebola had ravaged families and friends, felt as if I had found myself in the world of ghost stories told at home, and kept me fixated on this painful poster. Patric, noticing my intent focus, released a drawn-out sigh, his usual bright demeanour sunk away with his previously permanent smile, and he told me about all of the people he had lost to the tragedy: close friends, family and colleagues. The neighbouring house was empty. He remembered the tenant with a smile. His smile moved to the left side of his face in sync with a calloused hand, beckoning me to enter the house. A harsh smell of smoke from the woodburner was a welcome change from the damp jeep. One smile met another as his wife filled the room with her laughter. I couldn’t help but notice that I too was quickly developing a smile. Patric was here to show me around his home, however, planning to reveal every detail to me, and this home contained stories just as it did picture frames, chairs and a table. Resting on the side of the house was a rusting corrugated iron lean-to, the white crescent of happiness adorning Patric’s face shrunk to a dark line as we entered, surrounded by rusty sharp tools and utensils. Patric, seemingly unable to separate the physical presence of the shelter from the memories weaved into it, released again that drawn out sigh, as if he were removing an external layer of himself. I could soon see why. “Towards the end of the civil war”, he began. This is never a good start of a sentence in Sierra Leone, the brutal fighting having set back the country for years and culled the population. “I had to shelter in this shed when they came through with machetes”. The man in front of me had witnessed his fellow villager be brutally murdered, butchered and eaten on that same potholed road. Inhaling deeply, a smile began to reappear as he put that that episode of his life back away and continued to show me his pigs. Pouring me a generous helping of poyo into a tin mug, I wondered what other stories were lying on the shelves or hiding under the bed. Shouts of negotiation harmonised with the soft rusling of palms lining the road, gently set to rhythm by the staccato of a distant woodcutter. Slurping the bitter palm wine with a tangible sense of satisfaction, I believe Patric was not removing a protective layer of happiness when recounting another tragic memory of Sierra Leone’s history to me. It was an integral part of him, an asset which had allowed him to survive through the epidemic and the civil war. A shining shield rather than a transparent veil.