After decades of disaster, the West African country is finally ready to attract visitors—but will they come?
By Jody Ray
Bimbola Carrol’s office sits in a historic building in Freetown, Sierra Leone, overlooking a highway in the northern part of the city. Below, swarms of motorbikes and rattling kekehs (Sierra Leone’s version of the tuk tuk) swerve through pricey imported SUVs and brightly colored, beaten-up taxis—an ever-changing display of the city’s socio-economic divisions.
“How are you finding Sierra Leone?” Carrol, or Bims, as he’s affectionately known, asks me. Carrol owns and operates Visit Sierra Leone Travel, a staple of the country’s tourism sector since 2000.
“It certainly has a lot of potential,” I say.
Carrol rolls his eyes. “There’s all this talk about ‘resilience’ and ‘hope’ and ‘potential’,” he says. “Honestly, we’re tired of hearing about it.”
Carrol should know—he’s seen and heard it all.
Carrol has curated tours and travel packages for every type of customer, from corporate boards eager to see the country when they consider investing business here to teams working in the ongoing list of NGOs headquartered in Freetown. He has also curated small retail packages for local families who want to get away from the peninsula’s exhaust-soaked chaos and he is often consulted when members of the diaspora return to visit their origin country.
In 1991, this small West African country the size of South Carolina was clobbered by a civil war that would last over a decade, a conflict that spawned child soldiers, blood diamonds, and lasting stereotypes of African warlords into global consciousness. Images of flamboyantly dressed African military commandos in dark shades and large, sparkling necklaces have been exacerbated by movies like Blood Diamond, Lord of War, and Beasts of No Nation, none of which have helped Sierra Leone to become a sought-after travel destination. “That war decimated our tourism,” Carrol says. “Sierra Leone still struggles to free itself from all the negative perceptions.”
A decade after the war, the country's progress in social and economic development was again brought to its knees by a catastrophic Ebola outbreak that lasted over two years and took more than 3,500 lives. Carrol was there through it all. “There was no tourism during Ebola that I can speak of. As a company, we pivoted to providing services to medical professionals and international press arrivals.”
Three years later, COVID-19 seemingly nailed the coffin shut on any hopes that the country’s nascent tourism sector would have anything to show for itself after three back-to-back catastrophes. But as the impact of the pandemic wanes, Carrol and others want to know: Will tourists come to Sierra Leone?
The truth is, the country does have a lot of potential, and even Carrol agrees, as tired as he is of hearing about it. After all, the motto of his travel company is “Visit Sierra Leone Before Everyone Else Does.” The slogan suggests that the country is seemingly on the brink of a tourism wave that, had it not been for a series of disasters, might have already transformed into the next case study for international tourism and gentrification like Bali, Chiang Mai, or Medellín. Wrapped in the slogan is a sense of hope that travelers—and their wallets—are coming, and that the entire country is a source of unseen wonder that should be seen before it becomes another hip destination where overpriced drinks dominate crowded beaches full of digital nomads. And the slogan just might be right; Sierra Leone has plenty to offer travelers, and even though its rich culture and natural wonders have gone largely unseen by tourists for years, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes a sought-after destination.
A simple internet search for things to do in Sierra Leone will only reveal the obvious attractions in Freetown: a visit to the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary; outings to one of the city’s many gorgeous, untouched beaches; or trips to Bunce Island, from which tens of thousands of Africans were once shipped to South Carolina and Georgia and forced into slavery.
But Freetown is more than the sum of its internet search results. For example, it boasts three incredible museums: the Sierra Leone National Museum, the National Railway Museum, and the Sierra Leone Peace Museum, the latter of which is almost always confused with the first. These museums hold the information required to understand the history of Sierra Leone and where it stands today, from the National Museum’s collection of relics that predate the country's independence from Britain in 1961, to the Railway Museum’s train cars that once housed people seeking refuge during the war. The Peace Museum, established to pay homage to the civilians who were injured or killed at the hands of rebel soldiers, is where visitors will begin to understand the country’s recent history through its most brutal conflict.
Sierra Leone’s best kept secret is its provinces, outside of the capital city. Tucked away in the country’s far east is Kono, a district that borders Guinea, where most of Sierra Leone’s diamonds and minerals are mined. During the war, the district was heavily looted and fought over, but it stands today, with a giant diamond effigy at the center of its town square.
Provincial Sierra Leone will enamor any naturalist, starting with the 1,000-meter hikes in Senikedugu or Mombo Waterfalls. Picket Hill and Sugarloaf Mountain are the two highest mountains in the Freetown area, and both attract local hiking and camping enthusiasts who yearn to get away from asphalt and the vehicles that travel over it in nearby Freetown. In the deep southern part of the country, Tiwai Island Wildlife Sanctuary rests on an island in the middle of the Moa River that also provides ample forest hikes and is home to the pygmy hippopotamus, an animal that can only be found in this area, as well as 11 different species of primates including the rare and endangered Diana Monkey. Visitors can also keep an eye out for over 135 different bird species, the Duiker deer, and the forest-dwelling Bongo antelope.
Deep culturalists will appreciate the provinces’ masquerades, which play an extremely significant role in the life of the Mende and Temne people, the two largest ethnic groups in Sierra Leone. During these masquerades, performers use carved wooden masks, music, and dance to initiate members into the community or celebrate their achievements at various stages of life. These events occur throughout the year, but they are not always open to the public, so it's best to reach out to a tour operator like Carrol to discover this side of Sierra Leonean culture.
Back in Carrol’s office, the power suddenly goes out. Occurrences like these spur his frustration with the state of the country. During my visit, Sierra Leone experienced a major power outage that eventually forced the energy minister to resign in disgrace. Regular power outages are common for many developing countries, but these are issues that Carrol believes should have been worked out and fixed years ago, especially in Freetown. His concerns are twofold: that these electrical grid problems have dissuaded tourists from coming to the country, and that they signal that Sierra Leone has not made the progress and gains it hoped to after 63 years of independence.
Poor governance, state corruption, and aid dependency are all things cited by business owners like Carrol that keep the country in a state of stagnation. It’s so bad he thinks it has negatively affected entrepreneurship in the country, something he says is required to bring in more tourists.
“No one thinks big here anymore,” he says. “Many people here seem perfectly fine with the way things are running now.” He motions to the electric fan in his office that stopped oscillating when the power went out, blades stagnant.
His frustrations are echoed on local X (formerly Twitter) accounts, where popular creators, mostly based in Freetown, share memes around government ineptitude, societal complacency, and the idea of escaping Sierra Leone for greener pastures. Despite this, the government (through the support of the World Bank) has made substantial investments in its National Tourist Board, an arm of the Ministry of Tourism and Cultural Affairs. Carrol says that while the tourism industry is reaping some benefits, it still has a long way to go.
“We are seeing increasing interest from tour operators,” explains Carrol, “but there are still challenges such as air access and the development of some of our tourism sites.”
Some of these challenges can be owed to the fact that Sierra Leone is geographically isolated, so it’s quite rare to find backpackers even if they are “just passing through,” especially in comparison to other West African countries.
It’s difficult to reach the capital itself, thanks to Freetown’s location on an almost island-like peninsula on the westernmost side of the country, along the Atlantic Ocean. Freetown International Airport is located inland on the opposite side of the Sierra Leone River, housed in a former British Royal Air Force base, so travelers staying in Freetown must take a 40-minute ferry ride across open waters to reach the heart of the Western region.
Then there’s the climate—tropical, with a year-round average temperature of 78.8 degrees Fahrenheit, with seasons distinguished more by rainfall than heat. Travelers to this part of the world may already know there is a wet season and dry season: May to November, and December to April, respectively. Torrential rainfall during the wet season has been exacerbated by climate change, resulting in dangerous flooding and mudslides, which leaves just half the year open to available tourism.
Industry leaders like Carrol are doing everything they can to pivot when necessary. Because there isn’t a steady flow of visitors to the country, companies like VSL Travel are steadily concocting unique packages for all types of potential travelers.
And despite everything working against tourism in Sierra Leone, the country’s people are at the heart of any successful visit.
“There are many things people can’t really find out about here unless they know someone,” Carrol says. There are few traveler’s guidebooks and articles devoted to Sierra Leone, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t an abundance of hidden gems throughout its hinterland. Sight-seeing is possible, especially if you hire someone to drive a car or motorbike to show you around. In fact, it’s the drivers, usually young men, who seemingly have inadvertently created an impromptu tourism sector for the country.
Travelers to Sierra Leone will have an easier time if they remain patient and allow the country to find its more formal tourism sea legs, but the best experiences always seem to come from authentic, spur-of-the-moment opportunities, which Sierra Leone has in spades. Visitors must remember to come with an open mind and be patient when things don't work out exactly as planned, but perhaps there’s something special to be had in visiting Sierra Leone, as Carrol says, before everyone else does.
Read the original article on Thrillist.
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