Sierra Leone: Krio Culture, Freetown and the Diamond that Divided a Nation
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Freetown was founded in 1792 as a settlement for freed slaves — Black Loyalists from Nova Scotia, freed slaves from Britain, and later recaptives liberated from slave ships by the Royal Navy after Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807. The City of Freedom became home to tens of thousands of people from hundreds of different African ethnic groups, who developed the Krio language — an English-based creole — as their common tongue. Today Krio is spoken by 97 percent of Sierra Leoneans as a first or second language and is the de facto national language alongside English.
Sierra Leone's diamonds — discovered in the 1930s — funded both economic development and one of West Africa's most devastating civil wars. The Revolutionary United Front, which controlled the diamond fields of the east in the 1990s, used diamond revenues to finance a campaign of extreme violence that left tens of thousands dead and hundreds of thousands mutilated. The conflict gave rise to the term blood diamond. The war ended in 2002. The diamonds continue to be mined under international certification schemes designed to distinguish conflict-free stones.
The Freetown Peninsula's beaches — the Peninsula Beach Road running south from the capital through fishing villages to Tokeh and further — are among the most beautiful in West Africa: wide, often deserted, backed by forest-covered hills that drop directly to the Atlantic. The combination of dramatic scenery, warm water, and a capital city of extraordinary cultural vitality makes Sierra Leone one of West Africa's most rewarding destinations for those willing to look past its difficult recent history.
