The West African Monsoon

 The West African Monsoon

Image from brittanica.com

The west african monsoon (WAM) occurs during the northern summer months (May - October) from 9N - 20N latitude. This wet season is the season for  planting on west african farms.

In April-June, when the midday sun is at its highest, thunderstorms are common. The moist air layer at the edge of the advancing monsoonal moist air is generally too thin (~1,000m) to support convection. Convection happens 200-300 km behind the edge, where a ~2000m deep moist layer and hot ground combine to create unstable air. The upper levels of the resulting high-topped cells (or squall lines) tend to extend into the upper-level Easterly Jet, and are driven westward at 40-55 kph.

In July-October, during the main phase of the monsoon, lower clouds (3,500m) dominate. 

During the low-sun season (Dec-Feb), a shallow (~2000m deep) humid layer is overlain by hot, dry, dusty NE winds, which blow in from the Sahara. Upper atmospheric anticyclones can occur at 20N, and the Easterly Jet Stream may occur as far south as 10N. This dry season is the season of harvesting, brushing, burning, and preparing farms.

Complete year-round drought exists in areas north of roughly 20N. The dry season becomes less completely dry the further south one travels. South of roughly 8N, even during the dry season, regular precipitation events occur.

The Kono People: Native West African Fire Practitioners Prepare their Farms for the Rainy Season

 Overlooking monsoonal forest-savannah boundary zone in Sierra Leone. The local population has used fire to manage this landscape, for subsistence agriculture, for thousands of years.

April 2025

The grass-uplands/forested lowlands combination reminds me of native-managed parts of the Klamath Mountains in California, where wildfires are currently returning the land to a balanced state.  

We’re about to burn the slope below the viewpoint; some of the clinic staff will plant dryland rice under the palms, once the monsoonal rains come. The area was brushed several weeks ago and allowed to cure during the height of the dry season. Now that green-up has begun, the area can be burned safely, without fire running too hot through the grass zone on the ridge, and destroying the bean crop there. The ridge grass is highly fire-and-drought adapted, with deep, massive roots. It responds well to light-moderate burning; afterwards new growth provides graze for cattle and game animals.

There are frequent strong storms and outflows this time of year, but that doesn’t seem to concern the local farmers. “Fires do damage if they’re lit in February, when it’s too dry”, says one of our medics, Bakar. Indeed, earlier this year a fire destroyed a bean crop, and last year one burned a nomadic Fula village while the inhabitants were away. If the culprit for either fire were found, they would have been fined by the Chief (likely in goats or chickens).

This place burns a lot like the Southern Rough that grows in the Southeast US- under high humidity conditions, with pretty lively fire behavior in a “seven-year Rough”, for example. In fact, I highly suspect our Southeast Fire Culture was imported from West Africa, via the Gullah people and the slave trade.

We’ve been getting some early monsoonal rains and the slash is damp, so we light at the bottom of the slope in order to create enough momentum to get decent consumption. The head fire has flame lengths of 5-15’, but the soil and vegetation is moist and it doesn’t get hot enough to damage the palm roots. The fire even climbs into most of the trees and harmlessly consumes the dead lower fronds, which can host palm snakes and other dangerous vipers. We use oily palm kernel fibers as an initial fire starter. Then we drop dots of fire into receptive fuels along the road, using long, flammable bundles of split stalks. Five groups of farmers are burning adjacent farms at once today, and they coordinate with tonal shouts as they light. 

Land plots are held by families, with new allocations made by the Chief. Traditional land management practices seem to be sustainable for the landscape, given the length of time any given parcel has been under successful cultivation. 

For the people, however, social and climate challenges abound. Rapacious exploitation by foreigners remains the norm, just as it was in colonial days. Diamonds and gold continue to flow from the area into foreign hands. The local population has little to show in return for allowing mining concessions; mainly pits, tailings piles, and polluted streams, broken infrastructure-construction promises, and a handful of shiny cars and overseas-college-educations for the children of corrupt ministers.

Climate change affects the population directly and indirectly. Increasingly unpredictable monsoonal rains cause crop failures- either due to too much rain, too little, or poor precipitation timing. The southward expansion of the Sahara creates population pressures that flow south into Sierra Leone. Range fences arent a thing here, and nomadic Fula cattle-herders come into conflict with settled farming groups like the Kono people when cattle destroy crops. Climate issues in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger fuel political instability and create fertile ground for Islamists, various flavors of autocrats, and Russian influence. Sierra Leone social media (just beginning to penetrate widely into rural areas) is heavily targeted by propaganda from these groups.

Idyllic, peaceful and picturesque as village life might look on the surface, most young people don’t opt to continue their parents’ life experience of hard work, uncertain crop yields, low life expectancies, and high rates of child stunting (~60%+) and mortality (1 in 9 die before age 5). Youth flock to the cities, in search of education, work, and employment. Some succeed; most enter the vast ranks of the Sierra Leonean unemployed youth. Not a small number numb their frustrations with drugs like Kush (a dangerous mixture of marijuana, opiates, and various toxic substances). Others leave family, marriages, and children and dissapear to Guinea or the Ivory Coast for “jobs”, never to be seen again.

Schooling is another major pressure for the average Sierra Leonean, living on $1-3/day. Whether in the city or village, universal “free” schooling isn’t actually free. Paying for school fees, teachers’ salaries, books and uniforms doesn’t amount to much per child by American standards. But, combined with crop failures and food insecurity, it is more than enough to lock farmers into a cycle of poverty, unscrupulous lending practices, and poor access to capital.

Back at our burn, cumulus clouds are forming and starting to shade the sun. Most people in the area are behind on burning this year due to rainy weather, and there are concerns about crop failure. But our fire has already reached the top of the target area, and the results look ok. 

“Does fire ever burn too hot here if you let the fuel build up for too many years?” I ask Bakar. “Yes, then it damages the soil and nothing grows.” Bakar’s tone indicates that he thinks I’m not too bright for asking a question with such an obvious answer. Funny how one group of people steals billions of dollars in resources and labor from another, then winds up wasting billions on mega-fire suppression. Too bad the US didn’t listen to our own indigenous voices- with generations of fire management knowledge- last century, instead of embarking on 100 years of misguided total fire suppression.

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2024 IMA Deployment Report

 

 

International Mutual Aid's 2023 Accomplishments Report

IMA 2023 Annual Report

Director’s Note

Once again IMA’s local and expat staff had a very productive year. The Sally and Raymond Haik Womens health

center is fully functional, and providing definitive care to every pregnant woman in the catchment area of 30,000

people. Through the tireless work of our providers and the financial support of our donors we have been able to

ensure that not a single mother or child has died as a result of childbirth for over a year. In a country where 1 in 20

women die during childbirth, this is a huge achievement. The permanent housing for our local staff was

completed and also includes an IMA office, separate from the clinic. In less than two years the health campus has

grown from one small clinic to six buildings spread over more than an acre of land. This year also saw the

purchase of a new motorcycle for patient movement, and the hiring and training of five new IMA employees and

the training of multiple MOHS partners. During our time in country, we launched and have continued a

partnership with the local radio station to provide health talks every week. IMA worked in close partnership with

MOHS, Partners in Health, and Jericho Road Ministry to ensure accurate medical information was delivered to

the entire section, a location with a population of over 150,000 people. IMA’s providers built an effective

real-time consultation system to link our local staff to primary care providers in the United States. Through a

contentious election and local unrest, IMA has ensured timely, effective, and free medical care to our entire

service area. I cannot adequately express my pride in our staff, supporters and donors, in ensuring this is an

enduring reality. 

-Colin Dunn

Director 

New Staff: Abu-Bakar, Aja, and Patrick

A warm welcome to our newest IMA volunteers: Ambulance-motorbike Driver Abu-Bakar, Health Aide Aja,

Social Worker Emmanuel, and Registrar Patrick!

Together, they have treated and transported several critical patients, and made the clinic run more smoothly!

Welcome!

Left to right: Ambulance Driver Abu-Bakar, Health Aide Aja, Social Worker Emmanuel, and Registrar Patrick 

A Visit from a Little Success Story

IMA’s staff were very excited to have a visit this year from Baby Virginia and her mother! Virginia’s mother

brought her to the clinic in 2022, at three days old, with a blood infection and respiratory failure. IMA volunteer

V.P. rode in to the Koidu neonatal care unit on a motorbike together with mom and baby, stimulating Baby

Virginia’s respirations throughout the 2.5 hour ride to Koidu. After recovering from sepsis, acute liver failure,

and respiratory failure during a three-week hospitalization, Baby Virginia was released home. She is now a

chubby, happy, healthy 1-year old!

Gbamandu’s First On-site Eye Clinic

Working in partnership with Eye Specialist Dr. Bockarie, IMA organized Gbamandu’s first-ever on-site eye

clinic! 

In a single day we saw over 50 patients.

IMA was able to fund medical treatment, cataract surgery, and corrective lenses for dozens of patients.

Most of these patients were frail or too visually impaired to travel to Koidu for treatment, and were enjoying

their first opportunity to see an eye specialist in their home Chiefdom.

Kongokama’s story

A wonderful event occurred this year. Kongokama, a boy who suffered a traumatic amputation of his left foot

during the Ebola epidemic, has been a patient of IMA for years. Never one to be slowed down, Kongokama

often visited us for debridement and antibiotics, as work and youthful soccer games led to repeated secondary

infections of his wound. At long last, in March of 2023, Kongokama’s wound was stable enough for final

surgical prosthetic preparation at Koidu Government Hospital. IMA funded his surgery and prosthesis fitting,

both successful. Kongokama is now thrilled to be walking, thriving in secondary school in Koidu, and still

playing soccer!

Isata, a very brave elementary school student

Unfortunately, due to chronic malnutrition, tropical diseases, and inadequate healthcare infrastructure, advanced,

serious bone infections are relatively common in Sierra Leone. Amongst several cases that IMA treated in 2023

was Isata, a 7-year old elementary school student with a deep bone infection in her humerus. IMA is currently

working with this courageous little girl and her mother to conduct presurgical treatment, and seek a pediatric

surgical specialist in Freetown. Please help IMA to provide healthcare access and education in Sierra Leone, to

facilitate prevention and early treatment of deep bone infections.

 

Sawyer filters and water testing, Reduction in severe illness + waterborne illness vs 2022

With the help of nonprofit partners, Wine to Water and Mofinko Development Association, IMA has introduced

Sawyer water filters to the village of Gbamandu. These filters remove bacteria that cause typhoid, cholera, and

dysentery. Twenty 5-gallon filters were distributed, in consultation with village leadership, to publicly accessible

venues. Sites include the schools, clinic, places of worship, and the village meetinghouse. Responsible individuals

have been identified to ensure buckets are filled and the filters are regularly flushed. Gbamandu has already seen

a significant reduction in diarrheal diseases in 2023, and IMA hope to expand filter access to other villages in

2024.

Typical dry-season water source (cup is used to drink water directly from the stream), Colin drills a filter hole in a bucket, volunteer

Sosena distributes completed bucket filters

Connecting patients with resources

Volunteer Sosena feeds a malnourished infant from a village near Gbamandu. The child’s mother has difficulty

producing milk, and infant formula costs roughly 4 times her monthly earnings. She has lost two children

previously to the same issue. She has been trying to keep this child alive with cow’s milk, which is not

pasteurized and does not provide adequate nutrition. IMA assisted the mother with transport to Koidu and

exploration of potential formula sources. The child was admitted to the Pediatric Nutrition Unit for 2 weeks.

Upon discharge, local priest Father Hillary was able to provide funding for future infant formula for the child

through the local church.

Typhoid Conjugate Vaccine: a goal beginning in 2024

Typhoid, a bacterial infection spread by inadequate sanitation and contaminated drinking water, has long plagued

humanity. With the advent of antibiotics and modern sanitation, typhoid has been eradicated in most of the

developed world. However, it remains the second-most common cause of death and disability in Gbamandu.

Endemic typhoid manifests as acute episodes of severe diarrheal disease in children, which may lead to death by

dehydration or intestinal perforation. In adults in endemic areas, subclinical infection can spread throughout the

body and cause a variety of complaints. Multi-drug resistant strains of typhoid have become increasingly common.

A typhoid vaccine exists, but it is only partially effective, fairly expensive, not recommended for young children,

and it must be repeated every 2-5 years. This makes mass vaccination in poverty-stricken areas impractical.

However, in recent years a breakthrough has occurred in typhoid vaccination science. Typhoid Conjugate

Vaccines (TCV) have been shown to be safe, affordable, and highly effective in multiple trials, and a single

dose grant life-long immunity. Mass vaccination campaigns have begun in a handful of African and Asian

countries. 

Given the tremendous impact that TCV vaccines could have in Kono District, IMA is currently investigating

the feasibility of conducting a TCV pilot vaccination program, based in Gbamandu, starting in 2024 or 2025.

Stay tuned for updates!

A Visit from a Little Success Story

IMA’s staff were very excited to have a visit this year from Baby Virginia and her mother! Virginia’s mother brought her to the clinic in 2022, at three days old, with a blood infection and respiratory failure. IMA volunteer V.P. rode in to the Koidu neonatal care unit on a motorbike together with mom and baby, stimulating Baby Virginia’s respirations throughout the 2.5 hour ride to Koidu. After recovering from sepsis, acute liver failure, and respiratory failure during a three-week hospitalization, Baby Virginia was released home. She is now a chubby, happy, healthy 1-year old!

New Staff: Abu-Bakar, Aja, and Patrick

A warm welcome to our newest IMA volunteers: Ambulance-motorbike Driver Abu-Bakar, Health Aide Aja, Social Worker Emmanuel, and Registrar Patrick!

Together, they have treated and transported several critical patients, and made the clinic run more smoothly! Welcome!

Left to right: Ambulance Driver Abu-Bakar, Health Aide Aja, Social Worker Emmanuel, and Registrar Patrick