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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