Phil Dobson - Freetown - 4 June 2010 - www.ourmaninsierraleone.com

The slab was completed last Wednesday! I’ve not had chance to update this because of the chronic problem of lack of electricity or poor internet connection. The strange thing is that the rainy season has started and apparently there is not enough water in the hydro-electric dam to generate enough electricity for the country.

I’ve never heard of dead squatters taking land from people but it’s happening right here in Waterloo. A secondary school is right next to a graveyard and as the school does not have a boundary fence or wall the neighbors, the graveyard, have started encroaching on to the school land with gravestones appearing close to the classrooms. In Sierra Leone if you don’t mark the boundary of your land here then it seems like your neighbors will claim it and start building or digging or whatever on it. Anyway, one night a teacher at the school saw the gravediggers busy digging a grave and went to try and stop them, he was then thrown in the grave that they were digging and they started burying him alive! The teacher managed to scramble away but the gravestones are still appearing in the school grounds.