Category Archives: BLOG

Sherbro Island Airport (BTE) just outside the town of Bonthe hasn’t seen any fixed-wing aircraft land or take-off for around 11 years. The runway has long since lost its battle with Mother Nature. It’s now so overgrown, it would actually be safer to land a plane on the grass beside the runway.

Sherbro Island Airport has been closed to fixed-wing aircraft since 2002

The site is now used for two things: (1) It’s a helicopter landing pad about once a year, when UN or government officials come to visit. And (2) local kids use the abandoned Inter Tropic Airlines EMB-110 Bandierante as a climbing gym.

EMB-110, serial number 110-408 seen from the nearby dirt track

The plane caught my eye during my recent visit to the island. I saw the old Embraer, sitting alone beside the tiny terminal building. Her nose pointing in the air as she sat uncomfortably on her battered tail. Kids pestered her like a tired old dog. Her rusting shell was missing both engines and both nose wheels.

The Embraer EMB-110 was nicknamed the ‘Bandeirante’ or ‘Bandit’

I walked up to the plane, and the kids immediately invited me to join the fun inside. No passenger seats, no fittings, no avionics. But up in the cockpit the pilot seats and the yokes (steering wheel things) were still there. The kids followed me as I walked up the incline to the cockpit. I was looking down at the floor taking a picture of something when I noticed that gravity was decreasing.

I wish I had this playground when I was a kid

BOOM! Before I realized what was happening, the nose crashed down to the ground, as the climbing gym became a see-saw. I shouted an expletive and the kids all laughed. This is what they do every day. Their grins said “fun isn’t it?” I regained my composure and had another few goes on the see-saw before leaving. It was indeed fun.

Air Creebec in Canada still operates an EMB-110 like this one

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The Embraer EMB-110, serial number 110-408 rolled off the assembly-line in São José dos Campos, Brazil in 1982. Atlanta-based regional carrier Southeastern Airlines bought her and gave her the tail number N905FB. The turbo-prop started flying routes around Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina and northern Florida. After a merger in April 1984, the airline became known as Atlantic Southeast Airlines (ASA). It worked as a feeder carrier for Delta Airlines. ASA still operates today under the name ExpressJet.

110-408 pictured in Atlanta in 1990. Courtesy: AirNikon/Airliners.net

After 14 years of transporting business commuters around the southern U.S. N905FB, and its sister N904FB, were sold to a small aircraft leasing company in Florida called Liberty Airlines in 1996. Inter Tropic Airlines in Sierra Leone leased both planes. They were re-registered here as 9L-LBS and 9L-LBR respectively. Today in Bonthe, you can see both the newer tail number in red, and the outline of the older tail number beneath the less-than-impressive paint job.

The old tail number N905FB is still visible

Up near Freetown, the wreck of 9L-LBR has sat at Hastings (HGS) airport since the end of the Civil War in 2002. An online incident report says: “The runway at Hastings Field had been sabotaged by rebels overnight with concrete and steel projectiles dug into the tarmac. On an early morning sunrise flight from Lungi, the plane attempted to land and the obstructions tore off the right main landing gear. No passengers were injured.”

The sister plane 110-411, last registered as 9L-LBR, has sat in pieces at Freetown-Hastings Airport since 2002. Courtesy: Thomas Brügge/Airliners.net

I can not find any online references to the other plane in Bonthe. All I know is from word of mouth. A Bonthe radio journalist and colleague at JHR told me that the plane has been stuck on the island since the late 1990s. He told me that it had a technical problem and the Senegalese pilot was unable to find a way to get her in the air again (I don’t think ground technicians were common during the Civil War). 9L-LBS has sat there ever since.

The abandoned terminal building is smaller than a Toronto condo

Very few instruments remain on the plane

One bigger mystery remains, though. All available records show that N905FB (which become 9L-LBS) was assigned a manufacturer’s serial number of 110-408 (i.e. the 408^th Embraer EMB-110). But printed clearly on the inside of the plane’s fuselage is “N/S. (número de série) 410”. 110-410 was still flying as recently as 2006, in Fiji.

Serial Number 410, erroneously printed on the inside of the fuselage

My only guess is that a careless or compromised Brazilian technician installed the wrong panel, or placed an incorrect stamp on the fuselage of 110-408. If only he knew the time I wasted in researching the wrong serial number. No matter. He made up for it by helping to build Africa’s coolest playground.

There’s an old joke about my much-maligned hometown of Limerick. A Limerickman is on holidays in the United States. A girl serving him at a diner notices his strong accent. She asks him where he is from. He tells her “Limerick.” She asks “what state is that in?” He replies “It’s in an awful state.”

I like the joke, particularly because I have encountered similar situations. When I was 20, I spent a summer working in suburban Detroit with two friends (don’t ask me why we went there). When we would tell people we were from Ireland, the responses would vary. Sometimes we got blank stares, sometimes we’d hear about family trees, other times we were told that Arlington is indeed lovely at this time of year. Our favourite was a guy who said, with minimal confidence, “that’s near Poland, right?” True story.

A glass of Sierra Leone Guinness

Here in Sierra Leone, the responses also vary. But, in general, people know Ireland. They know what it is and where it is. Part of the reason is the number of Irish NGOs working in Sierra Leone. You see the Toyota Land Cruisers every day with the logos: Goal, Trócaire, Concern Worldwide and Irish Aid. Consequently, there is both an Irish Consulate downtown, and an Irish Embassy up the hill, not far from where I live. People here are grateful for Ireland’s presence.

But alas, there is no St Patrick’s Day parade. Nor is there the city-wide, Guinness-sponsored, queue-and-drink-and-vomit festival that has hijacked Ireland’s national day around the world. The latter is an image that has become many people’s only impression of Ireland. Now, I’m not saying we don’t like a drink, but there’s more to us than just that.

Instead, the main Irish cultural event last weekend was a pick-up gaelic football match organized for inside the Siaka Stevens National Stadium. Unsurprisingly, the stadium had been double-booked. So the game went ahead outside, on the dusty, grass-free practice pitch. Most of the participants were not Irish, meaning the standard was so low that I was asked to be a team captain. Afterwards, everyone talked about how much fun they had had, and how they’d like to play again. I really enjoyed it too, but I also noted how gaelic football was never meant to be played in west African heat.

After the annual gaelic football game in Freetown

Having said all that, I would be lying if I told you I didn’t enjoy a Guinness myself this week. In fact, I had my first taste of the local version of the black stuff. It’s 7.5% alcohol, it’s very sweet and it’s more metallic than sucking on a spoon. But it’s nice.

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, very few consumer goods are produced in Sierra Leone. That contributes to high prices and low employment. But that Guinness was brewed and bottled right here in Freetown. I guess our beer is not such a bad cultural export after all.

Six slices of cheese: Le 47,000 (C$11.33, €8.47, £7.38)

One of the many embarrassing moments in my life was at a supermarket checkout in Hamburg a few years back. A teenage girl finished scanning all my items, and then asked me where I was from. Weird, I thought. I answered “Ich bin von Irland.” She looked at me like I had zwei Kopfs. She had actually said “how are you paying?”, but my poor comprehension failed me again. My face quickly matched my name.

As of this week, I can now start making a list of embarrassing experiences at checkouts.

This time, I got to the same point in the transaction, only to find I had nowhere near enough cash for my shopping (very few businesses accept credit cards here). That had never happened to me before. Not even as a student. But it happened to me in Sierra Leone – one of the world’s poorest countries.

Whenever I see someone else hand back items at a supermarket checkout, I can’t help but feel bad for them. I wonder what hardships they face every day, just to pay the bills. Now, other people were looking at me. But I’m pretty sure they weren’t worried about my bank balance. I am sure they guessed I was new in town – getting used to the high cost of food and juggling banknotes covered in zeros ($233 makes you a millionaire in Leones).

Many non-staple food items cost around double of what they do in the developed world. And it’s easy to compare, because many of them are imported with U.K. prices, printed on the packaging.

Let me walk you down the aisles with a calculator.

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Part of the problem is that Sierra Leone produces very little food itself. Margarine comes from The Netherlands, cookies from Turkey, UHT milk from Germany. The price you pay at the till includes the hefty cost of shipping the food to the small market of Sierra Leone.

It’s part of the cycle of poverty. Most people can’t afford fancy foods because they’re too expensive. They are too expensive because only small amounts are shipped here. Only small amounts are shipped here because people can’t afford them.

According to the IMF, the average Sierra Leonean lives on less than $2 a day, so most, or all, of people’s income goes toward food – basic food, like rice, beans, cassava leaves and safe drinking water. On an average wage, those six slices of cheese would need to last about a week. In other words, shopping in a supermarket is like a night at Trump Tower. Forget about it.

So yes, I did feel embarrassed to hand back my cornflakes. But cornflakes are for breakfast, a meal many people here rarely enjoy. How lucky I am to feel so stupid.