‘Salone sweet o!’ It is not easy to convince the average struggling Sierra Leonean that this country is sweet to live in.
For him or her, we have the undignified and very ironic and contradictory honour of being a poor people in a rich country. To the struggling masses, we have all it takes to live a very comfortable lifestyle here at home, yet we suffer so much.
So, if the majority of our people are going through difficulties and hardships, who then is salone sweet for? This is a no brainer of a question as one would tell you that Members of Parliament (MP’s) and cabinet ministers are the ones for who Sierra Leone is sweet.
In a country where the average man finds it hard to afford $1 or Le10,000 a day, our leaders in parliament and the president’s cabinet ministers take home thousands of US dollars a month. This money is apart from the perks, per diems and the monies they are always accused of stealing.
You ever wonder why soon as election time approaches, sitting MP’s literally descend Tower Hill to their various constituencies to do all in their power including but not limited to stealing and buying ballots, encouraging political violence and the like to stay in power? Wonder why Sierra Leoneans leave the Diaspora as soon as their party takes power to come and work here?
After they or their parties win the elections, they stay and work, with the majority of them having their families overseas while they remit millions of dollars a year to such locations.
These men and women enjoy the sweet pie that is Mama Salone, out of which they take huge chunks, not caring if anything is left for the struggling masses. They will even dare try to prevent the crumbs that fall off the country’s dinner table from falling into the hands of their masters, the very poor people that elected them to power.
Sadly, it is part of life that nothing is guaranteed, and that all things have an eventual end, good or bad. After they lose elections or their appointments, most of them don’t consider staying and investing all the millions of US dollars that they have made in this very rich country where the majority live in near abject poverty.
Yes, they leave with their earnings and spend and invest overseas, where taxes and the cost of goods and services are much, much higher than in Sierra Leone.
Imagine having $1 million to spend. Would you rather spend it in, say, the US than in Sierra Leone? You cannot even begin to compare the prices of goods and services, even tax rates paid to government for the many services they provide to citizens in western countries. If they were expected to spend all that money without investing a penny, suffice to say, they will go through that million much quicker in the US than in Sierra Leone.
Politicians, who make an immoral sum of money when compared to the average Sierra Leonean, would tell us that we have some of the lowest costs of living and taxes in the world. Sadly, not all of us can say that, as not all of us are politicians. At the going exchange rate, a million dollars here is 10,000 times its value in the US.
If Mama Salone is so sweet, we expect for these men and women to not only live and work here, but also have their families here. When will we try and develop Sierra Leone into a place where we will not only be proud to be from, but will also stay and work to keep progressing?
That trend of capital flight from poor Sierra Leone to rich western and other countries has to stop. We cannot focus on building other countries with money earned from our poor folks while we leave our home to be pillaged by men and women who see the state’s coffers as their personal piggy banks. Let us make home like where our hearts are so we and our wives and kids can be here to build. Salone is sweet indeed, only we can make it sour.