MP David Mundell on his travels in Sierra Leone

Aug 25 2010 by Kieran Westbrook, Dumfries Standard Wednesday

MP DAVID Mundell recently visited Sierra Leone, a country in West Africa still suffering from the after-effects of a violent civil war.

Although peace was restored in 2002 and economic growth is on the rise, the people remain amongst the poorest in the world.

Having spent eight days there on a self-funded volunteering trip as part of Project Umubano, organised by the Conservative Party, Mr Mundell shares his experiences in this extraordinary country with the Standard:

This was my fourth self-funded summer visit to Africa and once again I am leading a Justice Project, under the auspices of the Conservative Party’s Project Umubano, which allows party members with an interest in development issues to volunteer in Sierra Leone or Rwanda

Whatever else comes from a visit to a country like Sierra Leone, it restores your sense of perspective.

It is so easy to lose that in the political bubble in our country and to forget the level of hardship people elsewhere endure on a daily basis, just to survive.

Sierra Leone, after its long civil war, is statistically one of the poorest countries in the world with a mother more likely to die in childbirth here than anywhere else on the planet.

Support from our Department for International Development is beginning to turn that round, but it will require sustained effort and is why I believe that even in these hard times at home, we must maintain our spending on overseas aid.

However, the difficulties shouldn’t obscure the beauty of the country and can’t hide the bustle and vibrancy of the capital Freetown, with its cocktail of street traders and traffic congestion.

You really can buy anything from the window of your car – with bathroom scales and steering wheels among the goods on offer.

We also travelled to Bo, the second city, which can now be reached by a made-up road, making the journey much more straightforward just now, in the rainy season.

At this time of year, whilst it is very warm, there are constant downpours turning unmade-up roads into rivers of red mud.

But our hosts tell us we haven’t really experienced the worst, when it rains all day, every day.

As well as working again with the Chief Justice and the High Court on improving court processes, we are helping to train paralegals for the charitable organisation Timap for Justice.

In a country like Sierra Leone, such people really are in the front-line of ensuring that justice is seen in action and that the rule of law prevails over violence and anarchy in resolving disputes.

In our terms, the paralegals perform the role of local citizens advice bureaux in the areas outwith the capital city, where people world have no access to a lawyer.

Increasingly, they are becoming involved in mediation to settle the cases that come to them and a lot of the work we did this year was on how to prepare for and conduct a successful mediation, which we used role play to illustrate.

I got to practice my acting skills as a wedding planner looking for payment from a less-than-happy bride.

Whatever the quality of my performance, I was really impressed by the calm and assured technique of our students.

Additionally this year, we have in our group a police trainer from the UK and have conducted a number of sessions with the local police on evidence-gathering and preparing for prosecution.

Building confidence in the police is essential to establishing law and order, especially in the area of domestic violence which is very prevalent in Sierra Leone and we concentrate some effort on that.

The reality of the police’s struggle for resources is highlighted by one anecdote of an officer having to borrow petrol to get to the scene of a crime; they certainly can’t guarantee to be paid every month.

As I have said before, Africa’s problems can seem overwhelming; it’s easy to think that they are too big to overcome.

However, I believe it is always possible to make a difference and I hope that is what my colleagues and I have been able to achieve again this year in Sierra Leone.