Dreamtown Journal vol. 3 - Bonga Town Community Profile

BONGA TOWN COMMUNITY PROFILE

Dreamtown.ngo

Dreamtown Journal vol. 3

1

Spring 2022

Dreamtown Journal is a publication series that unfolds the life of young people living in vulnerable urban communities and the actions they take to make a positive change. The journal is developed in close collaboration with the amazing grassroots and young activist that Dreamtown work with across the world. The goal of the journal is to broadcast the voice of a young urban civil society and inspire change.

Editor: Stine Kronsted Pedersen, Urban Design Lead, Dreamtown

BONGA TOWN Down steep dirt roads, behind the busy life of Wilkinson Road in Freetown, Sierra Leone, you will find Bonga Town.

It is built next to the riverside and only few people know of its existence.

In Bonga Town, people live side by side in an organic, selfgrown shed structure. Children, elders, goats, chickens, and not at least, young people, share the community with each other.

Moving through the community is a sensuous experience.

There is vital buzz of the quotidian life; street vendors, water-fetchers, builders and running children keep the streets moving, while people cooking, hairdressing and chatting sit around on every doorstep and street corner.

The community is constantly on the move, it seems.

Dreamtown had the pleasure to visit Bonga Town in January 2022 as a part of our project, Claim Your City.

The project was about giving young people a voice in shaping their own community - something they rarely get.

It was about young people claiming space in their own city.

Together with 20 young, visionary and hopeful men and women from Bonga Town, we have walked, talked, mapped, observed, drawn, designed, and tried to get a grasp of the vibrant, buzzing community.

This is a story of Bonga Town. Enjoy!

INDEX

Intro Sierra Leone Freetown

1 2-3

Zooming in Bonga Town

4-5

Bonga Town and the Urban Context Accessing Bonga Town Moving around Bonga Town Urban Connections Urban Morphology Urban Life Commercial Life Water in Bonga Town

6-7 8-9 10-11 12-13 14-15 16-17 18-19

Working in Bonga Town Mapping a Community Youth Driven Community Development Urban Space Design as a Process

20-21 22-23 24-25

Looking Looking up, down, straight, in People of Bonga Town References

26-27 28-29 31

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SIERRA LEONE Sierra Leone is a small country in West Africa. It borders Guinea and Liberia, and the Atlantic Sea. The name means “Lion Mountains” and refers to the foresty hills surrounding the harbour of the capital, Freetown.1 Sierra Leone is a beautiful, lush country, with forest covering 38% of the land.2 It has long, picturesque, white beaches that only few people know of.

The story that is most often told about the country, is the recent history of a large outbreak of the Ebola virus, killing thousands of people between the years of 2013-16. Preceding the virus outbreak, the country suffered from a bloody civil war between 1991-2002, with more than 50.000 deaths and 2.000.000 civilians displaced.These recent historical events has led to an economic decline that the country still suffers from, leaving Sierra Leone as one of the poorest countries in the world.3

Islam 60%

Dreamtown has been working in Sierra Leone since 2010. We experience the Sierra Leoneans as being warm, helpful and extremely joyful. The events of the civil war and the virus outbreak are still very present in the minds of the people. However, 95% of young people expect that their life will be better in 1 year from now.4 There is a a great optimism and hope about the future among young people.

7.8

54,7

mio. people in Sierra Leone7

is the life expectancy10

72.300

Cristian 20-30%

Local religions 5-10%

Religion5 15-65 54,4%

44,7

Over 65 3,7%

Under 15 41,9%

Age distribution6

km2 is the area8

are unemployed11

59,2%

ENGLISH

of 189 on the Human Development Index9

people under the poverty line12

is the official language. However, krio is the de facto language spoken throughout the country13

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FREETOWN AND THE RAPIDLY GROWING CITY Freetown is the capital of Sierra Leone. It is situated on the ‘Sierra Leone Peninsula’, at the coastal tip of a foresty hillrange, the Serra Leôa (“Lion Mountains”).

The name, Freetown, stems from the area being dedicated to slaves freed from England in 1787.14 Today, the city has around 1 million inhabitants.

Freetown is experiencing rapid growth which is putting pressure on the city to accommodate a growing number of, especially young, residents.

One of the reasons for this is the migration of youth to the cities from rural areas. The Sierra Leone civil war fueled urbanisation, as life in the city, was perceived as safer than in many rural areas. Today, the movement of young people from rural to urban is motivated by the search for better livelihood opportunities, both economic and social. Life in the city carries promises (although often unfulfilled) of education, employment, a higher living standard, less social control and expectations contrary to traditional life-styles and pressure from older generations, etc. In this regard, cities are natural attractors to youth, however, the promised freedom of urban life can be far from the experience of an average young person in Freetown.

Many of Freetown’s young city dwellers grow up or settle in vulnerable and informal settlements.

The large proportion of youth growing up in and migrating to cities challenges urban infrastructures and governance, and many youths experience challenges such as social exclusion from livelihood opportunities and meaningful participation in decision-making processes. This exclusion can lead to pathways where young people experience a lack of social control, have limited support systems, and urban youth can live in what are effectively parallel worlds to mainstream society.

Bonga Town

The city is organised in several communities, among which Dreamtown supports projects in Dwarzark, Kissy, Funkia and Bonga Town.

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Funkia

Dwarzark

Kissy ‘lower part’

Kissy ‘upper part’

CBD

Kissy Dwarzark

Lumley 3

BONGA TOWN Bonga Town is a self-grown, informal community in Freetown. By informal, it means that it is unplanned, and not a part of the offial planning system. Local estimates count between hundreds to low thousands living in the community, however the exact number is very uncertain. Household sizes are very small compared to other regions, with 41,9% living in a home with three or less residents.

The majority of the population is young people, reflecting the general tendency in Sierra Leone.

However, 75% report that it is a problem that young people are not being listened to. The youth are generally held out of important decisions about their community, and consequently there is a lack of space for youth. Only 33% thinks that young people have safe spaces to meet, 81% do not have green spaces that they can safely spend time in and 67% are missing places where they can go and be creative.15 There is a lack of space for youth in Bonga Town, but the young people also report of general issues in the community. Exposion to natural hazards, flooding during rainy season, poor housing, lack of proper sanitation, lack of jobs, crime, and unstable electricity, are some of the challenges that the people of the community experience.

While it is a community with a lot of challenges, it is also a place full of charm, vitality, and not the least, hope. It is a community where people take pride in where they are from, and have a strong belief that the future will be better.

Drinking water Job opportunities

Toilet facilities

Drainage School system

In this journal, we will unfold some the many facettes of Bonga Town. There is a lot more to tell, than what we are able to include in this publication. The true feeling of the buzzing town lies in moving in and out of the steel-house labyrinth, jumping over a canal, smelling the roasted fish, listening to the Africell vendors, jumping aside when a wheelbarrow approaches, your shoes turning orange from dust.

Bonga Town is a full-body sensory experience. But for now, we hope that this jornal will give you a sense of what is hidden down the roads of Wilkinson Road, in Bonga Town.

Electricity Hygiene Hospital

Waste management Adult education Diseases Child care

Issues in Bonga Town according to youth Data from workshop see p. 16 4

76%

OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN BONGA TOWN ARE VERY CONFIDENT THAT THEY WILL ACHIVE WHAT THEY WANT IN LIFE16

96%

EXPECT THAT THEIR LIFE WILL IMPROVE OVER THE COMING 12 MONTHS17

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BONGA TOWN AND THE URBAN CONTEXT Bonga Town is nestled between the heavily trafficed ‘Wilkinson Road’, a large wetland area opening up to the sea, and a high-end golf course.

Moving southwards from Bonga Town, one will reach ‘New Life City’ or the ‘Action Aid District’. Here, large buildings are hidden behind tall, thick concrete walls with barbed wires on top. In contrast to the vital Bonga Town with its dense, maze-like paths, this district is quiet and sparsely polulated. A lot of buildings are empty or half-done.

Wilkinson Road is framed by large corporate buildings, and the area is known for being home to wealthy people living in compounds. There is a stark contrast between this, and the self-grown shed structure of Bonga Town. The contrast between Bonga Town and its surroundings is emphasised even more, looking over at the neat, green golf-course on the other side of the trash-filled wetland that marks an edge of the community.

Wetland area

New Life City streets

New Life City

Wilkinson Road buzz

Wilkinson Road

Wilkinson Road

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Aberdeen Freetown Harbour Central Business district ive

r Dr

e Palm

Cole

e Driv

W in ilk ad Ro

Na

n so

w re

a sC

ive

Dr

Freetown Mall

Wetland ive

e qu

r eD

Sa

Crown Bakery Supermarket

Metro hotel

Golf Course Freetown Supermarket

New Life City 7

ACCESSING BONGA TOWN Arriving to Bonga Town is like opening the door to Narnia. If you ask the local taxi drivers, you rarely find someone who knows what Bonga Town is - you have to ask them to drop you off along the busy, traffic-heavy ‘Wilkinson Road’. From the big street, you can get a glimpse of the shed structure behind the large corporate buildings, but you have no signs leading you the way. You take one of the many steep dirt-roads down to the community and arrive in a different world. The primary access road is ‘Saquee Drive’ by the ‘Crown Express Bakery’.

Arriving in Bonga Town, you move from hectic, polluted traffic to a small, dense living structure with a calm buzz of people doing their things.

30 m 20 m 10 m 0m Section 1:1000

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Wetland

1 2 3 4

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6

7

8 1

2

3

5

7

4

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MOVING AROUND IN BONGA TOWN URBAN CONNECTIONS Moving around Bonga Town is a flow of light and dark, open and enclosed. You move in and out of a maze-like, coherent steel-house structure, that seems to be connected all along the 1,5 km stretch of the community. The pathways constantly vary between vast, open spaces, narrow walkways covered from above. As an outsider not familiar with the community, is seems impossible to find your way through the winding passages. However, over time, you slowly find your points of orientation, and begin to see that there is a logic in the structure, a way of making your way around. That being said, the locals also sometimes get lost, or end up in a cul-de-sac.

The paths are crossing the countless waterways via home-built wooden bridges. While this may seem functional, there are challenges related to the bridges.

Most of them are unstable, and some of them are close to breaking. However, Bonga Towners move swiftly across the thin wooden structures, in flipflops, with liters of water or a cement bag on their head.

Moving around Bonga Town is a true work of art.

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START

TIME WALKING THROUGH BONGA TOWN

20 MIN 1 HOUR

EFFICIENT WALKING

OF ACTUAL TIME DUE TO MEETING AQUAINTANCES, CHATTING, ETC.

END

DISTANCE APPROX. 1,5 KM

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MOVING AROUND IN BONGA TOWN URBAN MORPHOLOGY What makes Bonga Town magical is the experience of moving through the variation of spaces. From large, open spaces, to narrow pathways, through small, dark spaces, and then under the open sky again. The spatial experience is diverse and full of surprises. You never really know what awaits around the next corner.

While the community looks chaotic at first glance, there is a logic behind the connections and the destinations. To make sure that the community is connected, there are small pathways between all the houses. These are down to ½ meter wide, and are either covered by a roof structure or open towards the sky.

Open spaces

Semi-open spaces

Semi-enclosed spaces

Enclosed spaces

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Open spaces

Semi-open spaces

Semi-enclosed spaces

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Enclosed spaces

MOVING AROUND IN BONGA TOWN URBAN LIFE There are only few open, public spaces, that are accessible for the larger community, and the ones that remain are primarily owned by landlords with private interests. Many of the open spaces are filled up with garbage or building materials for an upcoming house, or a demolished one.

While the open spaces naturally attract a lot of activities, the streets and paths seem even more important to the public life. The majority of activities take place in the spaces between the houses, along paths that connect the community. Here, people are constantly on the move - moving building materials, selling goods, carrying water. Sometimes they stop if they meet an aquaintant, or to take a rest. The street belongs to the community, and is keeping the community alive and connected.

PUBLIC SPACE ACTIVITIES

STREET ACTIVITES

Along the streets, on doorsteps you meet people watching life passing by. The small amount of space they have in front of their houses seem to be an extension of their home. You see women doing laundry, cooking, sleeping, brading hair, taking care of kids, or simply sitting and talking. The boundary between the public and the private life seems to blend together in these liminal, semi-public spaces between the street and the house.

Some Bonga Towners live ‘compounds’. These are clusters of houses, organised around semi-private courtyards. Some of them are gated, some just have a hidden entrance. In the courtyards, women take off their wigs, they are ‘at home’. The compounds are clean and without trash. Everyone takes care of the environment here, as well as the children running around. While each home has a private space, the daily life is primarily lived in the courtyards and the streets of the community.

SEMIPUBLIC/ SEMIPRIVATE ACTIVIES

While there is a difference between the public, the semi-public and the private spaces, many activities take place in all spaces of the community. You will find hairdressers, people doing laundry, and children playing in all kinds of spaces of the community.

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Children playing

Street vending

Community meetings

Water-fetching

Shops

Hanging out

Tayloring

Cooking

Children playing

Hairdressing

Selling food

Street vending

Cooking

Hairdressing

Laundry

Taking care of children

People chatting

Keeping livestock

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MOVING AROUND IN BONGA TOWN COMMERCIAL LIFE In Bonga Town, you can buy everything from fresh fruit to flip flops and fried fish, from cassava to coca cola, cement and chewing gum, a new towel or a used dress. You can buy it either from the home-built wooden stalls along the streets of the community, or from people passing by, selling from the buckets on top of their head. It seems like there is no limit to what can be carried on the head, whether you are 6 years old, or 60.

Individuals selling

Small street shops

Large shops

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WATER IN BONGA TOWN

43%

Bonga Town is located on the banks of a wetland area. This is an extremely vulnerable location for a settlement, and flooding is a major issue in the community. During wet season, water rises above the ground level of the houses, and, according to locals, only few houses do not have water permanently in their home during these months.

Furthermore, the houses are poorly built, and many households have water coming in from above when it rains.

REPORT THAT WATER COMES IN TO THEIR HOME WHEN IT RAINS18

season, the gutters fill up with solid waste, grey- and blackwater from households. As the gutters are open, and the water is not moving, it causes severe health issues, carrying diseases like cholera, typhoid and attracts mosquitos with malaria. Locals also report that children running around fall into the gutters, exposing them to severe health dangers.

As a way to mitigate flooding of the houses, the community has built drainage canals throughtout the commnunity. Howevever, these can only do little when the water is at its highest. During dry

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MAPPING A COMMUNITY Bonga Town is a self-grown, informal community.

That means that information about who lives there, how many people, what already exists, what is needed, is not officially registered anywhere. How can people of such a community communicate the importance of development if they live ‘under the radar’ of official city planning?

1

5

9

2

6

10

3

7

11

4

8

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1.

Main path through community

.

2.

Mosque

3.

Water post Mosque

Main access road ‘Saquee Drive’

4.

‘Happy Hour’ bar

5.

Community center Water post 6.

Private school 7.

Washing spot 9.

Private school Youth space 8. Church Church ‘long bench’

For working in, and with, a community, we need background knowledge about where we are.

While this is important for our work as Dreamtown, mapping is also a powerful tool for claiming rights to the city. The more information that exists about a community, the better the people are able to communicate their needs, as a part of a city structure. When the people living in the community are taking part in the process of mapping, the process in itself enhances empowerment and community cohesion, as people living in the community get to know their surroundings better, and collaborate around highlighting important aspects of where they live.

They feel pride as they are the experts of their own community.

10.

Local court

In Bonga Town, Dreamtown has been mapping out important aspects of the community, in close collaboration with passionate youth groups living in it - the true experts of their own city.

Mosque Church

11.

Urban farming

12.

Dumpsite 21

YOUTH-DRIVEN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT THE CASE OF BONGA TOWN In January 2022, Dreamtown spent five days in Bonga Town with 20 young people from local youth groups.

The mission was to guide the youth through a collaborative design process for an urban space intervention. This intention grew out of the fact that in Bonga Town, and in many similar communities in Sierra Leone, young people are left out of important decisions about their own city. 75% of young people report that they are not being listened to.19 As mentioned before, the majority of the population in Sierra Leone are young people, but if they are not allowed to have a voice in shaping their own city, who, then, has the right to it?

This time, the youth were in the lead of shaping their own community. The project was called Claim Your City and was funded through CISU (Civil Society in Development).

The youth groups were Unique Family, Faithful Family, Iron Ladies, Top Range, and Concern Family.

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Firstly, the youth had to make maps of their community, as they saw it. Based on the maps, they had to look at their community through the concepts of safe, green and creative spaces. Where were these types of spaces in their community? If they exist at all? And how do they bring value to the community?

Now, with a broader understanding and a vocabulary about their community as a whole, they had to reflect about challenges in their community, and how they could develop solutions to these challenges. Each group had to choose a challenge/ solution combination, and develop a proposal for an intervention within this framework.

Lastly, the winning idea was selected through a ballot vote. The youth decided to invest in repairing a dysfunctional water tap, connect it to the community’s water systen and to develop a sustainable model for maintenance, that had the potential to provide funds for other small community interventions. They also developed an initiative for community cleaning that the youth were in charge of.

Both are ideas that will benefit the whole community.

After the workshop, the hard work of engaging the stakeholders of Bonga Town began. Through meeting after meeting, they had to collaborate with the decision makers about realising their ideas. They had to prove that their ideas were worth listening to and supporting.

At the time of writing, the mediation process has succeeded, and the interventions are currently being executed.

Pictures from the realisation of the intervention.

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URBAN SPACE DESIGN AS A PROCESS There is a tendency to focus on urban space as something we can see, touch, relate to with our bodies – a ‘place’ with a physical dimension.

While the places in cities are of great importance, urban space also has a psychological and political dimension; space for young people to express themselves, to be heard, and to be acknowledged as an important part of society. We are curious about the process of creating these spaces.

We experience that a process-oriented approach to place-making in space-making projects creates a long-lasting impact that is suited for the context in which we are working. Rapid urban changes related to landownership issues, political instability, health issues, climate, and environmental challenges, just to mention a few, makes it difficult, if not impossible to predict and manage a linear, product-oriented approach to urban space making. That said, if an outcome of such a process is physically manifested and publicly accessible, it is, in itself, a big step for youth advocacy. With each initiative that is executed, the young people prove capable of making a change, that they have a voice that is worth listening to, that they have agency. And when the next opportunity shows, they will manage their process better, they will be more confident in claiming space in their city. Starting small, each step of the process is strengthening youth civil society.

We experience that focusing solely on the ‘placeness’ of urban space leaves out on an enormous opportunity to gain knowledge from the process of creating and collaborating around urban spaces.

During this process, young people build on their capacity as groups and as individuals; through activities like developing a design, managing their collaboration, preparing a budget, communicating with stakeholders, as well as the larger community.

These are all competences that will remain with them regardless of the character of their intervention.

They will take these capabilities with them after the project is finished can utilise for future URBAN SPACEand DESIGN AS Athem PROCESS projects.

The workshop in Bonga Town

income generation improved health

DREAMING

EXPLORING

DESIGNING

DOING

Moving on ... improved safety

SPACES FOR YOUTH

social inclusion

social inclusion

SUSTAIN EXPAND INNOVATE

environmental sustainability

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

URBAN SPACE

FUTURE PROJECTS

Strengthening young civil society Capacity building Collaboration Empowerment Ownership

Community transformation Community cohesion

Youth mobilise support Youth actively pursue new projects

In the model, we illustrate the stages of urban space development, as we see it. It is especially during the design and implementation phase that the young civil society is strengthened. The workshop in Bonga Town was working with the ‘dreaming, exploring, designing’ part of the first phase. After the workshop, the youth were in charge of the ‘doing’ - to actually bring to life the suggested intervention.

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LOOKING UP

LOOKING DOWN

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LOOKING STRAIGHT

LOOKING IN

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PEOPLE OF BONGA TOWN

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REFERENCES ‘Sierra Leone’, Davidson S.H.W. Nicol , Britannica.com, used 22.03.22, url: https://www.britannica.com/place/ Sierra-Leone 2 ‘Sierra Leone Forest Information and Data‘, Mongabay. com, used 22.03.22, url: https://rainforests.mongabay. com/deforestation/2000/Sierra_Leone.htm 1 ‘Sierra Leone’, Davidson S.H.W. Nicol , Britannica.com, used 22.03.22, url: https://www.britannica.com/place/ Sierra-Leone 4 ‘Sierra Leone - early results from 2019 survey’, J. Schirmer, G. Mews, D. Mews, University of Canberra, 2019 5 ‘Sierra Leone’, New World Encyclopedia, used 22.03.21, url: https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/ entry/Sierra_Leone#Economy 6 Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision Archived May 6, 2011, at the Wayback Machine 7 Ibid.

8 ‘Surface area (sq. km) - Sierra Leone’, used 22.03.21, url: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.SRF. TOTL.K2?locations=SL 9,10, 11, 12 Human Development Indicators - Sierra Leone’, hdr.undp.org, used 22.03.22, url: https://hdr.undp.org/ en/countries/profiles/SLE 13 ‘Sierra Leone’, New World Encyclopedia, used 22.03.21, url: https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/ entry/Sierra_Leone#Economy 14 ’Freetown’, by ‘The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica’, visited 15.03.22, url: https://www.britannica. com/place/Freetown 15 ‘Sierra Leone - early results from 2019 survey’, J. Schirmer, G. Mews, D. Mews, University of Canberra, 2019 16, 17,18,19 Ibid.

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All photos are taken by Dreamtown.

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