Abstract
In Chap. 2 we get to know more the veritable heroes of the book: polio-disabled people living in self-managed communities in the city centre and in the vicinity of Freetown. These are very much the same people as passers-by experience as disabled street beggars, although not all the members of the polio-houses beg and not all the beggars live in collective self-sustained communities. Begging evoke desolating images of social disintegration, but the polio-disabled squatters manage to maintain a surprisingly well-organised life behind the façade of their collective shelters. The squats are not only homes for those who live there, they are the sites of intense and diverse economic activities and they also assure some form of social security. In them, people with disability realise a model of inverse integration, assuring housing and livelihood for a large number of abled-bodied Sierra Leoneans.
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Notes
- 1.
PZ is the name of a popular market at the Eastern end of downtown Freetown; Eastern Police can be considered the eastern edge of the city centre. It is an important junction, connecting Freetown to its Eastern outskirts.
- 2.
Okada is the local name for motorbike-taxis, which take an important share of public transport; especially on busy axes where other means of transport are slowed down by the constant traffic jams. Okada drivers are usually young men of low social status. There is a widespread conviction that okadamen are ex-rebels, a stereotype based on the fact that during the disarmament programme ex-combatants were oriented towards the commercial sector, namely towards the moto-taxi business.
- 3.
A podapoda is the most common means of public transport. It is a small bus re-arranged with simple wooden benches so that it can carry as many as 20–30 passengers at a time.
- 4.
A podapoda runs normally with two staff: a driver and an apprentice, who opens the door to the passengers, takes the money and signals the stops.
- 5.
According to the CIA factbook about seventy-nine per cent of Sierra Leone’s population is Muslim, with an important minority of Christians making up nearly the rest at just under twenty-one per cent. These data are often reproduced in various sources but their accuracy is questionable. Official in-country statistics enumerate ‘African tradition’ as well. It is probably more precise to consider the pervasive African cosmology as occupying an autonomous level of belief and practice, which coexists happily both with Christianity and Islam.
- 6.
Shado’Man is a documentary by Boris Gerrets. The film was shot in the very places where I conducted my fieldwork and followed the night-time activities of about a dozen people, none of whom were amongst my contacts. Gerrets does not explore the psychological complexities of the characters or the socio-political context. His film is suggestive and aesthetically impressive but its vision of ‘disability’ in Sierra Leone reinforces stereotypes of dehumanisation denying the capacity of self-organisation of the polio-disabled and all the important ties connecting the polio-community to the non-disabled world. See more on the film: http://variety.com/2013/film/global/film-review-shadoman-1200909192/.
- 7.
Source: Polio Global Eradication Initiative http://www.polioeradication.org/Dataandmonitoring/Poliothisweek.aspx.
- 8.
A calliper is a solid metal support that surrounds the leg, making up for the weakness of the muscle and thus allowing its wearer to walk.
- 9.
Source: Polio Global Eradication Initiative http://polioeradication.org/polio-today/history-of-polio/.
- 10.
Source: UNICEF https://www.unicef.org/newsline/poliopkeuromilestones.htm.
- 11.
The Global South is not properly a geographical reference. As an expression, it has become generalised as an alternative to ‘developing’ and ‘Third World’ countries. The changes in terminology mark important changes in ideologies but the core of the idea remains unchanged: it is part of the development agenda born after the Second World War, which dichotomises the world in different ways, mostly according to wealth, prescribing logically and morally a flow of material resources, knowledge and technology from the rich to the poor. The differences between ‘North’ and ‘South’ are increasingly pictured as religious difference in a new world order as Islamophobia establishes itself within Northern countries.
- 12.
Source: Polio Global Eradication Initiative http://polioeradication.org/who-we-are/strategy/.
- 13.
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
Source: Rotary International http://www.rotarydistrict5670.org/stories/polio-update-2018.
- 17.
Polio is of course not only a ‘Southern’ disease. But by today it has become a marker of those poorer countries that are referred to collectively as the Global South.
- 18.
Source: Polio Global Eradication Initiative. See: http://polioeradication.org/where-we-work/sierra-leone/.
- 19.
- 20.
- 21.
In 2010 I conducted a survey in three polio-homes and three regular urban neighbourhoods with the intention of estimating the prevalence of disability in both types of setting and comparing life situations of disabled and non-disabled people. The three neighbourhoods were Murray Town, Kroobay and Kissi Dockyard. Murray Town is a quickly gentrifying neighbourhood in the affluent western part of the city, still housing important pockets of poor residents; Kroobay is a slum area with a population of 16,000 people; and Kissi Dockyard is a relatively young settlement, in the poor eastside, populated by recent rural migrants. The survey was not representative but tentatively it established that 6.6% of the population in the respondent households was known to live with some kind of disability. Statistical calculations were carried out by Balázs Danka. More on this survey in Chap. 3.
- 22.
Source: UN Habitat http://ww2.unhabitat.org/offices/roaas/sierraleone.asp#b (Accessed 20 July 2011).
- 23.
Holston (2008) shows, in the case of Brazil, that illegality is not always dysfunctional. Strategic advantages accrue to those who know how to handle it, whether they are rich or poor. The situation is not totally different in Sierra Leone. The powerful have considerable ability to legalise what is illegal, but the poor also can and do exploit legally unclear situations.
- 24.
It does not mean of course that children in Freetown were always protected from polio, but first of all they belong, with greater probability, to relatively better-off families who have more resources to take care of their disabled family members and at any rate they lack the experience of de-rooting through internal migration. It is this experience which forced the first generations of the squatters to seek protection in collective self-organisations. As a result, the demography of the polio-homes shows a clear preponderance of people born outside of Freetown.
- 25.
Besides Sierra Leonean businessmen and political leaders, I count amongst the ‘local elite’ also ‘Lebanese’ entrepreneurs and members of the Sierra Leonean diaspora occasionally returning to the country, or only investing in it.
- 26.
The peninsula on which the first Freetown settlement was established is also referred to as the Western Area. Its geography corresponds with that of the former crown colony. The Western Area and the four (previously three) provinces are the biggest administrative units in the country.
- 27.
These estimations emerged from the same survey I described above. Besides the three neighbourhoods, I investigated three polio-communities: Pademba Road, House of Jesus and Kissi Shell. As opposed to the work done in the neighbourhoods, in the polio-homes I strived to do a full census—a challenging task, because of the fluidity of the meaning of ‘inhabitant’ and due to the constant fluctuation of the population.
- 28.
SLPP gave the first democratically elected president to Sierra Leone after the war. It was however pushed into opposition in 2007 and it was not before 2018 that it managed to get back to power again.
- 29.
This census was part of the survey described above. Disability was exo-referenced both in the neighbourhoods and in the polio-houses, that is, I asked household heads to count the number of people living with them and asked them to identify those who have some functional difficulties.
- 30.
I owe the idea of this classification to Andreas Dafinger (personal communication).
- 31.
Giving alms to the needy is both a Muslim and a Christian moral obligation. The Christians however follow the Muslim custom of generously distributing alms on Fridays.
- 32.
Ososu groups come together, usually weekly, to contribute equally to a common fund. One person of the group then takes the whole collection, and finances with it a smaller business investment or pays for a family emergency. The next week, another member takes the whole collection. In this way, with small regular investments, members of the ososu group can regularly take a larger amount which corresponds to the collective savings.
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Szántó, D. (2020). The Cast On-stage and Off: Polio and Beggars on Wheels. In: Politicising Polio. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6111-1_2
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