After getting off to a somewhat promising start to its post-colonial existence, the former British colony of Sierra Leone (or "Salone" as the local trendies like to call it) has lived through several decades of near-existential disasters. The country was blessed with an impressive array of natural resources including iron ore, bauxite, titanium, gold and diamonds (the notorious "blood diamonds"). The country boasts the world's third largest natural harbour and the Lonely Planet describes Sierra Leone as "...West Africa's secret beach destination". Yet once parliamentary democracy that had been in place since Sierra Leone's independence in 1961 was abolished ten years later, the country descended into rampant corruption-fueled chaos and serial coups (it still holds the African record - three in one year!), culminating in 1991 with the onset of one of Africa's most horrendous and brutal civil wars which went on for the next 11 years.

The civil war claimed more than 50,000 lives and left thousands more severely mutilated. The anti-government forces, with the support and encouragement of among others, Charles Taylor the former president of neighbouring Liberia recruited child soldiers who frequently lost whatever inhibitions they might have had by being drugged and even fed gunpowder "to make them stronger". Among the unimaginable atrocities committed included limb amputations, the evidence of which is still very much visible today. Several of the commanders responsible for encouraging the carnage have been convicted and sentenced by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, including Charles Taylor now serving a lengthy jail sentence in The Netherlands

We hear some first-hand accounts of the war from one of our guides. His mother was killed by rebels and he himself was captured and as a young teenager used by the rebels as a laborer. He escaped from the rebels in the northern part of the country where his mother had been killed and was able to make his way to Freetown. More poignantly, we saw ourselves victims of the war's atrocities - a soccer game between two teams of young men each of whom had had part of a limb amputated.

The soccer game showed some of the spirit which has enabled Sierra Leone to start to rebuild from decades of corrupt government and the awful civil war. The country was really on the mend by 2013 when it enjoyed one of Africa's fastest growing economies. Then came the Ebola outbreak which spread from neighbouring Guinea and Liberia and around the same time, a collapse in world commodity prices. Just two years later, in 2015 Sierra Leone had the world's fastest shrinking economy. And then just to add to the country's misery in 2017, there was a massive mudslide resulting from deforestation of one of the hillsides ringing Freetown killing more than a thousand people and leaving thousands more homeless.

Today, much of Freetown particularly the central area is a crowded, chaotic and dirty mix of shanties, slums and near-derelict colonial era buildings. Much was destroyed or damaged during the latter stages of the civil war (although not the Anglican cathedral with its colonial-era memorial plaques and its proudly displayed signatures of Elizabeth R and Philip from a post-independence visit).....

....and there are now signs of new construction.

We get glimpses of another side of the Freetown area - the coastal neighbourhoods of Aberdeen and Lumley with their upscale restaurants and hotels and the Hill District where a lot of embassies are located. And then there's the fishing community of Tokeh Beach on the Freetown peninsula, home to a 5-star resort, now called "The Place" which apparently was a favourite hideaway for the rich and famous of Europe before the civil war.

But wait....what about snow skiing? So here we are in a tropical West African country where the highest mountain close to the border with equally tropical Liberia, is a little under 2000 metres. That does inhibit one of our group, apparently a school teacher from Canada who asks our dumb-struck guide whether there's snow skiing in Sierra Leone....