Our dreamed journey

By Xaviera Finestres and Marta Huertas

We want to go to Africa, to Sierra Leone. The Republic of Sierra Leone is a country in West Africa. It is bounded by Guinea to the North, by Liberia to the Southeast and by the Atlantic Ocean to the Southwest.

We want to help the poor people and children, and find more information about this poor country and their activities. We are interested in the mining of diamonds and coltan.

We will travel by plane on a scheduled flight from Madrid to Sierra Leone. The people there are very interested in tourism and they try to sell the objects they make. Tourists are a very important means of earning money. It is a country with a very diverse culture, a country where we can find different customs and traditions, mainly depending on the tribes. Local groups are very interesting culturally, because of their traditional dances and music. It is a country with a great tradition of masks. The people are quite nice to visitors, and English is a language that almost everyone knows.

The most important source of jobs is the hotel industry, and the mining of diamonds and coltan is the most important business. In this country, there are a lot of dealers and they have a lot of money. This money is used to buy weapons, because it is not necessary to pay workers, they are slaves in their own land. They can be children too, as they are the cheapest workers. Also, soldiers capture children and make them child-soldiers who work for their chief.

There are slaves working 24 hours per day in the mines. The extraction of the diamonds is very expensive, but when they are exported to other countries they earn a lot of money. It is a clever business, although it is very dangerous.

There are also coltan mines. This is the most important mineral in the world these days, because it is used in a lot of technological products, such as microchips, computers, mobile phones... It is very important.

This journey is very interesting because it makes it possible to see a lot of things that are different from other countries, but it is very sad to see the poor people and the ill people. Luckily, there are a lot of NGO and a lot of doctors and nurses who help them. 
We will see all kinds of things, and we want to write a book about illegal business in Sierra Leone. It will be a VERY EXCITING JOURNEY!!!