Sierra Leone is in my heart. SJ Dodgson MJoTA 2011 v4n1 p1025

I was in the audience at a townhall meeting for the African diaspora in June 2009 when I heard Mrs Zainab Wai-Lansana talk about her fund-raising efforts in Sierra Leone, click here to read the article I wrote.

Zainab wanted to raise funds to feed pregnant women so they would not die in childbirth. The appalling statistic that more women in Sierra Leone die in childbirth than in any other country grabbed MJoTA Publisher, who followed Ms Zain to Freetown in August 2010 to find out why. Cecil Samba, who is Sierra Leonean and a social worker, moves back to Freetown after some decades in New York, and works hard to stop women dying in childbirth, click here.

Stories from the time in Sierra Leone include an interview by the Sierra Leonean newspaper Unity, click here; overview of the trip to Nigeria and Sierra Leone, click here.

On the day of the 50th anniversary of independence in 2011, I listened to structural engineer Melbourne Garber talk about his life growing up happily in Sierra Leone after independence and before financial collapse and civil war. He had a happy life and you can read about it, click here.