I remember the feeling the fire of righteous indignation writing this post nearly three years ago. I had been in Sierra Leone exactly two months when we were invited to attend a beauty contest. I also remember getting some flack from commenters after I wrote this post on my judgmental attitude. Sierra Leone hadn’t grown on my yet.
Fast forward. CelTel, the mobile phone company that sponsored everything, has been bought by Zain, a Middle Eastern company that sponsors everything.
But speaking of beauty, have a look at Aschobi Designs. It’s a company started a couple of years ago by a young Sierra Leonean designer, who after having studied at Parsons Paris, set up shop in the heart of Freetown. There’s also a Facebook page.
Put your arms together for Miss University
August 1st, 2006
Embrace. Beauty.
CelTel seems to sponsor everything around here. Beach bars are painted in the red and yellow colours and small booths selling phone cards dot the roadsides. So it was no surprise that Miss University 2006, ostensibly one of the most happening events in Freetown, would be sponsored by Africa’s leading mobile service provider.
Embrace. Beauty. CelTel’s entire marketing campaign is based around grammatically incorrect sentences and phraseology; and while I do not understand the rationale, I’m sure it is intentional. Miss Universe 2006 was the event we had been looking forward to since we saw the banners over a month ago. We even skipped an overnight trip to River No. 2 to make sure we could be in attendance.
The show was advertised to start at 9:00 in the evening, and we arrived at 9:30. Although Sierra Leone is four hours ahead of Eastern time, they were running on Standard African Time, which is anywhere from one to two hours behind schedule. Nobody seemed to care, and members of the large crowd appeared to be having a good time waiting in their seats, some munching on small pieces of meat on a stick.
Entrance cost 20,000 Leones, meaning many of those in attendance had probably saved up for quite a long time to attend. Twenty thousand Leones is around eight dollars.
It wasn’t exactly a classy affair.
This writer is playing a difficult game balancing accurate reporting with not being patently offensive to his host country. The dress for many consisted of relatively short bottoms accompanied by tops that reciprocated in coverage and lack of taste. One young lady donned a top with strategically-placed rips meant to tempt, tease, and entice but not give away the secret; except it shifted. Surprise! Everybody can see your nipple.
There were two fights.
Things got underway at 10:45 with several “artists” performing musical acts. And by artists, I mean what appeared to be regular people. And by musical acts, I mean lip-syncing and really bad dancing. Crowd response was lukewarm and my brow was furrowed.
Music was followed by the hosts, and the hosts carried scripts in their hands. I was reminded of something we did back in primary school called reader’s theatre. It was when we hastily put together a script of a quality which reflected our grade level and traveled to different classrooms reading and making up actions. I can’t say this was much better. Coordination between backstage and talent was lacking.
The show got underway. Each young woman was introduced to the crowd. More than one was named Fatmata, several were 5’6”, and a few enjoyed playing basketball. All were dressed in identical jean miniskirts and red CelTel t-shirts tied at the bottom to reveal as much midsection as possible. Each strutted out, posed, and shook her way down the catwalk, then back towards the stage to take her place among the others.
The host then asked us to “put our arms together for Miss University”. We decided to clap instead. Then we left to sit over some Sierra Leonean beer in a beach bar, which by that point, seemed to be the more sophisticated option.
Before asking us to put our arms together (which I still haven’t figured out yet), the host had asked us to wait patiently for things to get underway and the excitement to materialize. And before that, we heard that tonight, we would be witnessing real Sierra Leonean beauty.
Right… I saw many things that evening, but I’m not sure I saw beauty. I saw vanity, exhibitionism, and overall trashiness, but I did not see beauty. I saw women and girls who conducted themselves as though the road to a man’s heart runs directly through his pants (and men who would believe it), but I did not see beauty.
I saw eight young women making their first impressions to the world dressed in identical out-of-date denim miniskirts, emblazoned with a logo.
Embrace. Beauty.
I saw over a thousand people, many of whom probably paid more than a day’s wage to witness the Western phenomenon of chauvinism and vanity mixed together in a cheap soup.
Embrace. Beauty.
I thought about some of the people in a polio community I visited the other day. I thought about their sheet metal walls and their tarp roofs, and of their ragged clothing, their gnarled hands, and of the simple tools they use to construct the five dollar stoves they make from scrap metal.
Embrace. Beauty.
There is no shortage of beauty in this country, but not here, not this night. Rather, it is nestled in the vernacular, buried in the everyday, and typically obscured by a flaking veneer of poverty and drudgery. It lives in the candid moments when nobody pays attention; on the streets and in the fields, and in the daily struggle to survive. But like light through a pinhole, it is a beacon- visible to those who seek it, it summons us to compassion and illuminates our humanity.