Nancy Peddle lived next door to Sierra Leone’s Minister of Defense, whose house was fired on for hours during the bloody coup of 1996.
Peddle, who still lives in the country and runs a micro-grant program called the LemonAid Fund, writes in response to my questions while the electricity is running. Which, of course, is only part of the time.
Ten years earlier, Peddle was evacuated from the country while others she’d gotten to know and love had to stay and endure the bloodshed. She tells a story of her friend, Frances, whose house was burned to the ground. She and her daughter were chased into the bush, where they hid for three days.
Frances recalled this memory to Peddle while they watched a bootleg copy of Blood Diamond—the Hollywood blockbuster starring Leonardo DiCaprio that takes place in Sierra Leone during the coup. They laughed, commiserated, and pointed out some of the discrepancies between the movie and real life.
For Peddle, witnessing the coup, and especially having to leave behind those who were not fortunate enough to be evacuated, cemented her dream of making a difference in the lives of people who have been affected by war and other extreme difficulties. At the time, she’d been writing her dissertation on the relationship between forgiveness and healing trauma in refugees of war. But she wanted more. She wanted to give them hope.
Hope in the face of this: Sierra Leone has been ranked one of the six poorest nations in the world for more than twenty years; its infant and child mortality rate is the highest in the world; and beyond the physical remnants of war, the psyche of the country’s children was ravaged by widespread rape, sexual abuse, and other violence.
Yet Peddle describes Sierra Leone as a beautiful country “with some of the most pristine beaches I have ever seen, with none of the Western glitter.” She writes of unspoiled forests and the welcoming of an incredibly friendly population. She describes rebuilt buildings with fresh coats of paint, vocational schools that are helping a large group of young adults gain a means to support themselves, and children who are “wide-eyed and full of hope.”
“I hope that in ten years Sierra Leone will more than meet the challenges of increased prosperity, health and education it has its sights on,” Peddle writes. Peddle is “exceedingly optimistic” that Sierra Leone will begin to feed its population by harnessing its extensive natural resources. She said such prosperity requires a keen focus on the agriculture and fishing industries.
On the political front, she hopes the 2007 elections will help address the deep poverty that plagues Sierra Leone, and that the continued recruitment of honest officials and a more politically active population will improve the current situation. Peddle notes that people are also infused with hope because of money and attention coming from the World Bank, International Nongovernmental Organizations, the European Union and the United States. The United States recently completed a new multi-million dollar embassy in Sierra Leone.
Peddle’s tie to the country is also intensely personal. In 2004, five years after the LemonAid Fund was launched (Peddle had been living elsewhere), she met Umberto Romano, an Italian who is the administrative manager for a large road project linking Sierra Leone with neighboring country, Guinea. She was in town to see the accomplishments the Fund had made, and met Romano at a hotel where they were both staying. Now she lives in Sierra Leone travels to Italy a few times a year.
“I can give my full attention to fulfilling my dream of making a difference in more and more people’s lives because of my husband’s incredibly support,” she writes. Peddle continues to concentrate on the LemonAid Fund, which is indeed helping people make lemonade from lemons. Since 1999, a new preschool has been built, the LemonAid Fund Village is nearly completed, its resource center has received 28,000 pounds of books, and many people are getting help to rebuild their lives in the wake of devastating circumstances.
