China's Sierre Leone sea cucumber trade receives mixed reviews
CHINA's soaring demand for medicinal "sea cucumbers", fleshy, sausage-shaped bottom feeders, has brought Chinese traders to West Africa's Sierre Leone to exploit the resource for which locals had little use.
As most sea cucumbers have been fished out elsewhere, locals have found that Chinese promises of wealth were illusory and their experience with the trade has received mixed reviews.
Chinese traders based in Tombo village refused to talk to Reuters about the locals' complaints, as they work to supply the global demand for 10,000 tonnes of sea cucumbers a year.
But Mohamed Bangura, who works for one of them said the Chinese were breaking no law. While he conceded local expectations had not been met, he said the region was better off, and his company had supplied a generator to Tombo village.
Other locals find sea cucumber diving lucrative compared to fishing, which has been hard hit by illegal and unregulated foreign trawlers.
Abu Bakar, who is in his 20s, has been diving since the beginning of the cucumber windfall. Selling his catch to Chinese buyers enabled him to invest in land on the coast to the south of the capital, Freetown.
"We thank God the sea cucumber has pushed us forward," he said.
Diving must take place in the dark, when the slug-like echinoderms emerge from their daytime resting places.
One trip yielded just two sea cucumbers, which were hastily boiled and salted to be stored until there were enough to sell to his Chinese buyers and Sierra Leonean middlemen.
Moses Taylor, a former village chief known locally as Lord Moe, recalled the Chinese promises with bitterness.
"They said they would build water pumps in the street, they said they would build street lights. They said they would build community centres. But they did nothing for us."
"They just used us and dumped us like rubbish," said Abu Bakar Kanu, a cucumber diver smoking marijuana with friends down the street.
Sierra Leone's government says conditions are generally improving in the country, pointing to a set of impressive economic indicators. The economy grew 15.2 per cent in 2012 on the back of iron ore. Projections for 2014 are not far below that, at 14 per cent, according to the World Bank.
China has been a big part of that boom, with trade predicted to hit $2 billion this year, said Reuters, adding that life expectancy is 48 and the country ranks 177th out of 187 countries on the human development index.
