Freetown, Sierra Leone, West Africa

Roland Nair is invited by Michael Adriko to meet him in Freetown. The two old friends and partners had made a lot of money during the civil war in Sierra Leone seven years before. When Roland arrives in Freetown he notices at the airport is “still a shambles.” He remarks at the heat that hits him in the face when he steps from the air-conditioned plane out onto the steam heat of West Africa.

As Roland crosses the bay on a ferry he watches as the mass of crumbling buildings that represents Freetown’s skyline comes into view. Although he was familiar with the city, the fog of memory made him forget the poverty and blighted condition of the city. He remarks that all around the declining buildings is a “multitude of shadows and muddy rags trudging God knows where, hunched forward over their...