3/2/2024 0 Comments Inside skull and bones tombOriginally from the diamond-mining region of eastern Sierra Leone, Kabbah’s parents fled to Freetown 10 years ago at the height of the 11-year civil war that turned this once-prosperous West African country into hell on earth. The 24-year-old is a long-serving member of Skull and Bones, who are also known as the Friends of the Dead. Stoned, drunk, and happy for some company, he’d rescued me from the heat of the Freetown sun and led me to a shady patch behind a disintegrating tomb where some of his friends live. I had met Kabbah two days before this grisly encounter. “You see, there’s the head,” says Kabbah, pointing at the corpse. Still, I am able to make out the splintered casket below me and the decaying body inside it. It is dusk and the sky has been threatening an outburst for hours, crackling, whistling, and rumbling down at us. The boy, whose name is Alich Kabbah, kneels on the tombstone and, bending over, drops his head deeper into the open hole. Broken from years of neglect, this grave is one of many in Freetown’s Ascension Town Cemetery that has crumbled, reuniting the long dead with the still living. The rock easily gives way under his strength. He points inside and says, “Look, do you see the head?” I can’t, so he pulls the cracked gravestone farther from its resting place. He’s a member of a crew of kids who call themselves Skull and Bones. I’m bending over an open grave in Sierra Leone and trying not to fall in. Alich Kabbah leans into an open grave in the Ascension Town Cemetery.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |