I’m gonna say this with my chest: the most famous Sierra Leonean is Leonardo DiCaprio, closely followed by Idris Elba.
Too often when I declare that I hail from this tiny country on the West Coast of Africa I am met with the predictable question: ‘Have you watched Blood Diamond? That Leonardo film?’
The one where he’s sporting a really terrible faux South African accent.
There are only so many times I can begrudgingly answer with a ‘yes’; and shake my shoulders to Kanye’s ‘Diamonds from Sierra Leone’, lamenting that this is all people know. There are only so many times I can say ‘yeah but...’ when someone hears the word Ebola, and the word Sierra Leone quickly follows.