🇸🇱 Sierra Leone National Museum | Witness to Resilience

🌳 The Fallen Cotton Tree • Once Freetown’s 500-year-old icon, toppled by storms in May 2023 • Now immortalized on 10,000 Leone banknotes—its broken branches a metaphor for colonial scars • Site of slave auctions: Where humans were inspected like livestock under its shade ⛓️ 🏛️ Museum Truths • Colonial wounds: 500+ years of exploitation (170 under British rule) • Resource curse: Pink diamond wars (Blood Diamond wasn’t just Hollywood) → decade-long civil war • Flickering hope: Now a UN peacekeeper & African mediator 💎 Paradox of Plenty "Wealth beneath, poverty above": • Gold/river sands glitter while 70% live on <$2/day • China-built roads weave past bullet-pocked buildings #SierraLeoneRising #ColonialGhosts