An international team lands in Freetown with a plan to reach communities upcountry. A local partner has set up the meetings, chosen the spokespeople and lined up the beneficiaries. Everyone is welcoming. The trip goes smoothly.

And too often, what the team has seen is not the true picture. It is a curated version of it. The “community voices” may be someone’s relatives. The experts may be the people with the best connections, not the best knowledge. When that curated picture is treated as the whole, the program is built on a narrative someone else chose.

The biggest mistake I see is not a lack of goodwill. It is that teams, eager to get the work done, do not question enough of what has been set up for them, and do not ask about the power, gender and cultural dynamics behind it. Here is what I have learned from working in every district in Sierra Leone but one about doing it better.

Freetown is not Sierra Leone

Freetown is cosmopolitan. You can meet people from every corner of the country there. But it does not represent the provinces in any way: not geographically, not in population density, not in how life is lived.

Language is the clearest example. Because Krio is our lingua franca, outsiders assume everyone upcountry is comfortable in it. Most people understand Krio, but for many it is not their mother tongue. Ask them to speak Krio and you limit what they can tell you. Their own languages are richer and fuller, with words and expressions for things they simply cannot say in Krio, and certainly not in English.

So when we interview people in the field, we may ask the question in Krio, but we let them answer in their own language. We bring an interpreter or, for languages we will not find easily back in Freetown, ask a native speaker in the community to translate on the spot. For video, we have it translated into English and subtitled afterwards.

Their own words matter most. When I developed a communications strategy for Namati, which provides community paralegals and helps communities defend their land rights, it was clear that no one can describe what happens when a mining company takes a community’s land and pollutes its water better than the people who live there. The law matters in court. In telling the story, nothing beats their voices.

Language matters in the capital too. Many people in Freetown and other urban centres do not understand English well. Speak to them only in English and they hear exclusion: a conversation they are being kept out of. Even the most educated Sierra Leonean wants to hear Krio. In my own content, the videos I make in Krio get more connection and more engagement than anything I do in English.

A welcome is not a yes

What strikes me most upcountry is how readily people gather and give you an audience. It is almost customary: whether people agree with you or not, a stranger who comes is hosted and heard.

Outsiders often mistake that hospitality for permission, or for support. I have sat in meetings where Addax Bioenergy, which wanted to grow sugarcane, believed it had consulted the surrounding communities. Some of those communities felt they had never been consulted at all. They had been to meetings. They had been told what was going to happen. Informing a community and consulting it are not the same thing, and people in rural communities know the difference very well. Being told “we are doing X” is not consent.

Treat the welcome as the beginning of a conversation, not the end of one. Come back. Ask what people think, and show how their answers changed the plan.

Who speaks for a community

Sierra Leone’s land laws have changed. Communities now set up local committees that oversee land leasing, and those committees must include a set number of women and young people. That is real progress toward more inclusive decisions.

Even so, not everyone has a voice. The women’s leader speaks. The paramount chief speaks. Many others are spoken for. That changes more the further you go into the provinces. The individualistic idea of democracy, one person and one voice, does not always apply. In many places a community appoints one trusted person to speak for the whole, and decisions are made by consensus.

The point is not to fight that. It is to recognize how it works, plan for it, and still look for the people who are not in the room.

The real gatekeepers, and how to approach them

The right gatekeeper depends on the issue. For matters seen as women’s issues, you go to the Mammy Queen or the women’s leader. In a market, there is a market woman who leads. In a chiefdom, it is the paramount chief.

When I went to Kabala in Koinadugu, someone native to the town took us to the paramount chief’s house. We explained why we had come. He gave us his blessing and his support, and we did not have to give him anything.

People think money opens doors upcountry. It rarely matters as much as respect. Sierra Leoneans value being spoken to properly and having their role acknowledged: “I have come for this. I know who you are, and I am looking to you for support and guidance, because if anyone knows this place, it is you.” That reverence works the same with a chief, a religious leader or a women’s group, and it goes a long way.

The first call to make

In any community, start with the leaders. In a town, that means the city or district council. In a village, it is the town chief or headman. Ask anyone who the chief or the women’s leader is, and they will take you there.

For an international organization, there is a step before that. Touch base with the ministry, department or agency that covers your work in Freetown. You do not need permission from central government to work in the provinces. But introducing yourself, explaining what you are there to do and learning the government’s priorities will help you in the field. Skip it, and officials may feel you went over their heads.

Which channels reach beyond the capital

Radio has the widest reach in Sierra Leone, but it has limits. Most stations, community radio included, cover the urban centres, Bo, Kenema and Makeni, and perhaps 5 to 10 miles beyond. In the last-mile communities I have worked in, for Namati in Bombali and Moyamba and for Schools for Salone, the signal might reach the edge of the village, at the edge of the forest, and go no further. Beyond that, you are on your own.

So in remote areas, community meetings come first. You go in person, into the bush if that is where people live. Radio comes second. These are not alternatives. Think of them as concentric circles: each reaches a different group, some overlap, and together they make sure every household is touched by at least one, or knows someone who was.

If you are setting up locally

In 2021 I wrote a series on doing business in Sierra Leone. Five years later, much of it still holds. There is still a gap between what candidates’ CVs say and what they can do. So we hire with skills and personality tests, and we start new staff on three- to six-month contracts before bringing them fully on board. By the three- to six-month mark you usually know who will grow into the role.

Work culture has not changed much either. How clients’ teams communicate with us and take part in the work tells me that. Plan for it, rather than assuming your headquarters’ way of working will travel.

Procurement is part of doing business here too. Some tenders seem to have a favourite before they are advertised, and many requests for proposals end without a reply. That is no reason to stop bidding. You have to do them. Just don’t place too much weight on any one bid, and never neglect the work you already have to finish one, because the chances of winning are often slim.

Go further than the capital

The communities beyond Freetown are open, hospitable and ready to talk. That is exactly why they deserve better than a curated tour and a meeting that gets mistaken for consent. Go in with respect, listen in their languages, and let the people closest to the problem shape the plan.