Sierra Leone guest house accommodation
| country: | Sierra Leone |
| location: | Banana Island |
| price: | From US $65 per double room per night, from US $60 per single per night and from US $75 for a triple |
description
We invite you to be our guest on our spectacular island! A cosy chalet awaits you. We have no vehicles, no pollution, no noise, no crime, no begging, no trash heaps and no stress! The chalets are in traditional African style round with thatch; each room has either two double or one double/one single bed plus bamboo or wood chairs and a sofa and bed nets. All windows have screens.
There are two villages on the islands with about 900 people. The guest house is owned and operated by the Island Youth Association, a community-based organisation recognized by the Sierra Leone Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children's Affairs. Our goal is to provide an exclusive, high quality authentic experience for small groups of visitors in an environmentally-friendly manner.
We believe that the project can serve as an example of how fully participatory, job creating, ecologically sensitive, sustainable rural growth can be achieved through partnerships between local communities and interested parties abroad. Banana and Ricketts Islands have a combined population of about 900 people. The two Islands are connected by a spit of sand that is underwater at high tide. A stone bridge connects the path between the two islands' villages of Dublin and Ricketts, located on the coast facing the Western Peninsula. The islands were visited in the 17th century and perhaps earlier by Portuguese sailors and were settled in the late 18th and 19th centuries by freed slaves whose descendants make up most of the population of the islands today. We have named each room after an historic figure and have a framed one page description on each building.
rooms, food and facilities
We have three chalets, each with two rooms, containing tiled private baths with running water. Solar light and lanterns provide light in the evenings. We have cool running water from our reserve tanks. Each room has a small fan. Heat is never needed.Activities
We offer fishing from our own boat or in traditional canoes with a staff member. Our boat has life vests and an emergency cell phone - we put safety first. We also offer hiking and nature walks (see monkeys, flora etc), viewing historic slavery relics (canon, fortress walls, church ruin etc) plus volleyball, swimming, massage (weekends only).
how to find us
From Freetown International Airport one take's a ferry or helicopter to the city and then drives 90 minutes along the coast to Kent Village from where our boat will collect you. how this holiday makes a difference
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The guesthouse is owned and operated by the Island Youth Association which is registered with the Ministry of Social Welfare as a Community-Based Organisation (CBO). The BIGH has a Management Committee whose members included the elected town chief (Mrs Elizabeth Wray) other island residents and our sponsors and investors/donors(a US-based NGO,FARE).
The land is community owned. It is in the care of the Youth Association for the development of a guest house. The guest house is owned by the Youth Association with the Management Committee having control of investment decisions. As a community based tourism project the goal is that all profits will be reinvested in the project and the community. We employ 20 local people in our chalets providing necessary employment in the community. We provide staff training including sending staff to a restaurant in Freetown to learn how to wait tables etc. We also provide literacy training for all staff. We have improved drainage to protect the beaches; we want to train our staff about biodiversity, bio-hot spots, good environmental stewardship etc. and have tried to get a volunteer to the island through an ecotourism association and the British VSO program but have been unsuccessful so far. We have developed a bakery as a micro-project and have plans to develop a crafts center and tailor shop but have no funds at present. We have also approached other groups to try to get a nurse on the island (we have a health center but it has been closed for three years due to no staff) and the local primary school is getting some assistance from our backers. We have named each room after an historic figure and have a framed one page description on each building. We have developed a pamphlet about the islands history and its relationship to the history of Sierra Leone in order to inform our guests of our cultural and historic heritage. Several tourists have asked us how they can help the community more and we are happy to obtain donations from them for local projects - like topping up the nurses salary to induce her to move to the islands. |
Tourism can be good and bad for destinations & local people. We carefully screen every holiday against our criteria for responsible travel. 'Look behind the brochure' to find how each holiday makes a difference (see left). We don't claim to be perfect - there is no global accreditation - but we've led the way since 2001 and screened 1000's of holidays. We invite every traveller to write a review about their experiences and responsible tourism. This valuable feedback is sent to the people who run the holidays. We keep a very close eye on it and take off holidays that don't live up to our standards. |