STORIES & SONGS BY SIERRA LEONE WAR SURVIVOR SAA ANDREW

TUESDAY: *STORIES & SONGS BY SIERRA LEONE WAR SURVIVOR SAA ANDREW*

On Tuesday, May 15, at 7pm, at the UNB Art Centre, Memorial Hall, St. Thomas University student Andrew Gbongbor will tell his story of surviving Sierra Leone's civil war. Saa Andrew will sing songs he has written about the war. He will show pictures of what diamonds mean for the people of Sierra Leone and other African countries. Sierra Leone is ranked the world's poorest country by the UN Human Development Index. The Kono District has particularly high poverty levels but it has also produced billions of dollars worth of diamonds. In the past 15 years, an estimated 50,000 people in Sierra Leone, 500,000 Angolans and nearly 4 million people in the DRC have died from civil wars funded through the sale of conflict diamonds. Child and slave labour is employed in the diamond trade of many nations while the majority of artisanal diamond miners live in poverty, making less than one dollar a day. Decades of diamond mining by rich multinational companies have devastated large tracts of land, poisoned local water, and forced indigenous populations from their lands.