Successful recent visit to Bo – November 2024
Four members of OWL UK, Paul Atkins, Chris King, Anthony Wood and Phil Clarke, have returned from a successful visit to Bo.
The visit had several purposes; to renew old friendships and make new ones, to work alongside the Youth Group and meet with the Bo OWL Committee, to continue to support the urban planning work and to reach out to other partners and contacts in Bo and more widely.
A key focus was to understand more of the work being done by the Youth Group to invest in, and refresh, the life of the OWL Centre. Part of the money raised through the 2023 pantomime in Leamington Spa was used to support initiatives in the OWL Centre, many of which are being led by the Youth Group. See the other news article for more about this work.

The urban planning support was building on foundations laid over several years with Bo City & District Councils. OWL, together with the Prince’s (now the King’s) Foundation has been working with both councils on this project since 2017, and Bo was used as a trial location for developing a “rapid planning toolkit” by the Prince’s Foundation in 2020. Since then, local elections in Bo have brought in new councillors to both councils. The visit was a chance to meet the new councillors and reaffirm the relevance of the toolkit. We visited a demonstration site from the 2020 trial and worked with the City Council to lead a workshop to explore new opportunities to apply the toolkit as Bo continues to grow.

In this we worked closely with Haja Lukay, the Development Planning Officer for Bo City Council. Since we last met Haja in 2020, she has not only been championing the toolkit in Bo but has also spent two years in China where she was funded to complete a master’s degree in urban planning. (She is now one of very few qualified urban planners in the whole of Sierra Leone.) She only completed this and retuned to Bo in summer 2024 and has been an important contact and much valued friend of OWL in taking this work forward.

The meetings with the Bo City & District Councils had a wider purpose of renewing our links with key partners and friends and exploring new opportunities for OWL. We also visited the District Medical Officer at Bo Government Hospital, Mohammed Conti and the St Paul’s School for the Blind, the Assistant Inspector General of Police in Bo, Bo Children’s Hospital, and several of our linked schools. In Freetown we also had a rare opportunity to meet the Tamba Lamina, the Minister for Local Government & Rural Development, and also met Josephine Gauld, the recently appointed UK High Commissioner to Sierra Leone. At all these meetings we were warmly welcomed and were able to develop some fresh ideas and connections.

Alongside all these meetings and workshops, we were also able to visit the beautiful Tiwai Island for a night. Tiwai lies in southern Sierra Leone, about 90 miles south of Bo. A small island lying in the middle of the Moa River, it has been designated as a nature reserve and protected by the government. It is famous for its (sadly very elusive!) pygmy hippos but also for its monkeys and abundant bird life. A night spent in the forest in eco lodges as part of a low-impact eco-tourism initiative, and a fascinating forest walk with a local guide, provided a perfect antidote to the bustle and noise of Bo and Freetown.
Most importantly, the visit was about renewing and establishing friendships, and we were overwhelmed by the welcome we received from out friends in Bo. From a wild and noisy “cultural” welcome when we arrived (complete with musicians, dancers and a “Sierra Leonean devil”) to a dinner and party when we left a week later, we were treated both as honoured guests and also as old friends.
It was good to be back in Bo.