You are walking through the bustling centre of Bo, Sierra Leone’s third largest city.
Following the crowd, you turn off the main road onto a narrower thoroughfare and find yourself in an open-air market. Shelters constructed from timber and sheet-metal roofing line each side of the narrow, unpaved walkway. A foul smell hits your nose. The source? A young woman is raising an axe over the carcass of a duiker, a type of small antelope, laid out on a butcher’s block at the edge of the pathway.
As you pass by, you are sprayed with the animal’s fluids. Others near you look down to inspect their clothes, but do not react to what appears to be a regular and expected inconvenience.
