The world’s poorest country

Only 3,000 miles separate the UK from Sierra Leone in West Africa, but the two countries’ experiences of Christmas Day are worlds apart.

The ongoing effects of the Credit Crunch means many families in Britain will once again tighten their purse strings this Christmas. But it holds little hardship in comparison to the average child’s festivities in Sierra Leone – the world’s poorest country. The hangover from the country’s civil war between 1990 and 2000 has crippled society.

Against a jungle backdrop in the village of Samiaya, northern Sierra Leone, children will celebrate Christmas with a rare day off from the Palm Tree plantations; eat a meal of rice and peanuts; and have an afternoon of dancing in straw-roofed huts. It’s a big difference from many British children’s experience of receiving the latest must-have presents, a roast turkey dinner and kicking back to an afternoon in front of the TV.

Foday & Mabinty’s stories

Foday Kamara is 14 years old and lives in Samiaya. His village has no electricity, gas or water and, following his parents’ death from cholera in 2005, he’s been robbed of a proper family Christmas for most of his childhood.

Living with his brother and sister in his granddad’s tiny mud hut, he shares a sheet of rusty corrugated roofing for a bed. Stockings will be absent at the foot of it on Christmas Eve.

Foday said: “Christmas Day is the one day of the year I won’t work on the plantations. I’ll get up at 8am, wash myself in the river two miles away, then walk to the village.”

Foday is aware of Santa Claus, Christmas trees and the tradition of giving gifts but, in his village, the only decorations are dried Palm branches and the only gifts are that of life and surviving another year.

Foday said: “After our special dinner of jollof rice and ground peanuts, we visit family and dance all night long.”

Four mud huts up from Foday lives Mabinty. Aged 12, she lives with her twin sister, Fartu, and their 70 year-old disabled grandmother, Yamadame. Mabinty’s father died of a hernia in 2005, aged 35. Her mother is feared dead after fleeing to the neighbouring country of Guinea.

Yamadame has lived much longer than Sierra Leone’s average life expectancy for women – 44 – but ill-health means she may not see another Christmas.

Mabinty said: “The charity Hope and Homes For Children has paid for our schooling, clothes and helped us to grow maize so we can be independent.

“It’s also helped us to repair our home so we can spend Christmas with grandmother. The thing I most look forward to about Christmas is dancing. I hope grandmother is here next Christmas to watch us dance.”

A world away

Three thousand miles away in Frome, Somerset, 15-year-old Thomas Cuff expects nothing less than a gift-packed Christmas Day with his family. The lottery of life means Thomas was fortunate enough to be born in the UK where, despite living in the middle of a recession, he’s able to enjoy a Christmas Day of the likes Foday and Mabinty can only dream of.

Thomas revealed: “This year I want an iPod, although mum says we won’t get as many other presents as usual because times are tough. We’ll have a massive turkey with all the trimmings on Christmas Day, but I’m not spoilt compared to some of my friends.”

Shoppers in the UK will spend £5 billion on presents the weekend before Christmas – that’s nearly three times the annual income of Sierra Leone.