After civil war, Sierra Leone is rebranded as a holiday paradise

This is an article from the Independent which was forwarded to me. Baby steps...

Published: 20 January 2006

Thirty years after Sierra Leone's beaches first featured in a television advert that linked chocolate coconut bars with the search for paradise, the country is set for a tourist revival.
For the people of Sierra Leone, who have endured a brutal 11-year civil war and raging poverty that once made it the poorest place on earth, the arrival of holidaymakers cannot come soon enough.

London-based travel companies are now marketing the former British colony as an adventure holiday destination as well as the setting for off-season sun and surf vacations to compete with the Canary Islands. Kevin McPhillips Travel claims Freetown is growing in popularity as a place for groups of "sophisticated adventure travellers", while Sierra Leone Holidays promises customers that they will be drinking palm fruit cocktails beside the "kitchen salt" beaches of the Atlantic.

Three years ago it seemed unthinkable that Sierra Leone would ever be able to move on from its troubled past. In the fighting, some of the most brutal witnessed in Africa, thousands of children had arms or legs amputated by rebel soldiers trying to terrorise the local population.
But the UN peace mission, which at one time numbered 17,500 soldiers, has been universally recognised as one of Africa's success stories.

Last month the final contingent of peacekeepers flew out of Freetown, handing over responsibility for internal security to the newly trained army and police.

At the same time some of the more enterprising Sierra Leoneans have begun to fill the vacuum by offering the kind of beach service familiar to holidaymakers who frequent more established Caribbean resorts.

During the war the men of Freetown earned valuable dollars working with Western journalists and photographers who needed "fixers" to get them close to the fighting.

On Lakka beach, just four miles from the city centre and a popular location with NGO staff, a group of young men have formed a collective to run restaurants and organise fishing trips for the visiting Europeans.

There are no menus and diners are simply asked to place their orders on the basis of recommended dishes of the day. Fresh lobster and barracuda, served on beds of rice, are local favourites. The waiters simply disappear into the palm tree forests that fringe the beaches and reappear half an hour later carrying plates stacked high with food.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article339841.ece