Questions curious friends kept on asking me during my first stay in Sierra Leone, were the blood diamonds questions or did the war end?, mostly triggered by one blockbuster movie which put the war in Sierra Leone on the spot. Many were surprised that the war had come to an end, some mocked me when I said that Sierra Leone had become a safe country for foreign visitors. We need people to know that Sierra Leone is a destination that is safe — we can read on the Bradt’s website, a British publisher of travel guides known for venturing into destinations others overlook. And this is so true. The civil war that ravaged Sierra Leone for more than a decade ended twenty years ago.

There are no more blood diamonds, but the country is still healing from its post-war wounds, struggling with systemic corruption and facing many environmental threats. In his book Chasing the Devil, Tim Butcher wrote: For those who like tidy categorisations, Sierra Leone is a problem. More than a decade after his book was published, I moved to Sierra Leone, and I keep nodding along to his statement, still trying to understand, or — at least — grasp the idea of Salone’s intricate history and politics or its development challenges: poor access to electricity and water, uncontrolled rural to urban migration or deforestation, to name a few.

Living in Sierra Salone can be challenging even if you don’t mind the heat, the humidity and the constant cacophony of screams, honking, and roaring engines. But a week was enough, and I’ve found myself under Mama Salone’s spell, as Sierra Leone is affectionately named, totally and utterly charmed: by her cultural richness —and despite all the hurdles— her vibrant and joyful spirit, by Salone’s hospitable people who made me feel welcome. My white skin never passed unnoticed, though, I could never be invisible and just watch.

I now see Sierra Leone as one of the most underestimated and unexpected destinations in Africa. My way of describing her, and especially Freetown, may be romanticized impressions — but I have warned you that I’m under Mama Salone’s spell.

In Freetown, both natural and manmade beauties keep striking me all the time: when sitting in a kekeh, local name for a tuk-tuk, and slipping down the hilly roads falling into the Atlantic; or when twisting and turning in the labyrinths of the wooden Creole houses, oblivious to the passage of time; or when catching the eyes of the hawkers cutting cassava leaves on the roadside stalls at the Congo market; and during the harmattan, when the sandy wind from the void of the Sahara envelops the coast in the arcane dust and turns my photography plans into wishful thinking.

Sierra Leone is known for its religious tolerance. During ceremonies and public events, I admired this local religious coexistence, where a priest’s amen and an imam’s bismillah resonated together in one prayer. And if I had only one prayer to every god that humanity worships, I would ask for the healing of the wounds and igniting of the human spirit that I admire in Sierra Leone, because I don’t want to doubt that the future can be any different than better.

So no more blood diamonds, but Sierra Leone through a colourful lens of an outsider.