Climate Change and Ecocide in Sierra Leone: Representations in Aminatta Forna’s Ancestor Stones and The Memory of Love

Abstract

War has been instrumental in destroying land and forests and thus is a major contributor to climate change. Degradation due to war has been especially significant in Africa. The African continent, once green, is now almost denuded of its rich forests and pillaged of its precious natural resources due to the brutality of colonisation and more recent postcolonial civil wars. In Sierra Leone the civil war continued for over eleven years from 1991 to 2002 and wrought havoc on the land and forests. Thus the anxiety and trauma suffered by the people not only includes the more visible aspects of human brutality, but also the long lasting effects of ecocide which relate to climate change. Underlying narratives that address traumatic ecological disasters is a sense of anxiety and depression resulting from the existential threat of climate change. This paper demonstrates how narratives can metaphorically represent both ecocide and climate change and argues that such stories help people in tackling the real life stresses of anxiety and trauma. To establish the argument this paper has drawn on scientific and sociological data and placed these vis-à-vis narrative episodes in Aminatta Forna’s novels Ancestor Stones (2006) and The Memory of Love (2010). In these novels Forna depicts the ecological crisis that colonisation and civil war have wrought on Sierra Leone. The anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder – of war and ecocide – suffered by the fictional Sierra Leonean characters are explained through Cathy Caruth’s trauma theory.