Luca Ferrari: Kissy Mental Home

Kissy Mental Home is the only Psychiatric hospital in Sierra Leone. This “Purgatorio” is just outside Freetown, in Kissy. The people who are held here, have no support, shunned by their families as well as the African society.
The patients have no proper therapy, the most “aggressive” are in chains; the only treatment they get is some very strong medications such as Largactil, Chloroprozine and Haldol, to keep them quiet.
They have a piece of bread, some rice and two litres of water per day.

Joseph C. Fawundu
(picture 15)

I am a teacher, a lecturer in a secondary school; I have a Master in Biochemistry at the University of New Jersey. I worked in a school in Bo, near Kono. My psychiatric problem is a psychosis due to drug abuse.
I got a MA Magna cum laude and I applied for a scholarship for a PHD at Harvard. I passed the interview but during that time I used to take drugs.
Those things happened, you cannot control that, you don’t plan these things.
Once I destroyed the entire flat I had in Bronx, and then they brought me to the medical centre, the doctor said I was mad. So, my uncle decided to send me back to Sierra Leone for a traditional African therapy. I didn’t want to do that; I wanted to have a normal therapy, in a serious hospital.
This is the only psychiatric hospital of Sierra Leone; I arrived here in 1985.
During the war Msf (Médecins Sans Frontières) Holland gave us medicines.
Since ‘85, I have not been always here, for few periods I went back to Bo, and then back here then free again. I was in Bo when the war started.
Now I am fine, even if I am still taking medications, I don’t want to move from here because I haven’t anything left, the rebels destroyed everything in Bo, I don’t have an accommodation I don’t have a place to stay.
I lost the entire family, my mother, the only one left, died on 2000, my uncle is dead, I just have a brother but he lives in the USA.
But now I feel better and I can read, I’m happy now.
s and the illiteracy rate affects more than the 80% of its population.