The number

In every country, there’s a number. It’s a number journalists memorize and repeat so often that it’s hard to remember it’s a real number. In Uganda, the number was two million displaced at the height of the conflict with the Lord’s Resistance Army. In Liberia, the number is 250,000 dead during fourteen years of civil war.

I just learned the number for Sierra Leone: it’s tens of thousands dead, one third of the population of six million displaced by war.

I don’t remember the exact moment when I learned the number for Uganda. I also don’t remember the moment I learned Liberia’s number, since I read about the country long before I came here.

But just yesterday, I had to learn Sierra Leone’s number. I looked it up, because ten days in Freetown didn’t teach me that number.

The number two.