ABSTRACT

The forest environment, in contrast, although illegible to the uninitiated, continues to be a resonant and living memoryscape for those able to discern its secrets. A more suitable metaphor might therefore be that of the palimpsest, in which the 'memory' of prior memory practices is retained and can even dominate. The interface between Sierra Leone's mnemonic worlds is manifest materially and spatially at the very centre of Freetown in the juxtaposition of the National Museum of Sierra Leone and one of the city's most famous landmarks, the 'Cotton Tree'. Given the place of the cotton tree in both urban and rural mnemonic consciousness, one is likely not surprised that it has been incorporated into Sierra Leone's national iconography. The sites of memory are sites of mediation. Not only are they the material mediators through which coexistent regimes of memory are brought into relation with one another, and through which multiple meanings of war and peace in Sierra Leone are shaped.