On Easter Monday Freetown is, I'm told, usually heaving. Especially the beach. Today it was not as busy as might be expected, presumably because of the forthcoming 50th anniversary celebrations stealing Easter Monday's thunder.
Typical Easter Monday activities apparently typically involve going to the beach in your fine clothes and wandering photographers will take pictures of you. You then take the photographer's card and order the photos to be sent to you for a charge.
People in Freetown are happy to enjoy Easter Monday regardless of their religion. I don't know what it's like in the more Muslim-oriented provinces.
In fact in general people seem to have a much more liberal attitude to religion in Sierra Leone. Locals state this with pride, and it seems to be true. For example it seem to be fairly common for a Muslim and a Christian to marry.
I think I've had a moderately in-depth conversation with about four people in Sierra Leone about their religion, and each of them has changed between being a Muslim and Christian at least once in their life.
Valid reasons for changing seem to include
- When I was a child I moved in with a family who were Muslim, so I converted.
- It's easier to get a job as a teacher in Freetown if you're Christian, so I converted.
- The mosque was closer to my house than the church, so I converted.
This free and easy willingness to change religion seems to treated here as the natural consequence of a society in which there are no religious tensions. Not like the attitude back home, where I imagine that some would judge this as demonstrating a lack of genuine faith.
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