Many have begun to embark on the Temple Run, passing through Agadez in Niger headed towards Libya to board new boats towards Europe. They still serve as metaphors for how young men like Junior think about citizenship, but rather than asserting expectations, they speak of failures and disappointment.
#Temple run 3 real life free#
So now the boats have a different meaning, they are not distant memories used to claim the rights of free citizens, but they are expressions of a loss of faith, for some, that things can change in Sierra Leone. The economy crashed during the epidemic, and the post-war gains in economic growth all but disappeared. He collapsed in the streets and everyone ran away from him scared of contracting Ebola, leaving him alone to drag himself to the hospital and be put in isolation before his tests showed positive only for malaria. Some volunteered to join the response as contact tracers and burial team members. Junior and his friends kept hustling in Freetown, in the streets near Connaught Hospital, where at the height of the epidemic bodies were being dumped in the streets because there was no capacity to admit patients. The struggle was real, but hopes were high then. Through these slogans, and affirmations of citizenship, young people expressed their hopes and expectations of the government’s ability to deliver development after a 10-year civil war. “We are Sierra Leoneans, not slaves!” young Freetonians shouted in 2013, when an urban beautification project threatened to shut down the informal livelihoods, such as commercial motorbike riding, that allow most young people to survive in the city. The collective memory of the Atlantic slave trade off the shores of the Upper Guinea Coast to which Junior alluded when talking about boats, was once used to talk about rights.
#Temple run 3 real life code#
For young people in Freetown, Temple Run has become code for the perilous journey that an increasing number of young Sierra Leoneans are making to Europe via Libya.
In the addictive mega-hit mobile phone game, Temple Run, “you have to run for your life to escape the Evil Demon Monkeys nipping at your heels.” This involves jumping walls of fire, swimming through treacherous waters and flying across collapsing bridges. “That’s why everyone wants to go on a Temple Run”, he adds – this time everyone nods knowingly. He takes another sip of his Sprite and kicks up the dust on the street where we are sitting in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Now we’d get on gladly, at least it would mean work.” Junior’s bleak jokes are not making anyone laugh. “Back then, when the boats came, people used to run.
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