EPISODE ONE – THE ISLAND

This island may be the smallest inhabited island in the world. And it’s still getting smaller.

An escape from wars on the mainland, from disease, from poverty, from the onslaught of the modern consumerist world, and from family and personal relationships, the island, and surrounding archipelago have offered many people safe haven over the centuries.

Kondisie, a young man in his early twenties, have spent his entire life on the island.

Slowly, but surely, the island is disappearing…

COMING SOON

EPISODE TWO – THERE IS NO LIFE WITHOUT WATER

You feel a little thirsty, so you reach for the glass of water beside you, or walk a few metres to the nearest tap, raise a glass to your lips, and your thirst is quenched.

Where do you get drinking water when your whole island is made from sand? When there isn’t even a well for drinking water, what do you do?

COMING SOON

EPISODE THREE – WHY LIVE HERE, WHY LIVE ANYWHERE?

From mainland Sierra Leone, it’s at least fifty kilometres as the crow flies, or a day’s journey in a modern boat. The island first appeared on a map in 1843, but long before that people migrated to live in this region.

What is it about this place that has made it feel like home? What makes the people living there so adamant that they do not want to leave?

COMING SOON

Main Street Dissapearing

In 2015, The Island was separated into two distinct parts, the land in the middle covered by water when the tide is high. But what happens when your main street is simply no longer there? How did it affect the community living on the island, and what of the animals there?

COMING SOON

EPISODE FIVE – HEALTH IS WEALTH (PART ONE)

The utterly agonising, writhing screams of a man who’s been stung on the foot by a stingray echo around the island – the community temporarily silenced – but there’s no doctor or nurse in sight, and definitely no chance of an air ambulance. Accidents, illnesses, ‘run-belly’ and that most life threatening yet natural bodily function – childbirth – are plentiful here.

COMING SOON

EPISODE SIX – TO BE AN ISLAND CHILD

Running along the beach, rolling in the sand, and plunging into the water, it sounds like a fantasy childhood. But life is hard here too, and the work is plenty. School times change with the shifting tides, boys go out to fish from as young as five.

For Silimbule, the island is the only single place in the world that he knows – never having seen a car, or a road, or electrical lights.

COMING SOON

EPISODE FIVE – HEALTH IS WEALTH (PART ONE)

The utterly agonising, writhing screams of a man who’s been stung on the foot by a stingray echo around the island – the community temporarily silenced – but there’s no doctor or nurse in sight, and definitely no chance of an air ambulance. Accidents, illnesses, ‘run-belly’ and that most life threatening yet natural bodily function – childbirth – are plentiful here.

COMING SOON

EPISODE EIGHT – THE BEGINNING OF THE END

White scientists came to the island decades ago telling people on the island that when the water level rose above a pole they secured in the sea that they would need to leave.

Tommy Nyuma says that the pole has long since disappeared, women are still having children, and those children are growing up and having their own children.

There is no doubt that the island is getting smaller, what do people on the island think is causing it?

COMING SOON

EPISODE SEVEN – LOVE ISLAND

Lucy says that she didn’t mind her husband having girlfriends, but it was the moment when he married a second wife, and moved her to their home that broke her heart. Samobi says as a fisherman, the work is simply too much for one woman. Solomon says that to be a man on this island, you have to have your own boat, and your own net. Sallieu says that he’s married to two and a half women.

What does love look like on one of the smallest islands in the world?

COMING SOON