Rising sea levels threaten Sierra Leone's islands

Hassan Kargbo is up to his knees in water. Over the past five years, the 35-year-old fisherman has witnessed the sea slowly but steadily flooding the island of Nyangai. The island is part of the Turtle Islands archipelago, a group of islands in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the West African state of Sierra Leone.

"My house used to be where we are now. We had a big soccer pitch," says Kargbo. A soccer goal, nailed together from wooden slats, is the only remnant that can still be seen. "The water destroyed everything". Kargbo has already had to rebuild his house twice. But now the sea is at the door again. "Living on this island is stressful," he says.

Residents of Nyangai unload food from a traditional boat. According to the Sierra Leone National Disaster Management Authority and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, an international organization that monitors internal displacement, more than two million people living along the coasts of Sierra Leone are threatened by rising sea levels.

Women collect and smoke dried fish on the sandy ground. However, the soil here is salty and there is also a lack of clean drinking water due to the high salt content. The island has no sewers, no electricity and no health posts or hospitals. The inhabitants use the beach as an open-air washroom.

Ten years ago, Nyangai still had a thousand inhabitants. Although there is no official census, the community leaders estimate that fewer than 300 people remain. Many have already left the island or plan to flee in the future. The cell phone charging station has also closed down.

This mosque was not spared by rising sea levels either. It is located on the small island of Plantain, named after the English word for plantain. The small island is also located off the coast of Sierra Leone, but further north. It is not one of the turtle islands. An islander stands in front of the church, which was destroyed by floods, and looks out to sea.

Plantain Island is just 1.3 kilometers long and around 430 meters wide. Traces of its dark past are still visible today: the British slave trader John Newton built a house here and barracks for the slave trade on the island in the 18th century.

Joseph Rahall, an environmental expert from Sierra Leone, gives the turtle islands and Plantain Island 10 to 15 years before it's gone. "The entire archipelago will disappear. It's only a matter of time," he says. “If the sea takes over, everything will vanish, including the fishing culture.”