Games within games

The Commonwealth Games, quickly coming to a close in sports mad Melbourne, Australia, might not be on the radar of non-commonwealth countries. Though give some of the performances, sports elites everywhere will have been watching carefully.
The games have had the normal whiff of controversy, common to high level competition. It began under the cloud of sexual assault allegations against an India team manager. Doping managed to steal a few of the glory headlines, ensuring the drugs scandal is well entrenched in international competition.
The most fascinating story, for this non-sporting observer, is the defections. We are no longer in that intrigue riddled cold war mode, besides, we are talking former British colonies here, not a bunch of eastern European enclaves.

Half of Sierra Leone's athletes missing

Half of Sierra Leone's contingent of athletes is missing from the Commonwealth Games village after four more were reported absent today.
Two unnamed cyclists are the latest to disappear, having phoned the team camp last night and said they planned to stay in Australia.
Sierra Leone attache Robert Green confirmed that 11 Sierra Leone team members have been reported to police as missing.

Where is Sierra Leone? Let’s go to the CIA fact book; Western Africa, bordering the North Atlantic Ocean, between Guinea and Liberia.
The next question is why these defectors are so keen to give up their places on the starting blocks and seek to disappear into pleasant, but decidedly ‘white’ Melbourne.
Again the CIA fact book gives a political overview:
The government is slowly reestablishing its authority after the 1991 to 2002 civil war that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the displacement of more than 2 million people (about one-third of the population).. The last UN peacekeepers withdrew in December 2005, leaving full responsibility for security with domestic forces, but a new civilian UN office remains to support the government. Mounting tensions related to planned 2007 elections, deteriorating political and economic conditions in Guinea, and the tenuous security situation in neighboring Liberia may present challenges to continuing progress in Sierra Leone's stability.

Okay, that is broad brush and they don’t mention that; Sierra Leone is one of the world's poorest nations and has been torn apart by decades of civil war.
Or;
Seventy per cent of the Sierra Leone team - 21 of the total 30 - went missing during the Manchester Commonwealth Games team four years ago.

A search found little of immediate consequence, no war or coup; no famine or natural disaster. But thee was one interesting insight, an opion piece in a local paper:
The Good the bad and the ugly in Sierra Leone!
Some excerpts: What is so ugly here? We have a very pathetic economy…’
… children, as young as 12 years parade the beaches in search of men to the extent that they have gained the derogatory name of ‘Kolonkos’- a reference to their being prostitutes.
Violence of course in all facets of this society is now a fashion. The experiences gained by these boys and girls during the rebel war has transformed them into professional war-mongers, trained and skilful in perpetuating mayhem.

Well, perhaps it is no paradise, but it is difficult to see what are essentially ‘economic refugees’ gaining any sympathy from the Australian Government. They are the ones with the record of throwing real refugees to the sharks, real sharks!
It is sad that a country’s elites, sports or otherwise a so keen to abandon ship rather than help build something better. But then if we hardly even know of their existence, and leaving the development support to the likes of the World Bank, they can’t really be blamed.