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    Break Rules, Clean Up Gutters: The To-Do List Of A Rookie Mayor In Sierra Leone

    Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, the first female mayor in Freetown in years, is trying to clean up the perpetual mess caused by rain and garbage — a first step in her plan to revive the beleaguered city.
    by Mara Kardas-Nelson Dec 10, 2018 6 minutes
    Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, the new mayor of Freetown in Sierra Leone, speaks at the 2018 Concordia Annual Summit in New York City. "For decades, there had been no structure, no focused thinking of a strategy for the city," she says. "The way my brain works is with plans. I have to have a to-do list."

    Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr walks up the stairs from her office in Freetown, Sierra Leone, to her car when she notices that the sky has darkened and is starting to open up.

    Tiny drops of rain fall. Within seconds they've become large and squishy, splashing against the concrete – and she's forgotten her rain boots. Her hot pink slingbacks won't make it through a downpour.

    Aki-Sawyerr, who was elected mayor of Freetown in May and is the city's first female mayor in nearly 40 years, asks her driver to take a detour on the way to an outdoor meeting with market women. She's hoping to find a street vendor selling rubber sandals. As the car weaves through sheets of rain, she spots overflowing gutters and makes frantic calls to members of her team back in the office.

    "Have you seen this spot?" she asks. "We're near Victoria Park. Everything is flooding. Have we noted this?"

    Aki-Sawyerr, 50, is obsessed with garbage, rain and the intersection of the two in Freetown. The city is the capital

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