There's no place like home, like Sierra Leone,
Where a man in a uniform, thin to the bone,
Stops a man in the street and in god-fearing groan
Begs for cash or for bread or for transport back home
To his shack in a slum where the darkness has come
And in spite of the family each struggles alone
Through the squalor of sewage and refuse that's prone
To put anyone off from the place he calls home.
But he's not on his own, in Sierra Leone,
Where the bulk of our people are crammed in Freetown
And all over the place there are stray dogs that roam
Through the litter-strewn streets and the residue foam
From the wash of one’s clothes and one’s children, who moan
That they’ll go to bed hungry and wake up at dawn
With their bellies still empty and food still ‘don don’
And the prospect of making it all on their own.
So the Government's tone, in Sierra Leone,
Is an outright disgrace to the country that's grown
In its dishonest shadow, whose cover was blown
When it ran off to Guinea to rule by sat-phone
And they left us alone, in this place we call home
And then told the whole world that they couldn’t have known
That their people were ‘rebels’ who’d reach for the gun
At the first hint of fear in the Government’s tone.
These are ‘leaders on loan’, to Sierra Leone,
So directionless, bankrupt, corrupt in renown,
So pathetic yet wicked, devoid of backbone
That we’re sick of their claims in repetitive drone
That with vision and justice we'll make ourselves one,
When the precedents set by these leaders have shown
That the President's blind to the needs of his own,
And the only man worse is the heir to his throne.
When this Government’s flown, from Sierra Leone,
We’ll seek those who can lead us without undertones,
Who can stop all our diamonds from turning to stone
And who won't come to power just to be overthrown.
We will drag ourselves out of this poverty zone
And we’ll care for our own, our Sierra Leone,
We will raise up our hearts and our voices as one
And put people in power with some National Vision.