It was impossible not to gape at his presence. Standing imposingly between tall buildings, the tree named Cotton Tree spread its powerful branches majestically along one of the busiest streets of Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone.
Its enormous roots, up to 15 meters wide, and its gigantic crown, 70 meters high, did not leave the visitor indifferent because it was not just a tree, it was the symbol of the nation.
Now Sierra Leone mourns the loss of its emblem: torrential rains and strong winds last week felled the legendary Cotton Tree, a ceiba tree about 400 years old, leaving only a few meters of splintered trunk standing.
The country's president, Julius Maada Bio, who visited the site a day later, described what happened as a "great loss for the nation" and stressed that for centuries "the Cotton Tree was a proud emblem of our country, a symbol of freedom that It grew to serve as a refuge for many people.”
Its connection to the history of the African state is literal: 231 years ago, on March 11, 1792, the first settlers of the city, freed slaves from America who had won their freedom by fighting for the British Empire during the war of independence americana, gathered under its branches to pray together. From that day on, the Free City grew around that vegetable heart.
The Sierra Leonean leader assured that the government will take part of the branches and trunk to the National Museum and asked citizens not to cut or take the remains of the fallen wood.
“For us,” added Maada Bio, “it was not just a tree, it was the connection between the past, the present and the future and we must strive to immortalize it. We must find relief in the knowledge that when a tree falls naturally due to extreme weather, life springs up again (…) Together we will preserve the legacy of unity, human rights and freedom of our iconic Cotton Tree”.
Some citizens asked the authorities to plant a similar tree again in the same space or, before removing the stump, to study whether a new specimen could grow over time from the roots and the piece of trunk that did not fall after Storm.
For the Sierra Leoneans, the tree that has resisted asphalt for almost four centuries was part of their history and routine, since its silhouette decorates stamps, the 10,000 leone bill and has been the subject of poems and songs.
Two days after the tree fell, the Sierra Leonean poet Oumar Farouk Sesay dedicated a few verses to it in which he compared the Cotton Tree with some of the most important monuments on the planet such as the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Tajmahal, the Christ the Redeemer or Big Ben. “Our Cotton Tree is gone / A piece of our heritage is gone / Our city is left bare”, Sesay closed the poem.
Despite the fact that the disappearance of the tree has caused a majority consternation, not everyone mourns what happened. In Sierra Leone, where beliefs in spirits, black magic and demons are widespread among the population of all social and cultural backgrounds, there were those who believed that the trunk of the oldest ceiba tree in the country housed supernatural beings.
The influential pastor Francis Mambu, who leads the Biblical Faith Healing Church, had delivered sermons against a tree whose roots, according to him, were used for spells and were the hideout of witches and shamans. The pastor had announced in several of his massive masses that one day the tree would be felled by the Lord.
The presidential elections, which are held at the end of the month in Sierra Leone, also saw the unexpected end of the Cotton Tree and political observers and members of the opposition saw in the collapse of the tree a bad omen for President Maada Bio since a banner of his campaign was hung in front of his roots.
Sierra Leone, a densely populated coastal country, has recently suffered from flooding and is one of the states hardest hit by the climate crisis.
