The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir

by Samantha Power

On the wall of the call center was a map of Freetown. The Sierra Leonean volunteers were using red pins to mark the locations where deaths had been reported. When a team retrieved and buried a body, the red pin was replaced with a blue one. A week before, the Sierra Leoneans told us, only 30 percent of bodies were being collected and safely buried within twenty-four hours. By the time we visited—in no small part due to the infusion of British military and civilian experts and other international support—98 percent of reported bodies were being buried within a day. On the map, we saw a single red pin surrounded by a sea of blue pins. The practice had not yet been scaled in districts outside the capital, but they had developed proof of concept.