Renouncing your SL citizenship to get a job?

You just might have to do that if you are job searching in Sierra Leone as a “returnee” with other types of citizenship.

In my last blog post (One Year anniversary) I promised to share more about the struggleversary focusing on the job market in Sierra Leone for a returnee like me. I can only speak from MY perspective and although I might make general statements here and there, please keep in mind that this is MY experience.

I’ve written in the past about my experience working in Sierra Leone/Africa, for example:

• Yearly Round Up
• Being a consultant
• Working for a small NGO
• Volunteer life

So anyway, every time I have moved back to Sierra Leone, I always had a job. I think I would advise ANYONE returning home to their country to try to make that possible, if you are not moving back to start a business or something. This time around, again like I explained in previous post, I had a job. I thought I was secure and then two weeks in I had a very uncomfortable conversation, that made me question my skills and frustrated me, but I was going through a lot with my family and thought I didn’t need to defend myself and just walked away. I didn’t realize that this was a big mistake as things can just happen in Sierra Leone. In less than two months, I was blowing through my savings because I was saddled with the responsibility of taking care of some family members, which forced me to go on the job hunt fast.

I was confident though because I knew I had the skills and education to get a job and let me just say, finding the job was not the problem, but getting what I was worth or that would sustain myself and my new responsibilities was very difficult. The first offer came and I was super excited because this was a job I dreamed of in education and with a big American NGO that I wanted to work with. The County Director called to give me a verbal offer and I should have sensed from that conversation that something was off. He asked about my citizenship, but I didn’t really think much about it because this has never been a problem before. Me being an American/Sierra Leonean was an advantage previously. He told me that I could not be paid as an expat because I was Sierra Leonean, although the salary as a Sierra Leonean was also decent. What “decent” was I never knew and they wouldn’t disclose. He made a suggestion that I renounce my citizenship in order to be considered as an expat.

I decided to contact the U.S. person who had emailed me initially about my interview and seemed to be HR to understand such a policy and this is what they said:

So per [org name redacted] HR policy if an employee is a national of the country program where they are working then they would be a national staff hire and receive their salary from the country program (in this case in SL) including national benefits package, etc. I understand you have dual national status US/Sierra Leone so as a national working in Sierra Leone your hire would fall under a national hire status. The policy is driven largely by legal/compliance requirements that  [org name redacted] must abide by between US & country program governments where we work.

I am following up on a scenario whereby if a renouncement of citizenship were to be made how that would affect a national staff hire.

I asked other HR professionals and others who have returned if they have ever experienced this and all of them were quite surprised and said this was ridiculous and unheard of. I was seriously considering not claiming the citizenship and decided to test it out to see what they would say. When I let them know I was not a Sierra Leonean, but held an ECOWAS passport, Nigerian (I actually do, because of my dad, long story), they were like I need to come with all my documents to the office before they could send me an offer letter. I never experienced that before. I insisted they give me a written offer so I can properly weigh everything, before I did because I never heard of such a thing, the next thing I knew I was getting a generic email that I didn’t make it through the selection and good luck with my future endeavors. Huh??

The next offer came from an organization that I am very familiar with. The position was not advertised as a local one and I went through the entire process and got a call with the offer, but then I was told that the position is a local one and that the previous person who held the position was the last expat they would hire for the positon. When they told me the salary, I was flabbergasted because I KNOW what the range of the expat salary is because I am very familiar with the organization, as I said, but that wasn’t it. Even for a national salary, I was like how is that possible? The position itself didn’t change. It was a lot of responsibility. The duties all the same. Normally this position also came with housing and when I asked about that (because I was practically homeless at that time), it was later revealed that this was not possible. Wow. I spoke to someone I was close to who worked for the organization in Sierra Leone, and I stated that I felt like I was going to go backwards if I ever accepted that pay, they said: “that’s not even going backwards, that’s falling down.” ha!

That perfectly described how I was feeling. These were the two most distinct examples and I will have to say, what I’ve said about having something before arriving rang even more true now. Another thing that I had heard before that was even more apparent in this case is that you should always have something as you look, so you have more of a foot to negotiate from.

I have learned a lot in the last year for sure. Soon after all of this I decided to take a full

time role and actually was hired as a national. This was my first time actually working as a Sierra Leonean citizen. I had to register for social security and all my salary was paid in a bank account in Sierra Leone. In the past, all my pay went to my U.S. account. I learned that Sierra Leonean taxes are BRUTAL. Whereas in the US it might be higher, at least I would see some of my tax money come back to me when I file taxes or I could actually SEE physically where my tax money was going. Needless to say I was losing about 10 million leones every month from taxes and lord I felt that. That could be money I could have put aside for months.

To cut a long story short I hope people learn a little something from my experience. I am actually back on the job market because I decided to leave my most recent job due to reasons I am not ready to talk about publicly, but let’s just say I am following the below message and learning to make these decisions much quicker:

The next struggleversary blog post? Housing….? Or something else? I still owe several posts before I stop blogging on Voice of the Salone Diaspora for good. 🙂