Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr: How tough is it being Freetowns opposition mayor?
\u201cYou just learn that the people who are against you\u2026 will always exist and they\u2019ll always use every opportunity they can to amplify mistakes and actually very often try to portray them as deliberate. That\u2019s part of the learning I\u2019ve had to go through.\u201d
Being the mayor of Freetown is a tough job. Yvonne Aki Sawyer grew up in Sierra Leone but then went to the UK to study as a student. She stayed, built up a well-paid career in finance, got married, had kids. But after Ebola hit Sierra Leone in 2014 she took a sabbatical to help and became the director of Planning for Sierra Leone's National Ebola Response Centre.
In the years since, she\u2019s been voted in as mayor of Freetown twice \u2013 running on a ticket dominated with environmental concerns. But she\u2019s also been investigated for corruption and accused of misappropriating public funds - allegations she denies and says are politically motivated.
In a frank conversation, she tells Alan Kasujja about her attempts to work with the government, how women support women in Sierra Leone, and denies she\u2019s drunk the political Kool-Aid.
\u201cMy life is very different to what it was (in the UK)\u2026 I certainly don\u2019t earn a fraction of what I used to earn\u2026 I am here because this is my heart,\u201d she tells Alan.
You can see the Africa Eye film about her work \u2013 and the pretty brutal election campaign she went through - \u201cMayor on the Frontline: democracy in crisis\u2019\u2019 on the BBC News Africa Youtube page.