Sia Tolno is from Sierra Leone and critics are comparing her sound to that of the late great Miriam Makeba and Tina Turner.

The 36-year-old once had dreams of being a lawyer, but she never got a chance.

Her father was strict, her two stepmothers abused her.

So, Tolno fled home and ended up living in a squat with 30 other people.

Then, in 1995, the war in Sierra Leone forced her to flee to neighboring Guinea.

It was in Guinea where she began to sing in public.

She performed in a few small clubs and built a fan base.

Some fans gave her the nickname “Whitney” because she covered many of Whitney Houston’s big hits.

Then, a talent contest in Guinea put Tolno in touch with a European talent agent.

Her recent album is called “My Life” and she has written every track in the album.

Emmanuel Dolo is trying to apply on-line for a scholarship, but he’s not having much luck.

“The Internet here is very slow. Sometimes you pay for 60 minutes and you only get to use 20 minutes. It just keeps loading and loading,” Dolo said. “It’s frustrating.”

In Liberia, businesses and internet providers must pay for expensive satellite service, which is far beyond the reach of most Liberians.

Elliott Blidi, a project coordinator in Liberia for the West Africa Regional Communications Infrastructure Program, said Liberia has the lowest access to internet penetration in the region.

“In West Africa, Africa in general, our penetration is very low – about 0.02 percent. During the civil war years, the cables that were available, the financing and political will were not there to bring it in,” Blidi said.

But eight years out of war after the end of Liberia’s civil war, that is finally starting to change. Last week, a French ship arrived on the Liberian coast, carrying with it a fiber optic cable, two inches thick and 10,000 miles long. The ship is dragging the cable from France to South Africa.

Spectators watch the fiber optic cable being brought to shore in Liberia. (Photo: Bonnie Allen)

The Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) cable system, run by a consortium of telecom operators led by French Telecom, will provide broadband connectivity to more than 20 countries in Africa and Western Europe.

A crowd gathered on a sandy beach near downtown Monrovia, watching as a diver emerged from the sea, pulling a rope. Eventually, the underwater cable popped out of the ocean onto the beach, which prompted cheers from the crowd.

It was a moment of celebration for Ciata Victor. She’s a Liberian businesswoman who returned home after the war ended in 2003, armed with a degree in computer engineering technology. But she said it’s been difficult to work here.

“I moved my company home from America to Liberia and internet access has been extremely challenging. I have paid as high as $449 a month for internet access,” she said.

After lagging far behind, Africa is on the verge of an internet boom, according to a recent World Bank study. As of 2010, there were 12 submarine cables in sub-Saharan Africa and another five under construction.

For Liberia, as well as Gambia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the ACE submarine cable is the first connection to a fiber optic system.

Elliott Blidi is confident that internet use here will increase by 75 percent in the next four years, even though many here have never used a computer.

Blidi said the explosion in cell-phone use proves it’s possible.

“Any illiterate person, any farmer who has never sat a day in school can use a cell phone. Any old mother sitting in the market can use a cell phone. If you can use a cell phone, then it’s just a next step to going online,” Blidi said.

The entire ACE cable must be in place before broadband service can begin in Liberia. That’s expected to happen by mid-next year.

Meanwhile, the Liberian government and local companies must do their part — install wires, cables, and towers to share the technology with the country.

Barbès heats up like an African nightclub

Barbès is in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn but every Wednesday, it heats up like a nightclub in Guinea’s capital, Conakry. The Mandingo Ambassadors are a mixture of musicians from Guinea and the United States. It’s not a full-time gig – they don’t have a record label or much in the way of representation. But they do have Mamady Kouyate.

“Music doesn’t have borders, if it’s good.”

Kouyate was born into one of Guinea’s great musical families. His relatives played traditional instruments such as the kora and the balafon.In the 60s and 70s, Mamady Kouyate reworked old riffs and melodies onto the electric guitar.

Kouyate and other young musicians helped a newly independent Guinea reassert its cultural identity but over the years the country’s autocratic leaders brought economic ruin. And Guinea became one of the poorest nations on earth. Government support for musicians dried up.

Mamady Kouyate

So Mamady Kouyate tried to revive classic bands by operating a music center in Conakry. It was hard work.

“It was very difficult because if something was broken I had to fix it. If something was lost or stolen I had to replace it. It was very demanding, but I did it out of patriotism.”

But Kouyate’s patriotism didn’t mean he wasn’t critical of Guinea’s leaders. A trained economist, he was imprisoned a number of times for speaking out against corruption in the country.Eventually, the pressure grew too strong and in 2004, he fled to the US, where he was granted refugee status. He made a new home for himself here. And luckily for the denizens of Park Slope, he brought his music with him.

For The World, I’m Alex Gallafent in Brooklyn, New York.

• Mandingo Ambassadors on MySpace
• Barbès bar and performance space in Brooklyn
• Global Hit on Facebook

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On the history podcast this week a compilation of recent stories. Gerry Hadden tells us the story of a Nazi traitor who finally had his conviction overturned. Alex Gallafent tells us about changing U.S. views of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. And Marco Werman interviews Loyola University historian Elizabeth Schmidt about the significance of the September 28th stadium in Guinea.

B & B Restaurant Corp. in Manhattan

Guineans living in New York City do have reminders of their home in West Africa. There are restaurants like the B & B in midtown Manhattan, which serves Guinean dishes and employs a number of Guineans. But given the violence that has gripped their homeland in recent weeks, many Guineans in New York are looking home anxiously, and awaiting news from their friends and family. Some Guineans in New York are even organizing opposition to the country’s military rulers. The World’s Alex Gallafent takes the pulse of Guineans in New York.

• Massacre in Guinea (Oct. 8, 2009)
• Timeline: Guinea
• Country profile: Guinea

Read the Transcript
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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  In the West African country of Guinea, a national strike today left streets and workplaces deserted.  People were protesting an incident two weeks ago in which soldiers opened fire on a crowd in a soccer stadium.  Human rights groups say more than 150 people were killed.  Fifty thousand people had gathered in the stadium, in the capital Conakry, to protest the country’s military regime.  For Guineans living here in the United States, the situation back home is confusing and frightening.    The World’s Alex Gallafent reports from New York.

ALEX GALLAFENT: Mamadou Sidy Barry is a Guinean in New York, and here’s here on his own.

MAMDOU SIDY BARRY: All my family members are over there in Guinea, my wife, my daughter, and my father, brothers, everybody.  So I am here by myself and I’m here for political asylum

GALLAFENT: I caught up with Barry at the West African restaurant he runs in midtown Manhattan. It’s a small place, and Barry’s staff is getting for the lunch rush.  But back in Guinea, Barry was a political activist, working for an opposition party.  He says he was arrested during a local election in 2005 and jailed for three weeks.  On his release, he fled to neighboring Mali.  He didn’t feel safe there either.

BARRY: So from there I decided to come to the United States of America.

GALLAFENT: He hasn’t seen his family in years.  And since the violence of two weeks ago, Mamadou Sidy Barry has found it hard to reach them.  He says communication lines into Guinea have been disrupted, and he’s worried about his daughter in particular.

BARRY: My daughter is three years, so she’s a very small girl, and she’s really living on the panic, on the trauma, you know.  A little girl of three years, hearing every time sounds of guns, you know.  All over the night, they are in the streets of Conakry, blowing up guns, you know.  It’s crazy.

GALLAFENT: What does it feel like to be here while your family is there?

BARRY:  It is very, very, very hard, very difficult.  When they tell you some people lost their beloved ones, they never see their bodies, they never seem them in jail, they never see them in hospital, so it means that these people have been pulled away, or they have been buried, but who knows where and how?  What happened to the other person can happen to your own too, so it is really a very hard time for us.

GALLAFENT: Many of the workers in Barry’s restaurant are from Guinea themselves.

BARRY: Ismael!

GALLAFENT: Barry calls one of them from out of the kitchen, where a grill is piled high with chunks of meat.

ISMAEL:  [speaking Guinean Creole]

GALLAFENT: He says, “My wife and three children are in Guinea.  It’s safe here in New York, but if my family isn’t safe, I can’t be at peace.”  Finally, Mamadou Sidy Barry introduces me to a young woman named Mariama.  She comes out from the kitchen in an apron smeared with cooking juices and tells her story.

MARIAMA:  [speaking Guinean Creole]

GALLAFENT: Barry translates.

MARIAMA:  [speaking Guinean Creole]

BARRY: Really I’m very worried, because what is going on back home in my country is terrible.  They are raping women, killing them, taking off their clothes in the street in public and rape them in front of everybody, kill children.  My family is over there.  My husband, my children, my mother, my brothers and even they killed one of my brothers and I am terrified about what is going on.

GALLAFENT: The reports they’re hearing suggest that the violence didn’t spread beyond the events of two weeks ago, but that doesn’t ease the minds of these Guineans in the United States.  The Guinean community here is tiny, but Mamadou Sidy Barry says they plan to organize a series of rallies in Washington to protest what happened back home.  For The World, I’m Alex Gallafent in New York.

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