The Banana Island Guest House is owned and operated by the Banana Island Youth Association, a community-based organisation recognized by the Sierra Leone Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children's Affairs. Our goal is to provide an exclusive, high quality authentic experience for small groups of visitors in an environmentally-friendly manner.
We have three chalets, each with two rooms, containing tiled private baths with running water. Solar light and lanterns provide light in the evenings.
We believe that the BIGH can serve as an example of how fully participatory, job creating, ecologically sensitive, sustainable rural growth can be achieved through partnerships between local communities and interested parties abroad.
Banana and Ricketts Islands have a combined population of about 900 people. The two Islands are connected by a spit of sand that is underwater at high tide. A stone bridge connects the path between the two islands' villages of Dublin and Ricketts, located on the coast facing the Western Peninsula.
The islands were visited in the 17th century and perhaps earlier by Portuguese sailors and were settled in the late 18th and 19th centuries by freed slaves whose descendants make up most of the population of the islands today.
