Pros
The prestige for saying you work at Harvard. Retirement benefits. Living overseas, in general, has its benefits for moving up the ladder. Many fall in love with Freetown, SL and stay because they enjoy the city - not the job, nor the organization or PI.
Cons
I believe the specific PI that was single-handedly responsible for the toxic atmosphere and unethical research has long since been outed. Still, it is hard to forget or forgive what the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights-- from their leadership team, as well as their finance team, to Harvard's own HR and what they did in order to cover the moves of this PI under this Harvard project in Sierra Leone. This PI tends to hire ultra-motivated young females in their mid-careers who are eager to gain additional field work to put on their resume, and who very often start out with viewing their PI/supervisor as an academic icon in the field of mental health and trauma. While the salary is below for even Freetown standards (and barely anything for housing - again, which is very below average fro the expat life in SL), they are manipulated into thinking they will be rewarded through paper writng with the PIR or simply name association. However all Research Managers that came before and after me, like me, become quickly jaded as the nature of the work presents itself the way it does when they arrive on their own in Freetown. I witnessed first hand how the PI pushed for things to get done unethically, for example, moving forward on the research without full IRB approval or abusing the budget for her own conference/travel needs. It is not a surprise for her to guilt you into paying for local office costs (money for the generator, etc) with your own cash and take months for a reimbursement. From other expats who had left the position or those who came after (and this is due to a high turn over of staff who leave the position but stay in the Freetown's small expat bubble --this is why we all know each other!--) have also found themselves in horrific situations thanks to the PI and the actions allowed by FXB. For example, one researcher was stranded in Sierra Leone during Ebola without health insurance (let alone have an evacuation plan), local staff are often underpaid and not paid yet they are emotionally abused and bullied to do the work, a blind eye was turned to the sexual abuse that would happen at their local Freetown office by local staff, and so on. It was and probably still is an incredibly toxic environment. After years of research presence there, the PI has now openly gained a terrible reputation where well-established researchers in Sierra Leone know to avoid her like the plague! Sadly Program Directors/funders come and go and she is able to continue to find funding to continue to build her research career there. Harvard came to know of all this but chose to sweep it all under their carpet!