By Mabinty Kamara
In this 21st century one of the buzz words has been "gender-empowerment". And the emphasis, unsurprisingly, has been on women for whom a major concern is education.
There is a lot of talk about empowering women, yet not much is actually being done to realize this. For many it gets tougher as they get up on the ladder of educational pursuit. Many factors are at play, and they all boil down to the difficulty in accessing resources.
Here in Sierra Leone, very few parents can afford to raise the money required to pay university bills. The reason is obvious. In this situation some women and girls have had to abandon their dreams of pursuing academia and instead opt for vocational education, like Kadiatu Koroma did.
Kadiatu is a student at the Women in Crisis Vocational Institute (WCVI), located in Kissi Dockyard in the east end of Freetown. She sat at home for more than three years after completing her secondary school education with university requirements.
“I have five WASSCE, but because my parents could not afford my fees I could not go there [university],” she said.
After sitting for three good years she decided to enroll at the WCVI, where she is studying catering. She is set to graduate soon.
“At least I can do something for myself now,” the 24 year old told Politico in an interview.
Extremes
Fees are just a part of the expenses incurred at the university. Some parents can afford them initially but can’t continue with the other expenses that come along. This leaves many a student to battle with a huge burden of financial obligations. This has forced many women and girls to go through extremes to make ends meet.
Though some people may have come from affluent homes, majority do not. But being that they want to match up to the standards of their peers, some among this majority engage in the ‘dirty business’. This is how we have come to hear the term ‘intellectual prostitutes’. They roam from one office to another, from guest house to guest house, night and day, all in the name of making ends meet.
While for some this lifestyle is inspired by a genuine desire, like the need to pay their tuition fees, for many others it is merely to satisfy a life characterized by fancy cars and the latest fashion of dresses. Some people have gone as far as borrowing dresses from their colleagues to forge this destructive lifestyle.
The few who may want to uphold their dignity and pride must prepare for the hard walk through the thorny roads of life in the university, bearing the burden of the stress to study and make good grades and the depression of poverty and hunger. Some will leave classes with no hope of coming back the next day because of difficulty in accessing transport fare. Some of these people at the Fourah Bay College (BC), University of Sierra Leone, come from as far as Waterloo. For those who are coming from the provinces to the city, accommodation is a major problem.
At FBC you hear about the terms Canal and DSTV. These are slangs used by college students to describe two routes leading to the west and east ends of the city. These are used by students who trek to and from the college by foot.
DSTV is the route leading from the FBC campus down to the Government Model School on Circular Road. And it is used by those in the west end and central part of Freetown.
Canal is for those students coming from the east end of the city, and it runs from the campus through Dan Street Junction, Kissy Road. Some of the students who use this route sometimes branch off through Black Hall Road, Kissy.
Grant-in-Aid
FBC is located on a mountain. You climb through tough hills. Young girls and women sweat profusely in the morning hours as they rush for classes. They can easily be identified in classes by their clothes soaked in sweat.
After classes, it’s the same experience down the hills.
Salamatu Kamara, a student at the Mass Communication Department at FBC, explains how things became very hard for her in college that she couldn’t bear it anymore and had to leave the course for a year to help her parents raise her fees.
“My father is a petty trader in Lungi. He has been doing all his best to see me through school but it came to a point when things became very hard for us [so that] I could not afford transport fare to come to campus,” she said.
Salamatu said she couldn’t summon the courage to apply for the Sierra Leone Grant-in-Aid because of the fear that she might not get it.
A year later she was able to return, and she is full of praises for God for that.
“Though all was not well when I returned, I am making it through,” she said.
Like Salamatu, there are thousands of girls and women out there who want to be educated to the highest level but do not have the necessary support.
Now that the University of Sierra Leone has put stringent regulations on the payment of fees, one may wonder how many female students are destined to drop out of courses at the FBC and its other constituent colleges – IPAM and COMAHS.
We will not be surprised if soon other universities and colleges in the country follow on the footsteps of the USL.
In light of this, government and advocates of women’s empowerment have a major role to play in changing the lives of such vulnerable girls and women.
If women’s empowerment should succeed in a country with high level of poverty as Sierra Leone, then government and all these concerned bodies should endeavor to provide an enabling environment for women and girls, like through provision of scholarship opportunities for them. This can go a long way in changing lives in the country.
Juliana Konteh, founder and director of Women in Crisis Vocational Institute, a nongovernmental organization with the aim of empowering vulnerable young girls and women in the country, plead to all women who have the ability to support another woman to do so.
“If all the women who have the ability could help another woman or girl, even through secondary school, a lot of girls and women would be empowered because education is the key to every development. I know that there are a lot of women in the country who can do it. This is a challenge; let’s come onboard,” she said.
(C) Politico 18/05/16
