By Umaru Fofana
It was just passed midnight. Our get-together in our hotel had ended, climaxing two days of humanitarian work in Kambia. So we decided to drive around the northern Sierra Leonean town, that late.
During the day we had been to some remote communities in the district, where we saw many people struggling for the most basic things in life. Thankfully we did not see any signs of child malnutrition even if some of the kids walked and ran around barefoot and semi-naked.
I saw the beauty that Kambia exudes. This border district is the only place I have been to in mainland Sierra Leone without a mountain in sight or range. But it has its own beauty flapping its wings. The stunning Great Scarcies River almost literally passes by your doorstep especially if you are staying at the Moriya Hotel in the district headquarter town.
The river, also known as Kolenten, stretches to as far as the eyes can see. It looks still while at the same time appears to be slithering on a surface with a mirroring effect, as it ends its 160-mile course into a confluence with the Atlantic Ocean. When the sun rises from the east it sees itself inside the river. And when it sets in the evening west – as the red sun glitters like a gold nugget – it bathes in the sight of the water.
The lush green vegetation flaps and laps. And the dense mangroves sandwich the river as if goading it, as it disappears into the distance. The accompanying evening breeze is soothing. The town’s tarmac roads meander into each other, reminding you of suburban Europe. But beneath all of that veneer belies the plight that could continue to blight the future of Sierra Leone – the state of our children, especially girls!
As we drove around the town and environs that late in the night – after midnight – we saw the wrecking of a nation. We arrived in a place where four girls, none of them aged more than 16 years, walked past us clutching their Ciders and Beers. Two of them looked inebriated. Another one, hooked to her colleague, slightly staggered as she walked. She looked like a new recruit into night life on the street. These were just six of several dozen minors – perhaps hundreds of them – in this place. Others clutched cigarettes in a petrol station-cum-night club called “SKM” right on the main Kambia-Gbalamuya highway.
There is a two-story building a few meters behind the pump station, with cigarettes being lit in the area with tonnes of fuel in tanks underneath. But that safety issue is for another day, except to wonder why the local council and others in authority have not seen the need to regulate and avert the potential danger that may be lurking.
Anyway…The girls were ostensibly working as commercial sex workers. When asked, one of the batch of four told one of my colleagues that none of them had written their BECE or middle secondary school exams. “We hope we will one day have the energy for it”, said another who was eavesdropping apparently thinking they were negotiating for sex, chuckling.
I bet my life that at least six of every 10 women there were under the age of 18 years. It was too obvious to decipher. When they were not talking to my colleague, as I leaned on my car in the distance, the skimpily clad girls busied themselves dancing licentiously in a well lit open space. Some blew their chewing gums like balloons, as they compete with the wind for control of the skimpy dresses they wore. After a while we saw men driving away with some of them, while others hopped on motorbike taxis apparently in search of clients elsewhere.
Up inside the dimly-lit two-story building which you would imagine to be a mart, very big men bogeyed with girls, frolicking with and smooching them. They clutched cigarette and alcohol, sweating profusely.
We drove to another pub, right on the highway by the central lorry park. We walked in to buy some drinks. A handful of girls were nibbling around. The stench of cigarette smoke being puffed engulfed the pub. I could barely breathe. My colleagues and I decided to leave. We were angry at the damage being done to girls who should otherwise be sleeping at that time of night, after studying their notes.
In Kambia, like in many other parts of the country I have visited recently, girls and their adult ilk keep ridiculing the “Hands Off Our Girls” campaign efforts of the First Lady, Fatima Bio. “Will she give us food to eat if we stop sleeping with men?” are some of the things I have heard being asked. Do not blame it on the poor girls. Rather blame it on the dirty old men who lure these naïve and vulnerable girls.
A brilliant law we now have to be able to deal with sexual offences especially against girls, but the more you move away from Freetown the less enforcement of it you sense.
Talking about laws, we also have a good law protecting children against child labour. But on my way back on the following day – Sunday – I stopped in Barmoi. It was a market day. There was a melange of local produce brought in from rural Kambia and imported stuff from Freetown and neighbouring Guinea. It was deafening. The cacophony of traders competing to drown out each other’s voice was intense. Some made-in-Barmoi doctors and pharmacists were selling all sorts of medicines, claiming to heal all sorts of ailments.
Even more tragic is the fact that many of these traders are children with some as young as under 10 years. I saw some of them carrying wares too heavy even for their parents. The Great Scarcies River and the nearby Little Scarcies may be looking great, but a greater disaster lies ahead for Sierra Leone if the young and fragile girls and indeed other children are not saved from dirty old new.
© 2019 Politico Online
