The Silent Abuse of Girls in Sierra Leone

'Who Won the World, Girls'

“It’s not what you call me, but what I answer to.” ~African proverb 

Whenever I think about writing a new blog I will usually have an idea of what form and focus it will take. I'll write down a few ideas on my notepad then stare at my screen for a good half an hour before anything happens. I am sure you have already guessed that this piece will focus on women in Sierra Leone.

Initially I thought of finding some relevant statistics to start it off, but my internet is bandwidth-challenged and loading a big website like the WHO for example can take up to 5 to 10 minutes. So I have decided that instead of throwing statistics at you, I will do what most of my other blogs end up doing; telling you a few wee stories.

All names have been changed to protect the identity of the individual.

The women and girls I met in Sierra Leone were beautiful, passionate, strong, and fierce (when they needed to be and they certainly needed to be). Abuse was common and in many cases accepted as part of life, by the abuser, victim, and society. I have described the system of abuse to many people as follows; men abuse women, men and women abuse children, men, womenand children abuse animals. However, I would like to clarify that this is not the case for all Sierra Leoneans, this is a model of abuse I witnessed when abuse did occur. I became very good friends with a young woman around my age, she was attending the local university in Makeni city and was one of the most beautiful girls you have ever seen. We will call her Sally.

Abusive Relationships

One day Sally was helping me cook (I really struggled to cook on the stove and any help was appreciated by me and the people risking their taste buds); we got talking about relationships and she told me about her ex-boyfriend and that she had split up with him. When I asked why she told me that he beat her, very badly, that her face was swollen up and she had a busted lip. Firstly, I was shocked that she had been beaten so badly and secondly, I was shocked and impressed that she was the one to end it.

As much as I admire Sierra Leonean women, they are not the most assertive of females; in my IT and Career classes, they would be the smallest in number and would remain silent the whole time. This was not just a choice on their part but was sometimes reinforced by a few of the male students in the class. If I directed a question at one of the girls a man would answer for her or if I asked her to do something on the PC, a male student would take the mouse off her and do it. This was infuriating to say the least and I had little tolerance for it.

This is one of the reasons why I was so shocked at Sally's assertiveness, especially when she told me that she still had feelings for him; at that point my heart broke for her. Sally not only had to wrestle with her own conflicting feelings she also had to deal with pressure from her friends and her ex's family to get back together with him. Her friend Sarah told her that some women think that if their partner does not beat them then they don't truly love them, Sally countered this by saying that "you don't hurt someone you love".

I couldn't have agreed more with her. 

Female Genital Mutilation

Unfortunately, abuse of women and young girls does not begin or end there. You may have noticed the issue of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) has been talked about a lot in the media recently.

I spoke to a few local women about FGM and they told me that it is very common, transcending tribe, religion, and region, and that for many women it is seen as a right of passage.

Sally watched Ellen and I get up off our mattresses and winced; we laughed and asked why she did that? She said that because of FGM, she would find it painful to get up they way we did. She proceeded to show us how she tucks her legs underneath her and gently rises off the mattress, we asked her if she agreed with FGM, she said no and regrets having it done. She made it sound like it was her choice, but something told me that she didn't have much choice in the matter. Despite it being a very secretive part of Sierra Leonean culture, they have festivals dedicated to it every year.

FGM is a brutal practice and is often carried out in unsanitary conditions and with blunt and unclean instruments, which can cause illness and death. 

Sexual Abuse in Schools

Physical abuse is not the only threat that many Sierra Leonean girls must face; sexual abuse is common and often an accepted fact of life for girls who reach puberty. We spent the summer months in Sierra Leone, therefore we worked mainly in summer schools, which were run by a lot of very young male teachers, some of whom were younger than me (I am 23).

Not only did I question their teaching ability, I also also questioned their motives with a lot of the girls. Ellen came bursting into our room one day after her school shift, she was shaking and on the verge of tears, when I asked her what was wrong she said that the teachers at her school should not be there. To be fair there were a lot more expletives used than that, but it would seriously disrupt the flow of this blog.

After a few cigarettes. she told me that she overheard all of the male teachers talking about how they loved summer school because the girls would were tight clothes, and as they said this they would make lewd gestures and point out particular girls. I didn't know what to say; you can't say everything will be alright because it won't – some of those teachers may be involved in the systematic abuse of their students. Ellen said that they spoke so openly about it that it was obviously an accepted thing to do, even when you were in a position of responsibility.

I thought to myself, "These girls don't have a chance, how can this be fair?". 

This blog has been particularly bleak and has focused on a dark and dangerous part of Sierra Leone culture and society; however, time is a great changer. During my team's time in Makeni, we met a guy called Phillip – he was a social worker for Street Childand he told us that he was working on a case regarding a young girl who had been impregnated by her teacher; she was 15.

Phillip and I on Aberdeen beach in Freetown

The teacher refused to take responsibility and he was more than likely going to get away with it; however, Phillip was going through the courts to get this guy reprimanded and it was working. He told us that he was being threatened by the teacher's family as well as being bribed to drop the case, but that it was the right thing to do and he was not going to be swayed.

Sierra Leone's justice system leaves a lot to be desired and, more often than not, works against the victims of crimes, but it is people like Phillip who help keep the young women of Sierra Leone safe. 

Further Reading

Street Child - website - www.street-child.co.uk

World Health Organization - Female Genital Mutilation Factsheet

Exploit and Go: How the North steals from the South

A Scotsman, a Welshman and an Irishman walk into the Clubhouse in Sierra Leone...

This may sound like the beginning of a bad joke but it could not be further from the truth. The following account was made by my collegue Ellen Paton after a conversation with 3 miners in a popular European restaurant in Makeni city, Sierra Leone.

The three men were apparently on holiday "in this hellohole for two days. If you thought this was a s*&%hole you should see Tonkoli."  So I asked "bet you can't wait to go home?,"  they said "yep, exploit and go". When I said I was a volunteer their response was patronising to say the least, "aww that's nice. I mean, you have to live in this s*&%hole and pretend you are doing stuff. We are the ones giving the money back though. I spend so much at Apex! (Another name for Wusum Hotel)"   

They were two engineers and a supervisor working for London Mining. They seemed really racist. They told me that they were sinking 3 mountains in the north. They also said that the miners do not get adequate health and safety training. My friend Sheka (a national) said that in Makali, Bombali District there are frequent cholera outbreaks as miners work in gold mines where they are exposed to contaminated water, they are not provided with water purification tablets. It became obvious to me that there needs to be more transparency  in what these mining companies are doing. Everyone seems to be oblivious to the exploitation that is happening in their country. They like that there is foreign investment in the country whilst being unaware of the scale , the pollution and lack of remittances that it brings.

This account never fails to make my skin crawl. The lack of morality in this one conversation is disturbing but no longer surprises me after coming in contact with several western companies that were "investing" in Sierra Leone. We met the employees of two companies in particular, London Mining and African Minerals, in two locations in Makeni; Wusum Hotel and The Clubhouse restaurant. 

Wusum Hotel is a newly developed hotel in Sierra Leone, it has an internet cafe, swimming pool, gym and european style rooms. Manson & Knight's travel guide to Sierra Leone describes Wusum Hotel as the haunt of "miners, ministers & paramount chiefs" at night it can turn into a bit of a "hooker-fest" and the service is "less than friendly" (Manson & Knight, p.286). I can confirm this from personal experience, myself and Ellen spent several hours there during our search for reliable wifi. When the miners came out of their rooms the prostitutes would emerge, seemingly from nowhere. They would throw themselves at the often middle aged, overweight european miners who did little to deter their advances. These miners certainly do put a lot of money back into the local economy, but from my experience, not in the right way.

In 2014 there will be a West African Mining Consortium held in London, this will be attended by any self respecting mining company based in Africa, including African Minerals and London Mining. Why hold a massive consortium about the future of West African mining in London? Why not hold it in West Africa? Surely that makes more sense, considering the fact that you are mining very valuable natural resources from there and supposedly "investing" in the national economy. There are a lot of things that keep people in Africa poor, and this kind of foreign "investment" is one of them. 

I was part of a livelihoods programme in Sierra Leone and thid included career guidance lessons in schools. I saw a lot of young people benefit from these classes, however, it is my sincerest belief that career guidance is pointless unless the population is politically aware. If they cannot engage politically on a local and national level then how are they supposed to defend their rights as citizens and ultimately how their natural resources are mined and where they go? If London was rich in natural resources you can be sure that no foreign mining company would set one greedy foot near the capital!

Most of us international volunteers were educated to university level, we were all politically aware and had a critical mindset. We could not have been more different from most of the young people we met out there, we questioned some of our nationals about where their taxes go and what benefit did they see from it. They said that they didn't know where their taxes went and they politely shrugged off the quetsion with a smile, they said that to question the government in any way would be seen as revolutionary and after a decade of brutal war, revolution is the last thing on anyone's mind. To be honest I really couldn't blame them for feeling this way, they are peaceful to the point of being totally passive and who am I to judge, I wasn't the one who had to survive one of the most brutal civil wars of the modern age. Sierra Leone was recently revealed to have the most corrupt government in the world, this doesn't surprise me, however exploitation from companies like London Mining, Dawnus and African Minerals does not help this situation.

When a country and it's people are being exploited by their own government and external bodies, internal change is needed. However, we cannot forget the responsibility that our own government has to help stop this kind of exploitation. When it comes to the British government I would go as far as to say that they are not only responsible but contribute to the exploitation of Sierra Leone. During our first few days there we visited the Britsih High Commission in Freetown, of course it was at the very top of the mountain in a walled, green and almost suburban area. We met two sections of the British government, the Foreign Office and DFID. After chatting to several of them over expensive food and alcohol served by two local Sierra Leoneans, we soon discovered that each department were there for different reasons. DFID was there to promote Sierra Leonean interests and the Foreign Office was there to promote British interests. There was a beautiful pool, flushing toilets and air conditioning; after coming from a place where we washed ourselves with a a bucket of water none of us felt comfortable there. It just did not feel right, eveything was so lavish, expensive and so at odds with what we had experienced in the two days that we were there.

Most of the people of Sierra Leone are very poor, uneducated and politically unaware. How can Sierra Leone develop if there are so many internal and external bodies that jump at every chance to exploit this country and it's people? I do not know the answers to many of the questions I have posed in this blog, what I do know is that choosing to remain blind to the corruption of companies like London Mining and our own government will not help. Yes it would be easier to bury your head in the sand and trust me I have wanted to do it many times upon returning home, but one day it won't be a distant African country being exploited it will be our own.

The photographs below show a career forum that we organised in one of the local schools and all of us at the Britsih High Commission. Photos courtsey of the fabulous Kristine Vaivode :)