Freetown Mudslide: Rebuilding a Life

Only a few people remain at the Old School camp, a hastily-erected, tented compound in Freetown which - up until last week - housed hundreds of families who had lost everything in the August mudslide. A couple of miles up the road, you can see where the top of Mount Sugar Loaf used to be. Now the hill is ripped apart - a scar that will never heal. Hundreds of bodies remain buried under the mud.

The camp is eerily quiet, apart from a few young children playing outside. Inside the last remaining tent the air is thick and hot - there are a few single mattresses scattered near the doorway and a woman is sitting breastfeeding her baby girl. Fatmata only survived because she was on the labour ward in hospital when the mudslide hit. As she was giving birth, her husband was killed - a chastening reminder of the circle of life.

She has yet to receive her bank transfer from the government. When she does get the money, she will be forced to leave the camp. At the moment, she has absolutely nowhere to go and she tells me that she will have to sleep on the street with her three young children unless she finds a place by then. The transfer would just about cover a year’s rent in Freetown but it would leave her without any money to support her children, or start a small business to try and generate income. She is very worried that when rent is due again next year, she will be in an even worse position.

Another woman - Mariama - enters the supply tent, exhaling deeply as she sits down in the chair beside me. Her lapa is taut as it stretches around her waist, she is heavily pregnant and due to give birth any day now. She already has five children to look after and she is completely alone - her baby will never know it’s father.

She left the camp last week after finding a place relatively nearby and she invites us up to where she is living. We start driving up the rocky, red dirt track that seems to slalom endlessly up the side of the hill. At nine-months pregnant, it seems utterly impossible that she travels up and down there every day but she assures us that the okadas (motorbike taxis) manage just fine. We get out of the car and walk up the last 50 metres - she leads the way, not stopping once to catch her breath. Two of her young children come charging down the slope to escort us to their home.

We arrive at a rusted metal structure that clings on to the side of a sharp slope. Mariama lives in one room with her children. There is one mattress on the floor and in a blackened, sooty corner of the room there is a small stove and some palm oil. She was so worried about ending up homeless next year that she has already paid two years rent on the room, effectively her entire cash transfer from the government. She uses the little money she has left over to make soup to sell on the street, which barely makes her enough to feed her five (soon to be six) children, none of whom are in school. She simply cannot afford to send them.

Cecelia, the Street Child social worker I am with, is worried that many of the children affected by the mudslide will never make it back to school. She is especially concerned about the girls, who face a high risk of teenage pregnancy, early marriage and sexual abuse, “If I am a fully-grown girl and supposed to be in school but my parents cannot afford to send me, if I have a man who will give me five or ten thousand Leones to go to bed with them, I don’t have an alternative. I have to go. I have to survive.”

Back at Old School, everyone you meet has their own individual tragedy, now compounded by the added trauma of having to leave the camp and rebuild their lives on their own. One lady, Finda, looks on vacantly as she tells me how her and her daughter tried to run to safety in opposite directions when the flooding hit. When she looked back, her daughter had been carried away by the water.

She is now living in one tiny room with her two sons, a little way from the camp. The hillside she lives on is incredibly steep and serves as a daily reminder of the dangers that will return next year when the heavy rain starts up again. Last week, her 11 year-old son was sent home from school because Finda could not pay for the photograph he needed to register for his public exams. In total, his school fees amount to less than £40 but in her current situation she has no way to pay

‘It’s not easy’ she sighs with a sad smile.

For a country that has suffered so much in recent times - a devastating civil war, an Ebola epidemic and catastrophic flooding - Finda epitomises the spirit of Sierra Leone. A place where people endure constant hardship with a determination to better themselves and secure a brighter future for their children, no matter what the cost.

Before we leave, she grabs Cecelia’s hand, ‘We pray that God will bless Street Child for all that they have done for us. We thank you, we thank you so much.’

Everyone knows Cecelia well. They call her ‘Street Mama’ around here. Her team were at the camp every day, counselling victims, helping them with government registration and spending time with the children. They distributed toiletries, lapa, clothing, sanitary pads, mattresses, blankets and many other non-food items, giving to those in need. They also provided meals every day (over 56,000 ready-to-eat food packages were distributed). When others had left, Street Child remained and Finda says she will never forget their generosity.

Soon, Fatmata will be given her leaving package and asked to leave Old School camp immediately. Just like those before her, she will be expected to rebuild her life with it. On her own.

Two million, one hundred and seventy-five Leones (£214), two bags of rice, one gallon of palm oil, four laundry soaps, two bathing soaps, four cups, four spoons, six plates, ten pads, one blanket and one stove.

Her two sons chase each other around the empty tent and her baby girl, whose birthday will forever be bound to the death of her father, clings to her lap, wide-eyed and innocent.

In one or two months time, Fatmata, Mariama and Finda will be scraping out the last few grains of rice from their government-supplied sacks, with no family to look after them, no savings and no way to make money to send their children to school.

As we leave the camp, a woman thrusts a photo of her family through the open car window. Her husband and all of her children are dead.

She is singing.

‘God is good, God is good, all the time’.

*names have been changed

Thousands of children in Sierra Leone, and across West Africa, are not being given the chance to go to school.

When children are given the chance to learn, they have a chance to break free from poverty. They have a chance to build a brighter future for their families, their communities and their countries.

Every child deserves that chance.

Until the 15th February, the UK government will match all donations to Street Child’s Right to learn appeal, pound for pound.

Donate today and give the gift of education