Untold Suffering of Sierra Leonean Women Amid COVID-19

 

By Elizabeth A. Kaine

“I am the seventh wife to my husband, Pa Alimamy of Mathonko village, (what district and what region of Sierra Leone?). This is according to a female farm worker and a housewife, Isatu Samura. “Our livelihood is entirely dependent on the subsistent farming we do. We only sell a small portion of the produce and that is been coordinated by our husband Pa Alimamy” said Isatu Samura. “I and my co-wives engage on the farm work throughout the days and weeks, thus having little or no time to rest, but our husband rarely do any work on the farmland , rather he only serves as overseer  and man-in-charge of all major sales from the farm produce”, Isatu Samura explained.

Isatu further explained that she and her co-wives do engage in farming, aside from the main annual farming they do. She added that they plant pepper, cassava, sweet potato and other vegetables which they take to the weekly market for sales locally known as (Luma). This activity kept our lives going well until when corona virus was confirmed in the country. It came with restrictions contrary to what good farming practices demand. Especially the mandatory use of masks which we do not have and the restriction on movement and social distancing. This new way of doing things limited our productivity levels thus greatly disturbing their main means livelihood. It angered her husband most of the time and that always traumatized them as wives/workers.

She further explained that she and the other co-wives have been with Pa Alimamy for the past 35 years and that during their stay, every wife was solely responsible for her own welfare, her children and the husband, Pa Alimamy. She further claimed that she can hardly remember when last she received money from her husband. As a result of the limited farming activities in the regions, Isatu Samura came to live in Freetown where I started this story and further following her to her village.

Isatu Samura was narrating her ordeal during an encounter with this medium at the hill side community of Sumaila town in Freetown. Her body was just recovering from malnourishment, which she claims was due to stress and lack of rest and proper diet caused by covid-19 restrictions. She told this medium that she was brought in Freetown by her two elder children who had earlier travelled to the city in search of green pasture, adding that she had been given some money by her children to run any business of her choice, displaying the money to me.

Mrs. Samura vowed never to return to Manthonko village for a permanent stay until corona is over because she never wanted to go to hell again.

The pitiful story of Isata Samura urged me to do more investigations in order to gauge the story of women who are similarly suffering more than madam Samura.

I travelled to the eastern region town of Bandajuma Kovehgbowame in the Small Bo Chiefdom, Kenema District, Eastern Sierra Leone were I met Musu Mambu, a palm oil extractor. I met her extracting palm oil in a local oil mill located in the near-by farm. My first question to her after greeting her was whether palm oil production was the only hard task she does as a woman? She gave me a cheerful smile and answered in the negative swinging her head left to right to give a strong backup to her answer.

“My husband and I solely depend on the farming we do to take care of ourselves and our six children. Apart from our oil palm production, we also do upland rice and inland valley swamp rice farming once a year. My husband is only responsible for the brushing and plowing of the swamp, slashing and burning of the upland farm and the cleaning and harvesting of the palm fruit.

She narrated that among  other things that she was the one responsible for the entire processing of palm oil and also the planting, weeding, harvesting and processing of both the upland and swamp rice plantation which she term as herculean tax. She furthered that she also plant cassava, pepper, pumpkin, corn and more from which she sell and make some money to take care of some of her needs. She said the ban on the Friday weekly market as a result of covid-19 was causing huge havoc on her livelihood.

Musu stated that her husband maltreats her and regularly beat her out of the covid 19 restrictions frustration.

Musu told me that she and her husband survive on the substance farming they do, adding that it is through the same means they support their six children who are all attending school in their chiefdom headquarter town of Blama but that the arrival of Covid-19 created devastating consequences on their lives and livelihood especially when weekly markets were closed.

Efforts were made to raise the issues of the women to the 50/50 group, a women’s empowerment organization in Sierra Leone, there was no help gained.

Ann-Marie Koroma a mother of two also narrated how she was pushed out of her matrimonial home by her husband due to limited economic resources brought on them by the covid 19 restrictions. She lives in Freetown and has a formal office job as well as her husband.

Koroma noted that she has been married to her husband for the past three years, after five months after the wedding her husband lost his job and since then, she has been the head of the family as she provides everything that is needed for the well- being of their family including the welfare of her husband.

‘’I got married to my husband when I was 26 years old, and my husband was working, and everything was going on fine but after six months my husband lost his job and things became very hard for us due to that I took over of taking care of my family’’ she noted.

She said during the corona virus outbreak she was asked to stop working as the office was filled with panic as she was told that her services were no longer needed there and that was the worst moment of her live as everything including their livelihood was threatened.

‘’After I lost my job, my home was deprived as we barely carter food for our children. This leads to quarrels between my husband and I. To ameliorate the situation, I started doing night jobs to help keep my family together but after two weeks of working, there came in night curfew as another covid 19 preventive measure. The hardship continued unabated. We now look forward to the government agency call National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA) for a bail out  

This story was produced with support from Journalists for Human Rights (JHR), through its Mobilizing Media in the Fight Against COVID-19 in partnership with Sierra Leone Association of Journalists.