By: Alusine Rehme Wilson
In every community all over Sierra Leone, there is a number of youths occupying isolated areas serving as their dwelling, a hub to socialize and a point to reconnect with peers.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Report points out that many of the dire conditions that gave rise to the conflict in 1991 still remain. As in the late 1980s, many young adults continue to occupy urban ghettoes where they languish in a twilight zone of unemployment and despair, the report states.
The Media Reform Coordinating Group – Sierra Leone (MRCG-SL) with support from the Africa Transitional Justice Legacy Fund (ATJLF) sounded voices of youths in hideouts (ghettos) in some parts of the north to unravel some of the greatest challenges that they face.
Alimamy Fornah operates a local bar for palm-wine at Sowulia village near Binkolo town in Bombali district which he said he inherited from his late father who was killed during the civil war in Sierra Leone.
“I grew up in the streets because my mother passed away when I was a baby. My late father who was a famous palm-wine (poyo) tapper is the only parent I can remember. I wish they are both still alive.’’
He recalled that he was only 8 years old when he ventured into palm-wine tapping; it was all fun tapping and selling palm-wine each day to survive as that was the sole means of survival. He said that his father repeatedly told him that school was meant for children from rich homes and not for sons and daughters of the poor.
Just like his late father, Alimamy is renowned for supplying fresh palm wine to customers. All he knows is tapping palm wine from the bush and sell it to different customers who are predominantly youths. He said his poyo bar has been a point of convergence for youths where they debate on national issues and matters affecting their lives such as unemployment, lack of skill development and many more.
In Makeni Abdul Bangura is the leader of a youth group called SLYTO Youths. Members of this group are a blend of young school leavers, illegal migration deportees, commercial sex workers and clique boys that are undergoing transformation through Abdul’s advocacy and lobbying power.
Some of these youths squatting in Abdul’s hideout in Makeni were notorious for gambling, pickpocketing and night hustling but they are now undergoing transformations at the vocational centers within the municipality while others have ventured into playing football and petty trading.
When asked why they are out in the streets and away from their homes, a bulk of them replied that they are ex-combats displaced from reparation camps in the country but hardship is what has forced them out to join their peers in the street to find their living. They appealed to the government to develop and implement initiatives that would help to address some of the greatest challenges that young people are facing in the country.
This would be a way of adhering to recommendation 46 of the TRC which recommends: “Everyone has inherent dignity and the right to have their dignity respected and protected.”
This story was produced by the Media Reform Coordinating Group-Sierra Leone (MRCGSL) with Support from the Africa Transitional Justice Legacy Fund (ATJLF).
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