By Amara Thoronka

Background

“Lupercalia” was a pagan fertility festival celebrated in mid-February and was dedicated to “Faunus,” the Roman god of agriculture as well as to the founders of Rome.

During the festival, animal sacrifices were made to the Roman god by spilling blood on around farms. Also, grown-up men most often used the celebration to express their love for ladies and their intention for marriage.

When Christianity took over Rome, the pagan festival was prohibited and declared evil. At the end of the 5^th century, Pope Gelasius declared February 14 Valentine’s Day. It replaced the festival and continued with the showcase of love.

Scripted account of modern day valentine was written in perhaps one of the most unromantic places conceivable: a prison. Charles, Duke of Orleans wrote the love letter to his wife in 1415 while captured at the Battle of Agincourt. As a prisoner for more than 20 years, he would never see his valentine’s reaction to the love poem he wrote his wife.

Ignorance and misconception of modern-day valentine

It is obvious that card manufacturers are putting so much into advertising the day and the need for people to buy love expressing cards and share with their loved ones.

Interestingly, valentine day is now something else. It has been exclusively restricted to intercourse by many people, especially young people.

A week to Valentine’s Day, you can see the passion in students to prepare for the day.  Many youths now see the day as a moment for love making. The innocence of some females are given and taken away.

Young people most often spend their last penny to buy valentine customized clothes and other items to appear appealing on the day.

What remains unfortunate is to see elderly people on social media and other platforms, thereby reinforcing the love-making mindsets of young people.

Due to the ignorance around the day and the exclusive focus on love-making by young people, that has led them engaging in early sex and thereby increase the rate of teenage pregnancy.

Archie Charles Williams is an American singer who was wrongfully incarcerated for 37 years in prison and released on 21 March 2019.

Williams is from Baton Rouge, Louisiana in the United States. On 21 April 1982, he was convicted in a case of rape and attempted murder of a 30-year-old white woman at her home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1982, even though his fingerprints were not found at the scene.

Williams was 22 at the time and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.

Three people also testified that Williams was at home at the time of the crime, however the following year he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Williams has always maintained his innocence.

After spending more than 10 years in maximum security prison Louisiana State Penitentiary, the Innocence Project took up his case.

The non-profit legal organisation works to overturn wrongful convictions through the use of DNA testing.

After campaigning for 24 years, a new analysis of fingerprints at the scene identified a serial rapist as the man responsible for the crime – proving Williams’s innocence.

Just seven days later, all charges against Williams were dismissed and his convictions were quashed, and he was released from jail in March 2019.

Williams sang “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” by Elton John for his first performance in Season 15 of  America’s Got Talent on May 26, 2020. All four judges voted for him to move to the next level and he received a standing ovation from the audience and the judges. John said that he was “moved to tears” by the performance. As a result of Williams’ story, Simon Cowell became an ambassador for The Innocence Project. Williams sang “Flying Without Wings” by Westlife during the semi-finals. He moved ahead to the finals with four other acts. Archie finished as a Bottom 5 finalist of the top 10.

Guinea-Bissau President Umaro Sissoco Embalo survived last week’s five-hour gun attack and the government has launched a major investigation into the foiled effort, which Embalo has denied was carried out by members of the country’s armed forces.

ECOWAS chairman Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo has warned that the August 2020 coup in Mali had produced a “contagious” effect.

An attempted coup was thwarted in the west African coastal nation of Guinea-Bissau last week, the latest in a string of attempted, and in many cases successful, overthrows of governments in the region.

In late January, military personnel in Burkina Faso deposed President Roch Marc Kaboré, citing the government’s inability to deal with a deteriorating security situation in a country beset by jihadist insurgency.

Guinea’s transitional parliament was formed last week, five months after a successful coup ousted President Alpha Conde, citing allegations of corruption, human rights abuses and economic mismanagement. Mali has experienced two coups in the past 18 months, in August 2020 and August 2021.

Further east, coups also took place in Chad and Sudan last year, while an attempt to seize the presidential palace in Niger failed.

A study by the University of Kentucky’s Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne found that there have been more than 200 attempted coups in Africa since the 1950s, averaging around four per year between 1960 and 2000, before dropping in the first two decades up to 2019.

In 2021, six coups or attempted coups were recorded, prompting UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to caution that “military coups are back” whilst lambasting the lack of a unified international response to military interventions.

Guinea-Bissau President Umaro Sissoco Embalo survived last week’s five-hour gun attack and the government has launched a major investigation into the foiled effort, which Umaro has denied was carried out by members of the country’s armed forces.

Guinea-Bissau has become a major transit hub for drug trafficking, particularly cocaine, between Latin America and Europe.

International Bodies ‘Laughed Off’

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) met in Accra, Ghana last week to discuss widening unrest. The organization’s chairman, Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo, warned that the August 2020 coup in Mali had produced a “contagious” effect.

The 15-nation bloc has suspended Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso and imposed harsh economic sanctions on Mali and Guinea in an attempt to strong-arm transitional governments into keeping promised timetables for their respective returns to civilian rule.

However, despite efforts to impose punitive measures and deter future overthrows, regional leaders, western allies and international bodies are struggling to contain a groundswell of support for military rule in West Africa.

“Coup organizers seem all too willing to pursue isolationism. We’re seeing the authority of regional and international bodies being challenged and sanctions being laughed off,” Eric Humphery-Smith, senior Africa analyst at political risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, told CNBC.

“And the more coups that occur, the more solidarity among military leaders, likely delaying transition back to democracy.”

A ‘Complete Shakeup’

ECOWAS has drawn criticism for its imposition of tough sanctions that will disproportionately affect the poorest people in targeted countries rather than the political elite.

Robert Besseling, CEO of specialist political risk firm Pangea-Risk, also noted in a report Tuesday that growing anti-French sentiment in post-colonial countries will “uproot Europe’s counterinsurgency interests in the Sahel and create an opportunity for Russia and Turkey to step into the void.”

“A complete shakeup of West Africa’s political system, international relations, and counterinsurgency strategy is on the cards, and perhaps even an economic shift away from French influence,” he said.

Besseling highlighted that both ECOWAS and the African Union have failed to condemn elected leaders who seek to alter their constitutions to prolong their rule.

New AU Chair and Senegalese President Macky Sall has himself mooted an unconstitutional third term, and like third-term Côte d’Ivoire President Alassane Ouattara, staunchly opposes military transfers of power.

“While the trend of coups may indicate a shift in counterinsurgency strategy in the Sahel and across West Africa, the hawkish response to coups, including sanctions, asset freezes, and military interventions, will further entrench opposition to ECOWAS, the AU, and their western allies, most notably France,” Besseling said.

Pangea-Risk suggested that the risk of sanctions to countries deemed susceptible to coups could deter foreign investment and slow economic recoveries.

Source: CNBC

By:  Benjaminah Palmer

I’ve been living with COVID19 since the first lockdown in the UK.

I had gotten used to wearing masks almost every single day of my life. On the bus, in stores, at school, and even in the church. But being forced to wear them in my own home, to protect my family in a place where I felt safe from all the craziness of the world, my place of comfort, and peace, delivered reality right at my door.

I had also gotten used to the change in attitude towards natural things like sneezing and coughing in public spaces but being looked at as the virus itself in my own home was emotionally suffocating and exhausting,

The other thing I had also gotten used to was the one-way system. Now implemented in schools, train stations, restaurants, stores, and other public places, even if it took me longer than usual to reach my destination, I was OK with it, as it meant that I was doing what I could to prevent the virus from spreading.

But when you become deadly ‘contagious’, you start to view things differently, and you suddenly become sensitive to things like little labels, which later become self-fulfilling prophecies.

To understand the significance of anything, I have learnt that you must have a basic understanding of its background. For that reason, allow me to take you to the start of my COVID-19 journey.

On the 30th of July 2021, at quarter past one, I was awakened by the difficulty to swallow with a newfound pain in my throat, followed by an extreme rise in temperature, almost immediately, I noticed my feet slowly turning stone-cold, causing me to jump off the bed to find my long-lost socks.

Luckily for me, I was able to find it but when I returned to continue from where I had left off, I unconsciously couldn’t close my eyes for a second as my mind race across a thousand thoughts in my head and so I lay down there going back and forth till morning.

And before the sun rose, I was up, ready to take my lateral flow test which turned out to be negative. Nonetheless, this good news couldn’t take away the doubtfulness in my dads’ voice when I told him of what had occurred the night before, nor the worries in mums’ eyes as she reminds me where to find the paracetamols for my headache and the lemsip for my pneumonia.

The next day was much better until I took my second test, or should I say tests, all four of which turned out to be positive. I will never be able to compare the feeling of fear, mixed with anxiety and confusion stirring up in my lungs, causing me to feel nauseous and light-headed.

I went to bed that night, knowing that my life will change overnight, and it sure did, as, by the next day, new methods were now being implemented to prevent the further spread of the virus in my home.

Two days after my PCR test results arrived, alongside a call from the track and trace committee, I was formally sentenced to 10 days of imprisonment, with no right to visitors; no right to watching Netflix on the big screen in the living room; nor an opportunity to share with mum my new favourite song, or the ideas that just crossed my mind during the day whilst cooking dinner.

But most importantly, no right to sit down and have family dinners. Instead, I was locked away in my room, with my personalised cutleries, and other essentials.

Those gruesome and disheartening moments that I was afraid to touch anything without gloves made me more appreciative of those around me and the everyday things we often take for granted.

I mean, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would need a pair of gloves and a mask to use the toilet or enter the kitchen, in fear of disseminating my loved ones.

I accept the fact that this wasn’t the best of many experiences, but I refuse to play the victim. Instead, I’m grateful that I haven’t lost a family member or a friend of mine to it and for that I am grateful.

Plus, I have used this time to enhance my relationship with Almighty God, appreciate little things, and love myself more.

In conclusion, I would like to use this opportunity to say that COVID19 is real and to encourage you to play your part in protecting others.

Credit: BBC Africa Eye

BBC Africa Eye reveals how a powerful, illegal street drug called Kush is running rampant and having a devastating effect on the youth of Sierra Leone. Young people are suffering mental health problems, harming themselves and others and even taking their own lives.

The drug, plant matter mixed with psychoactive chemicals, has become king on the streets, pushing out other more expensive illegal highs like Tramadol.

One Kush dealer told BBC Africa Eye: “Now, in Freetown… Kush is the order of the day. They call it Mr More. The more I have it the more I need it.”

Police are battling to win the war against the drug. Head of SWATT team at Sierra Leone Police’s Transnational Organized Crime Unit, Andrew Ronko told Africa Eye:  “It is wide into the nook and cranny of Sierra Leone, it is not just the city. Tramadol is not even a threat now. Every other youth in the ghetto have fallen in love with Kush. It is really a threat.”

BBC Africa Eye Reporter, Tyson Conteh investigates why Kush is taking a hold in Sierra Leone. He discovers desperate Kush addicts selling sex to get money to buy the drug and others searching through raw sewage to find things to sell to feed their Kush habit.

Sierra Leone’s one psychiatric hospital is feeling the impact. Last year a new drug rehab ward was opened and its beds have been filled by Kush victims. Kush accounts for 90 per cent of male patients. There are women patients too. One woman said: “I sold Kush and smoked it.  I thought people wanted to kill me, and that the devil that was after me and I would be sacrificed.”

When Kush first arrived in Sierra Leone from abroad it was known as K2. The Kush dealer described the effect of smoking a Kush mixture called Red Light:

“When I smoked it, eight people held me down. If they had not, I would have murdered someone.”

“When people want the next ‘hot’ thing, these ‘chemist boys’ mix all sorts of stuff just to ** your head up.” With ever more unpredictable Kush cocktails on the market, even the dealer is calling for the Kush trade to be smashed up by authorities.

“They need to destroy all the cartels. I want the world to know we are suffering from this stuff.” Despite recent raids by the police, Kush is proving hard to stamp out because it can be made with so many different ingredients.

Ibrahim Kargbo, known to everyone as PRO, is the public relations officer for the National Drug Enforcement Agency. As a former police officer, PRO believes Kush cannot be tackled through law enforcement alone. He is on a mission to raise awareness of the dangers of Kush and runs sessions to help users kick the habit which is having some success. He says: “If all of us can stand up together and say, ‘Yes, it is affecting our families, affecting our kids,’ I think that is better for all of us.”

The unrelenting march of Kush threatens to consume the young people of Sierra Leone.

Can Kush be crushed?

Watch the news piece: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-africa-60260738

Watch the documentary on Youtube: https://youtu.be/u6MPV9zBXYg

By: Chris Evans [The Set Pieces]

Tom Saintfiet and his players are under attack, with only a cluster of soldiers standing between them and a group of angry fans. Surrounded by seething supporters all around the stadium, there’s little more the Gambia boss can do but take cover from the objects being hurled his way.

It’s 2018 and the Scorpions have just lost 1-0 to Togo, the first defeat of Saintfiet’s short reign as head coach of the West African nation.

After a pair of draws in his opening two matches in charge, the Belgian could have been forgiven for thinking he’d made a solid start considering Gambia hadn’t won a competitive match for five years prior to his appointment. But as he’s marched off the pitch under armed guard, it’s clear he has a lot more to do to earn the fans’ appreciation.

“In my third match, we lost 1-0 at home to Togo and that’s when we saw the passion of the Gambia fans,” recalls the well-travelled coach.

“We couldn’t leave the pitch and the army had to come with shields because the fans were throwing bottles and stones at us. We’d lost 1-0 to Togo, who were 50 positions better off than us in the world rankings at the time and Gambia hadn’t won for five years, but we still had stones and bottles thrown as us.”

Fast forward four years and not only has Saintfiet managed to turn around the swell of negative emotion he faced after that Togo defeat to remain in charge, but if he stood in the midst of Gambian fans today, he’d be mobbed as a national hero instead.

The turnaround has been stark. After finally breaking Gambia’s long wait for a win with victory over Benin a month after losing to Togo, Saintfiet’s side upset the odds to qualify for this year’s African Cup of Nations – the country’s first ever major tournament – as the lowest-ranked nation to ever play in the competition.

Gambia wasn’t there to merely make up the numbers, though. Ranked 151st in FIFA’s rankings before the tournament kicked off, the Scorpions drew with Mali and beat Tunisia on the way to topping their group, before getting past Guinea in the last-16 to set up a quarter-final tie with hosts Cameroon. A 2-0 defeat in Douala would see the fairy tale end there, but it marked a monumental achievement.

“The reason I stepped in [in 2018] was because I really believed there was more quality in Gambian football than people thought,” Saintfiet explains.

“In the first few weeks I was here, I said to the president and vice president, ‘we will qualify for the African Cup’ and they said ‘calm down, calm down, it’s just the first match we haven’t lost in years’. We laugh about it now, but it’s true.”

Saintfiet’s confidence came from a deep understanding of what it takes to manage a smaller nation, with Gambia the 48-year-old’s 12^th international coaching job – 10 as head coach of a senior side – in a career that has seen him work in four continents. He’s taken jobs in several lesser-vaunted nations, including Yemen, Namibia and Ethiopia, and faced an array of challenges along the way.

One of the most extreme was after taking the Zimbabwe national team job in 2010 when he was tipped off during a training session that the state police were coming to arrest him due to a discrepancy with his visa. Unable to go back to his hotel, Saintfiet holed up nearby for a few hours before crossing the border under the cover of darkness into neighbouring Botswana to evade capture.

It’s made for an eclectic CV and one that sometimes draws ridicule for the amount of job hopping he’s done in the past two decades. To fully understand Saintfiet’s numbers, it’s important to listen to the context, he reasons.

“Sometimes you don’t have the choice and it’s me who always accepted the jobs, so I don’t have to blame other people for it,” he says. “In Namibia, I took over two games from the end [of a qualification campaign] and immediately got good results and then it took a while before the next qualifiers started.

“And in other countries, I signed a three-month deal in Malawi, in Ethiopia it was for five months, in Bangladesh it was three. These countries say they don’t have budget for a foreign coach or even a coach if they don’t have matches for five or six months after qualifying ends.

“There are things I accept, but sometimes I’m not happy because people judge my CV and say ‘this guy never stays anywhere very long’ but they don’t know the ins and outs of it.

“Like I said, in Malawi, 10 months after I left they still hadn’t appointed a new coach because there were no games coming up. That was agreed before I signed a three-month deal, so I did my job and did my three months. On the other hand, it’s also good that I have the experience of working in all these countries because it makes me a stronger coach right now.”

There’s an argument that Gambia are now reaping the rewards for that. Upon taking the job in 2018 – this time on a longer-term deal – Saintfiet started laying foundations.

A new team manager was hired as part of a plan to instil greater organisation off the pitch, with Saintfiet insisting the squad stayed in better quality hotels, booked on “better” flights and had tighter processes to make playing for Gambia a slicker and more enjoyable experience.

With that side of things in check, the Belgian coach began to overhaul the on-pitch philosophy, transitioning the side from the attractive tiki-taka style that had been easy on the eye, but ultimately led to the Scorpions losing far more often that not.

Under Saintfiet, Gambia would be more tactically disciplined and harder to beat. Once a more defined structure began to take shape, the next step was to identify new players to join the revolution.

“In the past three-and-a-half years, I’ve let 34 players make their debuts for Gambia – not all of them made it, but that’s quite a lot,” Saintfiet tells The Set Pieces.

“In my first year, I lived full-time in Gambia, watched a lot of local league players, saw a lot of quality there and then started moving around the world to visit a lot of players, some who were known to us and some double-nationality players to convince them to play for us, like Saidy Janko and Noah Sonko Sundberg.”

Recruitment might be a skill more familiar with club managers, but in recent decades it’s become the territory of a proactive international coach to increase the talent pool of smaller nations too.

“I travelled a lot and we assembled the team,” Saintfiet says. “I did all the work myself, but I’m used to that. First of all, we have the internet where you can find a lot of players all over the world. If you know the Gambian names… you can start working on that.

“Then it’s a case of getting in contact with the player and the club, visiting them, seeing if they’re interested, watching if they’re good enough. We have a lot of players in Norway, Sweden and Switzerland – we have a few born in England, born in Germany and Scandinavian countries. That mixture helps.

“It’s a very intense job and people don’t always see that. I did everything myself and paid for my own flight tickets and hotel costs to travel around and visit players. It’s my passion for the job and my desire to achieve something.”

With those building blocks in place, perhaps it wasn’t such a big surprise that Gambia made it from the preliminary phase to top their AFCON qualification group ahead of higher-ranked Gabon, Angola and DR Congo.

If that was meant to be the hard bit done, the debutants were confronted with a host of challenges that punctuated their tournament, making their run to the quarter-finals even more improbable.

A pre-competition training camp in Qatar was blighted by a Covid outbreak, which left Saintfiet working with a skeleton coaching team and as few as 12 players and no goalkeepers available to take part in training sessions. It wasn’t until four days before Gambia’s opening match against Mauritania that they could play a full training match with a full complement of players.

After making it to Cameroon, there were further distractions at Gambia’s team hotel in Buea, where soldiers stood guard 24/7 amid security concerns triggered by friction between the government and armed rebels in the area.

And the night before their last-16 tie with Guinea, Gambia’s squad was struck down by food poisoning that left several players either unavailable or nursing illness right up to kick-off – leading Saintfiet to blast tournament officials for not providing AFCON’s smaller nations with the same quality of facilities as the leading lights. But there was no chance of the players letting the setbacks get on top of them.

“All the negative things and the bad luck we had, we used in a psychological way to become stronger. I’m not a coach who likes to talk about excuses,” Saintfiet counters.

“We created the group and in the outside world we made clear that we were underdogs and we were lowly ranked, but inside [the camp] our ambition was to become African champions. We were also realistic, but we were there with ambition and we really wanted to get the best out of it.

“With my team, we put together motivational videos of Denmark in 1992 becoming European champions, of Greece in 2004 and Zambia in 2012 becoming African champions. We showed the players them before every match and we really built up a team that had confidence in themselves.

“We weren’t there just to be there, we were there to compete with the best and show ourselves as the best side. When we won against Mauritania, there was a big party. I told all the players and staff, every point we won we had to celebrate… we created a flow and a belief in ourselves and the mental part was very important with that.”

The run may have ended in the quarter-finals, but Saintfiet’s Gambia were celebrated as heroes back home. Complications with return flights meant only a few players and staff were able to bask in a glorious homecoming, although the impact of the success has been felt nonetheless.

“The impact of what we did Gambia was really huge,” Saintfiet adds. “For Gambians all over the world can finally say ‘we are from Gambia, not from Zambia’ because there is a joke that people think they’re not from Gambia but from Zambia. But now people have finally started to know The Gambia and it is a huge honour to be part of that and the coach of that.”

One thing’s for sure, when Saintfiet next returns to Gambia, the greeting will be much friendlier than that night against Togo in 2018.

By Amara Thoronka   

The term “motivational speaker” has become one of the most frequently used words in both casual and formal interface in recent times. The internet is now inundated with motivational speakers from diverse cultures, professions and origins. But who really are they? What are the potential negatives in unreasonably exposing oneself to all sorts of motivational contents online? Should people be mindful of the type of motivational speeches or contents they listen to and put into practice?

Who are online motivational speakers?

Online motivational speakers are online content creators who use persuasive, emotional and mind-blowing expressions, gestures, narratives and citations to convince someone to believe in what they say. Some target general audience while others design their messages to targets specific people like youths, women, children, couples, business starters, employers, employees, the disabled, the sick or the traumatized.

Since the internet has taken over, motivational speakers are mostly seen online. They use social media platforms chiefly Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Tiktok to pass on their messages. Most of them have millions of people across the globe who follow them online. In fact, some people have become addicted to their online contents as they now go online to search for videos from motivational speakers that will uplift or recover their spirit from certain ordeals or challenges they are going through. Online motivational speakers are widely perceived by many as solution contacts and people who actually know what to do in any given circumstance.

The general good

Let me hasten to say that motivational speeches are generally good as they can positively change and inspire lives. It is good to listen to such speeches to see dfferent perspectives on life challenges, value success and failure equally, relate with the other person’s views or difficulties, learn something new and be inspired, and also increase your knowledge on various fields, happenings and occurrences in life.

Why you should be mindful  

Notwithstanding the abovementioned benefits of listening to motivational speakers, you should equally be mindful of messages you listen to for motivation. Take the following into consideration before you implement what you hear from online motivational speakers:

Cultural diversity is a major factor. You must ask yourself if what is being said resonates with the social and cultural ideals of your family, community or society in general. For example, someone who has lived all his/her years in United States, England, Canada, Switzerland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China etc, might not understand the realistic socio-cultural features of other societies or nations in other parts of the world. Their submissions of such motivational speakers are most often informed by the culture or ideals of their environments, so if you want to equally implement that in your community, there might be adverse consequential effects.

Also, some motivational speakers are online to make money through the internet traffic they get due to their large following. In such circumstances, the focus is to make videos that will attract huge viewership thereby make money.

Moreover, the nature and circumstances of agonies, misfortunes or challenges are different. Where, when, how and why they happened can vary. Therefore, depending on one motivational directive to solve an issue that has different nature to the one going on in the mind of the motivational speaker at the time he/she created the video, is not reasonably viable.

Furthermore, since the internet is open to all and sundry, you now see many online motivational speakers, who have never experienced the ups and downs of marriage, advising married men and women on complex marital issues. This also apply to those doing motivational contents on business, academia, career and other pursuits but they themselves have not experienced what they seem to be motivating people to do or not to do. Experience is the best teacher, right?

The main lesson

It is good to listen to inspiring words, but it is prudent to follow the ideals that characterize the answer one is looking for. It is illogical to depend on online motivational speakers to teach you how to treat your spouse, family, boss, job, children, friends, people around you, what and what not you should take from people, how you should dress, talk, walk, and so on.

Everything you need to success in doing something or make your relationship work is in you. All what you need is to be disciplined, committed, goal-oriented and treat people the way you would like to be treated. Stop consuming or following online motivational speeches that do not fit into your culture and situation.

By: Christian Conteh

“I still vividly remember the agony of 8 years ago as if it was yesterday. Bitter memories still linger fresh in my mind. I really didn’t want to go through such horrendous pain but because in my community which happens to be a village setting and the fact that all the girls of my age had gone through it, I didn’t have a choice but to follow the community traditions against my wish.”

Adama (not her real name) is a 23-year-old lady in a tiny village in the Northern part of Sierra Leone who was circumcised when she was just 15. Adama, like many African girls and women, is a victim of Africa’s inhumane tradition, Female Genital Mutilation.

Though we were sitting under a mango tree at a secure location in Western Urban Freetown and enjoying the cool breeze, the atmosphere was tense; so I decided to share some personal life challenges I had pulled through. She was amazed at my resilience. When I noticed she was a bit relaxed and comfortable I asked how it all happened?

Adama narrated: “It was a cold Saturday morning; I was struggling to cover myself with the little piece of cloth I had when I heard some women talking outside our house. This is unusual, I told myself. Several questions zoomed through my young mind. What were they doing at our house at such an early time of the morning? Were my parents and I safe?”

She said these questions were prompted by stories of how people had been banished from their village for the most insignificant of offences, going to the farm on a certain day dedicated to praying to God, who they claimed is responsible for the bumper harvest every year.

Adama continued: “Little did I know that they had come for me. One of the women who I recognized as my mother’s elder sister came inside our hut and told me that I should wake up as it was my day to become a woman. Whatever she meant by that sounded strange but exciting for a 15-year-old girl like me. I, however, resisted initially since my parents were nowhere to be found and I thought I needed their approval. My aunt insisted, and so I woke up innocently like a sheep to the slaughter with sleepy eyes and found my way outside.”

She said what she saw outside sent shock waves down her spine.

“I felt overcome by fear, but like someone who had been hypnotised, I could not speak. It seemed my whole body had frozen. Outside, several women dressed in plain white attire and a little over a dozen young girls my age were singing songs and chanting intermittently.

“I demanded to speak with my mother, but I was told she would join us soon. The oldest looking woman who I recognised as one of the community elders assured me I was in safe hands and whatever was going to be done was for my long-term benefit.”

My leg had gone sore with sitting in one position for long. I got up and stretched out the crampy feeling. Adama paused, her eyes still fixed on some pebbles just in front of us. I had brought along some water.

I took it out and handed her a bottle. She accepted it as if she was expecting it. She broke the seal and drank half of it immediately. She was now looking at me straight in the eyes and without getting the full story I started to see the pain in her tender eyes.

“So what happened next?” I quizzed on.

Adama explained: “Well… I was a bit disappointed that all this while my mom was nowhere to be seen, at least to see the state I was in and to help me. All I wanted at that particular moment was to see her so that she could see the pain in my eyes and tell them to let me go. Funnily, years later I discovered she could have been of no help because she approved it as she thought that it was a rite of passage that I should go through.”

So I asked her to take me through the main event when the procedure was done. Her voice had waned at this point and I had to pull myself a little closer to her to avoid missing the copious detail which I was so interested in.

Adama continued: “The singing became louder, as we were taken behind my house and made to sit on a very cold stone which had been moved in the previous night. Because of the fear, I refused to be the first to sit so I stood there staring at the stone thinking of what my fate was. My friend Fatu was a lot more confident, she looked prepared, she blazed the trail by taking a seat. I then watched her go through the cutting.”

I asked whether she meant her friend was circumcised?

“Yes, she was,” Adama replied.

Now the tears rolling down her cheeks had become visible. I was also getting a bit too emotional; I held her hands, tapped her on the shoulder, and assured her it was alright. She protested that she couldn’t go on with her story.

I was determined to get the full story haven to come from as far as the country’s central business district in the capital to the outskirts of the city; I needed to do a thorough job. I gave her time though to take another pause.

According to a 3rd February 2020 publication by the World Health Organisation more than 200 million girls and women alive today have been cut in the 30 countries in Africa and Middle East where FGM is concentrated.

The fifth Sustainable Development Goal seeks to abolish all harmful practices including female genital mutilation (FGM) by the year 2030. Sierra Leone sadly has no proper records of FGM figures.

According to a World Health Organisation Bulletin which speaks to fighting female genital mutilation in Sierra Leone published in 2005 UNICEF estimates that some 90% of Sierra Leonean women are subjected to genital mutilation. The Northern region has the highest prevalence of FGM according to Statistics Sierra Leone’s 2013 Demographic and Health Survey.

Meanwhile, when I saw that Adama had lost the zest she started with telling her story, I spontaneously poured out a few names of prominent and well-placed women in our society who had gone through the procedure and had shared their story with me; she was visibly shocked at my revelation.

She stopped sobbing and wiped away her tears and with some seeming fresh vigour continued her story.

“This moment I am about to share is one period that is still fresh in my mind and I will surely take this memory to my grave,” she paused. I gave her an assuring smile, and she went on.

“Immediately after Fatu it was my turn. I was perspiring all over with mixed feelings of fear and anxiety. They took a piece of cloth, tied it around my eyes, and held my head back. They put another piece of cloth in my mouth so that I could bite it during the entire process.

According to what I was told by one of the women who looked like the eldest woman in the group, the cloth was meant to ease the pain. I could feel my heartthrob as if it was going to fall off very soon. I had not experienced anything as scary as this before so I did not know what to expect.

“I started a fight in a desperate attempt to free myself from their grip, and I was expecting to at least be given the opportunity to see what was being done to me. But the more I fought the firmer what felt like a thousand hands kept me in position. A couple of other women held my legs so tightly that I could hardly move a muscle.

“The singing and chanting in the background continued unabated. I felt that they were celebrating my pain. Later on, I was made to understand that the real reason for the songs was to drown the cries so that nobody can hear me wailing.”

Rugiatu Neneh Turay is the Founder and Director of the Amazonian Initiative Movement (AIM) an organisation that is doggedly poised to transform the traditional Bondo Society in order to maintain our culture and tradition. Her campaign for Bondo without cutting has been piloted in Port Loko District, North of the country. The first alternative rite of passage in Sierra Leone in December of 2019 has been commended by many.

“I want people to know that I am part of the Bondo society and I like it, but I hate FGM because of my experience and that of other women and children which I witnessed. We still have the highest infant mortality rate in the world but yet we are afraid to talk about FGM. If we don’t talk about FGM it will be difficult as a country to address infant mortality because one of the things promoting that is FGM,” Rugiatu Neneh Turay said.

According to AIM, Sierra Leone has more Bondo bushes than schools and hospitals. To tackle this anomaly AIM is implementing a project called ‘Replacing the Bondo bush with schools, working with children and communities that have agreed to replace their Bondo bushes with schools.

Adama had taken a well-deserved break, she was smiling this time and I was happy that she finally felt relaxed. My approach worked. “So how would you personally describe the actual cutting? Give me a mental picture of what the feeling was like?” I inquired.

Adama looked me straight in the eyes for a few seconds and gently said, “The pain I felt cannot be described, thinking of it alone brings cold shivers running through my spine. It was intense but quick. Think of someone using a sharp razor to slice off a piece of your ears, that’s what it felt like between my legs.”

I opened my eyes wide as I tried to visualize the pain, sympathy turned empathy. “Did they use a blade for the procedure?” I asked.

“Well… am… my eyes were still tied so I cannot ascertain,” she answered.

“So… It was done,” she interrupted before I could ask further, “I was circumcised.”

Her tone suggested she wanted some amount of closure and I was determined to give her that. She sighed heavily.

“I could not control the tears from my eyes after that process and the magnitude of the pain that I was feeling. The pain I was going through was unbearable. So many questions were going through my head, what will happen after this? Will this pain ever leave my life? Will I be able to walk again?” Adama explained.

Mrs. Josephine Conteh is a Nursing Sister with over 30 years’ experience in female reproductive health. She says, “Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) has no known health benefits, and it harms girls and women in many ways. It involves removing and damaging healthy and normal female genital tissue and interferes with the natural functions of girls’ and women’s bodies.”

According to Josephine, immediate complications can include severe pain, shock, hemorrhage (bleeding), tetanus or sepsis (bacterial infection), urine retention, open sores in the genital region, and injury to nearby genital tissue. Long-term consequences can include recurrent bladder and urinary tract infections; cysts; infertility; an increased risk of childbirth complications and new-born deaths and the need for later surgeries.

FGM is recognized in numerous international and regional human rights instruments as a violation of the human rights of girls and women. The practice violates a person’s rights to health, security, and physical integrity, the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and the right to life when the procedure results in death.

There is currently no national legislation in Sierra Leone that expressly criminalises and punishes the practice of FGM. The Constitution of Sierra Leone (1991) is very limited in its commitment to equality and protection of human dignity; it also does not specifically address violence against women and girls, harmful practices, or FGM. It only states that ‘no person shall be subject to any form of torture or any punishment or other treatment which is inhuman or degrading.’

In July 2013 a review of the Constitution was launched, and a total of 134 recommendations were put forward by the people of Sierra Leone via a review committee. Sadly, over a hundred of these recommendations were subsequently rejected by the Government.

On a local level, in some chiefdoms (including in the districts of Bo, Bonthe, Kambia, Kailahun, Port Loko, Pujehun, Western Area Rural, and Western Area Urban), Paramount Chiefs and local practitioners (Soweis) have signed ‘Memoranda of Understanding’ (MOUs).

These agreements ban FGM for girls under the age of 18 and require the consent of women over the age of 18. These MOUs are entirely voluntary; though a positive step forward, have no legal standing.

Adama was still sobbing.

“It’s all over now dear,” I assured her, then I asked a very insensitive question that I still regret to date. “Would you allow your daughter to go through the procedure?” She gave me a stern look that seemed like my question was unnecessary.

“Definitely not; not even my worst enemy should be subjected to such an inhumane treatment.” She responded firmly.

Adama’s story fits into the larger stories of many African girls generally and Sierra Leonean girls in particular, many of whom have gone through the horrifying experience of being painted with the mask of beauty. With the compelling story narrated it is time Africans started mounting robust campaigns against this cruel tradition so 23-year-old Adama and her compatriots will be comforted and given a sense of closure

By Kemo Cham

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has failed to lead by example, thanks to the apparent ineffectiveness of its Secretariat – the ECOWAS Commission.

Chapter 11 of the Revised Treaty of the regional grouping provides for cooperation among member states in the areas of human resources, information, social and cultural affairs.

Article 66 of this chapter is specifically dedicated to the press, noting that in order to involve more closely citizens of the Community in the regional integration process, member states should co-operate in the area of information, specifically to facilitate exchange of information and promote and foster effective dissemination of information within the Community, among others.

Sadly, the Commission, which is supposed to ensure that member states implement these provisions, has itself failed in this regard.

Take a moment to google the word ECOWAS and click on news. All you get is news from international, non-African publications like AFP, AP, Aljazeera, France 24, and BBC. And the reports are either about coups in Guinea, Mali and Burkina Faso or the protracted fighting in the Sahel, among other rather grimy reading.

Even more depressing is the fact that you will have to dig deep on the web to get stories that are relevant to the average ECOWAS citizen.

There are no doubt many reasons for this. But it all point to the obvious ineffectiveness in the communication strategy of the Commission.

Firstly, it practices deliberate discrimination in the dissemination of information by language. The relevant ECOWAS instruments identify three official languages for the community: French, English and Portuguese. None of these is mentioned as more important than the others. Yet when it comes to communication, at least outside the ECOWAS system, either French or English is biasedly given priority. And French often gets most of the attention.

Press releases on low key activities many a times never come in any language other than French.

When it comes to communiques and press releases relating to the activities of heads of state and government, they always come in one language first, usually the official language of the member state in focus. The other language version often comes well later.

This way a substantial part of the community’s population, who do not understand both French and English, and there is no doubt that they are the majority, are sidelined.

As a journalist, who covers the activities of ECOWAS, I have had to go through this experience hopelessly, having to wait for long periods of time to get information from ECOWAS.

I have followed live virtual proceedings of the Commission, where the only language available for interpretation is French. What about the over 240 million English speaking members of the community? We are talking here about the majority of the entire population of roughly 390 million population of the sub region.

But in all fairness, I have also heard colleague journalists in Francophone member states lament the same feeling of frustration when documents are originally released in English.

The Commission’s website is rarely updated and, therefore, you can hardly find any important information there. It also seems that it has settled for facebook as the best platform to share official documents. But even there, documents are always uploaded in picture format, rather than in text, which can enable one to translate them electronically into the other languages.

In this situation, the ECOWAS Commission is basically saying that when a statement is done in one language, the others don’t need to understand it. At every given time, therefore, it is speaking to a particular linguistic group and marginalizing the rest. No community as diverse as ECOWAS can integrate in this kind of environment.

Another issue worth mentioning is that for Anglophone journalists, if you are not in Nigeria or Ghana it seems you are not important for the ECOWAS Commission. Most of the bloc’s activities happen in these two countries. This is by no means a problem. The problem is that no effort is seen to be done to cater for journalists outside these two countries during such programmes.

It is hard to accept that the communication department of an organization as important as ECOWAS cannot utilize the opportunities offered by the prevailing technologies, to avoid this unfair treatment of a large section of its population.

Article 66 of Chapter 11 of the Revised ECOWAS Treaty affirms the role of the press in the eyes of the founding fathers of the bloc. As journalists we therefore play a huge role in informing the masses, which is crucial to achieve the so-called ECOWAS of the People Agenda.

The ideal communication strategy for the bloc is therefore one that captures the region’s diversity by releasing statements on all three languages at the same time, for the timely access of all.

Also, there must be some form of arrangement to make sure that what is happening in one country is adequately disseminated to the rest of the citizens of the community. And this is only possible by ensuring unfettered access to information by journalists, regardless of your location, the language you understand or the reach of the media outlet.

Finally, individual governments also have to look into the operations of their respective ECOWAS Focal Persons.

In this respect I can speak more about Sierra Leone, which I am more familiar with. Our ECOWAS representatives in this country only identify with the press during conferences, workshops, launching of some documents or reports.

This is the only time they tend to think the media is relevant. And even at that, they only provide you with information they think you need. They don’t feel any sort of obligation to respond when you seek specific information.

After such occasions, their doors are shut. In line with the typical attitude of public officials in this country, they push away from journalists as though they have stuff to hide.

No wonder there is such a low level of awareness about ECOWAS in some member countries.

In 2016, the Ghana based Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) commissioned a study designed to popularize the ECOWAS protocols. It assessed the knowledge of the bloc among citizens in four countries: Sierra Leone, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Liberia.

The findings on Sierra Leone speaks volume. Majority of the people tended to associate ECOWAS to merely an emergency response outfit, rather than the regional integration purpose it was established for over four decades earlier, the study revealed.

It showed that there was “very little” knowledge of the bloc even among people who were supposed to know about it, including civil society activists and media practitioners.

Sadly, with every indication pointing to the fact that officials are contented with this status quo, I doubt the results will have changed, five years after.

How then can citizens of a country with such level of ignorance about such an important entity hold their government accountable with regards its obligations?

Afterall, not reporting on the activities of an organization means less or no scrutiny.

The launch of the MFWA sponsored report was the culmination of a training for journalists, where a media coalition was set up. I was elected coordinator, with the task of raising awareness of the ECOWAS protocols through our reporting. Our efforts died even before we could start.

The ECOWAS Commission, under the leadership of President Jean-Claude Kassi Brou, must review this counterproductive communication strategy. I hope the incoming Commission President, Dr Omar Touray, will also take note.

It is crucial if the ECOWAS of the people agenda means anything at all.

Kemo Cham is the editor of www.manoreporters.com, an online platform focusing on the mano River Union and the wider West Africa.