Some snapshots of gender roles in Sierra Leone

In Kamakwe, the village of Dr. Barrie.

“How de body?” I gave our small guardian a measured look. Her name was Asinatu. She was probably about ten years old, with carefully braided hair, a big piece of African cloth that she kept readjusting around herself as she talked, and a serious look.
That morning she hadn’t said a word to me; she had only produced the key to the locked room when Katie, Allan or I needed it. I’d woken up just as dawn broke, and gone outside to sit on the steps of the house. Mist was still thick over the other houses and grass-roof cooking huts. Asinatu moved all around me, carrying buckets and brooms back and forth from the house to the cooking hut. She hadn’t even batted an eye when I first said good morning.
Now we were sitting in the house, waiting. Amhidu had more or less abandoned Katie and I in this house in the corner of Kamakwe, and we were firmly stuck behind a fence of cultural and linguistic barriers. I was sitting on the floor, treating the toxic burns from “The Champion,” a bizarre acidic bug that had visited my legs a few days ago. Apparently it trails the acid as it walks.
Katie was doing something in the room with our stuff, and Asinatu was sitting on a chair, watching us.
In response to my question, she murmured “No’ bad.”
I gestured to my burns, “Me de get burnt na champion. You de know wetin na champion?”
She shook her head. She didn’t know about the champion. At least, that’s what I thought I had asked her. ‘Wetin na’ means what, more or less, but my Krio is quite unreliable. We lapsed into silence. Asinatu continued to stare me down with a very regal gaze, as I sat amidst a couple of alcohol pads and some Purel.
“You de go na school, Asinatu?”
She nodded.
“Which class you de study?”
She held up an open palm.
“Fifth year?”
Nod. We were quickly approaching the end of my Krio, given that I didn’t think she wanted to hear about malaria prevention.
“You de got favourite subject na school?”
She looked confused. I tried again.
“Wetin subject you de prefer, wetin subject you de like?”
Her eyes glimmered for a moment. “Math. Me de like math.” Her voice was much stronger this time.
“Math! Math i’ good. I de like math too. Math will take you very far.” I suppose the last part was a vanity; she didn’t understand my English. “Wetin you wan’ for do after SS?” I thought that meant ‘What do you want to do after secondary school?’
“I’ not for long tem.” She was more reserved again. I heard a note of wistfulness, but I could have imagined it. She was right, however. That was a long way away.
“Ousai you de go for SS?” Where are you going to go to high school?
The confidence was back. “Freetown.”
“That’s good,” then I recalled my first Krio lesson – ‘fine’ means ‘good’ – “fine! Fine.”
We fell back into silence. I dabbed some ointment on my burns, and then capped the tube.
Later Katie and I told Allan about Asinatu. He said “We probably don’t want to know what happens in her life.”

“So Amhidu, your sister lives here?”
“Yes.” Kamakwe was a giant labyrinth of familial relations – as far as we could tell, everyone was related, and none of the Sierra Leoneans seemed to be very careful about using the correct terms. Cousins were sisters, aunts were ‘Mama,’ as were pretty much all ladies older than thirty, and I was confused. However, I did know which girl was Amhidu’s sister.
“Does she have kids? I think we met her last night, on the porch, with a couple of other young women and a huge bunch of kids.”
“No, she does not have children. She takes care of my grandmother.”
“So your sister stays here, taking care of your grandmother?”
“She is not my sister, she is my cousin.” Well, I guess I didn’t know which one was Amhidu’s sister. I did know which one was his cousin.
“Right.”
Katie jumped in. “So wait. Do the girls in this town go to university?”
“No, they stay in the village, and they hope to marry.”
“Do they think that is unfair?”
Amhidu shrugged.
“What about your sister? Will she stay here?”
“She hopes to go to university. But her WASS is not so good.” WASS is the high school diploma (West Africa Secondary School, I believe).
“So she’ll just study, and then retake it?”
“Yes.”
“But wait. What if she just gets married, and can’t go to university?”
Amhidu turned his head a bit, as he often does when thinking. His turning face and eyes draw you along, and give the conversation a moment to pause.
“As for me, I will not let that happen to my sister.”

“What about rape?” We were talking about capital punishment. I had asked Allan about his stance, and then quickly realized that asking Sierra Leoneans would be more interesting.
“No, rape is nine months.”
“Nine months!” Wow, that’s terrible.
“No, no! Eight years, eight years!”
They debated in Krio for a moment, and I couldn’t follow. But I could feel the curiosity and questions oozing out of Katie. She asked, in careful warm tones, “Are there a lot of cases of rape in Sierra Leone?”
“No, not so many. You know, you know, many of these rapes, many of these cases, they are just reported by the families, they are not real rapes.”
“What do you mean?” Katie was the soul of diplomacy. I was silent.
“They just happen because the girl, she is a virgin, most of these things they happen to virgins, and she doesn’t think, she doesn’t expect it will hurt, so then she cries out, and the family comes and says that the guy raped her,”
Katie said something to get him to keep going.
“I used to work in the rape unit in the hospital, and we would examine the rape victims when they come in, to see if there is damage, any tears. But most of these girls will not say they were raped, the family will say it,”
“Why?” Again, Katie’s impressive self-control.
“Because they wan’ money. Most of these things, in Sierra Leone, they are settled out of court, for money, so the girl’s family can get money.”
“So these are the reported rapes?”
“Yes, the reported ones. Most of the reported rapes are not real rapes. Maybe one percent.”
I asked a question. “What percentage of Sierra Leonean women would you say have been raped?”
“I don’t know,” someone else answered, “ve’y small. Maybe one percent.” The popular one percent statistic.
Later, I asked Katie what she thought they would say if we told them that a quarter of North American women are sexually assaulted by the end of university (the statistic told by SHARE, one of my favourite student groups at Princeton).

“The thing is, we have to make sure Katie gets well. It’s not just for Katie, I mean, I’ll be really sad if she’s sick.” I actually thought that Katie was already sick. She was standing off to the side, and I was being pushy, trying to make sure the outcome I thought was best was the one that happened. We were in Freetown, and Katie was very rundown after several days of not sleeping well and being well beyond her comfort zone in terms of hygienic conditions. At Uncle Ben’s everything had been fine, and so I thought we should try and head back a day early. Beyond that, Katie couldn’t sleep well at Dr. Barrie’s because there was only one mosquito net, it was noisy, and it was very hot. She has pretty severe reactions to mosquito bites and doesn’t naturally adapt to heat that well. That means that she is constantly facing much more adversity than me, and so I’m completely in awe of her determination. But it was too early in the game to get run down, so right now the best course of action was for her to stay in the hotel we had stayed in the first two nights. It was quiet, it had A/C, it had clean washrooms, and it had power. Katie wanted this too, although she doesn’t like to miss out on things nor to see groups split up.
“Oh yeah, that’s okay. It’s different for girls.” Dr. Barrie’s reply. I can’t believe I hadn’t seen that this was the first place the whole situation would go, but I tried to save it.
“No, it’s not a question of guys and girls, it just happens that I’m lucky that I can sleep on the floor and I’m not bothered by the mosquitoes or the heat.” And I also have dulled hygienic standards, not usually an asset. But for now, the damage was done. I had been the one speaking up in the first place anyway, right? Damn.

So I got lost while trying to find Katie’s hotel. I eventually found it, and we had a sumptuous meal of bread and fresh peanut butter. Calling palm oil repetitive is an understatement, even for my unambitious food tastes.
A couple days later, Alimamy, Katie and I were getting ready to return to Kono. “Keddie,” that was how Sierra Leoneans say it – it’s a Sierra Leonean name, “can you get back to your hotel? Walking?” He had a mischevious gleam in his eye.
“No.” Katie was honest about it. Alimamie laughed.
“Chris is much more clever, haha!” Damn.
“No, not at all, Alimamy. Allan just drew me a map.” I had even gotten lost on the way. But Alimamy’s attention had wandered.

It was very late at night, about one in the morning, and I was waiting to work with Bailor. The power was out.
He works very late. So does Binta, his wife’s younger sister. She’s a secondary school student. Her and Asma, Dr. Barrie’s wife, look like twins, so for a while I thought Bailor and his wife were huddling over some finances. I could hear arithmetic every now and then. But then I noticed, no, it was Binta, not Asma. So he was tutoring her. And I remembered that Allan said he tutored her every night. Given that Bailor usually gets around three hours of sleep a night, that’s a pretty special investment of time.
“No, greatest common factor na...” snippets of math jumped out of the Krio and caught my attention. Eventually I let Bailor know that I was fading, and that if he wanted to review the Open MRS form drafts I had concocted, we’d better do it soon. Binta kept working, and then I went to bed, and as I slipped into sleep I could here the two of them debating greatest common factors.

“Keddie!” Katie and I were walking to the clinic, a week or so ago. We were walking up the hill on the main road, towards the center of town. Two women wearing colorful African dresses were calling her from the righthand side.
“Hi! How de body?” Katie is always very friendly to the people that speak to her. I’m more stony. But these two women often call out to Katie, and it’s much less likely that women will take a friendly wave to mean that they can come tell you a story ending in a plea for money.
“Fine, fine. How de body?”
“Fine!” Katie was smiling from ear to ear. We hardly ever get to even talk to women in Sierra Leone, but they seem to love Katie. These women knew her name from stopping us in the street the week before – I think. But it may have been simply through word of mouth.
It’s not hard to guess why seeing Katie, a ‘white woman’ would be so exciting to these women.