In a darkish patch of swampland within the metropolis, two intercourse employees identified an space with empty grain sacks unfold out throughout the bottom.
One of many younger girls, Mabinty, instructed us this was the place they labored facet by facet – seeing as much as 10 males an evening.
The boys pay them a greenback a time.
She is attempting to make sufficient cash to assist her kids. She had six, however three died.
The opposite three are in class.
“One little one has simply sat his exams. I don’t have cash to pay for him to go to high school, until I promote intercourse. These are my sufferings,” she stated.
Hundreds of girls are estimated to have turned to intercourse work throughout Sierra Leone.
Lots of them are younger girls orphaned by the struggle, which claimed the lives of greater than 50,000 folks and displaced nearly half the nation’s inhabitants by the point it led to 2002.
Charity teams say the variety of younger women working within the intercourse commerce has additional elevated because the nation grapples with the financial fallout of the Ebola outbreak and the coronavirus pandemic.
Like many crises, these have disproportionately impacted girls.
Prostitution isn’t unlawful within the nation, however the girls are seen as outcasts and obtain little assist from the federal government or society.
Not lengthy after we met Isata in 2020, she was kidnapped by a legal gang and compelled into intercourse slavery in The Gambia, Senegal and eventually Mali.
She managed to pay money for a telephone and described her life there.
“The best way they strategy us, it’s like they wish to kill us until we settle for,” she stated.
“I’m struggling a lot.”
BBC Africa Eye was then capable of observe her down and a UN physique, the Worldwide Organisation for Migration (IOM), helped Isata return to Sierra Leone.
She gave up intercourse work however, once we noticed her in 2021, she was struggling to make sufficient cash to care for her daughter, by cooking in a neighborhood kitchen.
The following time we acquired an replace on Isata, in 2023, she had returned to prostitution after turning into hooked on kush – a psychoactive mix of addictive substances offered cheaply, that may include human bones.
The drug has develop into such an issue in Sierra Leone, the president has declared it a nationwide emergency.
Within the grip of dependancy, Isata left behind her youngest little one – a son simply 4 months outdated.
He was being sorted by Isata’s mom, Poseh.
“The stress of the road life led her to smoking kush. It’s the stress,” Poseh stated.