Virus pressures see more child brides in Sierra Leone

In a remote corner of Sierra Leone, a man caught a glimpse of 16-year-old Marie Kamara as she ran past his house. Soon after, he proposed to her. "My family does not have money so when he told me he wanted me, I said 'yes', said Kamara. The financial pressure on her family felt more pressing than her wish to continue her education and become a nurse. Her family needed the money. Her stepfather runs a tailoring shop in Komao, but the coronavirus pandemic meant there were few customers.

Kamara's suitor was a miner in his mid-20s. His parents could provide rice for Marie's four younger sisters and access to their watering hole and they could pay cash. When her now-husband met with Kamara's family, she was asked if she agreed with the proposal. Thinking of the dire economic situation of her family, she accepted. Kamara hopes her younger sisters won't have to go through the same experience. She advises them to make sure they stay in school.

Marriages of underage girls like Kamara are on the rise as the coronavirus pandemic deepens poverty around the world, threatening to undo years of work by activists trying to stop the tradition in countries such as Sierra Leone. The United Nations estimates that hardships resulting from COVID-19 will drive 13 million more girls to marry before the age of 18. Statistics, though, are hard to come by as most families carry out such weddings in secret.

In most cases, needy parents receive a dowry for their daughter, a bit of land or livestock that can provide income, or cash and a promise to take over financial responsibility for the young bride. The girl, in return, takes on the household chores of her husband's family and often farm work too. In Sierra Leone, the rate of marriage under 18 had dropped from 56% in 2006 to 39% in 2017, a major achievement in the eyes of child protection activists. Then COVID-19 hit, schools closed in March, and child marriages accelerated.

It wasn't clear when or even if school ever would resume, and many parents feared their idle daughters would get pregnant out of wedlock, said Isata Dumbaya, from Partners in Health Sierra Leone, whose clinics provide health services to teenagers. Many of the girls' mothers were themselves married off as teenagers, she explained, and see early marriage as normal.

"They do not see it as harming their children," Dumbaya said, but rather an investment in securing their daughters a future.

It's a mindset that Sierra Leone's first lady, Fatima Maada Bio, has been working to change with her "Hands Off Our Girls" campaign. Bio herself managed to escape to the United Kingdom as a teenager after learning her father intended to marry her off to someone. She now has made it her life's work to help other underage girls. "If you force a child to be married at a very early age, you are legalising the rape of that child," she told the Associated Press. While sex with underage girls is illegal in Sierra Leone, it is rarely enforced.

Police say cases aren't reported because the families already have agreed to the marriage, whether the brides have or not. Billboards with the first lady's image reading "Hands off our girls" still line the roadsides, but COVID-19 precautions mean the campaign has had to scale back many of its outreach efforts. Like Bio, to become the first lady of Sierra Leone was the dream of Mariama Conteh, whose estimated age is 17. She's expecting a baby within in the next two months. Conteh had left her remote village near the border with Guinea to live with an aunt in Koidu and attend school. Then in April a 28-year-old man in their compound expressed interest in her.

"I told my aunt that I did not want to get married" said Conteh, but her aunt replied that if she did not get married, she'd have to return to her home village.

Conteh figured out that if she refused the proposal, her own parents would try to marry her off once she got home anyway. And food was scarce as her father has two wives and ten children. Conteh bursts into uncontrollable sobs when she thinks of the future she once hoped for.

"I wanted to become the wife of the president but that did not happen,'' she said.

On rare occasions, some teenagers manage to escape early marriage with the help of supportive relatives, but that assistance is often temporary. Naomi Mondeh was just 15 and had only finished fifth grade when her parents, living in a village near Kombayendeh, said that they could no longer afford to send her to school. A man from neighboring Liberia working in the timber trade was asking about her, offering the cash-strapped family a 50-kilogram bag of rice.

When Mondeh agreed to marry and move in with her new husband, she didn't even know his age or the fact that he already had one wife. Soon she was competing with the other woman for attention and money. Often, her husband would leave her alone with no money for food. She complained bitterly to her parents, but her fate was already sealed.

Then she took an extreme decision and escaped by motorcycle taxi to Koidu, the largest nearby town. There, she found an aunt who was willing to take her in. Young but strong, Mondeh is resolute that she is done with her husband. Now she's learning to become a seamstress. In October the schools reopened in Sierra Leone but - like  Kamara, Samba and Mondeh - not all the girls were back in the classroom.