By Alhaji Turay
The issues of forced initiation of young girls into a secret society known as the Bondo , where female genital in mutilation is being carried out in a sacred Bush of the secret society, still continue to be pervasive in especially remote areas in the small west African country of Sierra Leone.
Despite mounting vigorous campaign’s by various feminists and advocacy groups against the grave human rights violation with all of them calling on government to take sterner measures against the perpetrators, the acts are carried out clandestinely with no consideration even given to consent of the poor girls and women , who in most cases have no alternative but to yield to the forceful manipulations of their parents and other family members.
This medium came to learn of the ordeals of a Young woman by the name of Salamatu Lansana who was born and brought up in Freetown Sierra Leone, through one of our reporters who happens to be in that part of the country at that material time when all what transpired to the poor woman occurred.
He pointed out that as a matter of fact resident of the village, who spoke mainly the Temne language, are real traditionalists who still continue to tenaciously cling on to the customs and traditions of their ancestors simply because western civilization did not quite penetrate into that part of the country during the colonial era.
Salamatu Lansana was against the traditions of the female genital mutilation practice and decided to burnt down a sacred Bondo society bush where girl’s were taken to endure female genital mutilation (FGM) in the name of traditions. Salamatu Lansana a single mother has one son and her life took a tragic turn when her husband passed away in 2012 when their son was still very young. This left her as a single parent solely responsible for the upbringing of her son balancing her role as a mother ,she also worked as a teacher’s in Nairna day-care and pre-school in Freetown. During her ordeals her brother was an active members of an opposition political party called the All people Congress political party (APC). He was deeply involved in politics, passionately supporting his causes, but ultimately, the opposition lost power in the year 2023 election and his life became increasingly dangerous. Fearing for his safety, he decided to flee the country with his wife, leaving behind his four children in her care. Salamatu Lansana found herself not only raising her son but also taking on the responsibility of her brother kids which was quite overwhelming for her. As a single mother who had already lost her husband,her resources were stretched. With the little salary she earned as a teacher she did her utmost to provide for her son and her brother’s children , but it was a constant struggle to meet all their needs. Realizing the difficulties she faced in Freetown when she escaped , she decided to relocate to a bigger town in Makeni, where her brother in law lived.This moved allowed them to rent a house where the kids could stay with their grandmother, providing them with some stability while she maintained her teaching profession in Freetown, which is about two hours away.
Thing’s took a distressing turn when she learned that her brother’s children grandmother had decided to subject one of the young girls to female genital mutilation a practice she vehemently opposed. As she was a survivor of this horrific procedure herself know all the physical emotional and psychological scar’s it leaves behind. She explicitly informed their grandmother that she was against this , emphasizing that such a decision should be left to the child once she is of age and fully capable of making that choice herself.
One day, while she was in Freetown working she received an alarming phone call from her son, who is now a teenager , informed her that their grandmother had taken the younger girl away to undergo the traditional initiation ceremony. She was profoundly shocked and distressed by this News. She has firmly stated her opposition to such actions, knowing how vulnerable and impressionable children are. Fuelled by panic and a fierce desire to protect her family well being, she immediately left her job arranged for transportation, and rushed back to Makeni to intervened and prevent this from happening.
In the dead of night, she took a lantern and crept into the bush , dousing the makeshift site with kerosene before striking a match. The fire roared to life , devouring the place where they had planned to break a child. She watched as the flame’s consumed the instruments , the sacred clothes, the very roots of a brutal traditions. But fires draws eye’s. And soon voices rose in the distance . Anger, horror. The elders knew what this meant a direct attack on their authority, their customs. They will never forgive her. The men of the village , and the law enforcer’s of traditions indicated they would hunt her down. They would punish her as a traitor. In Sierra Leone, defying such customs meant exile at best, deaths at worst. So she fled. Through the back roads of Makeni past the watchful eyes of those who would turn her in bush for two weeks with no food drinking unpurified water where she caught skin disease that she don’t know what exactly it is that is affecting her whole skin itching so she lucky to meet an agent in Freetown who helps her to travel to the United Kingdom UK through Belfast and she head her way to up Dublin to sick an asylum as she narrated to this medium. Since Salamatu Lansana escaped she has never surfaced and speculations abound that she may have run into something very disastrous.
