Hawa's Plight

Hawa’s, a relative of Theresa’s living with her while I was there, ongoing difficulty with her husband stands out to me as a distinctively Sierra Leonean story and as having a number of aspects many Americans can identify with. Hawa’s husband, Sorie, has a history of running away and abandoning his family for periods of time. He both returned and abandoned them again while I was staying with Theresa. He had recently returned from Kono where he had been living “with a very fat woman” until she left him. His newest departure was signaled by the theft of a bag of ground nut seed belonging to the Women Against Poverty group that was stored at Theresa’s house. Sorie stole the ground nut and passed it on to his oldest son to sell in the market. Sorie took the profits and abandoned his family. If the theft of the ground nut didn’t make it clear that he was not intending to return soon his difficulties with the police did. The police had attempted to arrest him a few weeks earlier for debts he owed but Theresa persuaded them to wait since she had hired him to replace the roof on the house. The house would remain roofless if the police took Sorie away so they agreed to wait until the job was finished. He ran off the next day. Without his income, Theresa said she would not be able to support Hawa and her five children and gave Hawa until the end of the week to leave. This sent the usual stoic Hawa (she gave birth alone without so much as a peep) into a state of panic. She refused to eat. She reached out to Theresa’s daughter to advocate on her behalf. They begged money to buy a phone card and call Sorie. Sorie told them they could all die for all he cared and Theresa was adamant that it was not possible for her to continue to provide everything for all of them. It seemed that Hawa’s only option was to move back in with her parents in their village. School would not be an option for her children, but as I understood that was not one of the main issues for Hawa in moving back with her family. Her children had always had a sporadic record of attendance at school. With such a low social status from the abandonment, Hawa would likely effectively become a house/field slave in the village. She would have to work in fields living in the village unlike at Theresa’s house. I imagine rape is a constant concern for a woman in such circumstances. By the time I left, Hawa was still being allowed to stay with Theresa. I had heard that the resolution reached was that Hawa and her girls could stay, but the boys would need to leave. I have heard since that all have relocated.
Having been raised by my mother, I felt particularly upset at Hawa’s situation. It is incredibly difficult in our society for a single person to raise a family because of certain social stigmas and lack of economic opportunities and economic restraints. But in Kabala, there are almost no options for a woman to better her situation. Theresa had long encouraged Hawa to become involved in FAWA, a program which teaches women skills that should be economically beneficial such as weaving and garment dyeing. Hawa resisted becoming involved. I understand her lack of interest to be primarily based on two issues. One, I think there is a serious class stigma against women who sell certain things in the market. It would be very difficult for Hawa to go from sharing Theresa’s large home to placing herself so publicly as a merchant in the town marketplace. Two, there are so few, if any, instances that women have in their own lives of other woman who have become independent entrepreneurially. I do not think most women believe it is possible to earn money independently because they do not see any one else doing it.
In addition to my own identification with her situation, it was difficult to witness the increased discipline brought on her boys. Some blamed the oldest boy for his role in his father’s theft. Samuel, in particular, stepped in to discipline the boys. He is twenty and has had his own family broken apart by the departure of his father. His father died suddenly rather than running off, but the lack of a male head of household left him largely on his own to find money for books, school fees, etc. It requires an immense amount of maturity and good decision making to be upwardly mobile from his position – a goal which he is stridently focused on. Several times I watched all the kids in the house study. Samuel is very good at school. He clearly believes it is vital for Hawa’s boys (about 7, 8, and 10) to be successful in school in order to be successful in life. He watched over their studying, whipping their arms with a strip of tire when they were wrong or not fast enough. Several times at night I heard him whipping the boys for misbehavior. Since it was extremely disturbing to me to listen to the whipping and crying, I went over once to ask him to stop on the grounds that it was disturbing me. The boys, naked but not visibly bleeding, ran from the room. Samuel explained to me that it was not too much, that the boys had been very naughty in not obeying orders to help with housework, and they needed to be taught discipline. He was not happy for me to have intervened but fortunately it did not happen again while I was home.