By Brima Sannoh (ATJLF/MRCG Fellow 2025)
Under the dappled shade of a mango tree in Falaba village, young children barefoot and in tattered clothing kick around a makeshift football, their laughter masking the hardship that defines their everyday lives. Just miles from the lush Tiwai Island Park, an international ecotourism treasure, and these children are growing up in circumstances defined not by natural beauty but by social abandonment.
Falaba, nestled in Barri Chiefdom in Sierra Leone’s southern Pujehun District, is emblematic of a nationwide crisis: child neglect. In this quiet, rural pocket, Augusta Sheriff, a single mother of five, battles daily to keep her children afloat. Living in a crumbling mud home with rusted iron roofing, Augusta’s story echoes that of many women in her district: abandoned by partners, left alone to raise children, and forced to fight a system stretched thin on support.
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