By patricia.ngevao@awokonewspaper.sl (ATJLF/MRCG Fellow 2025)
From her side spot along Portee Old Road, where traffic slows just enough for buyers to lean out of car windows, Hawa Kamara arranges bars of homemade soap beside a tray of piles of garden eggs. The street is alive with the usual sounds, drivers yelling destinations, music spilling from nearby speakers, schoolchildren skipping past with dust rising under their feet. But for Hawa, this stretch of pavement carries more than the weight of daily hustle; it carries memory.
She keeps her gaze on the road, but her thoughts often drift. “This place, people see trade,” she says, brushing dirt off a basket. “Me, I see shadows.”
Her voice softens as she recounts the day soldiers stormed her neighborhood, years ago. “We ran and hid in a gutter just behind that shop,” she nods toward a weathered building. “I held my younger sister so tight, I thought we’d both stop breathing.”
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