SIERRA LEONE: More Than 9000 Families Get Help From The Red Cross

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Aug 14 1998 (IPS) - More than 9,000 poor families in the war- torn district of Pajehun on the border with Liberia, are benefiting from seeds and food from the Red Cross.

“Our target groups include displaced farmers, children and women who have lost all they had during the war and do not have anything to start off with,” said Alexsadra Matijevic of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) here.

She said the food rations the peasants received over the weekend would last for three months. “We distributed a total of 181,940 kilogrammes of seed rice to the majority of the population in Makpele, Soro-Gbema and Bari chiefdoms in the Pujehun districts,” said Matijevic.

The peasants also received “cereal, pulses and vegetable oil”, some of which were supplied by the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP).

The programme aims at helping families who have returned to their farms, after taking refuge in neighbouring Liberia, to regain self-sufficiency.

Pujehun, one of Sierra Leone’s 12 districts, suffered extensive destruction at the hands of rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). During its seven-year insurgency, the district’s about 200,000 inhabitants were forced to flee their homes more than twice.

“My house was razed to the ground by the marauding rebels, after they looted all what the family had worked for in 20 years, forcing me to flee across the border into Liberia with the six surviving members of my family,” recalled Francis Kaikai, a farmer here.

Besides torching over 100 residential homes in the district, the rebels also looted stocks of seed rice stored by farmers.

Hundreds of returnees from the beleaguered district, spent between two and three years at camps in Liberia. Their return home was self-motivated and was aimed at minimising their suffering in a foreign country.

“We had to return home because Pujehun is now relatively safe and there is hardly report of renewed rebel activity in the district,” said Momoh Rogers, a school teacher.

Food handouts aside, Rogers said there is also growing need for urgent medicine to stop children from dying from preventable diseases like measles, diarrhea and cold.

“It would help a great deal if aid agencies step in with medical relief supplies especially for children and sick women, otherwise we should expect an epidemic of catastrophic proportions,” said Rogers.

Safe drinking water is also a problem. Plans to construct wells in villages by ngo’s were disrupted when the national army, in collaboration with RUF rebels, overthrew the elected government of President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah in May 1997.

The rebels targeted ngos, government departments and water projects that were underway, forcing expatriate workers to flee the West African country.

The situation has further been compounded by the fear of an imminent outbreak of cholera, as many existing water wells in the district are believed to have been poisoned by the retreating troops loyal to the defeated junta leader, Major J. Paul Kromah.

Despite their suffering, the inhabitants of Pujehun remain undaunted. Predominantly a farming zone, they grow cash crops like cocoa and coffee, which are vital to Sierra Leone’s economy.

“We lost tens of thousands of dollars because of the disruption of farming activities and it is encouraging to see our people returning,” a community leader said here.

The Red Cross is also planning to distribute hoes, cutlasses, and axes to the returnee to enable them to resume farming.