HOUSE MANAGER - AMINATA'S STORY
I have sat here for ages wondering where to begin Aminata’s story, the house manager of AMF’s Accommodation and Training Hostel. I want to do her story justice. Given the odds she has overcome, but particularly given that ‘something’ about her, doing her justice will be hard, impossible maybe. She’s at peace. The peace of someone who has made it over the finish line after years of training for a marathon. Now with the steely determination of a winner, she is going to train others to run their race. Part fairy godmother, part RBG/ Malala/Oprah/ Michelle Obama... insert your hero.
Aminata grew up in one of Freetown’s many slums - slums described by the World Bank as a blight on humanity and widely regarded as the worst places in the world to live. At 31, Aminata has reached life expectancy for Freetown’s slum residents. But that will not be her fate.
She was a top student. She had to fight hard to be allowed to go to school but with good grades, her father allowed it. Technically 2019 marks the first year of compulsory primary school here - one of the last countries in the world where education has not been compulsory. The rush to enrol overwhelmed schools bursting them beyond capacity. They had to close to new enrolments and it’s estimated 20% of students missed out. But for Aminata and her family, sending her to school was optional.
To gloss over 7 years of the story- she had her baby, fought tooth and nail against her husband’s wishes to return to school (eventually the recalcitrant would be student was sent back to her family), left school top of her class and earned her place in a local university, where she studied home economics, again top student.
Now in her mid-twenties, Aminata saw a poster advertising one scholarship to study a masters degree in Beijing. She said she knew she had every qualification and would make a fine candidate. Got through to the final interviews, and then the last 2 candidates and was confident she had it in the bag. She knew the other candidate and was surprised he was even there.
When Aminata learnt she had not been selected, she marched straight to the Ministry of Education, armed with her university results and demanded to see the Minister. ‘Do you have an appointment?’ ‘No, and I don’t need one, I have my results!’. ‘You need an appointment.’ ‘No I’ll wait till he’ll see me.’ And so Aminata took up her position outside the Minister of Education’s office. She sat for days...
Eventually, someone she knew- her old uni lecturer turned up to see the Minister, and he had an appointment. He had always been impressed by Amii so put in a good word for her and the Minister agreed to see her. Turns out he thought she had been the winning student (someone knew someone with the other candidate and he had been slipped in over her), so off to Beijing she went for 3 years.
While I was so surprised by the unlikeliness of her story, why should I be? Do I really think that any young women wouldn’t want to fight, to do anything possible to improve her situation? And now she wants to teach other young women from the poorest families in Sierra Leone new skills, to have confidence, to work hard, be independent and to contribute back to society. Together with Aberdeen Women’s Centre and The Aminata Maternal Foundation, Aminata is running the pilot programme in our Training and Accommodation Hostel, and from what we have seen she is achieving everything she has set out to do - no surprises there though.
I wanted to tell Aminata’s story to illustrate the talent that we see everywhere here, so that our team and supporters can have every confidence that the work we are all doing, as volunteers, as donors, as knitters or service providers are achieving something very real in Sierra Leone. There’s such a long way to go, but we have taken the first steps. AMF is making a difference to lives in this beautiful country.
Penny Gerstle,
Chair
Polygamy is common in Sierra Leone and Aminata’s father had many wives. When Amii was 15, her mother died and she had to take over the mothering role. School was out of the question. Now that she was a ‘mother’ she needed to be married. Feeding her would become someone else’s responsibility. A ‘suitable’ 40 something husband was found.
By 16 she was married, middle-aged by local standards, pregnant, malnourished and living in grinding poverty in the most disadvantaged place on earth, little education and no prospect of escape... except for her spark.
Contrast the Aminata in the photo above - the Aminata we met. At 31 she’s fluent in Mandarin, has 2 university degrees, including a Masters in Hospitality and Tourism from a Beijing University, she’s financially independent and unlike an estimated 65% of graduates here she has a well paying full-time job which she loves. How?
It’s a long story, but the bit I love, the bit most illustrative of her determination, is the story of her scholarship to Beijing, the only international scholarship on offer that year.
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Here in Sydney as we find ourselves in an extended lockdown due to COVID-19, we can appreciate the access that Australians have to quality healthcare, warmth and shelter provided in our humble abodes (and the ability to stay connected via Zoom calls during periods of reduced face-to-face contact!).
In celebrating the 2021 United Nations World Population Day today, at the Aminata Maternal Foundation we are reflecting on how the rest of the world is managing with compromised health care systems. The area of sexual and reproductive health in particular is impacted as many countries are experiencing concern over changing fertility rates. United Nations Population Fund (formerly the United Nations Fund for Population Activities [UNFPA]), emphasises that educational, economic and political empowerment of women enables autonomy and control over choices regarding their body.
Did you know, only 55% of women have the power to make their own decisions about their bodies? The current pandemic has exacerbated gender-based inequities, notably in Sierra Leone as the teenage pregnancy rate continues to rise. During the Ebola crisis, teenage pregnancies in Sierra Leone saw a 66% increase and it is anticipated that another surge will result from the COVID-19 crisis. To combat this our Dream Team project collaborates with the Aberdeen Women's Centre located in Freetown, Sierra Leone to provide support to re-integrate teenage mothers into their communities post-birth.
References for further reading🌏:
https://www.un.org/en/observances/world-population-day
https://aminatamaternalfoundation.org/mission/our-projects/the-dream-team/](https://aminatamaternalfoundation.org/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed-pro/img/placeholder.png)
