This medium encountered a group of drug users in Bassa Town Field, Waterloo, in the Western Rural District of Sierra Leone, where drug pushers often gather in the early afternoon.
During our weekly media toure, we saw many young people visibly intoxicated by a dangerous drug called kush; several bore scars on their feet. When approached for a brief conversation, many were hostile, but they told us they have no proper treatment centre for rehabilitation and that they feel abandoned, as if there is no hope left for them to succeed in life.
Among them were two men who identified themselves as former combatants: Mohamed Jalloh, alias “C.O Med,” and Ibrahim Banja, alias “Col. Banja.” They said they had served in the Small Boys Unit (SBU) of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) during the civil war. Like many others in the area, they have turned to smoking kush and other harmful habits because of their difficult pasts; they feel their lives have been ruined.
Jalloh and Banja told us they never imagined their lives would end in such misery. During the war, they said, they recovered diamonds from Tongo Field and Kono and handed them to a colleague, Peter Sankoh, for safekeeping because they trusted him. At the time they believed the diamonds would secure a better future after disarmament.
According to Jalloh, Sankoh fled with the diamonds when they were told to surrender their weapons to the nearest UN peacekeeping base. “Since then we have lost trace of Peter Sankoh’s whereabouts,” Jalloh said. Their frustration is clear: they feel deprived of the wealth they risked their lives for and say they were betrayed.
Jalloh said that if they ever find Sankoh they will demand the diamonds; otherwise, “let him consider himself dead,” and that nothing will stop them from taking the law into their own hands. Ibrahim Banja added that they are still searching for Sankoh and vowed to kill him on sight, calling him a betrayer who must be dealt with harshly.
“How can a single man escape with what we suffered for several months?” he asked, speaking through grief.
Our medium calls on both government and the international community to come to the aid of these drug users and provide rehabilitation through technical and vocational skills training. Such programmes could help alleviate some of the severe problems and save the lives of these young people.
