By Dr Steph Dobrowolski | Director, Solon Foundation
In September, students in Sierra Leone went back to school. The start of a new academic year is always an exciting time, with new friends to make and new subjects to explore.
But this year, that excitement was tinged with sadness, as memories of the devastating flash floods and landslides that hit Freetown in August are still raw in the memory.
In the early hours of Monday, 14th August, torrential rains caused a section of Mount Sugar Loaf on the outskirts of Freetown to collapse. The resulting landslide wreaked devastation on the communities in its path, notably the town of Regent. Many communities in other parts of Freetown were also affected, either directly as the mud and water made their way downhill towards the sea, or in unrelated incidents caused by the same torrential storms.
Sierra Leone’s rainy season is intense and landslides and flooding are sadly not uncommon, but devastation on this scale is very unusual. Indeed, even getting an accurate estimate of the number of victims is very difficult, though local officials put the number of fatalities at more than 1000.
Among them are the family of Ishmael, a teacher at the Rising Academy Network. By chance, he happened to stay with a friend in another part of town that Sunday night, and awoke Monday morning to the heartbreaking news that he had lost his wife and children.
Thousands more were left homeless. Umu, a Rising Academy student in Adonkia, in western Freetown, was one of them, leaving her mother, a single parent, desperately searching for a new place to live for the coming year. Other parents who had hoped to enrol their children in school for the coming year were suddenly left concerned they wouldn’t be able to afford it having lost their homes or possessions in the floods or been forced to make unexpected repairs.
Nothing can compensate Umu and others for the trauma they have suffered. But we are proud to be supporting their families through our Hardship Fund to ensure that, whatever other damage it has done, these tragic events don’t cost them their education too.
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