Please note that in this post the words in italics are Krio, I do not know whether the spellings are correct but I have written them as they are spoken.
Opposite our house lives the 'area chief.' I put this in quotation marks because he is not the real area chief, how he has awarded himself this status here I am not sure, but we do know that he is the chief in a village about 5 miles outside of Bo. The real area chief lives nearby but doesn't seem to mind our neighbour taking care of some of his duties and it doesn't seem to step on his toes.
Now, the role of the area chief is to keep the area that they are responsible for tidy and in order. By 'in order' I mean that any civil disputes that arise in the neighbourhood are referred to the chief, he will sammonse (summon) the parties involved and they will hold court to resolve the case. For example, swearing in a public area or na street is not acceptable, should someone take exception to you shouting profanities they might report you to the chief. The complainant has to pay a small fee to the chief called cashee, the chief will then sammonse the alleged rule breaker and they will hold court about the case (suddon pon de case.) At this time, the alleged offender will have to meet the cashee paid by the complainant, so if they paid 20 000 Leones (about £3.00) the defendant has to pay 20 000 Leones as well.
Holding court over a case normally takes place in the chief's compound and can be a lengthy process conducted in the appropriate language (so if the parties involved are all Mende it will be Mende, if they are Temne it will be Temne and if there are several languages it will be conducted in Krio.) All people present have to introduce themselves individually and state what their interest in the case is, including any prayers they wish to say. This means that if 50 people come to observe the case, each in turn have to make their introduction which you can imagine could lead to a very long day! If the defendant is found to be guilty, the chief will decide on the appropriate fine and suitable punishment, they also have to return the cashee paid by the complainant to them.
Anything that can be deemed to be inappropriate behaviour can get you sammonsed to the chief, it just depends if you get caught by the chief himself or someone who wants to get you in trouble. The main things that would get you in this position would be unpaid debts, petty theft, having a shouting match (cussing) in a public area, or fighting in a public area.
So, back to our 'area chief'; one night from our compound we overheard a very loud argument he was having with his wife (this is not uncommon, they seem to have quite a tempestuous relationship), a large part of this argument involved him shouting at her "don't you know who I am? Don't you know that this is my Kingdom?" Not a shred of irony! Now the thing that is ironic is that he is not even the legitimate chief but he said it with such conviction that from that day, in our household, he has been known as Kingdom. We also did not know his real name so this has become his 'identifier.' The fact that he and his family conduct all their arguments at the top of their voices doesn't seem to get them in trouble!
Hadja is Winston's sister (she is biologically Winston's cousin but here she would constitute as his sister), who lives with us, she helps me with cooking and laundering and I could not manage without her! She is about 26, she has two sons one of whom lives with her father and the other lives with his paternal grandmother in a village near the Jong River (Luawa). Hadja did not go to school, when she was very young her father and mother separated, her father remarried and she and her step-mother did not really get on. Hadja says that her step-mother said "I will not work for her whilst she goes to school." This meant that Hadja had to stay at home to cook and launder with her step-mother whilst her brothers both went to school (there is a different attitude to schooling of girls now and more commonly there is equal chance of girls going to school, although they will still be expected to do a lot of work at home as well.) The advantage Hadja has over her peers is that we pay her a decent wage and also give her her bed and board, this means that she has the opportunity to save some money for her and her children's future.
Hadja has a conflict here, she is a grown woman but she lives in her older brothers house so she is culturally torn between living under someone else's rules and being an adult! According to society she will not really be an adult until she marries and lives with her husband. These two factors sometimes clash.
One day Hadja and I had been out to do the shopping with Thea, on our return Kingdom's wife called Hadja over to their compound (directly opposite our house) where a girl around her age was sitting. Hadja went over to the compound and I came inside to put the shopping away. After about two minutes I could hear an almighty row coming from Kingdom's compound and could hear Hadja shouting in Mende. I peeked through the fence unsure that I should involve myself in Hadja's business but things seemed to be escalating. The girl that had been sitting in the compound marched over to our gate with Hadja close on her tail, then the girl banged on the gate, I opened to see Hadja pulling her away and back across the road, she said to me "Beth, please close the gate." Still being English and not wanting to pry I closed the gate but things semmed to escalate further. Hadja and the girl were literally wrestling, I had no idea what it was about but it was turning nasty. That was it, I had to stop what was happening. I marched over to where they were fighting and told Hadja to go back to the compound, she said 'sorry Beth' and did as I asked. Once in the compound I asked Hadja what exactly had happened. She told me this:
Hadja had recently become romantically involved with a young Ocada rider (this is a motorbike taxi driver) called Abdul. Now, it wouldn't be uncommon for a man to have more than one girlfriend and Hadja had told him that she was not interested in being with a man that behaved so, she said that if he wanted to be with her he would have to terminate any other relationships that he had. As a result, Abdul finished the relationship that he had been having with another girl - the girl that Hadja had had the altercation with across the street. So, this girl (for ease we will call her Jenneh) had come to confront Hadja about stealing her man and also about some things Hadja had allegedly said about Jenneh in the presence of her 'people' (this just means the people that she lives with.) Hadja denied that she had said anything derogatory about the girl but angry, Jenneh said that she was going to tell Hadja's 'people' (that is Winston and I as we are responsible for her) that Hadja had stolen her boyfriend. This had started the physical fight. I would like here to explain why Hadja reacted so violently to the girl's threat; as I said before, Hadja effectively live's under her older brother's rule and in Sierra Leonean culture it would not been seen as the greatest disrespect that Hadja would either discuss her boyfriend or allow Winston to find out that she has a boyfriend. The irony is that if the girl had come to me and complained to me I would have told her that Hadja is a grown woman and her relationships are not any of my business. I believe that this would have diffused the situation and ended it there. However, Hadja's fear of what might happen meant that it escalated into something else.
With Hadja in the compound things died down and that was that.
The following morning Kingdom came and knocked on the door with another man from the area called Ibrahim who seemed to be there to talk for the 'chief.' They spoke to Hadja and asked her to come to Kingdom's house and pay the 50 000LE (about £7.00) cashee she was due to pay for fighting in the street. I saw the exchange at our gate and asked Ibrahim exactly what was going on, to which he explained to me that, as Hadja and the girl had been fighting in the street, they were due to pay a fine to the area chief. Now, I had several problems with this: 1) The 'chief's' wife had seen the girl at our compound gate and saw that we were not home. She decided to involve herself by asking what the girl wanted and further, rather than just telling the girl that we were not home and that she would tell us that she had called, she told the girl to wait with her for Hadja. We do not have any ties to this family and it was not her business to intervene. 2) It was Kingdom's wife that called Hadja over to her compound, inviting an escalation to happen at the edge of their property. 3) Kingdom is not the real chief, I do not see why Hadja should pay anything to his family and I was quite convinced that this was a reasonable assumption to make. Although feeling very annoyed, I tried to be diplomatic, refrained from saying any of the above and said that as Winston is the head of the household, and he is mainly responsible for Hadja, this should wait until he was home. I told them that they were welcome to come back and discuss it with him in the evening, I further explained that I was not going to allow any exchange to happen whilst he was not present. This clearly annoyed them and they turned to Hadja to apply pressure, saying that as I was a foreigner it was right that they would have to explain the issue to me, but she should know her culture and what is expected of her. At this point SK intervened and simply shut the gate. This may seem to be rude but SK knew that they had no right to come to us asking for money, they were trying to take advantage of the fact that I am not Sierra Leonean and that Hadja would undoubtedly bend to pressure from two men who are senior to herself. SK said to me that we had explained that Winston needed to be present, no further explanation was necessary and that they were just trying their luck to get some money.
When Winston returned we explained the situation to him, we discussed it and decided that rather than dismissing the situation we would try to understand how things should have been done. The following day Winston went and found the real area chief, he explained the street fight and the ensuing request from Kingdom and his crony. The chief said that Kingdom was in fact in the wrong, first and foremost he would have no right to charge 50 000LE for such and offence, a fine of 15 000LE would be more appropriate. Further to this, whilst Kingdom is a chief, our neighbourhood is not his jurisdiction. He also concurred with our argument that Kingdom's wife had invited the situation by asking the girl to wait and then calling Hadja into the compound. He said that in fact we should have paid the fine and then reported him to the town chief which would have meant Kingdom would have been disciplined for his unreasonable behaviour. He advised that we did have every right to refuse to pay the fine purely based on the fact that Kingdom's family commonly shout, swear and fight loudly around their open compound. The role of the chief is to be an example, he must live by the rules that he enforces. I just felt sorry for Jenneh who had come back and in fact paid 30 000LE begging that this was all she could afford.
We decided that it was best just to leave the situation as it was, needless to say the relationship between us and our neighbours is a little less cordial now but they have never requested payment of the fine or in fact spoken to us again.
Hadja will marry Abdul this coming Friday, 24th February. She is going back to her village, Luawa for a traditional Mende Wedding Ceremony. She will leave us to go and start her life in her own house not too far from here. Thea and I will really miss her, she has helped us so much and has been here all of Thea's life. I am happy though, Hadja will finally get to start her own family and I look forward to visiting her there, and I'm really going to miss her Cassava Leaves (Saki - mine and Thea's favourite meal)!
Good Luck Hadja, we will miss you xx
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