Isata, a single mom in her early twenties, epitomises the horrors of the lives of intercourse staff in Sierra Leone.
She has been crushed, robbed, kidnapped, trafficked to a different nation, rescued, trafficked and rescued once more.
Amidst all of this, she grew to become hooked on a harmful road drug, kush, that’s wreaking havoc within the West African nation.
BBC Africa Eye spent 4 years following the lives of a bunch of intercourse staff in Makeni, about 200km (124 miles) from the capital Freetown.
Town lies in an space wealthy in diamonds, which fuelled Sierra Leone’s civil conflict – a battle that has had devastating penalties nonetheless being felt to today.
Isata is one in every of a whole bunch of intercourse staff in Makeni. Like the entire ladies we spoke to, she has opted to solely use her first identify.
“All of the sacrifices I’m making, I do it for my daughter. I’ve been via a lot ache on the streets,” she mentioned.
“I met a person within the membership. He tore my garments. He took cash from my bra. I used to be making an attempt to combat my means out. He hit me on the again of the pinnacle together with his gun. He needed to kill me.”
It’s a harmful life – a few of the ladies we meet have additionally contracted HIV.
Others have been killed.
However many really feel there may be little selection.
In a darkish patch of swampland within the metropolis, two intercourse staff identified an space with empty grain sacks unfold out throughout the bottom.
One of many younger ladies, Mabinty, advised us this was the place they labored facet by facet – seeing as much as 10 males an evening.
The lads pay them a greenback a time.
She is making an attempt to make sufficient cash to help her kids. She had six, however three died.
The opposite three are in class.
“One little one has simply sat his exams. I don’t have cash to pay for him to go to highschool, except I promote intercourse. These are my sufferings,” she mentioned.
1000’s of girls are estimated to have turned to intercourse work throughout Sierra Leone.
A lot of them are younger ladies orphaned by the conflict, which claimed the lives of greater than 50,000 individuals and displaced virtually half the nation’s inhabitants by the point it led to 2002.
Charity teams say the variety of younger ladies working within the intercourse commerce has additional elevated because the nation grapples with the financial fallout of the Ebola outbreak and the coronavirus pandemic.
Like many crises, these have disproportionately impacted ladies.
Prostitution will not be unlawful within the nation, however the ladies are seen as outcasts and obtain little help from the federal government or society.
Not lengthy after we met Isata in 2020, she was kidnapped by a legal gang and compelled into intercourse slavery in The Gambia, Senegal and at last Mali.
She managed to pay money for a telephone and described her life there.
“The way in which they method us, it’s like they need to kill us except we settle for,” she mentioned.
“I’m struggling a lot.”
BBC Africa Eye was then capable of observe her down and a UN physique, the Worldwide Organisation for Migration (IOM), helped Isata return to Sierra Leone.
She gave up intercourse work however, after we noticed her in 2021, she was struggling to make sufficient cash to maintain her daughter, by cooking in an area kitchen.
The subsequent time we bought an replace on Isata, in 2023, she had returned to prostitution after turning into hooked on kush – a psychoactive mix of addictive substances bought cheaply, that can contain human bones.
The drug has turn out to be such an issue in Sierra Leone, the president has declared it a nationwide emergency.
Within the grip of dependancy, Isata left behind her youngest little one – a son simply 4 months previous.
He was being taken care of by Isata’s mom, Poseh.
“The stress of the road life led her to smoking kush. It’s the stress,” Poseh mentioned.
Nata can be a single mom in her twenties.
She has three daughters.
We met her at residence, the place she was on the point of exit and work.
“I need my kids to do nicely in life. I hope my prayers will probably be answered by God,” she mentioned.
Her daughter watched her mum apply her make-up. She advised us she needed to turn out to be a lawyer when she is older.
“To assist my mum,” she mentioned.
Throughout city, we met one other younger lady, Rugiatu, aged round 10.
Her mom Gina was additionally a intercourse employee. She was murdered in 2020 at simply 19 years previous.
Rugiatu now lives together with her aged grandmother.
“My mum and pa are useless now. I’m solely left with my grandma. If my gran dies, all I can do is go and beg on the street,” Rugiatu mentioned.
“I don’t need them to kill me on the road too.”
Once we subsequent noticed Nata, she was unrecognisable. She, too, has turn out to be hooked on kush.
“I’m not joyful to be like this, however I do not need to assume a lot,” she tells us.
“Typically I cry once I keep in mind. That why I’m smoking, to overlook.”
Her three daughters have needed to go and stay with kin.
Then, in early 2024, there was extra unhealthy information from Isata.
She had been trafficked once more, as a part of a bunch of girls who had been promised nanny work in Ghana however had been as an alternative taken to Mali and compelled to promote intercourse in a gold-mining space.
“I need to be taken residence. I am begging, I remorse all the things,” Isata tells us over the telephone.
She mentioned she grew to become frightened when the person who promised the nannying work dodged police checkpoints and border posts at each stage of the journey.
“He handed us over to a Nigerian lady referred to as Pleasure,” she mentioned.
“We requested: ‘You advised us we’re going to Ghana for nanny work, is that this Ghana?’”
“Pleasure requested us: ‘Have been we not advised we’re coming to do intercourse work?’ Then I mentioned: ‘No’.”
“She mentioned: ‘Go and get some cash’ and provides it her.”
Like many trafficked ladies, Isata was advised she should work to pay her traffickers a big sum of cash to purchase again her freedom.
They advised her she needed to pay $1,700 (£1,300).
She must have intercourse with a whole bunch of males to make that a lot cash.
Her traffickers advised her she had three months to pay them.
The IOM – the UN physique which helps trafficked individuals – says hundreds of Sierra Leoneans, together with kids, are trafficked yearly.
They’re both kidnapped or tricked into travelling in another country with the promise of a greater job.
As an alternative, they’re bought to foreigners in nations across the continent and find yourself in pressured labour or sexual exploitation.
Many might by no means see residence once more.
Fortuitously for Isata, she has lastly made it again to Makeni, and resides together with her mom and two kids.
You’ll be able to watch the complete BBC Africa Eye documentary Intercourse Employees: Lives within the Shadows on the BBC Africa YouTube channel or on iPlayer within the UK.