By Brima Sannoh
Early Mornings, Daily Struggles.
Before the sun fully rises over Pujehun Town, the central market is already alive. Wooden stalls creak open, basins clatter onto tables, and the smell of smoked fish hangs in the cool morning air. Among the early traders is 47-year-old Hawa Sheriff, carefully arranging fish she hopes will sell before midday.
“This market is my office,” Hawa told ManoReporters.
“If I don’t come here, my children don’t eat,” she adds.
A widow and mother of four, Hawa said she has depended on fish trading for more than a decade. She lost her husband in 2018 and suddenly she was alone with all the responsibilities. Two of her elder children are now in university, and she pays their fees entirely from her small business.
“It hasn’t been easy at all,” she lamented. “Some days the sales are very small. But when I think of school fees and feeding my children, I tell myself I must continue.”
Hawa explained that she restarted her business, after losing it due to her husband’s ill-health, with a small microfinance loan from a local institution in Pujehun District.
“That loan helped me stand again,” she said. “After that, I decided to depend on my own small capital.”
Today, she trades without loans, saving carefully and reinvesting what she earns.
“For people like us, nobody paid us for what we lost,” Hawa said. “What we have now is what our hands can make.”
The Market That Built a Future
Just a few stalls away, 33-year-old Kadiatu Kemokai balances a tray of smoked fish while keeping a close eye on her goods.
“I started this business when I was very young,” Kadiatu told ManoReporters. “This market taught me everything I know.”
Through her steady trade, Kadiatu has achieved what many in post-war Pujehun once thought impossible. “I own a plot of land, and I am building my own house entirely from my business proceeds,” she said proudly. “Nobody helped me buy land. It is this market that did it.”
A mother of two, she relies completely on her daily trade. And the business pays her children’s school fees and takes care of their other needs, she said. “If I don’t work, nothing moves.”
Losses from spoiled goods, rising prices, and poor storage remain daily risks. Yet in a district where war wiped out savings and property, land ownership represents dignity and security. “These small businesses are our insurance,” said Kadiatu. “If you have them, you are not helpless.”
Reclaiming Land and Leadership
About twelve miles from Pujehun Town, in Foniko Village, Galliness Chiefdom, recovery takes a different form—rooted in land, leadership, and justice.
Chief Mustapha Sillah, 54, walks through more than 56 acres of oil palm plantation he has nurtured over the years. “During the war between 1991 and 1997, we lost everything—homes, tools, even the confidence of our people,” he narrated.
“When peace came, the land was still here, but people had to find the courage to return and reclaim it.”
The war disrupted land tenure systems, blurred boundaries, and sparked disputes among returning families.
“I spent years mediating land conflicts, encouraging displaced villagers to reclaim their farms, and persuading young people to return to agriculture,” Chief Sillah said. “If land is not settled, peace cannot stay. Land is our life here.”
Oil palm farming, he explained, requires patience and long-term commitment. “You don’t plant oil palm for quick money,” he said. “You plant it because you believe in the future.”
Today, Mr Sillah’s plantation supports his household and provides seasonal employment. “Farms like this anchor the local economy and keep communities stable,” he added.
Institutional Support After the War
While individuals rebuilt through trade and farming, government-supported programmes also played a role. Established in 1996, the National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA) has helped communities in Pujehun recover.
“One of our key interventions is the Sustainable Cash for Work project. It operates in eleven chiefdoms and directly benefits nearly 1,000 people, mostly women. Participants cultivate rice for household consumption, share part of the harvest, reserve some for seeds, and receive three US dollars per day for their labour,” Nixon Collier, NaCSA’s District Coordinator, told ManoReporters.
“The idea is to give people dignity through work while improving household food security,” he said.
Collier added that the Economic Inclusion programme focuses on financial literacy, promoting savings, and providing access to micro-loans.
“We are training people to be economically minded so they can support themselves beyond the life of the project,” he said.
What the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Found
The experiences of traders and farmers in Pujehun mirror the wider economic destruction documented by Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
“The eleven-year civil war left farms abandoned, markets in ruins, and productive assets like tools, livestock, and fishing equipment looted or destroyed,” the report notes.
Roads and storage facilities were damaged, reversing decades of economic progress and pushing rural communities into extreme vulnerability.
The TRC report concludes that the absence of post-war compensation forced many survivors to rely on self-recovery and informal enterprise.
“Restoring livelihoods required access to land, rebuilding markets, and supporting small-scale economic activities,” the report reads—strategies that communities like Pujehun have pursued with persistence, courage, and ingenuity.
Civil Society Perspective
Isaac Sundifu Koroma, Spokesman of the Pujehun District Civil Society Forum, told ManoReporters: “When the war ended, Pujehun was almost economically silent—farms were abandoned, markets were broken, and livelihoods were destroyed. But year after year, economic activities expanded.
Young people entered small and medium-scale businesses, trading revived, and today economic life in Pujehun is more vibrant than it was before the war.”
Mr Koroma pointed to new shops and commercial structures across Pujehun Town, Zimmi, Potoru, Gendema, Sahn Malen, and other communities. “The return of local councils under President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah took government to the doorstep of the people.
By empowering councils to register community groups and NGOs, development programmes and employment opportunities followed. But for recovery to last, we must invest more in skills training—especially for young people—so the future of Pujehun is inclusive and resilient.”
Building Resilience, One Day at a Time
From market stalls at dawn to oil palm fields reclaimed from bush, the people of Pujehun rebuilt their livelihoods piece by piece.
Their recovery did not arrive through compensation or grand promises, but through persistence, land reclamation and informal enterprise.
“In Pujehun, justice was not delivered—it was earned daily, in the work of ordinary people determined to ensure that war would not have the final word,” said Abdulai Yillah, a 45-year-old trader and member of the local traders’ union.
This story was produced by ManoReporters.com with support from the African Transitional Justice Legacy Fund (ATJLF), through the Media Reform Coordinating Group (MRCG-SL), under the project Engaging Media and Communities to Change the Narrative on Transitional Justice Issues in Sierra Leone.
