Blocked in Lebanon, Sierra Leonean women shelter from war in a warehouse

Not far from the heavily bombed southern suburbs of Beirut, Jaiatu Koroma and her five-month-old daughter found refuge with dozens of Sierra Leonean women in a dilapidated warehouse transformed into a shelter.

After Israeli forces began hitting Lebanon heavily about a month ago, Koroma, 21, from Freetown, said she strapped her young child to her back and fled her home south of Beirut, first sleeping “on the street”.

She was eventually taken to the volunteer-run shelter – an old concrete structure on the outskirts of Beirut, now filled with mattresses, bedspreads and hastily packed suitcases, as well as a crib and a changing table given.

Wearing a red hat, she expressed gratitude as she and her baby now received “food, water”, diapers and a place to sleep.

A year of deadly cross-border exchanges between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah over the Gaza conflict escalated into all-out war on September 23, with Israel heavily striking Hezbollah strongholds in southern and eastern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut.

The bombings have caused more than a million people to flee, according to Lebanese authorities, and at least 2,546 people have been killed in a year of violence, more than half of them in the past month.

In the graffitied building – an empty venue called The Shelter, usually rented out for events – women sat on mattresses chatting, resting, praying or doing each other’s hair.

Others carried laundry in plastic bins to and from a laundry area, where lines of brightly colored clothes were hung to dry in a dark, damp room.

– Kafala system –

“I want to go back to my country,” Koroma said, as the sound of discussions echoed through the abandoned space.

She said she worked for months, but her placement agent took her earnings and she “received nothing”, adding that the agent also had her passport.

Jaward Gbondema Borniea, of Sierra Leone’s consulate in Beirut, said “a large number of our citizens… are stranded.”

Many Sierra Leonean migrants travel to Lebanon every year to work, with the aim of providing for the needs of their families back home.

Migrant workers are employed under Lebanon’s controversial “kafala” sponsorship system, which rights groups say facilitates exploitation, with persistent reports of abuse, unpaid wages and long working hours.

Borniea said the consulate was working to provide emergency travel documents to the most vulnerable and was working with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to facilitate repatriations.

Mathieu Luciano, head of the IOM office in Beirut, said the UN agency had received “15,000 requests for return assistance from migrants and their embassies”, including 1,300 from Sierra Leone.

The UN agency estimates that “around 17,500 migrants (…) have been displaced” by the war, Luciano told AFP, out of around 180,000 migrants residing in Lebanon before the crisis.

Dea Hage Chahine, among a handful of volunteers who run the warehouse shelter, said that “when we started 21 days ago, we took in 60 women. We’re at 175 now.”

“We are working non-stop,” she said, adding that some women needed medical or psychological assistance.

“The hardest thing is… the number of women who come every day is increasing.”

– ‘Second class humans’ –

The volunteer said she secured the space after finding women camped outside the Sierra Leone consulate, who were then evicted from a government shelter to make way for Lebanese families.

Volunteers set up a kitchen, subscribed to a patchy electrical generator system, installed lights and arranged for water to be delivered for washing and showering.

They are also running an online fundraising campaign to help cover the women’s travel and associated expenses, Hage Chahine said, noting that many “don’t have their passports.”

She blamed the lack of support for migrant workers on the kafala system and an “upbringing inherited from racism”, saying they were often treated as “second-class humans”.

Among those hoping to leave is Susan Baimda, 37, who said she arrived at the shelter two weeks earlier “because of the fighting.”

“The situation is very difficult,” Baimda said, but in the shelter “everything is very good now.”

“Everyone takes care of us,” she added as she and others helped prepare large quantities of pasta salad for dinner.

She has four children at home in Freetown and has only seen them via video call since arriving in Lebanon three years ago.

“Let me go back to them” and “to our country,” she said.

“We are tired of fighting… we want to save (our) lives,” Baimda added.