By Jeneba Sesay
In Sierra Leone, a silent war rages, one that claims not territories or resources but the very soul of a generation. It is a war waged with a substance called kush, and its front lines are our own homes, our streets, and our families. The enemy is invisible yet omnipresent, its poison seeping into the lives of our youths, leaving behind a trail of despair, addiction, and death. This plight has been framed as a distant problem, a matter of cold facts and fleeting news reports. But for those who live it every day, it is a devastating reality, an agony that can not be captured in numbers.
The stories of this devastating crisis fill me with a deep sense of pain because it’s not a distant problem. It’s here, in our homes, consuming the lives of our daughters and our sisters also. We can not pretend that this is a men’s fight or someone else’s problem. This is our reality, our silent, suffocating truth. The kush epidemic is a war being waged on the most vulnerable among us: the women and girls of Sierra Leone. I see them, I hear them, I feel their pain, their plight. The young girls with shattered dreams, their eyes no longer holding the light of the future, but the hollow gaze of addiction. Some are forced into prostitution, their bodies becoming a currency for the next hit. They use kush to numb their physical pain and to silence the screams in their minds—the trauma of every violation – every act of consent that wasn’t really consent. They are told it will help them forget, but the drug only traps them in a cycle of pain, where the temporary high is followed by a crushing low.
For others, the journey to addiction starts with betrayal. They are given this evil by people they trust—a friend, a so-called lover, an elite with power and influence—who tell them it’s just a way to relax, a harmless escape. They are coaxed, cajoled, and sometimes even coerced. They don’t know what they’re ingesting until it’s too late. The very people who introduced them to this poison, who held their hand and smiled as they destroyed their future, are the first to abandon them to their fate, without a shred of remorse. This is the ultimate betrayal, the kind that leaves a scar on the soul far deeper than any physical wound.
We must dismantle the dangerous perception that our own daughters are safe because they are “sensible.” That is not a shield; it is a passive illusion. The enemy is at our doorstep, and our complacency is its greatest weapon. This issue doesn’t discriminate. It seeps into every neighbourhood, every home. If we remain passive, if we think it’s someone else’s fight, the darkness will eventually find its way to our families, to our children. It should, therefore, be seen as a battle for our collective soul as a nation, and it requires every single one of us to stand up, act now, and decisively.
