United Nations and Sierra Leone: The war is not what scared me!

Chapter 3 — Zeynabu

One of the first days in my new home, I was a bit sick with what locals called `malaria`(any time anyone is sick it was referred to as malaria) and went home early to lie down. I lay down on the sofa in the living room. I was woken by a Sierra Leone girl sticking her hand through the window and yelling “Suzanne! Suzanne!” (pronounced Sooozan with Krio accent). Apparently she knew me.

I didn’t really know what to think of her. She was talking to the security guard, so I knew she was at least familiar. I then remembered that Kidjo had asked Louis to warn me that he had a schoolgirl girlfriend. He had mentioned to me that she stayed with him in the hotel he had been residing in the past month, and asked me if I would be bothered if she stayed with him at our house. Kidjo of course was very married with two children. He told me proudly that he had only one girlfriend, and he wanted to keep it that way so he doesn’t move around with too many like he has in the past. He said that would not be healthy and he’d get a disease and give it to his wife if he continued that way. He thought he was being admirable. I was stunned and disgusted. These were the things I was scared of from living with men, but it was a shared house, we all had our own private rooms, so I just tried to accept. I tried not to make it my business or even to think about it too much, or even to let me get more and more skeptic about the sanction of marriage. Such things, I had always heard about and sometimes observed, but it was never in front of my face like that before.

Her name was Zeyneb, or “Zeynabu” as pronounced by Sierra Leoneans. She was dressed in a school uniform with a very long skirt. She was more conservative than I thought, because I was kind of expecting a typical prostitute. She had pretty eyes, more brown than black skin, a tattoo in the middle of her forehead indicating she was from the Fulani tribe and she was bottom heavy.

She came and sat down right next to me on the sofa I was lying on, while I was hardly able to just look at her and tried to be polite through my fever. She told me herself she was the friend of “Mister” Kidjo, and he told her to come and meet him that day. She laughed at everything I said, and in laughter grabbed me very aggressively on my backside and lower. I was so shocked I didn’t know what to do or say. I had no idea if this was some peculiar Sierra Leonean custom, and I would look strange to act like it was weird.

She proceeded to tell me “I love you”. Now I was really confused. This was something I had heard a lot in Sierra Leone. Just walking outside of the headquarters, some of the young men would call at me, and when I’d look they would also whisper “I love you” in my face.

I asked her why she said that. Her English was more Krio than real English, but she told me she just liked the way I talked, the way I acted, the way I looked, I looked very kind so she loved me. When she talked all her hand actions and movements were exaggerated, very similar and much like a black American rapper would act. I noticed it was so different from the more polite mannerisms that of East Africans that I was used to. She continued to act like she was my best friend and I was not rude and as best as I knew how, tried not to be over friendly.

Zeyneb continued to live in our house, almost as another uninvited roommate. I did not complain, and either did Louis, but at the same time you could never feel completely safe with this street girl in the house. The house was large, and my own bedroom was very large, so I just tried to tell myself I kind of had an apartment in this house complex. At home, Zeyneb was becoming more and more intrusive. She no longer grabbed my backside, but she acted like my best friend and took on the role of lady of the house. It was obvious her goal was to get rid of our houseboy, Mohamed.

Mohamed was clumsy on his own right. He was very meek and kind of nervous, but also had this strange pride about him. He didn’t really seem to know how to cook and the only thing he seemed to know how to clean was floors. We tried to be patient with him. The good thing about him was that we hired him through a staff member that worked with us in UNAMSIL as a National Staff driver. In case of any problems, we could always find him. This is the only form of security we could look for. This was the main reason we chose Mohamed.

Everything was new to Mohamed. He couldn’t even wash clothes well because the dirt never seemed to get out unless I washed myself. I would always find worms in the cups. It was so disgusting! I stopped using a thermostat after Sierra Leone because with the heat, humidity and Mohamed’s incompetence I found worms on the inside of the thermos many times. He used the same sponge to clean the dishes as he used for the toilet, despite the fact that I continually yelled at him for this. Mohamed only really knew how to cook rice and fish and only in one style, but apparently that was normal, so I was patient to teach him new dishes.

Zeyneb however, was out to get rid of Mohamed. It began with small complaints, her telling us that he doesn’t know how to cook, that he asks her how to cook during the day. Then she kept telling us how he was stealing our food and bits of money. She started to cook meals for us ourselves, even though Muhammad had also prepared a meal. There was too much food in the house for no reason, but she was very happy about it. By her own words, she cared about food more than anything else and she gladly finished the over abundant leftovers.

Out of the blue, one day when Louis and I came home, we found an extravagant meal laid out for us. She had brought her ‘uncle” to cook for us. She was constantly telling us Mohamed didn’t know how to cook himself. Mohamed was too soft to even defend himself he just stood in front of us with a silly smile while she made horrible accusations behind his back, but close enough that he could hear it.

I had no idea who had given her the money to buy us the extravagant meal, but it must have been from her allowance from Mr. Kidjo. She was so eager to have him in our house. The meal was amazing, but her uncle was pushy. Something wasn’t trustworthy. She almost had Louis convinced, but we discussed it and once again discussed the benefits of having a worker related to a UN staff member in case anything happened. There was something suspicious about this whole coup d’etat. And we were right, because months later we found out this uncle was actually a big drug dealer and definitely whatever his intentions were, they weren’t good.

The generator provided most of our light source but because of the capacity we bought, could only run for 5 hours and could not power energy guzzlers like the air conditioner, tea kettles or blow dryers. One of the first days we had real electricity provided by the electric company, we were playing stereos, enjoying the luxuries of a current minus the horrible engine sound the generator normally provides. I was sitting in the living room with Louis and Zeyneb, discussing nonsense. All of a sudden I could smell something like burning fuel. No one else did, but I was very sensitive, especially since I was a chemist, it’s part of the job to recognize strange odours. I got up to investigate and found the hallway was filled with smoke. It was fire!! I screamed fire, and almost simultaneously the lights just went out. I couldn’t see a thing, but instinctively I felt around in complete darkness to find containers and water.

Louis came running out, followed the smoke and found my room in a blaze. I was the only one with an air conditioner, and since this was the first day with real electricity, it was the first day it could also run. I was far away but could see flames coming out of my room. I started immediately to fill some pans with water. Zeyneb was running around screaming and by this time the guards and the family that lived in the back was aware of the commotion and came to help. I had just had my security briefing with UNAMSIL, and had received the walkie talkie radio and the training on how to use it. I was trying desperately to contact UNAMSIL security but my radio signal was horrible, they could pick me up but I could hardly hear them. I also had recorded the phone number on my cell phone, but it wasn’t working. They had given the wrong code numbers, and had given the number as if we were calling a mobile instead of a landline. I figured it out, phoned the real number and finally got through.

Kidjo was still sleeping in his room so Zeyneb was making a lot of noise trying to wake him up. Kidjo came out with one small suitcase that he seemed to have prepared for emergency purposes. He didn’t ask how anyone or anything was; he was completely pre-occupied with himself and his belongings. After maybe 30 minutes, the fire was put out. The emergency team from the headquarters did not show up in the house until 1 and half hours after I contacted them. When they finally arrived, I sarcastically screamed at them “we’re dead!” They apologized, and said they were on the other side of town. One was from Tanzania and one was from Kenya so I made my funny remarks in Swahili. They were touched and stunned I could speak their language at all. They filled out their reports, promised me they’d make clear instructions as to the address of my residence, and promised to be there more promptly in the event anything else happened.

The electricity in my bedroom was completely destroyed, half the walls were completely black, there was now a big huge hole where the air conditioner sat (nice invitation for Sierra Leone’s famous malaria-filled mosquitoes and other creepy crawly things), the electricity did not work in my room and there was a horrible residual smell that did not go away for a week. It had happened again. As always in my life, things become completely chaotic but somehow I escaped unharmed. Both Kidjo and Louis commented on how I actually hadn’t panicked. I ran around, made a lot of noise, but I was the only one who even thought to contact UNAMSIL. I was a little scared to sleep in my room after that and also the smell was too bad and the room needed to be painted and rewired, so Louis graciously offered me his own room, and he would sleep in one of the other 2 still empty rooms.

Amazingly, none of my belongings were harmed. Much of this is actually due to Zeyneb who ran into the smoke-filled room to take all the belongings she could find, out, at the time of the fire. It was very kind of her. So there was a kindness to her. She was just so lost. She seemed to have had slight carbon monoxide poisoning as a result, because after all the chaos she became very dizzy and could hardly breathe. But Mr. Kidjo only made fun of her for doing all of that and she was really hurt. She had run into his room where he was sleeping worried about his life and he had shown no consideration for hers. She complained to him directly about this and he said to the rest of us in French “What does she expect? I only love my wife and my children. I cannot give my love to everybody!”

Cheating on your spouse was a very common topic of conversation in the household. It made me sick, but there was nothing I could do about it. Kidjo said it was the most natural thing in the world. He said (inaccurately) there were more women than men in the world, so he was actually doing a humanitarian service. In his native Benin, it was so common to have a mistress and their term for it was ‘deuxieme bureau’ meaning ‘second office’. He proudly spoke about how in his country, his deuxieme bureau was actually his wife’s close friend and that his wife would be really hurt if she found out. He said he was happy to be with Zeyneb instead of running around with a different girl every night. He also seemed to think he was doing her some sort of service, because she was poor, and he was helping her with her school fees.

Louis would laugh and act macho when he was with Kidjo. But then to me he’d tell me how much he loved his wife, that she is the mother of his children and no one chose him to be with her, it was completely his choice. He did reveal to me that once, and very recently, he had strayed and he still felt guilty about it. Overall however, Louis was the more family oriented one. He constantly contacted his family. He was very much involved with his children’s school. He seemed a real father.

Kidjo had spent so many years in missions he admitted himself that he felt very strange when he did finally have the time to spend with his family. He had arrived in Sierra Leone just a few months before me, before that he had spent more than 2 years in East Timor, before that 2 years in Liberia, before that a few years in Burundi and at some point he had also been in Bosnia. This was Louis’ first UN mission, though he had worked with the UN as national staff in his home country Congo.

Zeyneb was quite often present for these strange conversations in these first few weeks in the house. But she had no opinion and it even seemed she was hardly listening. She didn’t seem to mind at all when Kidjo spoke as if his family in Benin was his life, and she was just something temporary. It seemed so natural to her, and yet she spoke as if she loved him. But then again, she also said she loved me, so of course this may just have had to do with the meaning of the world love. It was just all so strange to me; I just couldn’t seem to understand. Kidjo told me I was a nice girl, and he hoped I would be someone’s first wife and not a second because I deserved that respect. It really depressed me. Louis knew what I was witnessing was actually hurting me, and he constantly told me I did not belong in the mission, I was an angel from heaven and I would never fit in.

In the weeks that followed, Zeyneb became more and more of a problem. She and Kidjo often had fights that could be heard at all hours of the night. She started to constantly snarl at everybody. Her schoolgirl façade was quickly being revealed. She never went to school. She started to wear brand new clothing which was extremely revealing. The people in the back of the house told us she was smoking marijuana with some of the street boys in the neighbourhood. These street boys were being allowed to come onto our property when we were all at work and our security guards and Mohamed our houseboy told us about it, yet did nothing about it. One of those street boys was actually the one that helped Kidjo find the house, and he was always coming by, demanding commission every single week for what he did. He would never stop, he was a cocaine addict and he was desperate.

It was very becoming very dangerous. It became clear that Zeyneb was actually a common prostitute. Louis even tried to tell Kidjo this directly but Kidjo pretended to deny it. He said he had even met her family, but admitted Sierra Leonean families were strange. He said her family was perfectly aware of the arrangement taking place between him and their daughter, but they pushed her to do it and asked her for money. I couldn’t help but wonder what my own family would do if I were in her position. There was no question, they would simply kill me. It would not matter if we were near starvation, family pride was everything. I was yet to discover, if this was an isolated case, or if most Sierra Leoneans had similar family values to Zeyneb’s.

During those weeks, Kidjo knew he had to get rid of Zeyneb, but said he didn’t know how. He said he was telling her slowly, but knew he could not tell her right away. But it just became insane, and it often wasn’t clear whether he was really scared to tell her or he just didn’t want to tell her for the other conveniences of having her there.

It finally all came to a pinnacle one evening when Zeyneb was high on drugs it appeared, or something was wrong with her. It was one of the nights where Kidjo had given her an excuse that he had a lot of work that day, so he told her to sleep outside. But she showed up anyway and stood outside ringing the bell non-stop for several minutes. I had never said anything at all, but this time I had enough. I opened the door and asked her what her problem is. She was wearing skimpy clothing, unbalanced, dizzy looking and just stared at me. She answered me back in very hard Krio and gave me a lot of attitude. She walked into the house, looked at Kidjo and screamed “bastard”. She just stood around, smacking her lips and giving everyone dirty looks.

Kidjo looked completely frustrated but just went into his bedroom. Zeyneb stayed outside in the living room, and continued to give Louis and me dirty looks. She put on the stereo (that belonged to Kidjo) and played it very loud. Louis asked her to put it down, but she just ignored him and started dancing on her own in the middle of the room. At that point Louis snapped and told her to get out of the house. He told her she is not welcome, we are all paying rent, and she needs to leave. She started screaming and ran to Kidjo, who had tried to avoid this situation but knew it was inevitable. He tried to talk more calmly, but he was also telling her it was true, she needed to leave.

She had a fit. She started crying and screaming and trying to beat Kidjo. She ripped his shirt in 2 and broke his gold necklace. She tried to take the stereo, but Louis wouldn’t let her. That had actually been the fault of Kidjo, because he had promised her the stereo before he left Sierra Leone. They sat on the porch leaving and she screamed she would never leave Mr. Kidjo, because she loves him even if he doesn’t love her. It became very very ugly and finally our security guards had to physically lift her and carry to the gate.

No less than 90 minutes after that fiasco, Zeyneb showed up again at the gate, except she arrived with a policeman. She had a big bruise and blood on her face that had not been there before she left. The policeman told Louis and Kidjo to step outside, because they were being arrested for beating a Sierra Leonean girl. They argued for a while, but the policeman told them that it would be very serious if they did not go with him. The 2 men spoke to each other in French arguing over whether they should go or not, but fear got the best of them and they went.

I don’t know why, but I demanded to go also. The policeman said I had nothing to do with anything, I could stay at home, but I just had a feeling something horrible would happen to them if I wasn’t there. So I insisted.

The ordeal at the police station was very slow moving. I was telling them the whole time that they should call UN Security and tell them what happened. They refused, and said that if the UN knew about the mess, it would go on his records forever. Kidjo was practically in tears with fear, and he kept telling us in French that he knew he was being set up and they might take his passport and he’d be kicked out of the UN.

It was very clear the police were playing a game of intimidation. They were trying to frighten Kidjo and Louis, and it was clear to me that they were waiting for bribes. I kept trying to speak to the police, but they completely ignored me, as if I didn’t exist. They kept saying there were no witnesses and I was practically jumping up and down claiming to be a witness, but the police chief just kept saying “young lady, don’t involve yourself in this.” After about 3 hours, Louis had called one of his Congolese friend’s who was high ranking in the UN system, and he came to the police station. He told them the same thing I had been telling them all along, that they need to call UN security. He could not stay long, because he himself was about to fly to Congo, but he told them he’d been through a similar thing, and they’d be making a mistake if they didn’t call the UN.

The police station was dismal and disgusting. It was completely dirty, with the stench of a dirty toilet throughout the building. After some time, I felt like I was being stared at and then I looked through some nearby stacked chairs to find 2 huge rats staring at me. They looked different from Canadian rats. It was almost as if they had human faces. The rats felt like a reflection of the police to me. I really felt like they were staring at me. They were so many, or they were so used to people, that they moved around freely while everyone talked. You could hear them constantly jumping and walking through the panels.

By this time the police had succeeded in taking the 2 men’s passports. Mysteriously, the same street boy drug addict that had helped Kidjo to find the house had suddenly appeared at the police station. And he was constantly whispering in Zeyneb’s ear. She was accusing Kidjo of getting her pregnant and asking her to have an abortion. Even I was shocked, because I had no reason to believe it was not true. The police started saying what a serious crime this was in Sierra Leone, and that it has serious legal consequences. The negotiations for the bribe were already on the way, and they were demanding an unbelievable $5000 U.S. But after time I guess out of stupidity, Zeyneb was changing her story. Sometimes she said she already had the abortion (which was technically impossible considering the amount of time Kidjo had been in Sierra Leone) and sometimes she switched back to saying she was pregnant.

I was becoming very annoyed and disgusted on the side. I was not about to be brushed away again, so I aggressively interrupted the conversation and explained to the chief of police again, that I was a witness and Louis had not beaten the girl up. I explained the whole situation that she had come to the house high or drunk, and was making a lot of trouble. I have no idea what I struck in the man, but he liked me and started to chastise Zeyneb for disturbing such ‘decent’ people. I talked to him a little longer and managed to even get the passports from him. I had really charmed him, because when I spoke, the situation went down, but every once in awhile Kidjo would still panic and add some words to the conversation which would send the whole thing into chaos again. By this time UN Security had arrived on the scene. As Kidjo had feared, they had to make a report, but they did completely separate us from the police.

We had arrived at the station at approximately 8 pm and left by 3 am. I was quite sure if I had not demanded to come along, the 2 men would be in a disgusting Sierra Leonean jail. They seemed to have absolutely no diplomacy or method of dealing with such situations.

That was, for the most part, the end of Zeyneb. A part of me felt sorry for her. Another part of me had no respect for her at all, because she brought on much of it to herself. The men surrounding her seemed to be manipulating her life. In many ways she seemed a victim, but I had to question myself if I was really so able to judge the events in her life that made her that way.