Duchess offers seed of hope to children sifting through landfill
Sarah Ferguson is leading an appeal to raise school standards for pupils such as those who support their families by selling rubbish before lessons.
Ben Morgan reports from Freetown, Sierra Leone
MUSA spends two hours each day sifting through piles of smouldering rubbish on a Freetown landfill site before he goes to school.
Like scores of other children at the Bomeh dump site in Sierra Leone’s capital, the 15-year-old scavenges for discarded plastics, rubber and metals that he can sell to provide an income for his family.
On a good day he can earn the equivalent of 20p for retrieving a huge sackful of recyclable plastic bottles plucked from the mounds of rotting rubbish. It is enough to buy some bread or fruit for him and his family.
Ousman, 12, carries a bamboo stick twice his size to poke through the debris while crouched over a trench of rubbish looking for copper to resell.
Bomeh is home to about 300 people who live in shacks around the perimeter, where toddlers play with discarded waste and fires spontaneously break out under the debris.
The smell is unbearable, and the senses are overwhelmed by the combined stench of burning plastic and decaying organic matter under an oppressive heat.
The Evening Standard visited Bomeh dump with British charity Street Child and its founder patron Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York. She was there to launch the Schools For Tomorrow pledge to b u i l d o r u p g ra d e 1 ,0 0 0 rural schools over five years. The charity is also running the Count Me In appeal to provide school resources and improve standards and access.
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