By Hassan I. Conteh

With two weeks on, still bombs are fired into the clean air, making it poisonous for everyone to inhale.

The range close to the Benguema Barracks is having “old guns” or bombs being released into the atmosphere almost every day.

The greyish smoke settles in the atmosphere for minutes without disfussing.

At Grassfield, we heard a bomb blast with the thick greyish smoke curling and staying in the atmosphere, but the thick smoke couldn’t go up higher into the sky.

It stays in the atmosphere only but for  long and it looks very poisonous, seeing it from afar.

This means it could cause harm to humans around and any living things like animals, etc, where it is released.

The plants, grasses may die as the gun smoke descends the ground after it has disfussed with the clean air.

The mixed air now becomes very dangerous to the children and the elderly.

Close to the range are places where there are many schools.

And the polluted air can affect water catchments thereby causing too much risks to people and their creatures dogs, cats, sheep and goats, fowl etc.

Residents close by the range where soldiers do their normal training activities have said the army there are fusing the very old guns at the mountains in the forest.

The place where bombs are fused is called in short Range by the  residents in Waterloo.

“That is the Range where sounds of bombs are coming from. Those are old guns the soldiers fire to fuse them. The whole world is requesting now countries to fuse their old bombs, maybe that is just what they are doing,” says Mrs Bernard, wife of Mr Bernard.

“They supposed, as they said years back, to be fusing these guns at a far away place. But the Range is too close to us. They should not be doing this to us,” explains Mr. Bernard, as he and his wife talked in monotonous tone.

Mr. Bernard is a household owner who lives at Jalloh Drive, York Road, a place that is just half a mile to Range.

The firing or fusing of the bombs have gone for about two weeks.

But no authority has come out in the open to inform the people why are there unusual shooting of the guns with their vibration trembling the earth with windows and doors creaking for a collapse.

The vibration on the ground goes as far as Grafton, Jui, which are about eight miles to the Range.

In a three time gun-sound release, Kadiatu, a tenant at a York Road, raised an alarm.

“I am scared. Look how the windows are shaking and the wall.”

Like Kadiatu many Waterloonians have been gripped in deep fear in the months of September and October this year as they heard the very strange sounds of bombs.

They are caught between heavy rainstorms and lightening thunders in the usual months of October and the strange bomb sounding from the range with dark fume, pervading the cozy and serene air.

Others were rushing up to the schools to pick up their kids fearing for their safety some weeks ago.

The panic and fear happened at the initial periods of the shootings at Waterloo Tombo market, a very crowded open market which serves the whole district of Western Area Rural.

But the deep fear and panic are subdued by soften messages coming from some community radio journalists.

“The sounds of the guns you hear daily are those released by soldiers at the Benguema Barracks. We won’t want people to become scared. It is the [soldiers] normal military training activity at the Benguema,” a journalist had told listeners on a Tuesday night, October 1st 2024.

But how the people can be prevented by the toxic smoke now remains the bigger question ?

They don’t have choice at all especially in a country where authorities are usually silent on things that matter most to the public.

Mr Bernard, a television mechanic, and his wife talked to me on how such similar bombings test had affected residents in the past eight years in Waterloo.

“At a particular year few people around that Range community got rashes all over their bodies, their skins have sores as they scratch their bodies of the infected areas by the gun-smoke like this one you see going up the air,” he pointed toward the range site.

That was the time when inhabitants were not as many as they are now.

There are many homes as houses being built countlessly at the mountainous area.

Although housing restrictions have been imposed on builders by the government not to build at the Range area, people still keep putting up houses around.

So, the number of individuals living there now has swelled up over the years as authorities can’t enforce the laws.

Asked why they are squatting by the Range, a man responded in a mild tone.

“We all can’t live in Freetown because of the high rental costs especially these days. So most of us have decided to come here to live with our families.”

The community chief at Paw-Paw road, a place which is just a meter to the Range, says it is difficult for them to enforce the laws by themselves to prevent the unlawful builders from encroaching the Range land.

“I think the army reserves that authority alone. Most times they come around checking for defaulters. They have destroyed many homes built at the Range area in the past. But now they have stopped coming for a while now.”

As many people still live in these places such as York Road, Paw-Paw road, Grassfield, and since they cannot be protected from easily catching the toxic and gaseous smoke released from  the guns after they are fused into the air, the impact may not be noticed on most people now at early periods, but the bad effects could only show up on them later as they  unconsciously inhale the harmful air day by day at these communities.

The locals here walk, work, sleep and wake up every day in the greyish mist of a toxic bomb smoke.

They surely can’t breathe a fresh air as long as they are living close to a military range at Benguema Barracks.