By Hassan I. Conteh
Old wharf community is one of the many communities in Sierra Leone whose people heavily rely on fish farming to eke out a living.
Ali Kamara has been a fisherman for close to thirty-years and he talks of his grandchildren to determine his long career spell in the fishing sector.
“I started fishing at a very tender age and I have born and grown up children in this business,” he said.
We took a stroll to Freetown’s coastal mangrove community down on the hills of Freetown’s Lion Mountain, the peninsula mountain range from which the country got its name by a Portuguese explorer, Pedro de Sintra.
That was many years ago since 1462 when Sierra Leone was originally called Serra Loa, meaning Lion Mountain.
Freetown’s coastal areas were known to be fishing habitats for Sierra Leonean early settlers, the Sapes, The Vais, Bulloms and the Sherbros.
Today, and about sixty years ago, other ethnic groups like Themes, the second largest tribe in Sierra Leone, have taken fishing, trading and farming as their predominant occupation.
Old wharf is among the many wharfs and towns that are back of the peninsula mountain on the coastal waters of the Atlantic sea in Freetown where large fishing activities are conducted.
Ali Kamara tells us that fishing is not tough in the sea these days than before five or ten years ago.
The reason is simple because the fishermen don’t now spend weeks away from home to catch fish while on voyages.
“We don’t go for ‘allen’ now, that is long voyages in the sea or fishing expedition, because our wives get angry with us,” he explained.
And as romantic relationships are broken as a result of fishermen spending weeks and days on fishing expeditions, it leads to the shortening of expeditions to adjust that for a day out fishing and the new strange norm looks troubling the markets in Freetown thereby causing fish to scarce or go up in prices.
My friends and I looked at a basket half-full of crabs while a fish delivery van couldn’t take away plenty fish bags as one could expect that to be.
But Kamara expresses satisfaction that they get enough catch amidst the growing talks of fish scarcity and sometimes consumers even complain of higher costs on fish commodity sold in market places in Freetown and elsewhere.
It also suffices it to say that while Kamara and others get more profits on each boat sale a day, the fisher women and retail buyers at the markets are paying high for fish.
Kamara works for a boat nicknamed as Youngster at Old wharf in Wellington, east of Freetown.
They are selling a more common fish type in the harbor Le 300,000 per a bowl of rubber. The fish is called by the locals, ‘size’ or ‘yefu’ in Temne. We don’t asses the kind of chain Kamara and others are using to catch fish. But we believe the fish are the smaller ones that should not be caught with little hole-chain like.
Artisanal fishing, to use cast nets, fishing arrows and bad local fishing methods, is condemned in all forms.
“We go out fishing in the sea to places like Yaliboya ( Kambia district), Mampa ( Moyamba district) and after an hour or two we return to the harbour to sell; fishing is booming because we don’t allow idlers like before who will wait at harbor points to scoop up the fish dropping from the boats,” he said.
“Now, if one is caught in that act, one is fined a Le 500,000 sum.”
Old wharf is a dense community in the east of Freetown.
It is built on a vast savannah and mangroves flat land.
The storey buildings being erected and the strong cement houses being put up by residents of Old wharf have shown that the community is different than other wharves settlements in Freetown.
But there are dwellers who are pushing forward on the Wellington mangroves building very poor makeshifts homes. Such places are not decent for living.
However, on the whole, unlike other wharves which are often affected by repeated floods and fire outbreaks, Old wharf prides itself as a safe haven for her inhabitants.