In Sierra Leone, the people fighting the sea to build a home

Off a path in Cockle Bay, a slum in Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown, lies the squat, tin-roofed house where Lamrana Bah lives and works.

The widowed mother of six, who sells soft drinks from her front porch, built the home from the ground up -- or, more precisely, from the water up.

Most of the houses here were constructed on land “reclaimed” from the sea.

In a process known here as banking, residents pile layers of tyres, rubbish and sacks of earth into the water, pack the ballast with mud, and then build homes on top.

It is a unique solution to Freetown’s problem of overcrowding, rooted in its geography and exacerbated during a decade-long civil war.

“Banking” displays the resourcefulness of a community who with their own muscle and meagre savings battle the sea to make a place of their own.

But their unauthorised homes also face perils ranging from floods to fire, and struggle with lack of roads and basic services.

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Bah used to live in an ordinary apartment in the city, but after her husband died she could no longer afford the rent.

She spent $350 between 2014 and 2018 to build her Cockle Bay home, which has electricity but no running water.

“My mother doesn’t pay rent any more and we don’t have issues with anyone -- we stay in our own house, so I’m happy for that,” her son, Prince Anthony, told AFP reporters visiting the area late last year.

Like most structures in the slum, it is one storey high and was initially built from corrugated iron. Bah later fortified it with cement walls.

The settlement has since expanded, leaving her house some 500 metres (yards) from the water’s edge.

About a third of Freetown’s estimated 1.5 million residents live in slums, according to the city. The population mushroomed during the 1991-2002 civil war, when hundreds of thousands fled violence in the provinces. By the time the fighting ended, many had built new lives and stayed.

But the city nestles on a peninsula between the Atlantic and mountains, and informal expansion in either direction is dangerous. In 2017, a landslide ripped through a hillside settlement, killing more than 1,000 people.

In the alleyways of Cockle Bay, women hawk nuts and doughnut-like “puff cake” snacks, while men on wooden boats bring charcoal to shore to sell.

The slum is home to community-run schools and at least one mosque -- all built on banked land.

Not all residents are poor. In an older area, large, solid houses painted pale yellow and green are shaded by lime, coconut, pawpaw and avocado trees.

“We live here happy (with) no problems -- you see the children playing?” said Fatu Dumbuya, a 33-year-old hairdresser threading a weave into a client’s braids while, nearby, her husband hauled mud to bank more land.