Jariatu Kargbo hauled a wooden spoon longer than her arm through a vat of rice as customers patiently waited their turn to buy lunch on the side of a busy road. The 38-year-old widow runs a stall called a “cookery” — the cheapest option for many Sierra Leoneans to grab what is often their only meal of the day.
Cookeries in this impoverished West African state are a crucial part of the economy as well as a social safety net.
However, the cherished institution is under pressure from a brutal external force: inflation.
Photo: AFP
“Prices for major food items — rice, cooking oil, onion, sugar and flour — have quadrupled,” Kargbo said, as the smell of boiled beans wafted over from behind her.
Cookeries in Freetown, the capital, sell rice and stew at a fraction of what they would cost in a restaurant.
“These predominantly women are kind of the backbone of the city in terms of keeping it fed, because a lot of people ... don’t have the facilities to cook at home,” said Jamie Hitchen, a researcher.
Photo: AFP
The densely-populated metropolis does not have any urban agriculture, so food is trucked in from the countryside or imported from abroad.
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine sent global inflation soaring, trucking in food has become painfully expensive.
As of November last year, the latest month on record, inflation had risen 35 percent year-on-year in Sierra Leone.
“We were buying a cup of rice for 1,500 leones [US$0.08 at the current exchange rate] in 2021 — now its 3,500 leones,” said Kargbo, who opened her business to support her six children after her husband died of Ebola in 2014.
Sierra Leone in July last year slashed three zeros off its currency hoping to restore confidence in the inflation-hit leone. Many, including Kargbo, still quote prices in the former denomination.
In August, riots broke out over the rising cost of living in the Shell Old Road Junction neighborhood where Kargbo lives and works.
Twenty-seven civilians and six police officers were killed.
Kargbo’s customers consist mainly of motorcycle taxi drivers known as okada men, street hawkers and, occasionally, office workers.
“My family depends on the cookery to eat for dinner during the week — we only cook at home on weekends due to rising cost of living,” said Francis Koroma, a teacher who was holding two plastic bowls to fill for his family of five.
Often, cookery meals are more affordable than buying products from the market, but the stalls have had to increase prices.
Kargbo now sells her dishes of rice with potato leaf sauce or groundnut soup for 8,000 leones, up from 5,000 leones in 2021. Market vendors, too, are not turning as much profit.
“We have slow sales,” Sierra Leone Market Women Association head Haja Marie Bob-Kandeh said. “People are now prioritizing what they should [spend] for the day because of inflation.”
She said that vendors were worried about the cost of fresh vegetables, which have a short shelf life, and instead focused on selling ingredients for basic meals, such as rice with sauce.
At a large cookery in the more affluent Hill Cot Road area, Fatmata Bangura, 48, sits on a low wooden bench and cuts up cow kanda — cow skin — while her daughter, Isata Dumbuya, and four employees stir onions, plantain, cabbage and beans in large metal pots over wood and coal fires.
They have been awake since 3:30am, when Dumbuya, 32, sets out each day for the market. By 6am she is at the roadside shop and beginning to cook the day’s meals: cassava leaf, beans or tola stew for breakfast, often crain crain — a local dish made with okra — for lunch.
Their business is stable, but their bottom line has nonetheless taken a hit.
“The palm oil was sold at 200,000 leones, now it’s 585,000 leones,” Dumbuya said. “The rice, before, we bought it at 280,000, but now the price is 550,000.”
There is a limit to how much of the cost increase can be passed on to customers, say stall holders.
Sitting on a picnic bench outside Dumbuya’s shop, Hassan Mohamed Vamboi, a 29-year-old motorcycle driver, digs into a plate of green, leafy stew. He eats here at least once a day.
Vamboi said he has been feeling the pinch of rising fuel prices and has had to extend his workdays from 12 to 16 hours to get by.
“It’s very challenging in the country presently,” he said.
He has also moved his wife and two children to his village to save money.
“My pocket cannot uphold them here,” Vamboi said.
For now, he continues to eat at Dumbuya’s, and she continues to cook.
“If people come to my shop and eat my food and say: ‘Oh you know how to cook,’ it inspires me,” she said. “So every day I do the same thing, for people to come and eat.”
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
CHINESE ICBM: The missile landed near the EEZ of French Polynesia, much to the surprise and concern of the president, who sent a letter of protest to Beijing Fijian President Ratu Wiliame Katonivere called for “respect for our region” and a stop to missile tests in the Pacific Ocean, after China launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). In a speech to the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday, Katonivere recalled the Pacific Ocean’s history as a nuclear weapons testing ground, and noted Wednesday’s rare launch by China of an ICBM. “There was a unilateral test firing of a ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean. We urge respect for our region and call for cessation of such action,” he said. The ICBM, carrying a dummy warhead, was launched by the
As violence between Israel and Hezbollah escalates, Iran is walking a tightrope by supporting Hezbollah without being dragged into a full-blown conflict and playing into its enemy’s hands. With a focus on easing its isolation and reviving its battered economy, Iran is aware that war could complicate efforts to secure relief from crippling sanctions. Cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah, sparked by Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7 last year, has intensified, especially after last week’s sabotage on Hezbollah’s communications that killed 39 people. Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon followed, killing hundreds. Hezbollah retaliated with rocket barrages. Despite the surge in