Families Marry off Daughters to Ease Finances Amid COVID-19

Families Marry off Daughters to Ease Finances Amid COVID-19

(Link): Families Marry off Daughters to Ease Finances Amid COVID-19

Excerpts:

by Krista Larson
December 2020

KOIDU, Sierra Leone (AP) — The man first caught a glimpse of Marie Kamara as she ran with her friends past his house near the village primary school. Soon after, he proposed to the fifth-grader.

“I’m going to school now. I don’t want to get married and stay in the house,” she told him.

But the pressures of a global pandemic on this remote corner of Sierra Leone were greater than the wishes of a schoolgirl. Nearby mining operations had slowed with the global economy. Business fell off at her stepfather’s tailoring shop, where outfits he had sewn now gathered dust. The family needed money.