- Title: Sierra Leone gangster leaves the street for a life of poetry
- Date: 19th February 2020
- Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) MANAGER OF WAY OUT, GIBRILLA KAMARA (GIBO), SAYING: "For the past 11 years, we've worked with over five thousand young youths across Sierra Leone. We are working within the arts, the music, the media. So, like we are using those platforms to see how best we can give opportunities and chance to the youths for them to use it, to make changes for themselves because you can change someone." KEYBOARD DURING EDITING TRAINING AT WAYOUT CENTRE STUDENTS LOOKING AND TAKING NOTES YOUTHS LOOKING AT SCREEN SCREEN SHOWING MUSIC VIDEO THE YOUTHS ARE EDITING HARD DRIVE WITH STICKER FROM THE JOE STRUMMER FOUNDATION READING 'Without People you are nothing'
- Embargoed: 4th March 2020 09:03
- Keywords: Poetry WAYout Youth Unemployment
- Location: FREETOWN, SIERRA LEONE
- City: FREETOWN, SIERRA LEONE
- Country: Sierra Leone
- Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment
- Reuters ID: LVA006C1A3UQF
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Yousef Kamara - former gang leader from Sierra Leone's 'Giverdamn Gaza' gang in the slums of Freetown.
"This is Exodus Lane, Gaza. As you can see, it's a very tight and narrow lane but this is where I've done most of my gangster or my thug acts, you know? I used to do my things here."
"The Giverdamn squad, we bow down to no one", said Kamara. The gang, known locally as a 'clique', chose the name because they 'give a damn' about the streets and want things to change. Gaza refers to the Palestinian enclave in the Middle East, a strip of chaos, strife and constant struggle like in the weaving slums of Sierra Leone's capital.
Gangs or "cliques" as they are locally known hang out with their soldiers, smoking, drinking and chilling in shacks in what they call 'the ghetto'.
"When you're looking for thugs to do whatever activity, bulldozing, to beat somebody up, you just rush to the Exodus lane and get these Giverdamn boys to do the act, you know?" he said.
After quitting the gang three years ago, 27 year-old-Kamara now hopes his journey to acclaim as a poet can offer an example to other wayward youths in Freetown, where increasing numbers are joining gangs modelled on the Bloods and Crips of Los Angeles.
Kamara has been published in several international poetry magazines and was invited last year to attend the African Writers Conference in Kenya.
It is a dramatic turnaround for someone who spent the majority of his life leading Giverdam Gaza, a gang of several dozen members he founded as a teenager on Freetown's Exodus Lane.
"My future is clear with poetry and I don't want to keep these feelings to myself, I want to give back to colleagues, more especially the little youths. Like I said I have spent more than 13 years on the street," he said.
He owes his dramatic turnaround to the WAYout Arts, a charity and media centre co-founded by an English film maker in 2008, Hazel Chandler, to train homeless and underprivileged youths and give them a voice.
In his poem "Rough Path", Yousef Kamara reflects on his years selling drugs and stealing as the leader of a street gang in Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown.
"Like a traveller in a rough jungle/Self propelling all alone/Edging through danger sharper than blades/My rough path is a cracked zone," he writes.
Kamara said he understands the youths who come through WAYout the place he himself came to looking for an exit, tired of life on the streets.
"So seeing the junior youth still coming into the streets, rushing into the street activities, what will I do to stop this? Because I was just like them when I took the streets and I've gained nothing. Just pain, disappointment, jail, long term in prison."
WAYout manager, Gibrilla 'Gibo' Kamara, is a sound recordist helping youngsters get their tunes out there.
Gibo himself lived in the streets before, breaking stones for less than a dollar a day to survive. He joined Way Out in 2010 to follow the video training course they offered. But he quickly discovered that his real passion was to pass his knowledge onto others.
"For the past 11 years, we've worked with over five thousand young youths across Sierra Leone. We are working within the arts, the music, the media. So, like we are using those platforms to see how best we can give opportunities and chance to the youths for them to use it, to make changes for themselves because you can change someone," he said.
WAYout was born when Hazel Chandler was making a film about street youths in Kenema on the Liberian border in 2005. She gave a small camera to gang leader Yumyum who shot 100 hours of footage for her and turned the camera into a badge of honour according to the media centre's website.
"This was the inspiration to give other people cameras and tell them their stories are important and this is where the seed was planted to start WAYout" it says.
Today the young dispossessed learn to shoot and edit documentaries and music videos. Others hone their writing skills, sing or learn about music production and recording.
Since 2017 British singer Frank Turner comes to WAYout to jam with the kids once a year. It is part of a fund-raising tour for the Joe Strummer foundation that he is part of and which gives money to music groups around the world.
"WAYout is not going to change the world. What something like WAYout Arts is going to change is the lives of individual people and the thing that I hear form so many of the kids here, over and over again is that WAYout is the only NGO over here, the only group over here that really treats them like individual human beings, gives them a voice, a chance for them to express themselves creatively and realise themselves as human beings," says Turner.
Kamara says the youths who come through here have an opportunity to regain their self-confidence which puts them back on the right track away from crime, poverty and for many jail.
"Like some of them have, for example, like, done a track. You have done music because you have been humiliated from your community for a long time and you come back here and do a track that you can be proud of. You can have something you can be proud of, go back home and show it to your community (and say to them) 'this is what I've been doing, I'm not the bad guy you used to know'. That, this is the most important thing because that makes society accept them back," he said.
It was the first time that 23-year old Kelly Wiz had come to WAYout. He heard about it from a friend whilst he was homeless. He has gone back to live with his mother now.
Although he loves singing, he says he doesn't think he will make it because the competition is too high. But after spending some time with Gibo, he wants to be a music engineer.
Kamara Gaz-B now lives in a house with his young family thanks to a grant WAYout helped him secure. He wants to start his own organisation to help vulnerable young people build self-esteem and shift "from crime to career".
The challenge is pressing. Across Sierra Leone, a country still grappling with the legacy of a 1991-2002 civil war that killed an estimated 50,000 people, dire economic conditions, including runaway unemployment, has led many from the post-war generation to join gangs, researchers say.
Kamara thinks poetry can be a powerful tool in combating that trend by forcing young people to be honest with themselves. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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