Many African, Asian families marry off daughters amid virus

KOIDU, Sierra Leone — The man first caught a glimpse of Marie Kamara as she ran with her friends past his house near the village primary school. It’s a mindset that Sierra Leone’s first lady, Fatima Maada Bio, knows first hand and has been working to change with her “Hands Off Our Girls” campaign since her husband took office in 2018. She has made it her life’s work to help other underage girls: “Early marriage in all forms is legalized rape,” she told The Associated Press in a recent interview. “Not everybody here is conversant with technology where you can say, ‘Let’s have a Zoom meeting.’ And even if you have a community meeting, how many people can log in?” As a result of the lack of contact and scrutiny, Sierra Leone’s first lady acknowledges that she does not have a complete picture of the rising rate of child marriages. “They said: ‘Your husband already married you, so you must be patient.’ But I told them that I can’t be patient with this kind of marriage, this type of forced marriage that you put me into, I can’t be patient with it.” Even amidst the rainy season when roads turn to sludge, isolating her village from the rest of the world, Naomi was able to escape in November by motorcycle taxi to Koidu, the largest nearby town, where an aunt was willing to take her in.