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My name is Inyilla Borteh Conteh. I was born in Sierra Leone to Fula and Susu parents, who are both Muslims.  I'm a 20-year-old mass communications student at Fourah Bay College.  Over the years I've tried to understand what it means to be a girl child growing up as a Muslim in a small and peaceful African community. Here's my experience.  When I was five, I was told in many different ways that I couldn't dress like a boy. My mother would often say, "you're not a boy; walk gently; don't sit with your legs spread apart." When I celebrated my tenth birthday, my dream was to make lots of friends, be it a pack of boys or a yoke of girls. One day I tried to play football at school, and my teacher said " football is a game for boys. From now on, you must stop playing with boys and start being cordial with the girls. I shouldn't have to tell you that liquids find their levels."  I wanted to try lots of things, like climbing trees to p...

Foday Melvin Kamara is the Sierra Leonean inventor you've never heard of. One of Kamara’s most recent inventions is a multi-purpose dryer. “The invention help(s) farmers to dehydrate produce before storage,” he told 9RiverMedia. “Over a year ago, we designed and constructed an electrically powered version that was installed at Lion Mountain Company in Bo and has been in operation for over a year,” he added. “The technology is adaptable for drying of produce such as cacao, coffee, ginger, etc... Before now, a dryer of the same magnitude was imported,” he said. During the raining season, when there's little sunshine, Sierra Leonean farmers face lots of problems in drying rice, corn, cacao, cashew nuts, pepper, cassava chips, onions, groundnuts, soybeans, corn/maize, and Moringa leaves. “The FINIC invention will meet the pockets of the farmers. Instead of diesel fuel to generate the heat required for the dehydration process, our technology uses burn oil, which is five ...