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This is early February; at this time most people in this country are planning how to make the best use of the dry season.
What with Easter and the Independence celebrations still to come. And time to sun it out in our beautiful beaches.
But sadly enough as most people plan, there are two who are thinking, not of the present dry season but of the rainy season that will follow it.
They are a mother and daughter couple who throughout last year's season socked it out in the rain.
Zainab Mansaray, 30 and her mum, Isata Kamara, spent the whole six months of the rainy season moving from one end of Victoria Park to the other.
"We became homeless after the relative who was caring for us died," Isatu said. "As you can see for yourself Zainab can't walk and she has no other person to look after her except for me".
As her mum spoke, Zainab who can neither talk nor walk stared, occasionally smiling sheepishly.
"She was not born like this. I could very well remember that she was born in the year when the new street lights came to this country.
The very year when late president Samuel Doe of Liberia, came to this country".
That was 1980 when Sierra Leone hosted the then Organisation of African Unity (OAU).
"My Zainab was a bubbly girl when she was growing up. She liked friends and school - but she was always prone to accidents and it was one of those that turned her into a wreck".
Zainab, though 30 years old looks like a 15 year old. While her mum goes around begging to feed her, she sits the whole day on her wheel chair staring.
Many people who pass her by he west side of the Park just opposite State House will think she is just kidding but she is not. "We lost our home a year 1go and this small patch of land has been our home since July last year. When it rained too heavily. I just simply wrap Zainab in a large polythene, put some clothes round her and leave her to either survive or die".
Died Zainab had, a thousand time "she had collapsed many many times but she always miraculously pull through.
Her health is on and off. It is a miracle really because in such condition you would have expected her to have died long ago but she is still here. That means God has a purpose for her in this life".
Zainab was about 15 years old when she fell and knocked her head badly.
"She left school then. But I encouraged her to put her life into use and she soon became a fish monger, a very successful one. She was known all over Aberdeen village". Bad omen was to still follow Zainab. A car accident knocked her off completely leaving her with mumbled speech and paralysed from her waist down.
"With her and her baby to look after it became an added burden".
Zainab was hoodwinked into marrying an old man at Lokomasama town where she went to seek medication.
"She was impregnated by that nuisance of a man who abandoned her after she gave birth".
Zainab bore another child after she was raped by another man.
"Dr. Matilda King of Rainbow supported us through our ordeal, may God bless her. But she can't carry all our burdens".
Living rough is not a matter of choice for Zainab and her mum.
"Who will want to be in such condition? When it is raining you see everybody diving for cover or running into their houses but for us there is no home to run to.
This small space where we sit the whole day is not only for sleeping but it is where we do everything. Hope you understand?"
Zainab is always plagued with diarrhea.
"What we eat is not nourishing mostly scavenged from market stalls. At times even that is hard to come by. Before I reach the market, others would have been there before me".
The rains will soon start pouring. Mother and daughter are looking for a place to lay their heads. "If we have to go through it all over again we definitely will not survive it. May God help us".
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