Safety, immigration, and maternal health in Sierra Leone

Aminata Conteh-Biger Transcript

Sabrina Merage Naim
From Evoke Media I'm Sabrina Mirage Naim, with me is Kassia Binkowski, and this is Breaking Glass - a series of conversations with women around the world who are shattering glass ceilings and challenging social norms. They are audacious, gutsy, and their stories are echoed across borders and generations in a rallying cry that is changing the narrative for women everywhere. We head to Australia today to hear a truly remarkable story, mostly based in Sierra Leone, about a survivor and activist, Aminata Conteh-Biger. Aminata grew up in a well-off family in the capital of Sierra Leone, where her father prioritized the education and opportunities for his six daughters. She had a happy and protected childhood until the truly devastating Civil War broke out in her country resulting in the deaths of more than 50,000 individuals. Aminata's own story of survival during this time is unbelievable.

Kassia Binkowski
And Sabrina, her story of survival doesn't end with the war. After rebuilding her life in Australia, Aminata ultimately endured the traumatic birth of her first child. And this is the tipping point that we really hone in on today. After that experience, Aminata refocused her entire life on changing maternal health outcomes in her home country of Sierra Leone, one of the worst in the world for maternal and child mortality rates. She founded the Aminata Maternal Foundation and has since reached tens of thousands of mothers with quality health care and raised more than $400,000. Her story is one of unimaginable trauma. But it's also one of incredible hope and optimism and impact. Take a listen.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Aminata thank you so much for joining us from Sydney today, very early where you are. We really appreciate you waking up super early for this conversation. Obviously, there's always a consideration of time difference. But you know, you have a really interesting story that we're excited to dive into. Thank you for being with us.

Aminata Conteh-Biger
Thanks for having me.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Absolutely. So let's start at the beginning of your story. You grew up in Sierra Leone, you and your siblings were primarily raised by your father in the capital of Freetown. Can you tell us some of the memories of your childhood? What was it like growing up?

Aminata Conteh-Biger
My memory growing up is of really my father, my dad. We grew up in this massive big house, and we're surrounded by a lot of poverty but we didn't really know it was poverty. I think he did that deliberately for us to be among people that are less fortunate. The place where we grew up, we have a lot of mountains around us. Just so beautiful in the morning. And my dad, waking up in the morning, by the time would come downstairs where he was living on his own floor of the house, his apron would be on. And I come from a Muslim family. He would say his prayer. And he would be getting breakfast for us ready and lunch was ready to go to school. And he was just this really gentle, soft spoken... and respect. Respect was just a key for him. Respect every single person that he met. Young people... and he always taught us that the same tone you speak to the poor is the same tone you speak to the person in the mansion. So I didn't grow up with him telling me how much he loved me. I rarely saw or heard my dad used that word but we knew that he loved us, like all the people around us our neighbors, they know that you can touch back with, they'd call him Pa, Pa Conteh or Mr. Conteh's children, especially his daughter. And this was in a surrounding where girls were not really looked upon to go to school and in proper education. My dad was actually the opposite, like the girls were very... they were so precious to him. And he wanted us to have education, he wanted us to live wherever we wanted in the part of the world. He wanted us to marry whoever we want. It was just a happy childhood. I never, never thought I would ever leave my dad, even if I'm like seventy years old. That was the perception that I had, that I will live with this man for the rest of my life, because the way we were loved and protected. Yeah.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I just want to say I think it's lovely to hear it expressed in that way, that maybe he never actually explicitly told you that he loved you, but it was something that you knew. That you never questioned, and that he's a man of values and morals that was very generous and really put your education and your future as a priority, which I think is lovely.

Kassia Binkowski
And it's something that we hear from so many different guests. I mean, it's definitely a common theme that we hear on the show is parents who chose to invest in their daughters' education, even when that wasn't the norm. Wherever they were living wherever they were being raised, which I mean, that just shows the impact is tremendous.

Aminata Conteh-Biger
Oh, no, absolutely. Even, we had six daughters, and we all have looked at each other and been so independent. You can even tell the difference from the daughters to the boys, because the boys, especially when you grew up with a father that has money, that travels, you have already that ego that someday it's gonna be yours. And my dad made it clear, like there was no son that was going to have more than the daughter. Not in his book at all. And in fact, you should go and get yours. And that's what he did with his properties in his will.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Good for him. And so there were six girls, and how many brothers do you have?

Aminata Conteh-Biger
Three.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Three. Wow, that's a lot of kids for this one man to have.

Aminata Conteh-Biger
Yeah, well... my older sisters, they lived in London, now they are 57 years old, the twins. So, because he wanted to look after his children. So we all come from a different mother. So I'm the only child to my mother, because we have a polygamous family. In Sierra Leone, especially from the Muslim side, in the Quran, if you're wealthy, and you're able to take care of a family, you can marry up to four wives. So my dad did that. Boy, him and his wives ended up divorcing, but he will not allow any of his wives to take his children.

Kassia Binkowski
So this is fascinating. We could have a whole conversation about this. Did you guys all have relationships with your mothers?

Aminata Conteh-Biger
We did but I don't have any memory of my mom. And the reason why he did that, because I always wanted to make that clear, because he believed, and we actually believed that too, the children, that if we were to be raised by our mothers, we would get married very early, and education would not be a priority. So you can take everything from him, but not his children. And I remember even when I was was living by myself for seven years, my mom was panicking, like, "Oh, do you have a boyfriend, are you going to get married?" But it didn't bother me because I didn't feel like I had to answer to her, because of what my dad has taught me. And I knew that if I would have grown up with my mom, I would have been married to a man that had already three wives, that's for sure. So he knew things.

Sabrina Merage Naim
My observation is that your mothers grew up with certain mentalities because that was the expectation placed on girls in that country, right?

Aminata Conteh-Biger
Absolutely. Yes.

Sabrina Merage Naim
It was not that they necessarily wanted you to leave your education or to marry early, but this is what they were taught, and this is what was expected of girls.

Aminata Conteh-Biger
And this is what has been done to them also.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, it was done to them for many generations, and that was what was the norm, the cultural norm. Whereas your dad had the freedom to be able to have a much broader view of what your respective paths could be.

Aminata Conteh-Biger
Yes.

Sabrina Merage Naim
And part of that is beautiful, and part of that is really unfair. It's unfair, that your mothers were not, did not have that broader scope or the multiple paths because they didn't have those options either.

Aminata Conteh-Biger
They didn't have this option, no. And my mom went to school because my mom grew up from Guinea, Conakry, which is French colonized. She went to school, she used to do ballet, she used to do dance, but in the end, often when I speak to, I'm very close to my mom, marriage and family would be a priority.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Because that's what it was for her as well.

Aminata Conteh-Biger
That's what is was. And for her that's very important. And she admires the life and she respects so much the life that I'm living with my husband. That is something that I've done, changed that part of her life. And we are very grateful for our dad, to have that.

Kassia Binkowski
We might have to get your dad on the show. I wanna talk to the man who interrupted this cycle for six women. I mean that's amazing.

Aminata Conteh-Biger
Yeah, it is something.

Kassia Binkowski
So let's rewind. So the first decade of your childhood is pretty idyllic. You have an incredibly close family, you have a father who is loving and caring and invests in you, you have the resources for a good education. But in 1991, that starts to shift. So that's when Civil War broke out in the country. And it took, my understanding that took about eight years for that war to actually reach where you guys were in Freetown, is that right?

Aminata Conteh-Biger
Yes. Yes.

Kassia Binkowski
Okay. So we're talking from the time you were 11 until you were 18 years old, this war is raging in your country, but far enough from you, that you're a little bit insulated from it. What did that season of life look like? I mean, those are such formative years. Was your family comfortable? Did you feel safe? How insulated were you from that threat?

Aminata Conteh-Biger
I was insulated, but not as much. We got information from friends from school about what was happening, and refugees were fleeing from Liberia, and also the villages in Sierra Leone, to come to the capital city, Freetown. So that's where everybody wanted to come. And I didn't see much because my dad was very disciplined. So I stayed home all the time. I never went out by myself. But at school I could hear, it was everywhere. The signature parts of the war, things that were happening like amputation or rape. So these were very common. But as the war continued, and after years and years, 3,4,5 years, they don't get into the capital city, we actually thought in a way that we would go on living life, that it's not going to get to the capital city. But we saw refugees and we saw people fleeing from Liberia and coming to seek refuge in in the capital city of Freetown.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So you were still going to school, you were hearing about it, you were starting to see some of these shifts, but you were still more or less insulated. And then there was a really big shift that happened when you were 18 years old. And the rebels reached the Capitol and everything changed. In your autobiography, Rising Heart, you describe the atrocities you witnessed in the hours that unfold during that invasion and eventually you yourself were kidnapped by the rebels who were looking for young virgins for sex slaves, human shields, and you were held in captivity for seven months. What can you tell us about what unfolded during this time?

Aminata Conteh-Biger
When I when I think of the day that they entered the Capitol city, which is a day we still will remember, it's called January 6th, we just were asleep. We were just sleeping, just getting ready to go to school the following day. And we just heard this echo. It was almost like something was coming off from the clouds and just burst. It felt like, we knew or we had a sense that a lot of the rebels were in the Capitol city already. They were in, they were civilians, they were getting dressed, they were watching what was happening. So it just felt like they came from the clouds and fell on us. So it was just a heavy sound that woke us all up and we knew exactly what had happened. And by the time we opened the windows and started watching what was happening it was just full of smoke. And you see houses being burned by the fire, and you see the fire. And then you can hear people crying in the house, because one of the things they would do to people was they burned the whole family in the house. And then you see people running, with them being lit with fire. And the house was, the windows were bulletproof. And also we could see people from the outside but no one could see us from the inside, the windows that we had we could see the fire that was happening but all you could just hear was people crying, was screaming and running. It's almost like a movie sometimes when I describe it. It feels so unreal because you feel like it's a small village where they've entered the Capitol city where people were just running and screaming and you're hearing bombs. You're watching the whole thing in the house. And I think for us, for me, my experience was something that I never really can have an explanation for. I just felt like my house was being guarded, because the whole time this was happening, our house was the biggest house in the whole area where I grew up. All the houses around us were being burned except our house. And what had happened that first day, a lot of people, and I still don't understand this. Most of the time when the war was happening, you don't run to a big house, you want to run to a poor house, a broken house, a house that has been burned. But for some reason people feel that they have to come to our house to get shelter. And we don't know why. And my dad, just opened the gate, and everybody came in. So in those times for about two, three weeks, we were seeing the horror that was happening. But we had over 1,000 people in our house, and it was quiet. I still don't know how people could be that quiet, because we didn't want to make a sound to trigger rebels that this house existed, but it did exist. It's massive, it's yellow, it's bright. Until the day that we just, and this was the day that the government was pushing the rebels out, and all of a sudden, he goes like this, "I'll just pop out". And one of the rebels said, "Oh, who is in this house, we just heard the sound". And everybody kept quiet. And you could hear that one voice started being ten voices. We knew straight away, we should come out, so we all came out. And all of us, all the kids have just disappeared. Because you're really surviving for yourself. And because I was the youngest, and I was very close to my dad, I decided to hold his hand and walk and get to the field, there was a little field out. And that's where we stood. And that, with me holding my dad's hand, we were to be shot. And that was the time that I got taken by one of the rebels called Derami.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Okay, let's recap for a second because I have chills. And that was a lot. Your house was the biggest house in the area, your dad opened the gates for a thousand people to come into your house and you all stayed there together for weeks before your home was infiltrated?

Aminata Conteh-Biger
Yes.

Sabrina Merage Naim
When they came, you all went out with the idea, with the thought, that you were going to be taken to a field and shot.

Aminata Conteh-Biger
Yes.

Sabrina Merage Naim
And you were with your dad. And instead of doing that, this rebel came and just took you away.

Aminata Conteh-Biger
Yeah he came, he walked towards me. And when he looked at me, I knew. But I also knew the love of my dad, that he is coming for me. So when he said, "You come here" I let go of my dad's hand. Because what they would do is... I could not even imagine what my dad was going to do. And if the parents fought back, they would either ask the child to kill the parent, or they would rape the child in front of the dad, or to ask the parent to kill the child. So it was a lot of incidents, so I just walked away. When he called me I just let go and walked away. And I never looked at my dad's face.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So you were protecting him?

Aminata Conteh-Biger
Yeah.

Sabrina Merage Naim
And you knew, you were old enough at that time, you knew what they were going to do.

Kassia Binkowski
You spent seven months in captivity then, is that right?

Aminata Conteh-Biger
Seven months... I still don't have the full memory. Sometimes I think three, my friends that were kidnapped say more. So I still don't have full memory of that. I think... you don't know anything, you really don't know anything. I thought they were all dead. They thought I was dead. My brother, older brother Aliou. He lived in the state followed me. I was very close to him. And he saw that they've taken me away and he kept following me pretending that he joined rebels group until he saw where I was settled. And he came towards me, he joined the group that I was in. So he sort of volunteered. He didn't want to leave me by myself. So my brother did that. So he was with me the whole time when all the things was happening to me.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I can't imagine what he witnessed. That must have been unbelievable. So during that time you say that your brother was there, he wanted to be with you. Was he able to protect you at all?

Aminata Conteh-Biger
No, no. The thing that helped my brother to be able to not join the rebels, because he's older than me, and when they see somebody like him, you would join, you become one of them, which is what they did to a lot of young boys. Well because Dorami was extremely, like extremely obsessed with me, he didn't mind my brother being with his crew. So he protected my brother, because that's how he could show that he loved me.

Sabrina Merage Naim
That's twisted.

Kassia Binkowski
Interesting.

Aminata Conteh-Biger
So my brother was fine, anywhere. But in the book I described one time when I got missing, then he almost wanted to kill my brother because that's the way he could hurt me for me to come back. So he was fine, my brother didn't go to war. He didn't do any of that because of Dorami. That's how he was showing me that "I love you. I don't want your brother to go to war and nobody can touch him"

Kassia Binkowski
As a form of manipulation. Sure.

Aminata Conteh-Biger
Yes. So that was it.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So he was there, but he wasn't able to protect, you.

Aminata Conteh-Biger
No, he couldn't do anything.

Sabrina Merage Naim
He couldn't do anything. He was just making sure that you were staying alive through it.

Aminata Conteh-Biger
Yes.

Sabrina Merage Naim
But really, you were kind of protecting him also.

Aminata Conteh-Biger
Yes.

Kassia Binkowski
I mean, your family's loyalty and love for one another is mind blowing. I mean, the ways that you guys had to demonstrate it. And the ways that was tested I think are you know, far greater than most families, most siblings, ever experience.

Aminata Conteh-Biger
That was my dad's legacy. He wanted that for all his children.

Sabrina Merage Naim
We won't go into too much detail of that time. Suffice it to say it was an extremely challenging time of your life. You were assaulted, presumably beaten, I mean, all the things that God forbid, we never want anyone to experience. And then after seven months, you were eventually released as part of a government trade and you were eventually reunited with your family. When did it become clear to you that you were never going to be safe if you stayed in Sierra Leone?

Aminata Conteh-Biger
It became clear as soon as I got released, and I went to Guinea Conakry, a neighboring country Guinea Conakry, I got a news from my sister's fiancée at the time, saying that Dorami had come back because he was extremely obsessed with me. And he felt like, because I was a virgin when he raped me that I was meant to be with him, he had these superstitious beliefs, he was very obsessed. So he came back and was looking for me in my home, you know, at home. And I still don't understand the extreme of it. Because we're talking about, you in Africa, your case is not that special. And you've seen worse. Because the UNH here heard of my story, I was part of an exchange and I was on television, that's how my family knew that I was alive. So they sort of kept me in a safe place in Guinea Conakry to make sure that I leave Guinea right away. And to make sure that I end up in a place where he will not find me.

Kassia Binkowski
So let's fast forward. In 2000, you came to Australia as one of the first female refugees from Sierra Leone, along with your sister, is that right?

Aminata Conteh-Biger
Yes.

Kassia Binkowski
What was that experience like? I mean, that's obviously a huge culture shift. And you've been very vocal since then, about the refugee experience. When did you eventually start to feel safe and at home in Australia?

Aminata Conteh-Biger
When I came to Australia, as soon as I entered the airport, I felt really safe. I mean, you have to know for somebody who is coming from a war zone. Safety's pretty, like, it's not something massive for us. If you can have a home, other things don't really bother you.

Kassia Binkowski
It's all relative.

Aminata Conteh-Biger
It's all relative. So I felt that right away when I came, but I was not so much as culture-shocked in that form, because the way I was living my life was like a British girl, you know, so nothing was really a shock for me. But I didn't know I was coming to Australia. I thought I was going to Austria, because I had confused Australia to Austria. I think it was more coming to a place where I thought that everything had been set up for us. It was not the case. I had to, really, my age was 20 years old, that was 2000. But my age had been reduced to 16, because of my safety. I had to go back to school. So I had to kind of re-start my life again. It was difficult. I started to learn too much about race not understanding what race meant. I didn't know anything about slavery. We were not taught this at school. I honestly didn't know I was a black girl. I didn't know what that meant. I knew I was dark, but not what it meant being a black person. So those were things that I was trying to figure out. But I could not really have the time to, because the way I was brought up, my father always made us feel that wherever we go, we're the most important person in that room, but we are no more important than anybody else. So whenever things would happen, it didn't really put me down.

Kassia Binkowski
So eventually you meet and you fall in love with your husband, Antoinne. In 2012 then you endure the birth of your first child, which is fairly traumatic it sounds like. Your daughter Serafina. What can you tell us about that experience? It seems like a pretty pivotal moment for you.

Aminata Conteh-Biger
It was. In Australia here when when a woman goes to the hospital to have a baby, I believe, what you're looking forward to is to see your baby's face. And that's what I was looking forward to. And it became really, it took a while before everything started going really bad. And Serafina was five kilos. They didn't check the weight. And she was very big for my pelvis, for her to come out. And I will never forget, because my husband was in the room, my sister and my mom. And my mom could not look at me. Her face was turned right on the wall. And she was praying the whole time and my sister was just standing there mute. And I could sense something was happening. But my intent was not to put any energy there. And I remember one of the doctors, she was visiting, she was a managing director. She was visiting. She was wearing jeans and a T shirt. And she came in the room and she looked at me and everybody looked at each other. And she just went in with her bare hands without wearing gloves. She was just that desperate. She just pulled my daughter and my daughter's right hand was injured. And Serafina didn't cry, my husband was quiet. My husband just whispered in my ears because we didn't know we were having a daughter, and just came to me and said it's Seraphina. And then I knew that it's a daughter. And they took her out. So still not knowing what was happening, and then I heard a sound and I just felt really calm. And yeah, they were trying so many things. But we stayed in the hospital for four days. But during that time, we had a case study being done on me. And we had doctors visiting all the time talking about maternal health. I didn't know what that word meant, I didn't know. I use it each year now, I've raised funds for maternal health crisis. I didn't know too much about it. So when I left the hospital, I felt really... just something to learn more, and building conversation as to why.

Kassia Binkowski
Was there a moment that it really occurred to you that had you given birth in Sierra Leone, you would not have survived? I mean, was there a moment that you remember that feeling?

Aminata Conteh-Biger
Yeah, absolutely. It was when I was watching the videos, you know, and I remember my husband coming to me and said, "If I knew this is how difficult it is to have a baby, we would not have had a baby, I would not want you to go through that". So when those conversations started coming to us, I looked at other women, and also realized that this is what every woman around the world feels having their child. We're no different at all. But while she died, I have survived because had several doctors in the room. Several doctors, and in Sierra Leone there's only six obstetricians in the whole country, in seven years. So for me, I just put those mathematics, I think because of my life too, the way I believed, and the way I was raised, I just felt like "Well, I'm dyslexic. I'm not an academic person. When I tell stories, I'm a storyteller. I'll just put these people together" I could only do so much in the room and keep having conversation. But between that, watching the video, and clicking back what had happened in the room, and thinking that, "wait I can do something" there was not a space where I felt like I could do anything, up to now. There's nothing that I've said to me. There's nothing I can do to contribute to this to the solution.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So as a direct result of your experience, and then the research that you started doing on what's going on with maternal health in the landscape in Sierra Leone, you founded the Aminata Maternal Foundation, which provides resources and funds and education and accessibility to the women in Sierra Leone who don't have that, like you said six OB's in the entire country. So let's double click on some of the numbers because as you mentioned, Sierra Leone has some of the worst rates of maternal mortality and infant mortality anywhere in the world. The lifetime risk of maternal mortality is one in seventeen. One in every ten children dies before the age of five. These numbers are mind blowing. And for reference, a woman is approximately 500 times more likely to die in childbirth in Sierra Leone, than in Australia. It is truly one of the most dangerous places to give birth. What do you see now that you've been doing this work? Now that you have the Aminata Maternal Foundation? What are you seeing on the ground as some of the primary causes for that?

Aminata Conteh-Biger
For some of the primary causes, we have to go back to the way colonization was set up after slaves were returned back. But also the war. And 11 years of war really broke Sierra Leone's spirit, it broke everything in Sierra Leone. And then there's there's never been any infrastructure for Sierra Leone, like what a country like Rwanda has had, at all. I call it a forgotten country, you know, they've gone through so much. And of course, it's one of the poorest countries in the world also. And people will say, "Well, it has a lot of resources", but the resources are all taken out. And then we had Ebola, also. Ebola that happened. And before Ebola happened, Sierra Leone, actually halved the infant mortality when the UN set up the millenium goals, they actually worked hard. So it's a country that is capable, and can do it.

Kassia Binkowski
Two steps forward one step back, yeah.

Aminata Conteh-Biger
Yes, massively. When we went back, you have to remember, people don't go to the hospital to have a baby. At that time, even now, people are still scared to go because that's where you go to die. And they lose half of their doctors. And the education system, too, is really poor, like no human being should live in this way. Where you see kids running around playing, coming out of their little houses, standing there smiling and it's like, I can't diminish this, because that's how they are surviving.

Kassia Binkowski
So let's talk about that reality on the ground. Because what you're saying is that the country hasn't fully recovered from the Civil War, then there was Ebola, then there are floods like it can't catch its breath for all intensive purposes. To this day, the life expectancy is still incredibly low, around 50 years, and roughly 70% of the population lives in poverty, which wasn't your experience, but is the reality of the vast majority of the individuals in the country. Paint a picture for us of what the average pregnancy looks like, how often are they is a woman receiving prenatal care? From whom where do they deliver? I mean, I think that's a really hard reality for a lot of us to wrap our heads around. Can you walk us through kind of an average woman's experience?

Aminata Conteh-Biger
Well I think for me, the shocking part is teenage pregnancy because teenage pregnancy skyrocketed to 66% when Ebola happened and also it's happening now with COVID because there's no schooling and once also a girl is pregnant they are not allowed to go back to school. When you're at the hospital, I was supposed to be there this month, and you see the girls walking into the clinic on a Monday and Wednesday. I can't even say heartbreak because they are clueless of what they're doing. It's like this is so real. What am I gonna do with this child, I can't even eat by myself. I can't even eat a three course meal. You can say to them, literally, "give me your child", and without a blink they will hand you their child. You look at their faces, and my daughter was seven or eight years when I went last time, I could not stop comparing my daughter's face to their faces because it's so wrong. It's really wrong. And these kids also when they come in our hospital, we give them transportation to come back. Because if you do not they can't come back. They can't come because they can't travel. So we have to give them transportation and we also have to feed them at the hospital when they're there. So it makes them want to come for the food. And because they have transportation and this is what the hospital does in Freetown, and we do a lot of outreach also. Because when they see a hospital, like ours is a the Aberdeen Women's Center, it's the second busiest maternal hospital in all of Sierra Leone. But it's small, it's out of capacity. We have to go and find these girls and bring them in, give them our numbers and give them the address book, give them transportation right there, because they will not call, they don't know the importance of coming to a hospital, they do not have a clue. So you almost have to beg them and drag them. And when they come, they're fed, that makes them want to come back.

Kassia Binkowski
So this is the really interesting thing about working in maternal health, though, is that we're not talking about trying to find a cure for malaria or eradicate malaria, like we know what works. And access to medical care is one of those things. Let's talk about some of the other solutions. What do you see, what have you seen as some of the other solutions that are really driving down maternal mortality around the world, and not necessarily just the work that you guys are doing, but looking at the industry at large? What works? What are some of the simple solutions that have a really tremendous impact?

Aminata Conteh-Biger
What works is community, I think that is very, very important in places like Africa, and a lot of places that are poor like that. Communities are a very strong part of things. In working with the government, you might disagree with their policies or not. But you have to, and I truly believe that if we as Western or people to have this opportunity to go and help these women, if we go and give these women a training, and pay them the amount they -- because most African women, or anyone in Africa want to leave, want to leave Africa and want to come and get a job here, you know, but if they are well trained, and well paid, these are people that will stay there because when you we all know when they invest in women or community, they stay back and develop that. And I think that's the problems really when you when you think of midwives, they have a really high shortage of midwives. They need about 3800 midwives we have about we have I think 10% of that

Kassia Binkowski
There's a huge gap, there's a huge labor gap.

Aminata Conteh-Biger
That's a huge gap there. And if people feel like they have to work in a government side, and they get paid, even if they don't have the skills, they stay there, because that's security for them. So those are I think, for me, those are things that need to be changed that when we look at development, as ways that we're going to do to help in places like Sierra Leone, we have to really bring our skills and leave the skills with them. And pay also for what it's worth, because everybody is in their own survival mode. If they're doctors or they're going to study being a doctor, and then they get a job being a secretary, they would drop that. They would drop it and they would do that secretary job. It's not like here, you've studied medicine so you do that job until the day you die. It's not like that, in places like Sierra Leone. Whatever pays the bills and provides. That's where people will focus on.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Right, people need to provide for their families. They need a livelihood.

Kassia Binkowski
Yeah. And we had a similar conversation, Sabrina, with Dr. Agnes Binagwaho, who commented on the same thing about how broken that pay structure was and how there wasn't any incentive to go through a medical career.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, she was talking about how a doctor could be paid less than someone, a sanitary worker, or someone who has much less education. And so yeah, of course, you would go for the easier job that pays you the most.

Aminata Conteh-Biger
Yeah, absolutely. A midwife salary is about $2,500 a year, that's a midwife salary. And every time I say that, that just blows my mind away. So those are the things that we have to think about when we think of development, when we think of really changing the way Africa has been structured or been helped from the west. We really need to rethink it really seriously, because it's damaging, and it's getting worse.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Aminata you have now raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and reached tens of thousands of women providing safe births through education, pre and post natal care, much more. Lots of resources. What are you most proud of?

Aminata Conteh-Biger
What I'm most proud of is the idea that I had that policy that I said I was going to help one person. And I don't have any family back home. And when I went to Sierra Leone with my first trip in 2016 what was shocking for me and what I was proud of was none of the Sierra Leones thought I was the one that was going to be helping. They saw me with my friends and they thought... they Googled me. A lot of the doctors, they Googled me and my face kept coming up and they're going "it can't be her". That really saddened me. I started understanding what the importance of representation meant, because there were girls that have not gone through, most of these girls have not gone through what I've gone through, but they were seeing me and saying, "I can do something that I'm proud of to do more and more". And it fills me up. It's a place where I wake up every morning and just feel so humble that I am part of this contribution. I don't feel like it's mine. I feel like I'm just part of this. This tribe contributing to humanity.

Sabrina Merage Naim
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