Banjul - On a windy evening, Oumie Sanneh, 42, sits in front of her small house in the beach town of Kololi and looks forlornly out to sea.
Ruefully, she thinks back to the day a Dutch tourist arrived in the former fishing village, which lies on the Senegambia Strip, in the heart of Gambia's tourism industry.
When the man in his 50s befriended Sanneh's 14-year-old daughter Sirreh, a combination of being poor and too trusting led to the biggest mistake of her life.
The tourist offered to pay for Sirreh's school fees and buy her clothes. “He came to our house, took my daughter out for walks and he gave us a lot of money,” the single mother recalls.
Sanneh thought it was a kind-hearted, charitable act from a well-off European. Only much later, weeks after the man had returned to Europe, did Sirreh dare to tell her mother that he had sexually abused her.
“I destroyed my own daughter, all because of poverty,” cries Sanneh, with tears rolling down her cheeks.
Hundreds of girls and boys are sexually exploited in the small West African nation, where every second person lives on little more than a dollar a day, according to a study by the United Nations children's fund Unicef.
“In West Africa, Gambia is the main destination for child sex tourism,” confirms Sheriff Manneh, an officer with the Tourism Security Unit in Gambia's capital, Banjul, which was formed specifically to focus on curbing sex tourism.
Every year more than 150 000 people visit the former British colony, which is only a short flight from Europe, according to the World Bank. Most tourists come from Britain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Germany.
“Many are coming for only that reason, to have sex with children. We see it happening every day. It has become a normal thing,” says Omar Jarjue, a tour guide in Kololi.
As child sex tourism is more and more heavily policed in Asian countries like Thailand and Cambodia, lesser known destinations like Gambia are gaining in popularity, experts say.
Sex tourists bluntly offer poverty-stricken parents money for their children, according to the Child Protection Alliance (CPA), an umbrella body of about 40 local non-profit organisations. Others befriend children who sell food and drinks on beaches.
Some parents are trusting like Sanneh, the Unicef study found. But others turn a blind eye to the sexual exploitation of their children to earn extra income.
Gambia's government has stepped in and reformed several laws to curb child sex tourism. A Sexual Offences Act and a Responsible Tourism Policy are meant to protect children. In 2014, the national assembly signed off on a special tribunal to hand down hefty fines and stiff sentences to sex offenders.
Awareness programmes have been launched to educate hotel staff, community leaders, teachers and police officers. Hotels are now prohibited from allowing adults to take minors to their rooms.
“We check the identity documents of all visitors to determine their age,” explains Sillah Darboe, a receptionist at the Bungalow Beach Hotel in Kololi. If staff don't follow the rules, they are suspended or fired, he says.
The CPA has formed dozens of watchdog groups, which monitor beaches, restaurants and bars in holiday towns and report cases of child sex tourism to the authorities.
But corruption and weak law enforcement create stumbling blocks in the fight against child sex tourism, laments CPA national coordinator Njundu Drammeh. “Prosecuting the culprits remains a challenge,” he says.
In addition, sex tourists find ever new ways to circumvent the law. “Instead of staying in the big hotels, they now stay in small motels or in privately rented out accommodation,” notes Manneh.
Part of the problem is also that government needs to carefully balance the fight against child sex tourism with the need to promote the Gambia as a thought-after tourism destination.
Tourism makes up roughly 15 per cent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) and supports more than 80 000 jobs in the small nation of less than 2 million people, according to the World Tourism & Travel Council.
Every dollar spent by holidaymakers and business people is important to keep the nation afloat, tempting law enforcement officers to look the other way.
DPA