Aminata bows her head as she admits, in a low voice, how she made her money: at just 15, she was working as a prostitute, seeing as many as three clients a night.
But it is what comes next - the reason she found herself on the streets, forced to sell her body - which is truly chilling.
Aminata wanted to go to school, and this was the only way she could afford the fees.
This is Sierra Leone, one of the world's poorest countries, where the £40 a year price tag on education makes it a privilege - and it is an amount many families simply cannot afford.
It forces some of the most vulnerable, like Aminata, to make an exchange no young girl should ever have to make: sex in return for education.
Pregnant: Aminata used the money to pay her school fees, as well as feed and clothe herself. But it all came crashing down when she got pregnant, despite having used contraception. Now 17, she is no longer in school - but is desperate to return
Trapped: Adama (pictured) is about five months pregnant. She began sleeping with a man after he promised to give her food when her aunt - who used her as a domestic servant from about the age of 10 - decided to stop feeding her
Stark: Aminata (right) was just 15 when she first became a prostitute, working the streets at night and going to school during the
Aminata found herself making the choice after her family decided they could no longer afford to support her, and she found herself very much alone.
On a good night she could earn as much as £9, but that meant seeing three clients.
With that, she had to feed, clothe and put herself through school – buying uniform, books and paying the fees.
‘I was not feeling good about it, but I had no other option – there was nobody to support me,’ she told MailOnline ahead of the launch of Street Child's new Girls Speak Out Campaign launched today.
‘I was on the street, I was engaged in child sex work. It was to raise my funds to go to school.’
At school, Aminata was doing her best to pretend like everything was fine. No one knew how she was surviving, not even, it seems, the friends who she was staying with.
And then the pretence crumbled: Aminata got pregnant, and there was no more hiding. School became a thing of the past – another girl dropping out of a system which sees 20 per cent of men reach at least secondary education, compared to just 9.5 per cent of women, according to the UNODC.
It is one of the biggest ironies for girls like these: the need for education forces them into sex, but in the vast majority of cases pregnancy will end their schooling altogether.
‘If a young girl gets pregnant while she is at school, it is actually has a lot of negativity possibilities for her,’ Sia Lajaku-Williams, operations director of Street Child of Sierra Leone told MailOnline.
‘Usually her family will drive her out. They will stop all support. The girls start suffering from that point.
'And when they have the baby, they struggle to take care of that baby. Rarely do you have a boyfriend who is supportive.
‘Just feeding themselves is a challenge. It is more day to day survival. There is nothing left for school.'
Smart: Marie, 16, pictured with her one-year-old son, came top in her class in Sierra Leone's equivalent of GCSEs, but she was forced to stop going to school after her parents separated and her father refused to keep paying the fees for Marie and her younger sister
Desperation: After two months selling goods on the streets of the slum where she lived, a boy Marie knew made a deal with her. If she slept with him, he would pay her school fees. 'I'm not stupid,' she told MailOnline. 'But I wanted to be educated. He gave me hope'
A little distance away, Marie knows exactly what Sia is talking about.
A bright and articulate 16-year-old - who chats away in English as well as her native Krio - sits on the family porch, cradling her young son.
I was betrayed. He had given me hope that my condition could change. When people get educated, their conditions change… I just wanted to be like those who are educated.
Marie, 16
‘It was not that I am stupid,’ Marie tells MailOnline. ‘I came top in my class in the BECE [Sierra Leone’s GCSE equivalent].
‘I wanted to be educated, I wanted to be a lawyer, it was my dream.
‘But my father wouldn’t support me and I had to leave school... What was I meant to do?’
Marie also grew up in the slums outside of Freetown – a place where children run around in ripped t-shirts, and mismatched shoes, outfits cobbled together from donations.
People here live on the edges – working the only jobs they can get, jobs which leave them always a step away from not having enough money to put food on the family’s plates.
The sides of the roads are strewn with rubbish, houses are crammed together, and the extra little bit needed for school fees, uniforms and books is always at risk.
Which is how, at 14, Marie found herself peddling wares on the streets, to support her mother and younger sister after her parents separated.
For months, she was forced to make her living, while watching her former classmates trek to and from school in their brightly coloured uniforms.
And then, a boy approached her – possibly around 25, she says. Marie already knew him from the area.
A deal was struck: you sleep with me, and I will pay for your education.
Child: Marie was just 14 when she struck the deal. At 15, she gave birth to her little boy - and is now trapped in her house, unable to afford school after the boy disappeared. She now spends her day doing domestic work, looking after her son and helping her grandmother
Dreams: But Marie still dreams of becoming a lawyer. Street Child is hoping to help 500 girls like her return to some form of education
Marie is unequivocal. She knew exactly the bargain she was entering into – sex for schooling – and that this was a business arrangement. She knew her earning potential rose considerably for every year of school she managed to complete.Street Child estimates it could be by as much as 25 per cent a year. And Marie was desperate to become a lawyer.
‘I came to have feelings for him,’ she concedes eventually. ‘But that was because of what he was doing for me. He gave me hope.
‘But I don’t think he liked me.’
When she became pregnant, his true colours showed.
He disappeared, leaving her dreams of a brighter future in tatters.
‘He was nowhere to be found,’ she said, speaking on the porch of the small hone she shares with her mother and baby son – a house with its windows blocked up with pieces of magazine, and barely a scrap of furniture inside. It is the home she had dreamed of leaving, but where she now spends every day, collecting water, cleaning and – once she has completed those chores – goes to help her grandmother, a wizened woman who sits at the edge of the dusty road selling the cakes she has made.
‘I was betrayed. He had given me hope that my condition could change. When people get educated, their conditions change… I just wanted to be like those who are educated.’
Servant: Adama was sent to live with her aunt near Freetown aged 10, because her family in the countryside believed she would have a brighter future in the city. But in reality the little girl became a domestic worker, cooking, cleaning and fetching water
Making money: At 13, her aunt decided she should also earn a living, so she was made to get up at 2am to walk the two hours to market to sell cooking utensils like these. It was terrifying, and she used to seek safety from danger near the tea sellers until first light
Adama’s lover also ran when she became pregnant – but the deal she had struck with him was far more basic.
In return for sex, he was giving her food. School and education had long been a distant dream.
Adama had been sent to live with her aunt at the age of 10. The eldest of six, her mother had died shortly before. Going to her aunt's, who lived just outside Freetown with her three cousins, would, they believed, give her better access to an education.
The only way to make a living is to get an education, otherwise it is hard labour – that’s where the girls go to the dump – or they take to the streets, just so they can survive.
Sia Lajaku-Williams
The truth turned out to be far from it: Adama took the role of a domestic servant.
‘I was doing the laundry, cooking, cleaning, fetching the water,’ she explained..
But at least at first she did get to go to school, along with her cousins. It was short-lived: at 13, her aunt decided the work she did in the house wasn’t enough. She needed to earn her keep, as well as do the chores.
So, at an age where most girls are sat in class, still hears away from even considering what job they may want to pursue, Adama was getting up at 2am to start the dangerous two hour walk to Freetown, her wares balancing precariously on her head.
‘We went in groups of three, and it would take us to around 4am to get there,’ she said. ‘We would look for guys who were selling tea, because it was safe by them.
‘The nights were terrifying,’ she added, visibly reliving nights spent hiding from pimps, drug dealers and drunks.
School became something which happened maybe once a week, and then once a fortnight.
And if she couldn't make the treacherous journey, her aunt would refuse to feed her.
It left Adama was vulnerable: tired, scared and hungry – so when the man who approached her with the offer of food in return for sex, it wasn't a good deal, it was the only one.
‘He was the only person in the world who cared for me,’ she said. ‘When he denied the baby was his, when he disappeared, I felt bad, I felt betrayed. Even if he had to go, he should have helped me to know where he is.
‘He just disappeared into the air.’
And with him, her only source of income.
‘The only way to make a living is to get an education, otherwise it is hard labour – that’s where the girls go to the dump – or they take to the streets, just so they can survive,’ explained Sia.
‘Education is really the opportunity for them, but where do you get the support?
‘There need to be other options. We need to let them know there is somewhere they can go. Having a baby is not the end.’
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