Tiyayo left Sierra Leone with a dream and two children depending on it. Like thousands of young West African women before her, she went to Lebanon chasing work, income, and a better life. What she found there broke her.
She came back.
But the woman who returned was not the woman who left. The mental wounds Lebanon left on Tiyayo are invisible to most — visible only in how she now moves through Freetown, scavenging to survive, her two children watching a mother the world has forgotten.
Greener Pastures is a long-form documentary photography project by James Tamba-Martha, following Tiyayo’s story with dignity and care. It is a project about migration and its hidden costs. About the women Sierra Leone sends away and the broken promises that send them back. About motherhood, survival, and what it means to keep going when everything has fallen apart.
Tiyayo’s story is not unique. It is just rarely told.
