Yes, Sierra Leone! (part 2)
“When we got there, we were relieved, we thought we had done a good job. What we didn’t know is that things would get much worse. There were other rebels who welcomed us by whipping us so hard that we still have those scars.”
This kind of brutality became a daily routine. Sahr can only clearly remember one particular incident that affected him personally.
During our telephone call, he told me about this experience, calm, almost distant, as if he wanted to spare me. I knew what was coming. During his stay at the kanthari Institute, he had told us in tears. But back then in 2009 the memories were still so fresh that he had obvious pain telling this story. Also, for us listening to him was almost unbearable. The calmness and strength that he was now radiating showed me that in the meantime he must have dealt with the incident. He probably had told this story many times during his study in England and thus he created a psychological distance to it, as if he were reciting someone else’s story.
Sahrs sister was taken to his camp along with other sisters of the child soldiers. In front of their brothers, they were raped by a rebel group and then slaughtered with machetes. When Sahr and the other boys began to cry, they were whipped and ordered to collect the blood of their dying sisters in cups and buckets, and then wash their hands in their still warm blood. After that, they were instructed to applaud and laugh at the dead bodies.
“That was our preparation for everything that was ahead of us. We were their fighters, fighting the ideological battles of the rebels against the civilian population and against the governmental forces. Of course, I did everything they ordered us to do. What choice did I have?! We were little boys, powerless, and obedience was the only guarantee to survive.”
They survived in the jungle for two and a half years. They marched from base to base. Sometimes in Sierra Leone, sometimes across the border in Liberia. His hopes of being reunited with his mother in one of these war camps was in vain.
As recruits in the Small Boys’ Unit, they had to learn a lot. How to operate a rifle, how to plan an attack, how to kill with a machete, they had to learn about war tactics and how to ambush the enemy. While they could have fled before, now, there was no way to escape. They became valuable warriors and were therefore guarded day and night. Anyone who tried to run away was threatened with execution.
Additionally, there were no regular meals. Cooking was done only for the commanders. The children had to take care of themselves: “Often we didn’t eat anything but raw vegetables, leaves and forest fruits. Whoever found a wild mango had the first bite. I was never one of them, but the others generously shared their fruits. Kaprie in particular was always there for me. He defended me when boys were making fun of me.
Kaprie, Sahr’s best friend, came to kanthari one a year after Sahr, in 2010. He is sighted but has a deep affiliation with the visually impaired and still works in Liberia on the education of the blind. In one of the jungle base camps he met Sahr and helped him the best he could.
All of us at kanthari remember Kaprie’s survival techniques when it came to finding the right food and preparing it on open fire. Once he lay on the boat jetty, stiff and still like a log, with his torso stretching above the water of the Vellayani Lake. He had a long knife in his hand and occasionally he stabbed into the dark water and took out one fish after another. In no time a bucket was filled with fish, for such a catch the Vellayani fishermen would have had to patiently lay nets for days. But Kaprie, like Sahr and all jungle fighters, was a survivor and always knew what to do in the wilderness. He was able to distinguish poisonous from edible food and he could sleep anywhere.
“We didn’t have a fixed camp where we slept,” Sahr tells me. “We just slept on rocks or under trees and shared our bed with snakes and insects. The scorpions were particularly annoying. I still have scars of sting wounds today. In the swamps there were leeches and mosquitoes. Many of my jungle mates died from diseases like malaria.”
While listening to him, I was surprised that his severe visual impairment hardly seemed to matter. When I asked him out of personal interest, he thought for a while. “I didn’t receive a special treatment. We all had to fulfil the same tasks. The rebel leaders didn’t seem to recognize my eye condition.”
That might have been fortunate for him, just imagine what the rebels would have done if they had realized that they were accompanied by person with a disability? There was no mercy. Injured fighters were often simply left behind or even killed.
Sahr recalled that only one of the rebels found out that something was wrong with his eyes. Then, out of boredom, that guy came up with the idea of pouring liquid plastic into his eyes.
“Obviously being blind as a fighter is pretty risky,” he said matter-of-factly. “We were mostly out at night to spy on the villages. As soon as it was dark, I couldn’t see anything at all, and I regularly hit my head on tree trunks. When the bullets flew around us during a raid, I lost my orientation. But it was dangerous for all of us! Whenever we invaded a village, many in our group were killed. We were always sent in first to collect information and after the battle was fought, we were the last to carry the bags of looted food into camp.”
Before the child soldiers were assigned to combat missions, they were injected with cocaine or amphetamines. Intoxicated, they lost all fear and had no inhibitions to kill. Today, many former child soldiers, who were forced to fight either for the rebels or for the government forces, are dealing with psychological and physical consequences.
Many suffer from severe depression and migraine attacks.
“Most of us have severe headaches and have to take expensive medications. I lost my sense of smell. Additionally, we are still being stigmatized by the society.”
The abducted youth were liberated in 1998 by Nigerian-West African troops, the ECOMOG. The child soldiers, including Sahr, were initially taken to a transit camp, a UNICEF demobilization camp, for rehabilitation.
“We had to get rid of the drugs first. And we were psychologically and medically supervised by foreign experts.”
The rehabilitation lasted almost a whole year. During this time, the experts searched for his family and found his mother as the only survivor. One aunt was killed in the camp, the other died shortly after the liberation.
“My mother is still not able to talk about the time she was held in the rebels’ camp. Every time I want to know something about her experiences, she starts crying. She must have endured terrible things, but she never had the opportunity to free herself from the images by telling her story.”
The Yenga Peace Village
“YES” is the name of Sahr’s project. It stands for “Youth Empowerment Sierra Leone!
The main part of “YES” is the “Yenga peace village”. It is an ecological village, just on the border with Guinea, on the banks of the Mano River. The village has two main objectives:
1. Training in sustainability methods
The skills he offers in his training programs are those that can enable young trainees to live independently.
It includes organic farming, sustainable architecture and the use of renewable energies, business start-ups and everyday practical skills to cope with both the past and the future. Many of the trainees are victims of the civil war, even though they are too young to have been actively involved in the war operations themselves. They are highly traumatized by the history of the country and their families.
2. The fight against FGM
FGM (Female Genital Mutilation), is still a practice that is carried out especially in the remote regions of Sierra Leone on six to nine-year-old girls. Sahr sees this practice as a brutal act of war against girl-children. He knows that it is exceedingly difficult for traditional villagers to change their mindsets. But he is trying everything in his power to replace the FGM-ceremony with other rituals. “We compose songs and dance and sing to them. These festivals may encourage a mindset change.”
Sahr was able to protect his 11-year-old daughter from circumcision, even though during that critical time he was studying in England.
Currently, Sahr is busy acquiring enough land along the Mano River for his training projects.
“When I imagine our training centre in the future, I think of the kanthari campus and Lake Vellayani. Our river Mano is about as wide as the lake. On the opposite side of the Yenga Peace Village you can see Guinea. In dry seasons you can walk over. But when the rain comes, the river swells and you need a boat or a raft made of banana tree trunks. We will also have boats. And then we invite tourists who can live with us in simple huts and experience life in nature. The huts look similar to Nabulai, our bamboo classroom in kanthari. And the bigger houses are built of clay. our young trainees will be equipped with methods in organic agriculture, construction of huts and much more.
Can I prevent all these youngsters from making the dangerous journey to Europe? No, I can’t. But I might be able to give them an alternative, more positive outlook of the prospects for their future in their home country. Perhaps some will become ambassadors for peace who choose to say “yes” to Sierra Leone!”