Fri May 18, 2012
Mariatu Kamara
Reaching Out (Without Hands)
By Mariatu Kamara, Sierra Leone and Canada – December 2009
War on any continent is bad with innocent women and children forever changed by the violence. Forced to witness of rape, brutal beatings, cold-blooded murder of family and friends, victims are left with terrible nightmares that are war’s impenetrable scars that never go away. I can tell you this because I am a victim of war.
I was 12 years old in 1999 – too young to understand that the senseless war in Sierra Leone was all about diamonds. My cousins, who were 13 and 14 at the time our village was attacked, were with me when our lives became our living hell.
My cousins are still paying the price of Sierra Leone’s war today. War amputees, they are begging on the streets just to survive – hoping that people will be sympathetic and generous. They, like me, have no hands. Our hands were chopped off with machetes by child soldiers so that we would never be able to vote and we would never have a future.
Believe me, I wanted to cry, when we were captured by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and forced to see with our own eyes what no human being should ever see – but you know I couldn’t. They said if I cried then I would be the next person to die.
Even though you want to cry, trust me, your eyes will be dry – you are terrified to death. We just had to watch whatever they were doing – torturing people. We all had to be a witness to the torture they did.
I thought I was going to die. When you see everyone else dying what else is there for you? Just that you are going to die, too.
Describing everything I saw brings me bad memories – especially when the soldiers cut off our hands. Maybe they thought that was how they would get in power. But I can tell you that there would be no one willing to vote for them.
What did these rebel fighters want from us? I really didn’t know. I don’t even think they knew what they were fighting for. The strange thing is I wasn’t even living in an area that was rich with diamonds. But when the war came the rebels just scattered all over the place – not just where the diamonds were.
The violence they perpetrated across the country over the course of 11 years – from 1991 until 2002 forced too many people to suffer terribly – not just from the loss of our limbs but also in the refugee camps where we ended up.
Just imagine a camp with over 400 people who had had their limbs cut off by the rebels – the rest were war wounded. The camp was very dirty and very hot without proper food and proper sanitation, or a place to sleep. Many other bad things went on in the camp too. There was a lot of violence.
While life in Sierra Leone is little better today there are too many people like my cousins who are left to beg on the streets to survive. As for me – sometimes I have a meltdown but I try to overcome it by thinking that what happened to me didn’t just happen to me. It happened to many people and many others lost their lives.
So I feel lucky to be alive – lucky to be living in a developed country now and given a second chance to be the person I am today. I am in college taking sociology – trying to learn how I can make a difference in my country. This gives me the strength to move forward.
More than anything I want people to be inspired by my story so that they might help me to help rebuild our country. Sierra Leone so desperately needs support. It’s not just money we need – we need people to go there and offer their expertise to build homes, schools, and infrastructure.
There are so many homeless people in Sierra Leone because the rebels burned down our homes. Without villages to return to they desperately need help to rebuild their lives. They need to learn basic skills so they can be helped to help themselves. Medical care is needed and first and foremost Sierra Leone needs to provide education for the young people.
The Western world should probably be amongst the first countries to step up to this challenge. Why? Because it was the West that supplied our people the guns to kill their own people for diamonds.
Diamonds made good business for the West out of our people’s blood. And it is those weapons that the West provided our people that have damaged too many people’s lives. In fact, I believe that the West is almost totally responsible for fueling the war.
As one of the war’s victims I hope to help create change in my country. I’ve started a foundation – the Mariatu Kamara foundation and my aim is to go back to Sierra Leone to help my fellow amputees develop productive lives for themselves so they no longer have to beg.
I want to change my cousins’ fate and get them off the streets. I can’t give them money because I don’t have it myself. But I can give them a voice – a voice that can be heard around the world. I believe that helps. One person can make a difference and that’s the difference I want to make for them.
* Mariatu Kamara is the author of The Bite of the Mango which tells her story.
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