Mariatu Kamara

Mariatu Kamara
Mariatu Kamara

Sunday, May 1, 2011

reaction to ghosts of rwanda

I feel like my whole life has been censored and controlled. I knew of things like the Jewish holocaust and the American civil war, but I wasn’t truly aware of the bloodshed and gore behind those events. Throughout my life, I never once heard of the Rwandan genocide and the horrors it contained. To see some of the images in the video made my perception of the world falter and have to reshape some of itself. I didn’t know such bad things could be done by good people. I wonder how they committed such awful acts. Were they just unable to think and were blindly following their companion’s orders? Or where they completely aware of the pain they were inflicting but couldn’t suppress their actions behind a wall of thoughts anymore.
One of the most disturbing images was a shot of video that depicted a line of bodies, shot bleeding and very dead, but still with their colorful cloths on, and various possessions and valuables in their hands. All the dead faces were hidden under cloths, or by arms thrown up to stop deadly bullets that were never slowed by things like flesh and bone. Among the group of people were several children, one with a doll in its hand. Beside the child with the doll was a scarf, covered in mud and dropped by some fleeing victim. The images haunted me and gave my nightmares, and my perception will never be as ignorant and innocent as before I saw the video. Rwanda experienced an awful genocide that should never have happened, and when it did, every measure possible should have been taken to stop it.
This documentary depicts a startling image of the life of a child soldier and his victims.
The boy they interviewed, Sherieff  Koroma, weaves stories of how he had been drugged with cocaine, and when he was high, he would do whatever he was told. “If we were heavily drugged with cocaine, we would spare no one” He explained. He still has scars from where his superiors rubbed drugs into his skin and says. He says he still has urges to kill. He isn’t even a teenager yet, and he has been turned into a recovering drug addict and a murderer, who maimed people and shattered their lives, and he will have to survive through his guilt for the rest of his life.
Another interview the journalists managed to conduct was with one of the leaders of the rebel group, Foday Sankoh. Sankoh seemed very proud of what he had done, and denied that he has caused much abusing of children. He said the children worked out of their own free will and knew what they were doing. I was appalled as I watched this man talk. He seemed happy and proud that he had ruined millions of lives, and turned innocent children into slaughtering machines. He represents a very dark and evil side of the human race to my eyes.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

reaction to The Bite Of The Mango

As I read the bite of the mango, Mariatu Kamara’s book that describes the things she had to go to , and gives a breathtaking description of her life and the hardships she endured, I felt myself go through many different phases of thought. I feel as if the book has helped to open my eyes and give me a glimpse of a life so different from my own. I have lived a life of comfort, where the world is at my fingertips, and I have experienced so many luxurious privileges that some can only hope to experience. Mariatu's life was in stark contrast to that after rebels destroyed her home.
My life has been sheltered, sometimes unintentionally and sometimes on purpose, and I have never known the true meaning of violence. Mariatu’s story helped me broaden my view and gave me something to ponder. She described very violent and painful things that I still don’t fully understand, nor do think I will ever be able to unless I experience in the first person violence of the magnitude that Mariatu went through, which I can only hope will never happen.
One of the things that struck me deepest was that Mariatu was able to forgive. She was able to let go of her resentments and grudges and not be blinded by them. I can’t even forgive someone for saying some unkind words this morning. The strength and wisdom with which Mariatu Kamara composes herself with is amazing.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Mariatu kamara


a child whose hands were cut off by the rebels.

Sierra Leone is a troubled country that has experienced much political instability since the westernization of Africa. The country is very poor and lacks infrastructure. As such, there have been many changes of power. One of the most violent parts of Sierra Leone’s history was a civil war that occurred throughout the 1990s and claimed many lives and damaged the spirit of the country. The war broke out when the Revolutionary United Front, a group of rebels united for the purpose of overthrowing the existing government, waged a violent and well armed coup against the current leader and government.  Ripples of violence spread, and the coup turned into a gruesome civil war that claimed over 50,000 lives. Many of the soldiers were still children, who had been handed a gun almost as big as themselves and told to fight. The war started in 1992 and officially lasted 11 years but aftereffects are still being felt and people are still homeless, crippled and grieving.
child soldiers
The event’s classification as a civil war has been questioned because certain groups of people were targeted during the mass killings that occurred. Whole villages were wiped out as a way to scare the dominant political party and government into surrendering and to gain control. Because of the specific targeting and elimination of selected villages, many people believe that it should be called the Sierra Leonean genocide rather than the Sierra Leonean civil war. A reason for the event being referred to as a civil war is thought to be that the UN didn’t want to acknowledge that genocide was happening, and wouldn’t have to interfere as they said they would after the Jewish holocaust of the 1940’s. This action bears a strong resemblance to the skipping around the word genocide that the UN displayed during the Rwandan genocide.
Amidst some of the atrocities that occurred, many children were lost, killed or crippled for life... Some were part of the estimated 10,000 child soldiers that were used by both armies, and some were victims of the soldiers. There were children killing children over an adult’s conflict, and the world was turning a blind eye and was unwilling to use the energy needed to stop the violence. The following are some accounts of a camp, made for turning child soldiers back into rational human beings, stated by Mike Wessells after his visit. “The use of children in armed conflict is global in scope-a far greater problem than suggested by the scant attention it has received… The camp director said that when the youths had been given drugs-most likely, amphetamines-while soldiering, they ‘would do just about anything that was ordered.’ Some, he added, were proud of having been effective killers.”[1]
One of the children caught up in the conflict was a young girl named Mariatu Kamara. Mariatu grew up in a sheltered village called Magborou that stayed hidden from the outside world in the middle of Sierra Leone. She knew very little of modern culture, but she was content because her village wasn’t poor. Magborough didn’t have much in the way of money, but people were hard working and cared about the community and each other. There was enough food for people to be content, and the houses weren’t very extravagant, but they were clean. The men in the village were strong, and the women were smart.
Mariatu Kamara
Mariatu grew up with her extended family (it was very common for children not to be raised by their direct family) and the many relatives she lived with were her friends and playmates. She was happy and had a good life until the rebels broke loose and vented their anger at the government on her village and destroyed her world.
Just before the civil war broke out though, a part of her world was tarnished by a man she was supposed to marry named Salieu, who raped her when her family wasn’t home. The experience was horrible for her, as her words convey, “I tried to get loose, to kick, to scratch, but he was too strong. I was a small 12-year-old. He was a big muscleman.”[2] Unfortunately, such an awful act is not uncommon in less educated and poorer areas of the world, and Mariatu had to live with the consequences rather than Salieu, when she had a baby who would later die of malnutrition in a refugee camp at 2 years old.
News of the rebels had travelled to her village, but she didn’t know much about them except for the news she received about their violent nature and the destructive path they left wherever they went. The day the rebels came to her village, she fled with her family to hide in another village called Manarma, as they always did when they heard that the rebels were coming. Unfortunately, they had been told that the rebels were coming so many times that the warning hardly meant anything anymore, and Mariatu was sent back to Magborough with her cousin Alie to get food. This time though, the warning was real, and the rebels caught them both. Sierra Leone has many different languages, and because of this, she couldn’t even speak the same language as the rebels. They had a person who interrogated and jostled her for information, but because they could not communicate well and she was brave, they could not get information from her.  In the midst of the chaos, Alie was dragged away from her, and many people she knew and loved were killed. The rebels brought people in front of her and slaughtered them, and then asked her if she liked what she saw. Salieu, the man that had raped her was shot in the head before her eyes, 20 people were locked in a burning house, and a mother and baby had their heads chopped off because the rebels were bored. Those were just some of the atrocities that Mariatu witnessed. The rebels decided they would not kill Mariatu, but to make a statement toward the government, they would chop off her hands. They said that if she didn’t have hands, she couldn’t vote. She recollected the moment with a frightening clarity when she said in her book, “The first swipe didn’t get through the bones, which I saw sticking out in all different shapes and sizes.  He brought the machete down again in a different spot, higher up on my arm. This time, my hand flew from the rock onto the ground.”[3]
Mariatu was left to die, bleeding and helpless. She found it in her to start crawling. From the shattered village, she crawled into the African bush. She managed to get to a small town many miles away, where she was picked up by soldiers, and taken to a hospital in Freetown. Because there were so many injured people, the hospital staff could hardly find a bed and treatment for her. Many people at the hospital had lost their hands as well so a message would be sent to the government from the rebels that they would keep killing and maiming people until a new government was installed.
Mariatu with her baby, Abdul who died in the refugee camp.
In the hospital, she found several friends and family members, but not many. Most were killed during the sacking of the villages where they resided. Soon, Mariatu found out she was having a baby. The father was salieu, but when she was interviewed by western news reports, they misinterpreted and several stories about refugees of the violence that included her said the rebels had raped her. The rebels didn’t try to sexually abuse her because many of them were too young to know about rape.
Mariatu spent many months in a refugee camp in Freetown, but was later taken to live with a family in Toronto, Canada. She learned to speak English, and write sing the stumps of her arms. She is now an activist, and spreads her story throughout North America, trying to inform people and get them involved in stopping violence that happens in poorer areas of the world.


[1] Child soldiers, Mike Wessells, bulletin of the atomic scientists nov/dec 1997 http://pangaea.org/street_children/africa/armies.htm
[2] Mariatu Kamara, the bite of the mango (annick press,2008) page 71
[3] Mariatu Kamara, the bite of the mango (annick press,2008) page 41


Friday, April 15, 2011