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

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