Photo Essay: Perspectives from Sierra Leone's Youth

Throughout the 1990s, West Africa witnessed protracted, intertwined, and mineral-fueled conflicts in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Although Sierra Leone's civil war was initially a battle for control of the government and the diamond fields, the conflict soon devolved into acts of brutality against civilians perpetrated by all sides. After several collapsed peace accords and a failed Nigerian-led intervention, a fragile peace was finally established in 2000 by the British military (Keen 2005). The United Nations assisted with the rebuilding of the country and oversaw democratic elections in 2002.

In Sierra Leone, the tragedy left nearly 50,000 dead and scarred the minds, and often the bodies, of the living (Hirsch 2001). Since the war, several local and international organizations have worked to rehabilitate and assist war-affected individuals. One such organization is iEARN Sierra Leone, which seeks to empower war-affected youth through creative expression while also providing training in practical skills. As part of a 2007 collaborative effort between iEARN and the Art Department of the University of the South (USA), I taught a "Literacy through Photography" (LTP) course at the iEARN youth center in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

LTP was developed by Wendy Ewald as a means for facilitating critical thought and self-expression by enabling students to portray, and reflect upon, their own lives and communities in photography and writing (Hyde 2001). LTP is a form of art therapy, an approach to rehabilitation that uses the creative process to enable catharsis and healing, especially in traumatized populations (Eaton 2007). During iEARN's LTP program, the students discuss their own lives and their aspirations for Sierra Leone. In this photo essay, Mamadu, Mohamed, and Sahr, three young men who participated in the program, offer their own perspectives regarding their lives and their country. While their stories are reflective of the violence and displacement of the region's wars–Mamadu's family spent time in Guinea as refugees, Mohamed watched rebels kill his parents, and Sahr fled Liberia to come to Freetown–each is striving to move beyond the conflict and help Sierra Leone become a nation of peace.

My father and I in the bakery. Mamadu, June 2007, Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Mamadu, 19 Years Old

I am the first boy to my mother. And I work with my father in the bakery house in the picture and am not attending school. I am a dropout. There in the bakery, we work for survival.

I wish really my family were not like that. There is too much struggle for survival.

I myself wish that I could be a student and live in a self-contained apartment because every day I wake up in a flour store. I see my family. Six of them are in a just 5 by 6 foot room. I felt so bad about it. Even my brother who managed to sit for the university entrance examination has stopped school because there is no money to send him to university.

Self-portrait. Mohamed, June 2007, Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Mohamed, 18 Years Old

On one Friday morning my father went to mosque to pray. On his way the rebels arrested him. They took him to our home and asked him to show them his wife and children. My father refused so they killed him. Then they caught me and my mother. They wanted to rape her in front of me. They killed her too.

I thought that they are going to kill me, but they just asked me to stay with them and be one of their boys. I stayed with them for few weeks, and then I tried to escape from them and so I decided to run. I was so angry and had nothing to eat, I sat down in a village and started crying. Then one woman came to me. I told her that I need help. She took me with her and we ran to Guinea but after a one month she died and I felt lonely...