by Rosemarie North in Freetown
By any standard Kadiatu Fofanah is a
success. She built up her own business from scratch and it now supports
her husband and nine children. Since her brother's death, she also helps
with his five children.
And she's done all this after surviving Sierra Leone's nightmarish 10-year civil war, which was declared over in January 2002.
When rebels invaded Freetown on January 6, 1999, Kadiatu was hiding in a psychiatric home with her seven-month-old baby and about 100 other people. The rebels threatened to burn the home down. So everyone came out, Kadiatu recalls.
First the rebels shot all 30 of the men. Then they began to hack off the limbs of the women with axes. Kadiatu was third in line.
"No matter how you pleaded, they wouldn't listen to your plea," she says. The rebels threatened to behead Kadiatu's baby son. She offered them her hand instead. It still bears a scar. Then they hacked off her legs below the knee.
Months in hospital
For three days she and her baby lay without water, food or medical treatment, until her husband came to look for her. Because of a shortage of doctors at the hospital she had to wait two weeks to see a doctor. Infection set in and six weeks later both legs were amputated near the pelvis. She spent months in hospital.
Thanks to a loan of 100,000 Le (less than US$50) from a Red Cross programme called Job Aid for War Amputees (JAWA), Kadiatu was able to buy fish and rice to go back to her old job, selling hot food at a roadside stall. She repaid her loan in four months.
JAWA has helped 146 people whose limbs were amputated in the war with skills training, job placement or micro-credit. The programme also offers counselling and runs an awareness-raising campaign to improve reintegration.
In 2002, 30 people became tailors, 10 trained in traditional gara tie-dyeing and soap making, and 80 were given small loans to start businesses. The Red Cross says people in the programme are much less likely to depend on begging now. "Before the micro-credit scheme I used to go to town begging and from the little I had I used to keep the children," Kadiatu says. "With the Red Cross coming aboard I had more money and I was able with the sales to put my children through school."
Lucky recipient
Now Kadiatu supports her own family, along with her brother's children. Her husband has a poorly paid government job and sometimes is not paid for months. Other relatives rely on her income too, thinking she's the lucky recipient of overseas donations.
But she says she doesn't always make a profit now that she's moved out of the capital, Freetown, to Grafton, a small settlement with a water bottling plant, camp for internally displaced people and school.
In Grafton she manages a roadside stall, where she cooks rice and stew, and sells cigarettes and other small goods. She moved out of Freetown because her whole family was living in a two-bedroom house there and she was offered a home in Grafton. She hopes business picks up in Grafton as people settle there.
Like Kadiatu, Bundu Kamara would rather have his business closer to a larger group of customers. When we visit, he is sewing a royal blue shirt for a schoolboy.
Bundu's foot was blown off in a bombardment against the rebels in January 1999. As a result, the former sailor was no longer nimble enough to climb ladders and ropes at sea. When he graduated from the Red Cross tailoring programme, he was given a treadle sewing machine, scissors, thread and other materials to set up his business.
Education the key
Bundu says Grafton's small, poor population makes it difficult coming up with the 40,000 Le (less than US$20) a year to send his two children to school.
Education is the key to the world, says Kadiatu. Educating her children is her motivation in life. One daughter wants to be a nurse. A son wants to be a lawyer.
Being occupied has other benefits too, she says. It helps her to cope with the trauma of the war.
"Initially I was very tormented and confused. But now I have some faith in God. If I am engaged in working I will forgive, but I will never forget what has happened to me," she says.
Her youngest son -- who is now four - has trouble accepting his mother's fate. "He comes close to me and asks 'Why are you not walking?'" Kadiatu says.
"With such questions I usually become sad. At times he says, 'let me lend you my feet so you can walk'."