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FISHING FOR SIERRA LEONE If you want to learn anything about Sierra Leone, the best classroom is Paddy's Bar. On weekends the bar was full. Locals usually didn't drink or smoke; they had no money. They came ro dance ro the painfully sibilant music with a Western beat. The white expats hunched around the bar had that peculiar look that comes with Mrica: a permanent, slowly consumed drink in one hand, a burning cigarette in the other. They were untanned serial drunkards at night, uncomfortable and sweary officials during the day. Out of place with their short-cropped graying hair, srorklike slouches, faded blue shirrs, and beer bellies balancing a flat butt with pasry stick legs. In contrast, the locals glistened in their blackness. The men were chiseled, bright eyed, and laughing. The women were fine featured, high hipped, and boisterous. The only catch was that you didn't see a lot of old people. The average life span was less than forry years. The South Mricans were easy ro spot in Sierra Leone. They didn't have the tired expat look. They were healthy, laughed loudly, drank rapidly with rwo or three beer cans to a fist, and could be found at most bars until pumpkin time. Unlike the thinly veiled altruism of the aid workers and expats, the Sourh Mricans freely admitted they were here for the money, whether as businessmen, mercenaries, miners, pilots or "consultants." The aid workers were a little different from the ordinary expats. They were younger, smaller, sported long hair (often in ponytails), and generally looked like college students of the 1970s. The French were usually the ones with the longest hair, the Brits the shortest, the Americans the tallest, and those who worked for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that dealt with food and aid seemed to be the thinnest. The NGO uniform was a T-shirt, loose pants, and sandals, with a mandatOry piece of local handicraft to accessorize. There was a definite distance benveen the NGOs and the former mercenaries, and, in fact, the French NGOs were under direct orders not to talk to the South Mricans. I drifted over to talk to a tall American who was with a food-distribution NGO. He tOld me it tOok a while for the world communiry to react ro the events in Sierra Leone. Although the atrocities and the fighting began in 1991, the UN didn't really make a stand until 1999 when it became painfully obvious that the war was simply about control of diamonds and making certain people rich. By then 75,000 ro 100,000 people had died and 2 million people were refugees. The aid worker predicted problems as they downsized for peace. "They are already informing the refugees in the camps that they will only provide food to the elderly and the young. The rest must go back to their homes. We are worried about riots. The people have gotten used to free handouts." I pointed at his T-shirt, which read, IF VEGETARLANS EAT VEGETABLES, THEN WHAT DO HUMANITARLANS EAT? He laughed, "It's hard not ro become cynical here." He was happy to be leaving soon. He was going to Mazar-i-Sharif in northwest Mghanistan. "A much nicer place," he said. I'd driven past a sign reading amputee camp many times, and although I'm nOt squeamish, I felt I had to wait for the right moment ro visit the camp, a moment when I could focus and properly consider what I would see. A discussion with British peacekeepers had unsettled me. I'd gone with them ro deliver a piano to a home for the blind. The children were dressed in yellow and posed for photOgraphs as a British soldier leaned self-consciously on the piano for the benefit of the British military video camera. It was a photO op to show the folks back home that the boys overseas were doing a splendid job. They chatted and joked with the children, but there was an uncomfortable feeling about the need to videotape the event in such a calculated manner. I asked an officer about the amputee camp. "Sure," he said, "you can do that, like every journo. You can go over there and shake all the stumps you want." Marie Koroma was the star of the show because she was the youngest amputee to survive. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the UN-everyone had jumped on this srory, and it was visually stunning. She'd been wounded at thirteen months old, although some stOries reported that it had happened when she was three months old. A tall, thin man walked up behind me, grabbed my camera pack, and shouldered it with a smile. There was something wrong, though. He was holding his hand up ro greet me but he had no hand. As he shouldered my bag I realized he was missing not one but nvo hands-he had only thin wrists that terminated with a tuck of brown skin. There was something unsettling about seeing the mutilated bodies; it was as if their missing parts were hiding, or fooling you somehow. The man offered ro show me around the amputee camp as another young man began the adhan, or call to prayer. According to Muslim tradition he was supposed ro cup his right hand over his ear to keep pitch, but with his stump pushed against his ear it looked like he had shoved his hand inside his head. Five feet away, a man with no ears listened. He nodded to me and waved his stump. The people here had not only suffered terribly, but would continue to suffer until they died. Even though there were 226 amputees here, more than 2,000 family 74 members lived in the camp, which resembled a mini slum. The amputees could no longer support themselves, and the families acted as protection from thieves. If it was hard enough to survive this country in perfect health, it would be virtually impossible to survive without hands or legs, or arms or ears. My guide pulled a pack of smokes from his right front pocket, tOok out a cigarette, lit it, and put away the pack in one smooth move. Gibrill Sessay, forry-three, smoked his cigarette by using rwo wrists ro hold it. "We have had many, many, many, many journalists," he said. "Many famous people. Kofi Annan, Madeline Albright, even Mary Robinson the human rights lady from the UN. They are so many. But they never bring money." His stOry was typical. "In 1996 I was a contractOr in mining. The rebels drove us from Kono and my whole family was in the bush for four months. In April the rebels ambushed us . Their first words were, 'Where are your diamonds?' I had put my diamonds in a botde and buried them in a swamp. I had 36 pieces but I would have given him the diamonds to save my hands. "My hands were cut off by the soldiers that aligned themselves with the RUE They rook me over to a cross stick and cut off my hands. When they amputate you, they tell you to go to President Kabbah and ask for a hand. "I have forgiven the man that cut my hand off. If he comes and apologizes I will have to forgive him. For now I need money to do business." The people around us carried their prosthetics and practiced using hooks, wheelchairs, and plastic feet. Gibrill didn't want prosthetic hands. "There is not much you can do with hands," he said. Ishmail Daramy ftOm Kana was a driver and not so forgiving. "I would like war crimes for the people who Cut the people to stand on trial before the people of Sierra Leone. Look at me, I am living on handouts. I am suffering." "If I can see the person who amputated me in prison I can be happy. But if I see this man with a good job, good house, and happy family I will want revenge. I am 42 years old. Let the RUF explain the reason for the amputations. We are miners, farmers, we know nothing about politics. How I can be useful inside the community now that I am just a funnyman? People are laughing at me because I am begging every day just to eat. They are fed up with me. Why are we to be everlastingly punished?" The Kamajors were one of those wartime phenomena that are formed under pressure and emerge in a strange, mutated, but valuable form. Fighters who ignored conventional training but proved to be aggressive, brave, and determined, they believed themselves bulletproof and invisible, and sought ro protect their villages from pillaging and looting by both the rebels and soldiers. Kamajor is a Mende word for hunter. The tribal hunters were formed intO more official militia groups in the early 1990s and adopted the more respectable moniker of CDF, or Civil Defense Forces. They were essentially a militia recruited outside the normal military that was loyal ro the government of Kabbah. Their leader, Sam Hinga Norman, was wisely installed as deputy minister of defense. Because the FreetOwn-based military had had a hand in most of the eight coups and countercoups since independence, the Kamajors were a stabilizing force, and were the only groups that fought against the rebels when the army refused to leave the main roads or tOwns. The Kamajors weren't the only militia faction of the CDF, but they were the largest, with about 10,000 members. They evolved directly from the secret societies of Sierra Leone and the tradition of hunting with mystical powers. The young men were initiated into the mystic skills of hunting and fighting by an elder and then charged with defending his village. They were the only group that had seen majo r successes against RUF rebels. Norman explained that "the Kamajors began in 1993 after the rebels had been fighting for rwo years. We were not paid. We srood up with traditional weapons: the cutlass, the shotgun, spears, even sticks ro defend our villages .... In 1994 a few Mende chiefdoms selected men berween 18 and 24 and initiated them into the secrets. There are three elements in this secret: the Bible, the Koran and herbs." Before Kamajors went intO battle they drank a special potion. The conrents were secret, but it got them into a methlike lather; they no longer had to eat or sleep. They also washed their faces in this mixture and wrote Arabic scripture on their arms with it. From that point on they had ro go straight to battle. If they tOuched a woman, they had to go thtOugh the whole procedure again. "We refuse to wear a uniform because our enemies have tricked us by wearing our uniforms and then attacking us. We wear armaments made from natural bark. Initially we did not have tactics because we were bold enough because of our beliefs. When an enemy shoots rwo or three times and nothing happens then he realizes this is a Kamajot and he runs away." I asked what happened when journalists or skeptics demanded to see proof of this invincibility. "It is not 100 percent foolproof, just like your defenses. Don't you have radar, bulletproofing, jamming systems that sometimes fail? Don't yout soldiers believe that their helmets, gunships, and armaments will protect them but sometimes don't?" continued on page 76