Woman of War

The book A Long Way Gone tells the story of  a young boy going to war in Sierra Leone, showing the tribulations and losses he went through. Kid soldiers were the army's main source of man power and is incredibly sad, but I would like to talk about the women and young girls in this war and tell some of their stories. I feel there isn't enough focus on the women and what they went through along what

happened to their lives after.

At first the women were not treated any different then men because the Rebels just needed man power, this why children were used. After a couple years of war they realized that women were better for cooking, cleaning and keeping the houses nice.

I feel these women don't get recognized for what happened to them. They became slaves to men. There to cook and be a sex object for any man. The women had children to men they didn't love and didn't know the father because of the amount of sexual abuse. Laura Conteh was taken at 12 by the rebels, her family didn't know they were coming and had no time to pack or anything they just ran. Laura got separated from her family and got captured. For the next three years she was apart a group of men that she didn't even know their names. She was sexually abused my many men and one man described her as his "bush wife," but this didn't stop others at all.  Her son now 18 was born during this war. Laura heard many stories of other women like "one women in Binkolo recount. ‘I was raped by 10 men on the first day,’ Fatsmata Koroma, a husky-voiced former combatant, said. Fatsmata thinks she was 11 at the time. She added, ‘They took turns with me and then left me lying there" (Friedman-Rudovsky2013).  Laura also said "You just wished you weren’t beautiful because they didn’t let the beautiful ones do anything or go anywhere, even to fetch water. You were guarded day and night because they really didn’t want you to escape" (Friedman-Rudovsky2013). If you tried to escape they would flog you. (beat someone with a stick) Also if you showed you were homesick or cried because of someone else getting punished they would beat you or kill you. Other punishments were squatting for multiple hours and spending the day in the toilet. Nobody really fought the sexual abuse, Laura states "you just get use to it (Friedman-Rudovsky2013). 
These women's hard times were not over when the war was over. One woman Janet Masaray came back to her family pregnant and was unwelcome by her father. She says "‘He was ashamed of me. He and a lot of others here thought we weren’t fit to live with our families any more because we had been with the rebels.’ This was the norm. ‘People would say to me and the other girls, you are rebels – you don’t belong here"(Friedman-Rudovsky2013).  Some beliefs from the war was that the woman didn't try to escape because they were enjoying a life of sex and stealing. These women were unwanted by men because they were disgrace to families and were undesirable. These women have lived through hard times during the war and even after the war ends they still have to fight for respect. More information straight from the woman in this video here. 


http://i1.wp.com/globaltableadventure.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/woman-and-children-in-Sierra-Leone.jpg
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/sierraleone/10450619/The-women-who-bear-the-scars-of-Sierra-Leones-civil-war.html  
https://vimeo.com/84057158