Eugene Smith proposal
"If they could have gotten their hands on God, they would have killed Him too," Sierra Leoneans say about the rebels. The civil war in Sierra Leone, West Africa, (1991-2001) was labeled "the cruelest in Africa's recent history". Characterized by destruction - of property, but more so of human lives and values. Tens of thousands civilians died, hundreds of thousands were raped, burnt, tortured, enslaved, mutilated. The Sierra Leonean amputees, their limbs cut off by rebels, became this war's heartrending icons.
"Faith in Chaos" I named my photography project about hope in post-war Sierra Leone. For two years already, I have been capturing the lifes of Sierra Leonean youngsters whilst they are creating chances for themselves in a land where opportunities are very rare. Even before the war, Sierra Leone was the poorest country on earth (UNDP figures). It still is, and now it's in shambles too.
I first went there a year after the peace agreement was signed, to produce a photo essay on "Faith" for the World Press Photo Masterclass. I hooked up with groups of kids who were the most affected by the war, but who had emerged as the strongest. Young people who were amputated and blinded bouncing back to demand the chances that were stolen from them. Former child soldiers, not long before, members of rebel gangs, now transforming themselves into proper police and security forces. Even kids who lost their minds in the war and living in a mental home, succeeding to return to the world of the sane.
I returned three times for weeks and months on end, and documented the struggle of these youngsters. It's a story that sheds light on a side of Sierra Leone (and of Africa) that we don't often get to see. Of stamina, pride and self-confidence. Against all odds: Sierra Leone is part of Africa's unstablest region, with rebels still roaming the neighbouring countries Liberia and Ivory Coast.
Victims of war and poverty? Yes. But their determination humbles us all.
What is their faith based on? How far in life will faith get them? To know, it is necessary to be there and document their lifes during a longer period of time.
Four groups I find most illustrative for my theme.
"Long or short?" the rebels would ask when they caught you. They meant: Do you want us to saw your leg off at the thigh, or at the knee? In those days, being asked that question was a great relief. You knew there was a chance you would live.
Most amputees were found by patrolling Nigerian peacekeepers, who took them to capital Freetown in the backs of their trucks. Two thousand ended up living in Murray Town Camp.
Twenty two boys got themselves together and trained eachother into the Amputees Soccer Team, now a sportive force the nation has to reckon with. Through soccer, the boys have regained their pride and self-confidence. They learned that with their abused bodies they can be even stronger than before. I want to document how far their stamina will get them in life.
Some had their eyes poked out by rebels. Eighty five children live and learn in Milton Margai School for the Blind in Freetown.The children learn English, braille, typewriting, and to play music. Some are now getting old enough to leave school. I want to follow them into the outside world and capture how they seek a life for themselves. Some have already found jobs!
It is estimated that the war left 50,000 Sierra Leoneans psychotic and 300,000 others depressed and in need of psychiatric treatment. Only 148 of them found a place in Freetown's Kissy Mental Hospital. The wards remind of Dante's inferno, patients are chained to the floor. But Kissy is all Sierra Leone has for the mentally sick. Worse: Kissy is all Africa has! Mental healthcare is virtually unknown on the continent.
Most of Kissy's inmates are young. Many are former child soldiers. "It's the things they were made to do by their commanders that made them go crazy," Sierra Leoneans say. They were forced to kill, sometimes cannibalize, their own kin.
A few get better. They find the confidence to leave Kissy, go back to their villages and work to be accepted back in their communities. I want to travel with some of these young men and women and document their encounters with the people they hurt when they were child soldiers.
"Thanks" to the excessive cruelty of the war, and the public outcry for the international community to stop the amputations, in 2000 Sierra Leone was endowed with the largest UN peacekeeping mission then on earth. The "blue helmets" succeeded in establishing peace and disarming the warring fractions. They are now training groups of former child soldiers into security forces and police. The trainings, in the bush, are hard. "Most important is to help them achieve things in life," a Nigerian trainer says. "If you can be proud of yourself, you don't feel the need to hurt others."
I want to document the trainings and how they help the ex-child combattants grow.
I believe that journalism is at its most sincere and most credible if practiced in independence of media tycoons. In 1998, I left my native Spain and went out into the world. Years of travelling (lately to various corners of Africa, for a photographic project about aids in Ethiopia, DR Congo and Zambia), years of photographic documentaries and essays were the results, for newspapers and magazines in the UK, the USA and most European countries (see my resumé).
My journey to Sierra Leone in April 2002 caused a decisive turn in my professional life and thinking. I saw how faith enabled people to see perspective in even the most inhumane of circumstances, and I started my "Faith in Chaos" project.
My explorations in Sierra Leone of the sources and the strength of faith continue, still in independence. And with even more urgence now the country is reaching a new milestone. In December this year all but a few UN military trainers will be withdrawn. The UN needs the blue helmets (and the resources) in newer disaster zones: Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan.
The grant would enable me and give me the financial independence to continue my documentation of what happens after the Sierra Leoneans are left to fend for themselves again, without the "eyes and ears" of the international community.