The Mariatu Foundation

Mariatu Kamara is featured in Nick Danziger's Femmes face a la Guerre (Women
facing War).

Composed of 22 photographs and 11 documentary short films, this exhibition
portrays the lives of 11 women affected by war, and is thematically linked
to the resolutions of the Geneva Conventions and principles of international
humanitarian law.

From 1991 to 2002, Sierra Leone was engaged in a brutal civil war. Armed rebels with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) destroyed villages and farms, and raped, maimed and murdered thousands of women and children.

Today, Sierra Leone on the coast of West Africa is one of the poorest countries in the world. In rural areas, the average wage is less than $1 a day, life expectancy is 40-years-of-age and most children do not attend school on a regular basis.

Women and children have been hard hit by the war. Their traditional village lives, in which they garnered respect from men, families and communities, no longer exists. Many women are subjected to on-going sexual, emotional and physical abuse, largely a result of poverty that has resulted in large-scale unemployment. Men, unable to support their families from agriculture or other jobs, have become alienated and angry. Children, particularly girls, often endure rape at the hands of older men as well as forced early marriage.

The Mariatu Foundation seeks to provide a much needed refuge for women and children. Through the opening of a home and eventually homes in Sierra Leone, the Mariatu Foundation will offer healing programs and assistance in the resettlement and reintegration of abused women and children into loving and supportive communities.

Mariatu Kamara knows all too well what women and children are experiencing in Sierra Leone. In 1999 at the age of 12, a man whom she was being pressured to marry, raped her. Shortly after, RUF attacked the village where she was staying and child soldiers amputated her hands. Mariatu conceived a son from the rape that eventually died from malnutrition at the Aberdeen Amputee Camp in Freetown. Before moving to Canada in 2002, Mariatu’s means of survival was begging from better-off Sierra Leoneons in Freetown.

Today Mariatu is a spokesperson for UNICEF Canada on the impact of war on children. Mariatu’s memoir, Bite of the Mango, chronicles her remarkable journey from peasant girl to international speaker and illustrates how the power of love can heal even the deepest physical and emotional scars.

Photo used with permission of Annick Press/© J.P. Moczulski, Toronto, ON