Chapter 3: In My Life: the tale of an ex-girl soldier

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I met Mariam (not her real name) in Sierra Leone in June 2007. Because her privacy needed to be protected for legal reasons (she was scheduled to testify against Charles Taylor at the International Criminal Court at The Hague), I needed to find a way to tell her story without showing her face. She had asked me to teach her how to use a camera – and I realized this was a perfect solution, one that would allow us to see Mariam’s world, through her eyes, without seeing her face. What I didn’t expect was that Mariam would choose to use the camera as a metaphorical tool, a way of telling the story of her life in the bush through photos taken in the village where she now lives. She took photos of her life, and I took photos of her. The words that accompany the photos are her own, written in my hand. I’ve taken them from my interviews with her, and also from the comments that she made as we looked at the photos she took and chose for this essay. I was able to stay in touch with Mariam for a year or two, mostly through others (she didn’t have internet access), and I was able to raise some money for her to buy a sewing machine and material, which I gave her – but unfortunately we lost contact some time ago. I continue to be grateful to her for her willingness to collaborate in telling the difficult story of her life as an ex-soldier, and for doing it so fearlessly.  

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