"Woman see lot of things"

Woman see lots of things, and undgo untold many more.

It was a painful documentary to watch. Sitting there, at times you would hope the retelling of the horrors experienced by the three former girl soldiers in Sierra Leone would stop. But that is a mocking comfort, which perhaps comes from some twisted form of voyeuristic pleasure, you have as a member of the audience who can get up from his seat and just walk away after the 65 minutes of the film is over. For these girls, and many others, the horrors are retold and relived. Daily.

The descriptions are graphic, aided by well choreographed close-up shots of the women's faces, sullen eyes, scarred surface of their skins, and the moisture on their wavering pout lips. Unborn babies cut open alive from the pregnant woman's womb... orders to gouge out the heart of a hanging corpse to prove readiness to join the rebel forces, the rapes of infants below five, abused and tortured girls with swollen stomachs left on the roadside to succumb to a slow and undignified death... These are but some of the tragedies lingering from over a decade of civil war in Sierra Leone and neighbouring Liberia. After the war, the women continue to be victims in a society that shuns and openly tolerates the discrimination of women. Out of desperation, many turn to prostitution, while others willingly submit themselves to become slaves in exchange for meagre food and shelter for their children.

Words cannot explain the pain. Not even the tears. War is violent, and sexual violence had until recently been a taboo not recognised as a crime against humanity. Yet, the overwhelming majority are women who suffer at the moment literally the unspeakable is done to them, and who continue suffer pain and shame long thereafter. It is upsetting to just hear, to just imagine, but what is it like to be the victim?

But in these women, and in the children who run around with smiles on their faces, you see strength so lacking elsewhere. You realise that despite all odds, despite all the worst excesses of inhumanity that they have had to see and experience, there is hope. Hope of earning money, getting a proper education, and being able to open a shop, of being able to be an independent woman in a society dominated and corrupted by men. Hope of perhaps one day leaving the country and travelling abroad where it is easier to make a living. Whatever hope it may be, hope seems to transcend the horrors before, and spring eternally.

Never again... never again... You would think to yourself, and you would hope for the victims and for the children who run around and enact scenes of soldiers they have witnessed at border posts checking the papers of fleeing refugees...

But it is happening. Over and over again.