“From Ritual to Recovery: Spirituality as a Tool for Recovery Among Women Recovering From War-Related

Trauma in Sierra Leone.”

B.A. August 2000, University of Maryland

by Sariane Leigh

A Thesis submitted to:

The Faculty of

Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University

in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

May 17, 2009

Thesis directed by Daniel Moshenberg

Associate Professor of English and Director of Women’s Studies

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© Copyright 2009 by Sariane Leigh All rights reserved

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Dedication

The author wishes to dedicate this thesis to:

The Dead

My grandmother, Lee Pearl Cooper, you resolved that you would never let a traumatic

experience alter your spirit for success

My mother Heysette E. Leigh, you often fell off the balance beam of trauma, coping and

healing but always pulled yourself back up for a stunning finish.

My cousin Deborah Renee Turner, you overcame the odds through unconditional love

My father, Dr. Johnnie S. Leigh, your love and care as a father was short-lived but your

commitment to Sierra Leone and your legacy will solidify your footprint in this world

The Living

My siblings, Yahya-Johne, your patience, strength and discipline is unmatched

Amandae, your generosity and humility continues to ground me and reminds me of my

own humanity

Anita, my baby and sister, you have taught me the pain and joys of learning to cope and

survive on your own

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Acknowledgment

The author wishes to acknowledge the encouragement, supportive guidance,

limitless vision and honesty of Professor Dan Moshenberg.

Dr. Nemata Blyden whose poise and intellect serves as a role model for the

African Women’s movement in documenting history about the Diaspora

The Sierra Leone Youth Empowerment Organization and the strong determined

women of the 50/50 organization have always accommodated my requests for

information about Sierra Leonean women.

The unwavering support by my employers at The George Washington University

for offering opportunities me to flourish economically, academically and professionally.

Dr. Syreeta James, PhD of Howard University for her persistence, commitment

and intellectual stimulation, without whom, I may have given up before I even began.

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Abstract of Thesis

During the Sierra Leonean civil war, women’s bodies were repeatedly used as a

weapon to terrorize and oppress civilian communities. Attempting to recover from trauma

in Sierra Leone is a gendered, collective and spiritual experience as many women were

violated within the same time period by familiar community members. While academic

research and humanitarian aid has brought attention to the traditional culture recovery

techniques, my thesis considers the gendered spiritual recovery methods women use

during and after conflict. The research highlights the commonly used techniques, distinct

modes of spiritual expressions, activities, and social outlets employed by Sierra Leonean

women in order to initiate healing. This thesis will argue that women in Sierra Leone are

on the pathway to transformational healing from war- related violence by utilizing three

distinct modes for spiritually induced recovery; ritual, social navigation, and personal

power.

The data is based on interviews with women who lived in Sierra Leone during

the war and excerpts from war narratives. We learn that even in post-conflict women’s

spiritual activities are vital to their resiliency and capacity to regain normalcy in their

lives. The research establishes a foundation and a gendered reference point for Sierra

Leone’s spiritual recovery and the tools that women use to reclaim their identity during

and after the impact of war related trauma.

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Table of Contents

Dedication .......................................................................................................................... iii

Acknowledgement ............................................................................................................. iv

Abstract ............................................................................................................................... v

Table of contents ................................................................................................................ vi

Illustration: map of Sierra Leone ...................................................................................... vii

Personal background ........................................................................................................... 1

Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 3

Data collection and selecting interviewees ........................................................................ 9

Documenting and naming spirituality as recovery ........................................................... 14

Cleavages of war and spirituality ...................................................................................... 18

Spiritual expression during times of normalcy ................................................................. 26

Postcolonial spiritual practice and historical spirituality .................................................. 29

The analysis of coping and healing ................................................................................... 37

Transformation .................................................................................................................. 40

Spiritual transformation through ritual ............................................................................. 41

The social aspect of recovery ............................................................................................ 45

Personal recovery and collective power ........................................................................... 50

Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 56

Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 59

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1

Personal Background

I initially chose to investigate spirituality and recovery in Sierra Leone as an

attempt to piece together fragmented parts of my identity that are linked to my families'

memory of separation, death trauma and ultimately transformation. Post-conflict war

recovery is an important starting point for change and allows women to begin the

conversation of personal, social and political change.

My father, Dr. Johnnie Samuel Leigh was a Mende and Krio agricultural

researcher studying at Njala University, located in the center of Sierra Leone about 125

miles from the capital and coastal city of Freetown. He met my mother, an African-

American, Heysette Elain Cooper, while she worked as a United States Peace Corps

Volunteer. She requested a site change closer to Njala University, a school that allowed

her to exercise her teaching skills. Their union was fast and adventurous; marked with

getaways to Liberia and Guinea and shortly after they met and married in 1977, I was

born. I have fading memories of living in Sierra Leone with my father's family in the

busy and bustling city of Freetown where crowded streets were lined with wooden flats

and concrete structures. My father tried to escape the hustle of downtown Freetown by

treating us to vanilla ice cream and biscuits every Sunday at the posh Cape Sierra Hotel.

From Freetown, we often traveled hours along the bumpy and dusty roads to the province

of Bo. In Bo, we lived in a rural town called Njala, where my younger brother and I

curled up in the quiet, secluded, clay two-room sanctuary. The shift from city life to rural

isolation also created a shift in our realities. While living in Freetown, our family enjoyed

western comforts like "Wonder Woman" cartoons and Fanta drinks. In Njala, my wonder

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woman was an eight year-old girl named Bebe Boza who liked to climb up termite hills

and run barefoot through bushes haunted with owls. These are just a few of the memories

that I struggled to keep alive after we returned to the United States. Our family abruptly

separated in 1984, prompting my mother to suddenly carry us out of Sierra Leone to

Baltimore, Maryland. We never saw his side of the family again until 1992 when we

learned of his death during the initial stages of the Sierra Leone civil war. The early

trauma of loss and separation combined with the brief but vivid childhood memories

made it necessary for me to ask many questions about the Sierra Leonean side of my

family. I wanted to know more about how my father's family interacted with one another,

who were my new cousins, how did the family celebrate, worship and communicate with

one another? Even more, I wanted to learn about my family’s feelings concerning the

civil war, how were they coping with losing my father, their son, uncle and brother? My

interest in researching the recovery of Sierra Leonean people is a direct result of the

traumatic incidents in my personal life and my passion for learning about women's

recovery under difficult and extreme circumstances.

My personal experiences reveal that spirituality and religion function as vital

sources toward recovery for women in the African Diaspora. I acknowledge that my

personal narrative of trauma, memory, recovery and transformation frame the context for

my analysis on women and spirituality. However, the purpose of the research is to use my

recovery experience as a springboard toward understanding how African women use

spirituality to cope and heal during wartime. An analysis of how women of African

descent initiate self-healing helps me to better understand how my family processes

positive and negative experiences (Koss-Chionio 6). Within my Sierra Leonean family,

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the long-standing habit for women is to defer to spiritual practices when we are

confronted with managing negative emotions. For example, my Krio aunts placed their

social networks of church and religious institutions at the center of their spiritual practice.

Others like my Sierra Leonean grandmother were rumored to use the ritual of "roots" as a

protective, preventive or defensive way to deal with difficult social situations. Women

upheld spiritual relationships as a core component for managing the more emotional

challenges or when formal and organized religion could not sufficiently address the

interpersonal and private areas of their lives. I use Akyampong and Obeng’s (1978)

definition of spirituality among the Asante:

…distinct from religion in that religion represents a distinct activity that

revolved around beliefs and practices. Spirituality acknowledges the reality of a

non material world, as the material world was seen as incapable of explaining

the totality of the human experience. (24)

Introduction

My interest in the women of Sierra Leone speaks to my interdisciplinary

academic research in counseling, international relations and women's studies. While this

project was personal and academic, I can't ignore the political implications my analysis

will have on how the world understands the coping skills of women on the African

Continent. The research for this thesis concludes at a historical nexus for rebuilding in

Rwanda and Sierra Leone while overlapping with the political unrest in Congo-Kinshasa,

the Sudan, and Zimbabwe. We know that women are simultaneously recovering while

living through unspeakable crimes. We know that they go on to forgive, forget or

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suppress what they have witnessed. However, what I seek to learn is how African women

continue to press forward and emotionally sustain themselves to help others and rebuild.

Generally, Sierra Leonean women's identities are shaped by their roles as the

caretaker, mother, feeder, and nurturer. Nigerian theorist and activist Molara Ogundipe-

Leslie (1994) emphasizes that some gender issues do not receive intellectual attention

necessary in order for comprehensive research and knowledge on African women (15).

Here, spirituality aids in women’s ability to transcend their immediate experience and

redefine themselves, creating a new world based on a self-tested transformation.

The 1990-2001 civil war in Sierra Leone was wrought with the devaluation of women's

bodies, a despondent patriarchal state and the burden of the individual woman to sustain

the collective often consisting of caring for children and the elderly (Fofana 187). Yet,

women collectively demonstrated a unique ability to emotionally empower themselves in

order to care for others. Investigating how women use spirituality “strategically and

rhetorically” (Lubkemann 315) in the context of war speaks to women's relationships

between the self, the state and the external forces that are larger than both combined. I

argue that women use gendered spirituality through three distinct tools- ritual, social

navigation, and internal willpower. These tools serve as a core component in women's

capacity to recover and transform after extreme trauma. More so, in a post-colonial, post

conflict atmosphere, women's self-transformation alludes to a larger national liberation

and reform movement that demands their participation in a self-reflective process in order

to move the nation toward collective healing.

Revolutionizing the Self and Then the State

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"Revolution begins with the self and in the self"

Toni Cade Bambara, 1970 The Black Woman

My academic location as a western, graduate-educated, middle class, African-

American female with Sierra Leone ancestry impacts the scope of my research and my

ability to transcend my location (Alcoff 1992). My attempt to offer a balanced

perspective involves fusing concepts from United States Black American feminist

theories with transnational West African womanist theories. For example, Patricia Hill

Collins (2000) conceptualizes Black American feminist thought as a reaction to

uncompensated female labor and reproduction used to build a capitalist system and black

women's responses to a Caucasian "matrix of domination". As a result, Hill-Collins says

U.S. Black women have historically forged self-reliance, self-definition and

independence in a reaction to their forced dependency (145). In a post-colonial context of

some West African nations, Nigerian Afro-Marxist theorists such as Molara Ogundipe-

Leslie (1990) examine the condition of the African and her direct relationships with her

family, her role as mother and caretaker. Ogundipe emphasizes changing the individual

psyche as well as the state apparatus for social change.

"Any revolutionary project in any society must take account of what is happening

inside people's heads and hearts at any historical moment in order to cohere the personal

and the political to the end of creating a more genuinely and thoroughly liberated

society. We may as well begin with ourselves." (146)

Both theoretical standpoints acknowledge class, race, poverty, citizenship and other

"intersectional paradigms" (Hill Collins 5). However, when examining women in a post-

conflict context, I ground my analysis in theories that reflect women's immediate realities

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and frame their self analysis. Without comparing suffering, I carefully glean ideas of

trauma, recovery, religion and spirituality that are used to oppress and empower women

affected by war and conflict. Sierra Leonean women have their own unique reaction to

colonialism, patriarchy and war that present a new angle to womanist and feminist

theories. Molare Ogundupe Leslie's (1990) goes on to explain the grey area between

feminism and womanism calling it STIWA-nism,

"This term allows women speaking about African women to discuss the needs of

African women today in the tradition and spaces of the strategies provided in our

indigenous cultures for the social well being of women. STIWA is about the

inclusion of African women in the contemporary, political and social

transformation of Africa." (264)

The term “African Women” is in and of itself problematic because of the varied

positions and relationships among women living on the continent. I categorize women of

African descent as those who identify with the struggles and victories women on the

continent share in their daily existences. The term African women may also resurrect

stereotypes of identities crafted from a mold based on western and medical(ized)

fixations with “normalizing” women’s bodies, most often bodies affected by fistula,

female cutting and HIV. This normalization process is consistently employed by an

outside gaze to define the body, language, and position of women of African descent. The

gaze of the outsider comes with loaded ideas and interpretations of how ritual functions

in these communities. Chandra Mohanty (2003) discusses the complicated grouping and

representation of women’s experiences as a "category of analysis":

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"Women are constituted as women through the complex interaction between

class, culture, religion, and other ideological institutions and frameworks. They

are not "women" - a coherent group- solely on the basis of a particular economic

system or policy. Such reductive cross-cultural comparisons result in the

colonization of the specifics of daily existence and the complexities of political

interests what women of different social classes and cultures represent and

mobilize," (93)

African women are multi-faceted and represent varying dimensions of participatory

power in their society. More so, collectively speaking for Sierra Leone women, who are

defined by Spivak as the "subaltern" creates the potential to group all women's recovery

methods together. Therefore, rather than speaking for women recovering from post-

conflict, my analysis seeks to listen to and "speak with" women. Alcoff (1992) discusses

the fragile state of a researcher attempting to move beyond his/her location to speak on

and about a subject:

"The unspoken premise here is simply that a speaker's location is epistemic-ally

salient. The second claim holds that not only is location epistemic-ally salient, but

certain privileged locations are discursively dangerous. In particular, the

practice of privileged persons speaking for or on behalf of less privileged persons

has actually resulted (in many cases) in increasing or reinforcing the oppression

of the group spoken for." (52)

Even more challenging was the task of choosing what women will speak and how they

will be heard. The war in Sierra Leone has created a platform for women to be "spoken

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for" as Gayatri Spivak’s (1983) says of western feminism's colonization of third world

women:

"On the other side of the international division of labor, the subject of

exploitation cannot know and speak the text of female exploitation, even if the

absurdity of the non-representing intellectual making space for her to speak is

achieved. The woman is doubly in shadow." (289)

Like many women who have one foot in Sierra Leone and one foot in another part of the

world, this research reflects the connections and the distances that capture women's

experiences during the civil war. My researcher role is bound by my location as a U.S.

Black American and my Sierra Leone lineage. It requires I tease apart the theories that I

associate with Black American women and the realities I learn to be unique to Sierra

Leonean women. As a child, I walked the streets in Freetown and Bo where many

violations took place, played with children who are now probably the subjects of

recovery. I have felt the direct impact of the devastation of war on my desire to have a

complete and whole profile of my family. Yet my limited Krio language competency,

long periods away from Sierra Leone and distant relationship with my Sierra Leonean

family make it difficult for me to relocate and totally connect to the interviewees. The

biggest obstruction to the interview process and gathering data was my inability to

communicate in fluent Krio. My tendency to apply my notion of intellect to women's

experiences at times made me feel like both an "outsider" and an "insider" (Hill Collins

97). My location also influenced the interview process and my desire to make a

connection with interviewees. I feared that I would seem detached if I did not share my

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personal relationship with this research. I also recognized I did not want to seek the stamp

of authenticity from my interviewees. I am aware of my research categorizes women and

I use women's individual responses as a mechanism for their self-definition.

Data Collection and Locating Interviewees

The academic contribution that this research brings forth analyzes the collective

spiritual experience for women of African descent. The work of actually investigating

and documenting how women use spirituality during trauma may seem trivial to women

within this community. The culturally implicit agreement is that spirituality and religion

functions as a major therapeutic tool for women recovering from severe trauma (Fofana

147). Women's various ethnic, class, educational, sexual, and psychological identities

directly affect their reactions to the war and how they initiate recovery. I design

frameworks and structure questions that factor in these intersections to allow room for

individual expression. I apply a feminist standpoint epistemology which values women's

lived experiences as in-depth data. By using a “triangular” research approach, I included

data from documentaries, accounts from books, and one-on-one interviews as resources

(Blee et al 101). I scanned interviews from independent documentaries about Sierra

Leonean women's stories and attended youth conferences to listen to college-educated

Sierra Leone women describe their recovery process. I also reviewed documents from

non-governmental organizations such as Physicians for Human Rights, the Center for

Victims of Torture and religious affiliated trauma recovery organizations who

documented the rural experiences of women. The concepts from Black feminist

epistemology heavily influenced which information depicted women accurately and

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honestly. The inclusion of this data is rooted in a methodology that Patricia Hill Collins

(2000) calls "talking with heart" and the "ethics of caring" describing researchers who

closely identify with their interviewees:

"This theme of talking with the heart taps the ethic of caring, another dimension

of an alternative epistemology used by African-American women. Just as the ex-

slave who used the wisdom in his heart to reject the ideas of the preachers who

talked "wid dey tongues widdout sayin nothing'", the ethic of caring suggest that

personal expressiveness, emotions and empathy are central to the validation

process. (263)

This data is my way of documenting the extreme experiences of survivors without going

to Sierra Leone and interviewing them which allows the women not to have to be re-

victimized in the retelling. For most women interviewed, defining spirituality became

less important than how women used their faith as a vehicle for transformation to

rationalize her world. The interviews also explained the multiplicity of Sierra Leonean

women. Anthropologist Doug Henry (2006) addresses how acts of violence impacts

gendered people differently,

“The girl who was gang raped by soldiers experienced the war differently than

the boy who was kidnapped by rebels and forced to carry ammunition by foot 60

miles to the battle zone. There have been, however, collective experiences, shared

sufferings and social struggles”. (382)

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Though all women living in Sierra Leone were affected, rural women had a different

approach to spiritual recovery than their urban counterparts. Women with access to social

resources used spirituality in a different way than working class women who had access

to natural resources. Yet what this paper will examine is how women weave the

discussion of spirituality into Sierra Leonean women’s definition of recovery for personal

and national transformation.

The Semi-Structured Interview Process

Oral narratives help to explore the interviewees' cosmological concepts allowing

for revision and expanding ideas as opposed to documented ideas of religion and

spirituality, (Blee et al, 103). For my own interviews, I chose a semi-structured interview

approach allowing women to define religion and spirituality for themselves. When

necessary, I freely deviated from my script and just listened to their explanations of

recovery. The questions I asked the women were scripted and designed to create space

for individual expression, language and concepts of spiritual and religious practice based

on their world view and their immediate reality. In the formulation of questions I took

into account Patricia Hill-Collins’ (2000) discussions on the duality of commonness and

uniqueness among people of with similar backgrounds and experiences:

"One of the three interrelated components of the ethic of caring is the emphasis

placed on individual uniqueness. Rooted in a tradition of African humanism, each

individual is thought to be a unique expression of common spirit, power or energy

inherent in all life. (263)"

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While the interviewees expressed their support for the mainstream activities of post-

conflict peace, each applied a different personal tactic in addressing how to achieve

emotional stability. The one-on-one semi structured interview approach revealed the

semantics of statements given by women taking into account the various classes, ethnic

affiliations, belief systems and wider experiences with the war. Some women

communicated spiritual recovery through traditional Sierra Leone sayings, songs, and

their consistent reference to a higher force they define as “God”. Locating interviewees

largely emerged from my personal network of Sierra Leoneans who live in the United

States, had access to electronic mail, telephones, and were willing to be interviewed in

English. I also chose to seek out participants by visiting different Sierra Leonean

communities in Washington D.C. and Maryland. Many of the subjects that volunteered to

be interviewed were middle-income Krio women, with college degrees, who self-identify

with Muslim and Anglo-Christian forms of spirituality. These interview methods engage

the role of spirituality in constructing identities of recovery and transformation among

women (Blee et al, 103).

Spheres of Trauma and Recovery

The women interviewed had varying degrees and spheres of trauma, separation

and loss. Ultimately, I decided to interview five women who lived in Sierra Leone for as

little as six months during 1991-2001. The women were primarily from Freetown but

many had lived or worked throughout Sierra Leone’s twelve districts. Their occupations

included students, activists, political participants, and counselors. Some women were not

directly affected by the extreme forms of trauma such as amputations, often associated

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with women from the rural areas or upcountry. Though each described her own personal

form of trauma and recovery, most were comfortable discussing their experiences, some

recounting events as if they had told their story many times over. The challenge was

encouraging the interviewees to discuss spirituality and coping in a way that helped me to

understand the link between recovery and spirituality. Many women took their spiritual

practices as a natural part of their daily interactions and casually named prayer, God,

church and ritual. They tied their recovery to a spiritual and religious concept. Their

recovery also reflected their decisions to pursue careers committed to areas of need. All

of the women interviewed are politically and socially active in improving the lives of

rural and disenfranchised women. Their interviews demonstrate that faith and spirituality

are building blocks to recovery and establishing a foundation for nation building.

Qualitative Research and Human Agency

The qualitative research methods I choose to employ bring human agency and

accounts for the multi-faceted “alternative survival circuits” that support women

throughout their post conflict recovery process (Ehrenriech; Sassen 267) When I sat to

interpret the data, I paid close attention to underlying themes, central ideas, core

meanings, and structures of narration (Blee et al. 111). For example, interviewees aged

50 and older were very politically involved before and after the war focusing on political

participation as a tool for social and personal transformation. Older women were also

well connected socially and accessed a global network of resources to assist them. The

younger interviewees ages 30 and under lived through the war in their teens. Most were

subject to the decisions of their guardians and parents and discussed spirituality and faith

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on a continuum as opposed to their immediate reality. These same younger women have

chosen to pursue careers in areas such as health, medicine, psychology, education and

international diplomacy. Their careers shed light on the gendered employment

opportunities that require women to give care, emotions, compassion and affection to the

community of Sierra Leone. These career options reflect the importance of investigating

self-care for Sierra Leonean women. Self-care, spirituality and recovery will inevitably

spill over to affect those receiving the services of war recovered women.

Documenting and Naming Spirituality as Recovery

The idea that women use religion as a recovery tool is widely accepted among

Sierra Leonean women. However, spirituality is difficult to legitimize academically due

to the fluid terminology and elusive nature of spiritual and religious concepts. The “ivory

tower often” groups African women’s anti-colonial spirituality with traditions, medicinal

healers or witchcraft. Where my research differs is its’ focus on the gendered, self

initiated recovery based on the person-God relationship to transformation. A qualitative

documentation and theoretical argument for women’s spiritual expression with recovery,

authorizes women as credible witnesses to their own experience (Hill-Collins 255). Hill-

Collins reminds us that traditional epistemology investigates the standards used to assess

knowledge or why we believe what we believe to be true. This is often rooted in

"hegemonic masculine academic assumptions" that the researcher is the expert. Even

more difficult is legitimizing an abstract claim such as spiritual and religious therapy

using scholarly norms such as measuring degrees of faith, defining recovery and

identifying healing (Hill-Collins 255). Spiritual, religious and cosmological paradigms

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encompass interpretive frameworks such as intersectionality that are used to explain

social behavior (Koss-Chionio 7).

The spiritual belief systems that support human relationships are legitimate

techniques for recovery. Spiritual relationships, customary community practices and

symbolic rituals provide Sierra Leonean women with a forum to address issues of

socially perceived womanhood. We also learn about women's agency during conflict by

revealing how spiritual belief systems aid in the reclamation of women's bodies and well-

being in the context of extreme trauma. Dr. Philomina E. Okeke-Ihejirika (2008)

reinforces the critical element of gender when analyzing spirituality,

“As part lived experience and cultural exchange spirituality is an integrated

aspect of personal and collective selves increasingly held on to and traveled with.

Historically gender is a central element of spirituality in personal and social

spheres is a widely recognized and celebrated among people of African

descent”(7)

Spirituality in Sierra Leone is a cornerstone of individual and collective identity. There is

not a single definition for spirituality but rather a shared ideology that acknowledges the

existence of a force outside of oneself and the material world (Brome et al 472). Elements

of Krio culture borrow from Yoruba cosmological concepts which honor both male and

female deities (Fyle, 366). The supernatural forces are representations of a purpose,

feeling, connection, belief and self-concept beyond the concrete world. This form of

spirituality is inclusive and recognizes the various ways women construct and define

spirituality to suit their cultural identities and social realities. Additionally, the task of

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naming an activity constructs a different reality for literate and non-literate women. Thus,

naming spirituality further isolates women who do not share the same communication

tools.

Reality of Recovery

The rhetoric of recovery from war related trauma is painted with a broad brush of

reconciliation, forgiveness and national healing. These concepts appear abstract in the

context of most women’s daily lives. A woman’s life is grouped with overall national

healing and her personal experience is simply one of many whose lives were spared and

are surviving. Religious leaders are complicit in this umbrella approach to healing by

mandating participations in confessions and apologies. Dr. John Hatch’s essay (2006) on

religion and reconciliation in South Africa rightly criticizes how can formal religion

pollutes recovery because of its unregulated influence in politics.

The South African experience lends some credence to the claim that

reconciliation’s praxis problematizes walls of separation between religion and

politics – and brings them into dialogue.” (1)

Like South Africa, Sierra Leone’s reconciliation process was put in under the hands of

religious leaders and political enforcement. Hatch’s assessment of reconciliation along

the blurred lines of religion and politics challenges the definition of recovery and healing

on traditional patriarchal guidelines. The most important component for drafting a

working definition of emotional recovery is to factor in women's immediate access to

essential needs such as food, water, shelter and safety. Recovery takes into consideration

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the interconnected relationship between traumatic events, losing her most basic survival

needs and mental health (Leibling 44). Recovery and healing is more than a harmonious

notion of forgiveness of an act. Recovery and healing operate on a spectrum of living

conditions that make life easier for women. For women in the context of post-conflict,

Judith Herman's (1992) definition best applies to recovery, “coping and healing as the

ability to function in daily activities and human relationships that reflect basic capacities

for initiative, competence and identity” (Herman 263) . This definition accommodates the

ever-changing reality of recovery and opens up new areas of inquiry about women's

immaterial, spiritual and personal techniques for contextual recovery. Learning more

about the immaterial recovery patterns such as spirituality in the time of crisis for women

of African descent is increasingly more important considering that wars overwhelmingly

affect civilian women (Leibling 43). In addition, how women express spirituality in

public may be completely different than how she chooses to practice her spirituality in

private. In their private spaces, women are not forced to be “silenced out of fear of

interrogation or rejection” (Lorde 184). Examining women's everyday behavior as an

important location of knowledge is an alternative way to produce and validate how

women self-initiate healing.

Spiritual activities are more dominant in the private sphere than in the public, but

domestic rituals sometimes shape public issues (Modupe- Kolowe 199). Women

privately access spirituality individually when a Muslim woman makes Salah prayer

alone, when a Christian woman sings spiritual songs to herself while completing daily

chores or when a woman who carries out a ritual passed down through generations. Sierra

Leonean spiritual recovery methods are a way of voicing and expressing the silenced

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experiences in need of social and political transformation. These personal and intimate

moments of connecting the self to a higher force cumulatively build a set of tools for self-

healing.

It is important now, seven years after the war, to investigate and validate how

women use their cosmological concepts and cultural norms to navigate trauma. Dr.

Philomena Okeke-Ihejirika reminds us that the rapid global movements require that

people hold onto to something steadfast and reliable.

“Movements of spiritual revival have become global phenomena in response to

the contemporary ontological insecurity fostered by rapid shifts, uncertainties and

extreme fluidity” (87)

During the civil war, food shortages were common and many families relocated

to overpopulated towns and cities for safety and humanitarian assistance. Throughout

these experiences women and those in their care faced physical violations. If women can

motivate themselves to participate in routine activities despite extreme trauma and

without the assistance of formal western-based therapy, there exists a culturally unique

recovery technique worthy of analysis and critique. The performance of post conflict

stability teeters on the edge of social unrest as women continue to face threats of

insecurity as a result of conflict, natural disasters and global economic upheaval.

The Cleavages of Civil War and Spirituality

Sierra Leone's true wealth and power is in its natural resources; its coastal

location, gold, titanium, bauxite and diamonds. The land that houses these resources is

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often toiled by women but not owned by women. This reality consistently arises as a

major challenge to the social and financial self sufficiency of women. Natural resources

continue to serve as a contentious issue for trade and economic development. After

gaining independence in 1961, Sierra Leone experienced a series of tumultuous political

changes and destructive economic policies imposed by The World Bank Group (1994).

These policies pressure governments to agree to structural adjustment programs and

currency devaluation. Despite the challenges and occasional civil disruptions, Sierra

Leone remained a peaceful country from 1961 until 1991. Internal corruption triggered

politically disenfranchised rebel and military groups to seek power by taking up arms and

attempting to remove from power the dominant political party which held office from

1971-1985.

Seven years have passed since Sierra Leonean officials signed treaties declaring

peace. However, the emotional condition of Sierra Leonean women remains an important

issue for national rebuilding. An overwhelming amount of attention given to the war

focuses on child soldiers, mass rapes, and amputees. Books such as Boyden and Berry's,

"Children and Youth on the Front Line" (2004) analyze the psychology behind African

child soldiers. Ishmael Beah's autobiographical bestseller, A Long Way Gone (2007)

gives a personal account of his life as a child soldier in Sierra Leone. While the conflict

over resources provides a more economic explanation for the motivation, some authors

such as David Bergner's, fictional “In the Land of Magic Soldiers" (2003) alludes to the

power of traditional beliefs, Islam, and Christianity in Sierra Leone. The prevailing

images in documentaries such as Raquel Cepeda's "Bling" (2006) and Hollywood's

"Blood Diamond" (2006) tackle the informal arms and the diamond trade which helped to

20

fuel the disorganized rebels and government militants. Dr. Michael Jacksons’ “In Sierra

Leone” carries the reader through a narrative based on Jacksons’ actual friends who

happened to be soldiers, political leaders and taxi drivers. Again, all the dominant

depictions of the civil war reproduce the patriarchal perspective of war; women as

victims and the men as perpetrators. In these accounts, healing, rebuilding, and recovery

are always achieved with the help of outsiders. Women are very rarely shown as having

their own techniques to initiate recovery. The narrative of depending on an outside entity

for normalization also reflects the systems of bio-power at work on women’s minds and

bodies. (Foucault 16). Non-governmental organizations invest time, money and lip

service to liberate Sierra Leone women from so called sexual oppression but overlook the

impact their efforts have on women’ self –initiated healing and liberation from other

more pervasive forms of sexual violence. Human rights agencies, aid entities and even

Sierra Leoneans outside of the African continent recreate hierarchal systems of

dominance by insisting recovery happens on terms that reinforce colonial norms of

control, dominance and power flow.

Globally, war analysts have tried to rationalize the civil war via debates around

whether the war was caused by natural resource exploitation, good or bad governance, or

a youth movement led by disenfranchised intellectuals (Richards xix). There is less

information about the role of religion and spirituality in the war. Rebels included

religion in their training regiments by having male and female soldiers recite Islamic

prayers. Richards’ testimonies explore soldiers who protect themselves with amulets

and villagers who dance away bush devils to protect their homes from soldiers. Still,

women remain marginal.

21

In Fighting for the Rain forest: War, Youth & Resource (1998), Paul Richards's

analysis seeks to locate religion, nature, culture and the civil war in "wider conversational

background". Richard's points to "patrimonialism" as a primary factor contributing to the

start of the civil war. Richard’s analysis of patrimonilaism borrows from Fanon’s

description of colonial resistance. The villagers, community members and local peoples

create a “decisive irruption” rallying around a seemingly nationalist search for self

discovery distinct from their patriarchal colonial fathers. “All of this reminiscent of a

religious brotherhood, church doctrine and mysticism” (Fanon 84). Richards employs

Fanon’s concepts of religion in Richard’s analysis of the civil war in Sierra Leone.

Under patrimonialism, a resource rich country like Sierra Leone redistributes its

resources as a mark of personal favor to followers who respond with loyalty to a leader

rather than to the institution the leader represents (34). Patrimonialism and religious

syncretism in the civil war also impacted how women processed the role of the state in

their daily lives. Richard argues that this worked especially well with state-sponsored

entities such as school fees and social services (36). However, as this corrupt façade

broke, disenfranchised intellectuals, youth and other state bound individuals turned to

small factions for the loyalty and a promise for an improved quality of life. Richards

makes strong connections to the sectarian features of the Revolutionary United Front

(RUF) citing religion as a major tool for recruitment and the social response to the war.

One rebel leader named "Black Jesus" was praised by having his name plastered over

buildings after a diamond-mining capture (Richards 55). Excerpts from both Richards

and Jackson include personal accounts from both men and women on both sides of the

war referencing spirituality. Richards incorporated excerpts from a British Broadcasting

22

Corporation (BBC) Africa segment where a reporter interviews a woman named "Rose"

who was forced to work as a secretary for the RUF. During the interview, Rose answers a

question about how she justified the forced prayers by the RUF and their subsequent

actions. Rose's simply responds, "They were bad." When the interviewer asked how she

coped with caring for her family despite these experiences, she simply responded, "I have

faith in God". The women's spirituality documented by a western journalist is brief,

unexplored and grouped together with the overall victim narrative of war.

The spiritual collaborations among the different groups also factor into peace such

as encouraging cease fires, peace talks and reconciliation during and after the ten-year

conflict (Penfold 1). Throughout the civil war, many bishops, Islamic leaders, and local

chiefs convened to discuss ways to end the violence (Penfold 1). During the post-conflict

re-stabilization, churches and mosques sponsored Truth and Reconciliation Commissions

that allowed citizens to publicly express their emotions about the war. However,

women's sexual recovery or the link between spirituality and recovery was noticeably

absent from the discussion on post-conflict rebuilding and collective healing. For

example, during the Sierra Leone Trials on war crimes, some women's testimonies about

sexual violence were deliberately excluded as evidence due to "unexplained restrictive

positions" adopted by the court's trial chamber representatives (Kendall and Staggs 10).

Incidents such as these, reflect the culture of silence and shame that obstructs the

political, judicial and community motivation to aid in the process of healing for women.

Without national support for healing, women are forced to look inward and among one

another to create a sacred space that acknowledges trauma and honors recovery.

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War and the Aftermath

From 1991-2001, the international community observed the civil war evolve from

an attempt to overthrow the sole political party to a chaotic attack on over 5 million

civilians. Violence was especially concentrated in diamond rich areas where many rural

civilian women reside. Human rights violations ranging from maiming to gang rapes

were common place in the once safe, small villages of mountainous communities

(Human Rights Watch 1). The United Nations, in collaboration with the World Bank and

British Defense Fund, sponsored a disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR)

program in 2002 in an effort to return the country to “normalcy”. The gendered attempt to

move the country toward normalcy included a national sensitization campaign asking

civilians to forgive the rebels (Schroven 17). DDR program removed over 40,000

weapons from rebels and coordinated multiple donors to give $31 million dollars to

rebuilding and infrastructure. However, the women's reintegration, economic struggles

and psychological rehabilitation were largely overlooked.

Despite the international relief community's disregard for women’s psycho-social

well-being, women managed to survive and initiate normalcy. Women play a key role in

helping Sierra Leone as a nation re-instate the daily routines that maintain peace. Women

serve as farmers, vendors, cooks, caretakers, mothers, wives, teachers and nurses. These

same women experienced life-threatening traumatic experiences such sexual torture,

having their homes burned down, losing relatives to abduction and walking long

distances searching for food (de Jong, Mulhern, van der Kam 1). The more extreme

experiences included amputation of limbs, witnessing the murder of loved ones, and

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public rapes (de Jong, Mulhern, van der Kam 1). Symptoms following these experiences

include intrusions, flashbacks, uncertainty and social withdrawal. The conditions often

last for years after the peace-building process and well into political and social

stabilization. The phrase, "War don Gon" lingers around Sierra Leone as a plea for Sierra

Leone to enter an age of modernity and for a fresh start after the damage (Jackson 71).

Collective and social forgetting is commonly espoused by Sierra Leoneans as a pathway

to healing (Shaw 5). Yet, even this coping mechanism has a gendered tone alluding to

patriarchal dismissal of the atrocities in order to maintain power hierarchies. Truth and

Reconciliation Commissions conducted throughout 2003 and any anxious effort to seek

peace would mean overlooking the process required for healing and often ignoring

sufficient justice for the perpetrators. Collective and social forgetting clouds the actual

strategies worthy of examination.

Scope of Women's Trauma

The story that is absent from the Sierra Leone conflict narrative is the analysis of

women's emotional response as a tool for power subversion. Women watched their sons

transmogrify into zombies, their financial stability uprooted, and in some cases family

members’ limbs severed. Survivors from Sierra Leone's easternmost district, Kailahun

shared their experiences with Amnesty International (2007). They revealed that, although

the war had ended the impact of the rape, sexual violence and sexual slavery they

experienced still affected their everyday lives. Few had received the assistance they

needed and as a result, they were continuing to feel the psychological and physical effects

of trauma. The empirical data, reports from non-governmental organizations or feedback

25

from non-religious interventions about the current status of women's recovery from

widespread violence is scarce. Even less health data has investigated how the formal

religious community responds to women's recovery. Yet, many western-based religious

institutions have independently established counseling centers that specifically address

violence in their recovery efforts. However, the counselors often arrive as religious

proselytizers who apply imported neo-colonial, western interpretations of post-traumatic

stress disorder therapy that don't allow appropriations for everyday applicability.

The effects of violence and torture on women are reflected in the statistics on

sexual violence and demonstrate the huge unmet need for women's mental health

services. Of the 991 females interviewed by the Physicians for Human Rights, 89.2

reported one or more war related sexual violence experience (Physicians for Human

Rights 5). Of those who did not report the attack, the most common reasons were

"feelings of shame or social stigma," fear of being rejected and not having trust in

anyone. Women often under-report due to cultural taboos, fear of retaliation, lack of faith

in the criminal justice system and lack of resources devoted to the problem (Human

Rights Watch 1). The statistics and the narratives indicate that women are currently

surviving and attempting to rebuild their lives despite the haunting memories of violence.

The United Nations (2004) sponsored DDR programs assisted thousands of male

soldiers with their psycho-social recovery. Women received almost no immediate

assistance and were left out of the program; forcing them to cope and initiate emotional

recovery without government-sponsored support or a targeted community outreach

program. Consequently, women devised their own psycho-social strategies for survival in

26

the form of spirituality, traditional belief systems and community networks. Sierra

Leonean women's experiences with recovery are overshadowed by the toxic and prolific

media images of their "suffering" (Mollica, 43). At some point, the victimization ends

and a woman's reclamation of self begins. Thus, women shift focus from their condition

of distress to their capacity to recover leading to an exploration of transformational

spaces in between trauma and recovery.

Spiritual Expression in Times of Normalcy

Women's historical role in shaping and transforming Sierra Leonean society is

evident in the political decisions, rituals, rites of passage and cultural traditions that

demand women's participation and representation. Among the most prominent woman

based religious and spiritual factions in Sierra Leone are indigenous Secret Societies,

Christianity, and Islam. Through their spiritual activism woman enter into the political

and social fabric. Often, gender roles and stereotypes allow women to use spirituality and

religion as a vehicle to enter into the local discussion with greater acceptance. Through

religion and spirituality, Sierra Leonean women consciously and unconsciously initiate

self-healing demonstrating that women's self-healing is an act of gendered political and

social transformation. This is bound up in women's daily yet diverse realities. For rural,

urban, western educated, indigenous or marginalized woman, each opportunity to initiate

normalcy during wartime is framed in a gendered and politicized state that doesn't

account for every woman's unique circumstance. Paying attention to class, location, age

and tribal affiliation is crucial in analyzing women's experiences through the filter of

religion, spirituality and culture. For example, a single young urban, educated Krio

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woman uses spirituality as a transformational tool much differently than an older Temne

farmer caring for her family. The examination of women's spirituality and religious

identity in a historical context and as a modern understanding of West African women's

evolution reveals West African women as the new leaders. Examples such as Liberian

President Ellen Johnson- Sirleaf emerge as vital stakeholders for peace and political

stabilization and improving the overall quality of life.

Historically, women's roles are marginally documented in academic texts and

books as traders, during the slave trade and colonization or as, in the case of indigenous

women, consultants to chiefs. Locating women in terms of religion and spirituality

requires what Rosalind Shaw calls a "historical specificity" that accepts the fluidity of

Sierra Leone society (110). In order to completely understand the post-conflict

perspective on women's religious and spiritual expression, we must revisit the history of

women's roles in the various religious, spiritual and cultural groups. Women's social

activities have served as a social safe haven and a platform to engage in political and

social decision-making. This is most evident among indigenous groups such as the

Mende who live in the interior of Sierra Leone (Boone, 47). In cultures like the Mende

and Temne, women's spiritual and religious rituals play a vital role in linking their

personal spiritual beliefs to the community’s overall social significance (Coulter 433).

The Mende are known throughout the Mano Region for the secret society initiations. In

both Poro (male initiation) and Sande (female initiation) ceremonies, adolescents

participate in rites of passage ceremonies marking the transition from adolescence into

adulthood (Boone 48). The Sande society includes elements of art, dance, education and

gender roles. The Sande also serves a religious and philosophical purpose; to inspire

28

individuals to reach their highest aspirations and promote constant refinement of the

individual (16). Sande allows for the individual as well as for the collective growth by

creating artistic spaces for women to personally express their uniqueness while also

maintaining fellowship. The Sande ceremonies are especially unique because women

solely initiate and sustain the tradition in the role as cooks, herbal healers, judges, and the

transmitters of "feminine" knowledge. Yale University anthropologist, Dr. Sylvia Boone,

traveled to Mendeland in 1985 through Western Liberia, Southern Guinea and

Southeastern Sierra Leone to learn about the Sande secret society activities. In her 1985

book, Radiance from the Waters, Boone's research documents the Sande Society as, "the

most powerful patron of the arts in West Africa" (13). Boone calls the Sande ceremonies

"coterminous", and argues that "there can be no Mende people without the society" (25).

The historical significance of the Sande ceremonies is underlined by early Portuguese and

English European travelers who documented the activities they witnessed as a major

component in the how the overall gender relations function within the Mende (Boone

23). The importance of Sande is the overall respect and acknowledgement by the Mende.

Of all the various groups of women in Sierra Leone, Mende are among the most

recognized to have sustained the gendered memory of the pre-colonial female ritual and

acknowledge its impact on the African Diasporas Mende community.

Despite the different ethnic groups, diverse spiritual beliefs and multiple ways of

expressing a spiritual connection, women similarly use their bodies to make an intrinsic

association with spirituality. Again, among Mende tribes, women traditionally employ an

exclusive Sande ceremonial (Figure 1) masking ritual which invokes spirits within nature

and signify a woman's physical, spiritual and emotional maturation (Phillips 5). Women

29

are carefully selected to wear masks to allow spirits to communicate knowledge of

medicinal plants, herbs, and select the next generation of leaders (Phillips 5). Among

Temne and Limba groups, the birth of twins is cause for a spiritual veneration via artistic

carvings and statues (Cromwell 3). The Temne and Limba carve twin figures (Figure 2)

to honor the spiritual gift of twin births and double responsibility within the community.

The twin figures are treated just as the living children would be: they are washed, offered

food and drink, decorated with jewelry, amulets, and treated with love. The images of

twins may also be carved at birth to control their spirits while living. They may also be

commissioned by a female diviner who depends upon their special powers in prescribing

a proper course of action (Cromwell 3). Self-representation in ritualistic art serves as a

unique opportunity for women to center themselves in the context of a collective feminist

movement. Cultural theorist Judith Butler (2004) advises on using self-recognition as a

transformative force,

“Recognition is at once the norm toward which we invariably strive, the norm

that ought to govern therapeutic practice and the ideal form that communication

takes when it becomes a transformative process (133)”.

Sierra Leonean women’s self-representation puts Butler’s post-structuralist theory at

work in this context by revealing ways that art in life transcend the primordial self in

reframing gendered identities.

Post-Colonial Spiritual Practice and Historical Spirituality

30

Achille Mbembe's (2008) essay, "What is Post-colonial Thinking?" represents his

view on the Diaspora events as a key component of the migrating African resulting in a

form of post-colonial, modern and urban global African culture. Mbembe links this form

of (re) learning oneself in relation to power as a way of political strength that supports the

theme of spirituality as transformation, transcending and ultimately liberation.

"What constitutes the political strength of post-colonial thought is its enrollment

in the historic social struggles of colonized societies and especially its rereading

of the theoretical praxis of what we call liberation movements. So it is a way of

thinking which, in several respects, still believes in the postulate that the only true

learning is the leaning that aims to transform the world. It is a way of thinking

that belongs to the being-subject, to the being-for-itself, to the manner in which

the dialectic of master and slave, of colonist and native, might be transcended."

(1)

Colonial Sierra Leone turned into a hotbed of syncretism, fusing cosmological

concepts to adapt to their changing realities. With diverse ethnic, geographic, temporal

and political history there is not a single women's historical experience. Post-colonial

African women are often influenced by a variety of cultures that inevitably shape and

create new identities. Hill-Collins (1995) notes the redefinition by black women in post

colonial states:

"In a transnational post-colonial context, women within new and often Black run

nation states in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia struggle with new meanings

attached to ethnicity, citizenship status, and religion." (91)

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Different regions and localities, moreover, have their own memory practices and often

their own techniques of social recovery that may have developed during the course of

their own history (Shaw 110). Throughout the regions of Africa deep-rooted with culture

and tradition, gender-based education often includes appealing to a formal religious entity

or an informal socio-political "head" in the community to alter the doctrine and dogma in

order to allow for flexibility in women's roles (Phillips 8).

Many of the groups that comprise the nation of Sierra Leone express spirituality

through activities that borrow elements from neighboring tribes, colonial influences and

even modern representations of spirituality. The practices based on experience, history

and identity color how spirituality is defined and constitute a nature syncretism in how

cosmological belief systems overlap. The culture of spirituality among Krio women is a

fusion of Islamic, European Christo-Judaic and West African beliefs incorporating songs,

dancing and worship styles into their spiritual expression (Wyse 10). For example, a

Yoruba tradition also practiced among Krio called Komojade celebrates the naming and

presentation of a baby to the new world. In Sierra Leone Krio it is also referred to as, “pul

na do” or pull on the door to figuratively open the doors to the new baby (Fyle, Falola

and Childs 378). During this ceremony an elderly female relative introduces the child to

his or her surroundings and the child is given a name followed by incantations, libations

and prayers (Wyse 10). The woman’s role as the child’s first introduction to their world

through a spiritual ceremony demonstrates how women function as medium between the

material and spiritual self.

Mediums for Memory and Healing

32

Sierra Leonean women have loosely defined relationships with the present day

narrative of trauma and the transatlantic slave trade, African exploitation of resources

diamond-mining and war. The sources of emotional strength that women utilize are

evident throughout interviews, songs, ritual and survival circuits. Historical and

contemporary religious practices offer a regenerative refuge for women to rebuild their

self-esteem and confidence after living with the memory of the horrific experiences. The

communities and diverse ethnic groups within the Mano River region exchanged

resources, languages, belief systems and practices. Within women's social networks, they

exchanged ideas, creative forms of expression songs, language and rituals (Boone 5).

However after the momentum of the Atlantic trade route stimulated the local and

international economy, groups migrated from every part of the African Diaspora

including Afro-Portuguese traders, maroons from the West Indies, slaves who escaped

from Nova Scotia and Europeans sought opportunities to enjoy the British-designated

free colony and to establish entrepreneurial ventures (Blyden 1). Sierra Leone also

experienced gradual colonization by British politicians, religious missions, business

leaders and the same immigrants who primarily tried to use Sierra Leone's natural

resources and religion as tools for political and social control (Fyfe, 17). Rosalind

Shaw's Memories of the Slave Trade (2001) acknowledges the transformation of the

society due to the trade and how memory is shaped by these interactions.

“In many parts of the world, the transformation into a universe of foreign

commodities, capitalism and transregional commercial flows dates back to the

fifteenth century- as was the case for Sierra Leone's integration into an expanding

Atlantic system. Thus not only does the modernist rhetoric of forgetting actually

33

require to production of memories, but also modernity itself is hardly recent, and

has been generating memories for some time: (16)

Memory acts as an emotional balm while enduring and recovering from trauma, memory

functions to help negotiate the present with the past (Steiger 1). Moving beyond and

rising above is often curiously linked to returning to the source of a traumatic event

(Durrant 85). Memory often serves a as a bridge from trauma to recovery transcending

events, time, and geographic boundaries. Through memory, individuals are reminded of

their relevance. By sharing the memories, they reinforce their existence and survival.

Franz Fanon’s (1961) celebrates the attempt to grasp at an ongoing vital activity that in

reaction and its evolution into culture,

“A national culture is the whole body of efforts made by a people in the sphere of

thought to describe, justify, and praise the action through which that people has

created itself and keeps itself in existence.” (Fanon, 233)

The tools for coping and recovery are often passed along throughout generations. This is

most evident in the documentary, "The Language You Cry In" (1998) by Alvaro Toepke

and Angel Serrano, which demonstrates the power of memory rituals and their ability to

transcend time, land and foster the belief in spiritual healing. The film follows the origins

of a burial hymn sung by an enslaved African woman living the Gullah Sea Islands. The

historians unearth a song recorded in the 1930’s sung by an African-American woman

who was taught the words by her enslaved grandmother. They investigate the meaning of

the song to learn that the some of the words are not English, but of Mende origin

referring to a grave. In 1998, ethnomusicologists and historians trace the burial song

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village by village to a Mende woman in Sierra Leone. They discover that the Mende

woman could sing the same song from the 1930’s and actually perform the ritual

associated with the lyrics,

Mende:

Ah wakuh muh monuh kambay yah lee luh lay tambay

Ah wakuh muh monuh kambay yah lee luh lay kah.

Ha suh wileego seehai yuh gbangah lilly

Ha suh wileego dwelin duh kwen

Ha suh wileego seehi uh kwendaiyah.

Translation:

Everyone come together, let us work hard;

the grave is not yet finished; let his heart be perfectly at peace.

Everyone come together, let us work hard:

the grave is not yet finished; let his heart be at peace at once.

Sudden death commands everyone's attention,

like a firing gun.

Sudden death commands everyone's attention,

oh elders, oh heads of family

Sudden death commands everyone's attention,

like a distant drum beat. (1998)

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The Mende woman explains that her grandmother taught her the song so that she would

be able to recognize any of her distant relatives. The words, rituals and memories of the

burial hymn were preserved by women at two different times in history and two different

locations on the earth. The women who passed the song along from granddaughters to

daughters over a two-hundred year time period. The determination of individual women

to collectively keep words and memory alive associated with trauma indicate how

memory can operate when used as a restorative tool. Through one song, historians were

able to reconnect families terrorized by the transnational slave trade. The power of

memory and ritual were able to pull the past into a contemporary context and aid in

rebuilding the connective structures lost due to the slave trade. The documentary

demonstrates how memory functions as a spiritual medium for healing and holds a

distinct place in the ways women shape their personal, national and transnational

recovery narrative. In this case, women’s conviction that spirituality via ritual would

facilitate survival beyond death establishes a foundation for continuity of self.

Prescribed Recovery Versus Personal Healing

Shaw’s (2003) colonial analysis is spread throughout her post-war analysis on

Sierra Leone’s use of forgetting as a tool for healing factors in to contemporary Sierra

Leone’s collective wish to forget the aspects of the war. Shaw leaves little room for a

Sierra Leone evolution beyond forgetting. Shaw discounts gendered healing in her

analysis of Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (2003). Shaw

conducted research on the TRC throughout local and formal communities uncovering the

division among Sierra Leoneans about the effectiveness of the TRC,

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“For some communities, such as a large village in which I worked in 2003 and

2004 that had held church ceremonies to reintegrate ex-combatants, the TRC

disrupted their own practices of reconciliation. Sometimes whole communities

agreed not to give statements or to give statements that withheld information that

they thought might be damaging to the ex-combatant children of their neighbors.

People thereby sought to protect their communities and their relationships from

the potentially damaging consequences of publicly remembering violence.” (Pg.

8)

What Shaw fails to explore is the public and private domain of gendered healing.

For those who want to protect children, many were associated with the “ex combatants”

children via blood or fictive kinships. The patriarchal government or paternalistic human

rights groups’ demands for a truth telling commission for victims, mostly women, would

mean exposing women to the same gendered norms that made women targets during the

war. Women’s outcry against abuse threatens the power binaries that prop up the

systemic social imbalances. Dr. Fofana (2006) however, acknowledges the “masculine

space” of truth commissions,

“Of the estimated 40 percent of the testimonies made to the commission by

women, less than 2000 testified to being victims of sexual violence…

Furthermore, considering that space is both a medium and an outcome of gender

ideologies and practices, the public and the inherently masculine space that the

TRC represented could have deterred many women from testifying because

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masculine and public space have for many of these women been places of pain

and rejection.” (88)

A woman publically speaking about violence by individuals unlikely to be held

accountable only sets her up for future re-victimization. Rejections of the TRC hearings

were an act of silent rebellion. Instead of being faced with public shaming under the guise

of coping and healing, women could return to the tried and tested spiritual recovery

methods that they can use on their own terms and in conjunction with public healing. The

history of secret societies and rituals has shown that Sierra Leone women’s healing

operates in a private and domesticated sphere. Shaw’s omission of a gendered and sexual

analysis about how healing is processed in post-conflict Sierra Leone reinforces the

message that women’s healing is not a priority. Like the DDR programs that focused

primarily on children and not the women who must raise them, Shaw’s analysis explores

an all encompassing rejection of TRC as a national rejection of an imported approach.

Instead, I challenge Shaw to sift through who’s healing is important and who dictates

how healing is supported and framed for women.

The Analysis of Coping and Healing

How do women cope? Portland State's Jan Haaken warns of an academic analysis

that may pose a, "risk of fixating on psychic or social devastation." Instead Haaken

focuses on the upbeat and positive concept of peace through collective action. But peace

is a catch-all word that can only be addressed after the personal and individual work of

forgiveness, reconciliation and healing have begun (Gobodo-Madikizela 97). Haaken's

"psychoanalytic theoretical" examination in the documentary "Speaking Out: Women,

38

War and the Global Economy" reveals that Sierra Leonean women frequently mention

their spirituality and faith as a key to their ability to pursue peace.

"We sat for a while and I asked her what she ate in the bush to survive. As we

talked about these very tangible aspects of survival, Kanu went on to describe

how she and the other women would gather to pray. A devout Christian, Kanu

drew on her faith to sustain her. But so, too, did she find strength in her female

companions who fled with her to the bush, sometimes grabbing whatever

children were within reach. "We stood tall, as women, because, you know when

you fall; your husband will not be by your side." (3)

Haaken sidelines spirituality and religion and focuses on women's solidarity as a primary

factor in women's recovery. Again, she innocently describes a nun named Sister

Catherine's role in helping the community recover:

"By creating a community garden, for example, the group builds a sense of

collective strength and restorative capacity. Yet Sister Catherine Dauda, director

of a center for child soldiers, insisted that "we have to remember and understand

what has happened to us. Otherwise, it will come up again and again. The elders

have failed the youth, so they took up guns and went into the Bush." Sister

Catherine organized theater groups in the refugee camps that incorporated child

soldiers in scenes re-enacting the war, including the mutilations. While

seemingly contradictory approaches to trauma recovery, these two perspectives

were part of a necessary dynamic of moving between the present and the past."

(4)

39

Though Haaken examines women's voices through a feminist lens and highlights

the role of friendships, she fails to discuss the most obvious location of Sister Catherine’s

coping, her religious and spiritual activity. Sister Catherine blatantly acknowledges the

power and presence of spirituality but few western academics value spirituality as a

concrete source for emotional recovery. Haaken's avoidance and oversight to examine

religion is a subtle western academic and psychological tool to dismiss the validity of

spirituality in African women's lives. Like Haaken, Sierra Leone scholar, Dr. Aisha

Fofana (2004) of Fourah Bay College interviewed numerous women about their

traumatic experiences with the civil war. She gives women a voice explaining the

difficulty of recovery when a woman cannot return home, is suddenly the sole

breadwinner or physically scarred form the memory of multiple rapes.

While Fofana (2006) addresses spirituality and ritual as a legitimate tool for

recovery, she too overlooks the subtle characteristics of a personal and reflective

spirituality evident in women’s ability to cope. In one of the testimonies, a woman

describes her response after being raped,

“I am no longer interested in any man or having sex with any man. I think this is

because I was raped so many times when I was abducted. Anyway, it does not

even matter because all the men around here are full of lies and have nothing to

offer. What's the use of having a boyfriend who expects sex and food but

contributes nothing to the household? I am really not into that and would rather

stay celibate and struggle on my own. There is a rumor going around about me in

40

my neighborhood. They say that I am wedded to a spirit and that's why I do not

want to take on a lover.” (128)

The woman’s description of being wedded to a spirit coincides with a Judeo-Christian

ideology of being married to God. It also takes on local connotations as being linked to a

negative spirit. Dr. Fofana does not probe this concept of “wedded to a spirit” thus doing

other rape survivors a disservice by not acknowledging the spiritual reference in the

woman’s description of coping. The survivor’s reference to the community use of the

term begs for a deeper understanding of spiritual union after sexual recovery. Dr.

Fofana’s emphasis on economic survival as a tool for psychological healing overshadows

the telling data that women depend on spirituality to answer the questions about moving

beyond an experience.

Transformation

Sierra Leonean women respond to Ogundipe-Leslie's theoretical and practical call

to activists for continental transformation. Transformation in the socio-cultural context of

Sierra Leone means that women are positioned to change their well-being by using their

personal networks and resources. Transformation as a spiritual ideology symbolizes the

power and plasticity of spiritual beliefs as tools for coping and recovery. Women’s

transformation at multiple points along the continuum of trauma, coping and recovery is

compulsory if they are expected to themselves as many times as necessary to move to the

next stage of self-sustenance.

41

"The desire to transform ourselves and our conditions must in fact stimulate a

heightened, reflexive and rebellious consciousness, in particular regarding these

practices that are often explained as simply a self-evident part of us, part of our

cultures, or vanquished traditions." (140)

These spiritual activities fulfill the purpose of transformational discourses because they

impact women's lives outside the contexts of discourse while also inventing new topics of

discourse regarding African women's emotional and mental welfare. Spirituality alone

does not adequately answer how women recover. There is a process toward

transformation and self re-connection. Women are able to funnel spirituality through

three primary tools: ritual and social navigation and collective power.

Vehicles of Spiritual Transformation: Ritual and Social Navigation

"Wellness is an act of political resistance"

bell hooks, Sisters of the Yam, 1993

Rituals are among the most documented and most analyzed aspect of African

spirituality. Rituals encompass of the mental, physical, material and spiritual aspects of

most West African cultures by cementing them in a repetitive practice. Gender and

women’s bodies give meaning to rituals that are often grouped in with the spirituality in

the culture at large. Yet women often make personal and physical sacrifices that indicate

their individual investment for the sake of the larger community. Women’s use of ritual

from recovery in post-conflict nations is a well documented and highly revered form of

healing. Currently, the existing programs addressing clinical mental health, coping and

42

social recovery in Sierra Leone are run by local community groups, non-profit

organizations, and some internationally based groups which incorporate rituals in with

counseling and psycho-social services. Dr. Stephen Stepakoff (2006) reported how the

nonprofit Center for Victims of Torture incorporated elements of ritual in their mental

health treatment models:

"Elements of traditional West African culture that were incorporated into many

of the groups included healing rituals, symbols (e.g., offering kola nuts to

welcome newcomers), traditional stories, drumming, chants, rhythmic clapping,

and song. (1)

Similarly, United Institute of Peace researcher Dr. Rosalind Shaw (2004) witnessed

children and adults in Sierra Leone performing cleansing ceremonies that were not based

on "traditional" rituals in order to reintegrate child ex-combatants. Shaw observed that

war-affected youth in Pentecostal churches used prayer, Bible reading, and spiritual

healing in order to drive out their memories of violence and rebuild their lives.

“In Temne communities in the Northern Province, praying over water or kola,

asking God and the ancestors to give the child a "cool heart," and rubbing the

water on the head, chest, arms, and feet bring about an inner transformation in

the child and his/her social relationships. Part of having a cool heart is not

talking about the war: the children are transformed as new social persons. .” (4)

43

Shaw cites that these are local, not "traditional" ceremonies. They involve people

drawing upon their spiritual knowledge to create and adjust forms of reconciliation and

social recovery appropriate to the context of the civil war

However, anthropologist Chris Coulter’s (2008) reflects upon witnessing a

Kuranko girl’s initiation ceremony three years after Sierra Leone’s peace declaration. She

ultimately concludes that the ceremony is an opportunity for the Kuranko to reinstitute

normalcy. Coulter says,

“The social significance of the ritual is particularly emphasized; the ceremony is

not only a social event but has become a key event in reconfiguring social

relations after a decade of civil war.” (433)

Coulter’s analysis is only a piece of what ritual means for communities. Ritual also

serves as an opportunity to sacrifice something personal for the greater good. Often a

repetitive action can sooth or ease the memory of trauma (Kidd, 2006). The importance

of the ceremonies was revisited by Anthropologist Dr. Doug Henry (2006) exploring the

somatic expressions of trauma during the civil war. While many anthropological

researchers examine the ways spiritual beliefs influence war, Henry (2006) delves into

the restorative nature of ritual and ceremony during a chaotic post conflict environment.

“Healing rituals do not just reflect larger social meanings, but offer diverse and

creative local ways of resisting terror and dealing with its traumatic effects,

actively refiguring meanings in line with changing perceptions of the universe.”

(383)

44

Fofana’s research revealed that most of the women she interviewed participated in or

desired some for m of cleansing ceremony, because rituals are “an important catharsis”,

“In Sierra Leone, cleansing ceremonies can last from a day to a month

depending on the physical and emotional state of the person seeking a “cure” and

the amount of money they can afford to spend. Such ceremonies often include

ritual baths in which people are bathed by herbalists with a mixture of herbs and

then given herbal and/or lasmami potions to drink. Lasmami is a kind of holy

water made in two different ways. A wooden slate inscribed with a specific

Quranic verse is hung over a container then washed clean or pieces of paper with

the Quarnic inscriptions are soaked in the water- the water collected in these

processes is what is called. Lasmami. (Fofana 188)

Challenging centralized religion represents the ways women access spirituality. Personal

practices and applications of spiritual beliefs decentralize the power embedded in

spirituality. Sierra Leonean women's bodily association with the non-material world

represents their capacity to transform and transcend the concrete world. This association

indicates women's reliance on an outside force as a source of energy and power. The

power derived from spirituality coupled with women's physical and non-physical

relationship with spirituality is an important component in women's self-motivation to

exercise spirituality as a healing force particularly for physical trauma. Women who

sense their potential to heal via spirituality have an opportunity to address issues of

sexual trauma, gender based-violence and physical harm on their own terms or on terms

that are shared by their communities. The use of spirituality as an instrument for women's

45

self-definition in pre-war Sierra Leone suggests that war-affected women continue to use

spirituality for recovery during and after the civil war.

The Social Aspect of Spiritual Recovery

Women weaving between the layers of a warring state often develop networks

and navigational tools that improve their quality of life or help them survive. Survival

networks are an organic by-product of post-conflict war which is accompanied by loss

and separation. For example, during Liberia’s conflict, a notorious set of armed

women formed “Black Diamond”, a rebel group comprised mostly of female orphans

with no place else to go (Itano 1). Through this “cooperative survival project” (Itano 1),

the women combined their cooking, fighting, and negotiating skills to protect them as a

joint effort to survive. The strength that is received from others is an indicator of the

power that exists by relying on something outside of one’s self. Western notions of

complete healing or recovery do not apply to women who must still live in the same

village where they watched family members murdered or raise a child that was a product

of rape (Honwana, 33, 1999). Here, the psycho-social and emotional processes used for

social navigation have similar traits of spiritual recovery for transformation. Both require

that one pulls on the readily available resources to move forward and both demand

personal determination but reach out for assistance outside from the self in order to cope.

Under these circumstances, healing and recovery must emerge out of a daily human

interaction and a personal commitment to move beyond trauma. The daily commitment

requires operating within a complex game of players who under different circumstances

may be considered adversaries.

46

One woman's experience in Liberia reveals how she also constructed social

institutions in order to navigate extreme circumstances. This unique interview of a

Liberian female solider Binta by Swedish researcher Mats Utas (2005) demonstrates the

fluidity of navigation and transformation in conflict. From the interview, the term "social

navigation" is coined to encompass the "agency tactics" available and deployed by

women in the contexts of war zones. Utas unpacks agency calling it strategic, "strategic

agency- an agency for those who can forecast the future state of affairs and has the

possibility to make use of other people's tactical agency (Utas 407)." In the context of

conflict, these women re-write the narrative of woman as the victim. "Bintu" revealed

that she took on the roles as victim, refugee, "girlfriend" and combatant until she found

herself in a situation that satisfied her demands for better life.

"You had your family, and they did not have any food. If you did not have a

relationship with a commando, how would your family survive? You had your

mother, father, brother, sister, uncle. If you didn't love a commando, they would

not get food." (416)

Bintu's story of psychologically and romantically influencing rebel leaders, creating

fictive kin-ships with protective females and choosing to leave refugee camps and take up

arms exposed her astute ability to adapt in the precarious nature of war zones (Utas 408).

As the context and circumstances changed, so did Bintu. When she anticipated an

opportunity to transform, she weaved between the existing social structures and accessed

her friendships-based institutions to accommodate the circumstances. Bintu survived to

47

share her story and to expand upon the pervasive images of helpless, victimized African

women to opportunistic and shrewd. Bintu describes her experience,

“I will tell you one thing about fighting: to fight, to meet your enemy, and to

exchange bullets with them is not hard, but to retreat, that is the real problem.

And I was not a military woman. It was God and nobody else that saved me that

day. To retreat from BWI (Booker T. Washington Institute) all the way to

Fourteenth Street, that was a problem. But God brought me out of that.” (423)

Without the belief that something external was supporting her, Bintu says she would not

have been able to survive. Bintu’s strategic agency is linked to spirituality because her

courage is coupled with her perception of spiritual support.

Like Bintu, my interviewee “Ami” exercised strategic agency tactics to survive

amidst conflict suggests that other recovery mechanisms exist in times of insecurity and

danger. During our interview, she described her experiences as a teenager living in

Freetown when the rebels entered into the city. Ami was sixteen years old, middle class

and highly educated living in Belgium prior to returning to Freetown in 1998. Her family

returned to Sierra Leone for her father’s job and upon the second attack on Freetown,

Ami and her sister were living with extended family while her parents were traveling.

Ami’s first confrontation with rebels occurred in 1998 while at her cousin’s house

perched high in the mountains 10-15 minutes from the urban center. The area where they

were living was targeted because, at this point in the war, rebels were targeting high

officials, Lebanese and Whites living in Sierra Leone. The rebels “ransacked” her

family’s kitchen, living room while she hid with her sister in another room.

48

Ami says that she thought she was going to die,

“The whole house was shaking, they were shooting guns. My sister almost got

shot. All I could think is if I am going to die I want it to be quick. Cause they like

torturing people. My little sister couldn’t sit still. All she could think of is get out

cause you knew they were coming again.”

After the rebels left without finding anything worthwhile, she her sister and her cousin

reached out to their neighbors for assistance. Without phones, her sister used Morse code,

learned from Lebanese acquaintances, to communicate that they were held up in their

home. Neighbors arrived at their home injured and bleeding and joined them in a state of

“hold out” until they could plan their next step. They soon discovered that among all of

the people in the area, they were among the few who were not physically hurt.

“At this point there was a 24 hour curfew no one could step out. No one had

food. Neighbors who would come to see if they could get stuff, it became a barter

system”.

After weeks of being held in their home, she and her sister were assisted by a German

who worked with her father. The German man helped them to escape by getting the

rebels drunk and taking the sisters to his home. Ami and her sister ended up among 30

other people staying with the German until they could make it to Sierra Leone’s Lungi

airport. These “alternative survival circuits” emerged out of the sisters’ basic survival

needs and the institutions of friendship they created (Sassen 265). Sassen’s (2003)

describes how survival circuits become their own institutions:

49

“As the term circuits indicates there is a degree of institutionalization in these

dynamics; that is to say they are not simply aggregates of individual actions.”

(265)

Navigating recovery is a necessity for women who endure extreme forms of torture in

times of conflict. Navigating recovery in the context of spirituality also considers other

theories of strategic coping such as social navigation. Social navigation function as tools

to confront western paradigmatic "healing" or "recovery", centralized spirituality and

masculinized modes of recovery. After reflecting on this experience, Ami‘s first tool for

recovery was silence and forgetting,

“Mom wanted us to keep talking about. Too frustrating to talk about. Too much

had gone on. I put it back and forgot about it. People say it is better to let it out.

But let out what? You don’t understand. It was hard to talk about it before. I

didn’t’ talk about it for years. I didn’t want to go into details because it was too

much. “Don’t ask, ‘Am I dealing with this?’, you just want to make it by day.”

Upon returning to the United States, Ami was faced with discussing what she had

experienced and explained that, “The little things reopened old wounds”. Ami recalled

attending a Sierra Leonean event in the United States and hearing a firecracker like sound

and everyone started to run and hide behind cars. She says jokingly, that was how you

could tell who lived in through the war and who didn’t. But still there was her own

personal recovery that she needed to work through. Ami’s recognition of spirituality grew

after she processed the events,

50

“You don’t question it, you don’t. Especially if you came out alive, you don’t dare

say this isn’t a God. It made complete sense in God’s way. It is just like I prayed a

lot more to be able to explain how you were feeling. I will always turn to religion;

I would just explain …Almost everyone I know we know that both part.”

Both Bintu and Ami’s story of social navigation emphasize the importance of

survival circuits during war. Yet in both of their reflection on how they survived they

immediately acknowledged their “God” as a primary source of survival. Their

transformation occurred when they had an opportunity to safely and peacefully process

their experience and they pathway toward healing. This form of recovery is not atypical,

but the tools that are gendered and challenging ways women access the power of

spirituality.

Personal Recovery for Collective Power

Women's deference to a spiritual and religious belief system as a mechanism

toward recovery speaks to women's conviction to transform self and society while

offsetting power binaries. Using one's ability to transform is a tool of power subversion

working to challenge the African wartime norm of woman as victim, vulnerable,

wounded and weak. Psychologist Judith Herman's (1992) feminist theoretical framework

analyzes trauma among women and identifies ownership as a key factor in recovery

within the framework power imbalances,

51

"The first principle of recovery is the empowerment of the survivor. She must be

the author and arbiter of her own recovery. Others may offer advice, support

assistance, affection and care but not cure." (133)

Herman's emphasis on power is a reaction to the traditional Western based client-

therapist relationship which typically appoints the therapist as an expert on the clients

life. An equitable comparison can be made between Herman's theory of empowerment to

the recovery of Sierra Leonean women who ground their emotional health in a spiritual

relationship. For women who adopt spirituality as therapy, they have the capacity to

develop a boundless relationship with a spiritual entity. During the moments of a spiritual

connection, women have free range of communication and access to relay their feelings

to an immaterial presence or force. The interdependency between the individual and her

environment is an important element of the coping process (de Jong et al 488). The

spiritual method of coping does not pose the same dependency limitations of therapy. A

coping mechanism using spirituality is fluid and places the control in the mind of the

person seeking support. Herman advises therapists to affirm a position of "solidarity"

with patients (134). This solidarity demonstrates a fundamental understanding of the

injustice and trauma survivors experienced. Like the client-therapist relationship,

traumatized Sierra Leonean women often experience helplessness and mistrust and are

reluctant to disclose intimate details of their trauma. If a woman is seeking out

unconditional solidarity and an opportunity to disclose her difficult experiences, personal

spiritual relationships allow her to conceptualize an outside force to assist in a way that

sensitively considers her social reality in the healing process. By focusing on the feeling

of personal power that comes with developing an individual process towards healing,

52

women also create tools to alleviate the loneliness, sadness and detachment that arise

during post conflict rebuilding.

Blood and fictive kinships predominately shape the identity of Sierra Leone

women. These relationships consist of the born, unborn, ancestors and even after death

the actions of the living are done to accommodate requests or honor the dead (Mbiti 140).

However, African scholars with theories steeped in generalizing all African cultures as

collectivist ignore the dichotomous nature of individualism and collectivism during

traumatic recovery. Religious scholar John Mbiti discusses the interdependency between

an individual and her community,

“In traditional life, the individual does not and cannot exist alone except

corporately. He owes his existence to other people, including those of past

generations and his contemporaries. He is simply part of the whole.” (140)

What Mbiti fails to examine is the culture of collectivism that expects greater degrees of

self-sacrifice from women. Mbiti does not examine the individual in a post conflict

setting who is often socially mandated to sustain relationships. These same women then

create self development tools to remind themselves of their purpose and a connection to

the “whole”. Women’s spiritual recovery process brings to light how personal power can

develop into collective power. Spirituality functions as a regenerative force for

individual empowerment by reaffirming the individual’s faith in herself to overcome

difficult circumstances. By first developing the self, a woman can then take her strength

to catalyze others in similar situations. Individualistic recovery is not limited to a

western theoretical psychological outlook. Though Sierra Leonean culture has collectivist

53

attributes, a woman’s awareness of her need to initiate the self-healing process

reformulates how individualism is defined in a post-conflict setting. The power

generated from cultivating a personal spiritual practice during wartime is reflected in

women’s frequent reference to prayer. Sia, a 56 year old educated mother and currently

living in the United States working as a refugee counselor names prayer as a critical

component to survival,

“You can’t go through war and you don’t pray. No Way! There is no way you can

survive that. Cause only it’s God”.

For Christian and Muslim Sierra Leonean women, prayer is an individual and intimate

relationship that helps to sustain hope and maintain faith in an external protective force.

Sia says growing up as a Christian she was taught that spirituality was ultimately all that

you could depend on,

“I am an Anglican; I have been a Christian my entire life. My father was a pastor.

I grew up in a Christian home. All of my relatives are Christians, so that is what I

believe in. My parents, in fact my mother, would always say to me I don't have

anything to give to you except God.”

Sia works for a large international organization describes her experiences as a peace

advocate and leader when the war entered into Sierra Leone. While dealing with her own

personal and political struggles, she became involved in community efforts ultimately

using her home as a primary contact for women, political organizations, international aid

and even rebels who wanted to contact the organization. She helped organize a peace

54

event which carried coffins through the streets to symbolize the volume of death and

destruction caused by the rebels,

“We went to different funeral homes and asked them if we could use some of their

caskets. We draped a truck black. We wanted to show the world, what the rebels

have done to the people in the country. I remember when March was passing

through Shaka Stevens street and there were some women at the Central Bank

building, just the caskets alone. Some of them were from upcountry and they had

destroyed relatives and friends... so they just cried. I went home my telephone just

wouldn't just stop ringing. Cause they kept asking who is the organizer. .. I told

them it was me”.

Prior to Sia’s involvement with the peace march, she was imprisoned for her

association with a political party. Sia lived a comfortable and upper class lifestyle in

Sierra Leone. Sia operated on both sides of the power systems but was subjected to the

same structures her involvement helped support,

“Prison happened after the peace march. I don’t want to talk about it.

Because every time I start thinking about it I start getting emotional.

Because I remember I walked into the precinct. They stripped me naked. I

was only given two blankets. I had to sleep on the floor. It was horrible.

Arrested and put in prison for reasons best known to man. I don’t know, I

wish they could tell me why I was arrested and put in prison. I don’t know

why they had to go to my house and take my vehicles and all of those

55

things. When I was in prison, I read the bible from the first page to the

last”

Sia’s experience from solitude in prison to mobilizing a community effort is indicative of

personal transformational experience that helped her to access personal power. This

power ultimately helped Sia to recognize areas where she could use her resurgence of

power. From the prisons to the peace march, Sia maintains that her spiritual practice was

an essential aspect of her capacity to deal with living through war. Extracting the

spirituality discourse and examining recovery techniques requires a feminist evaluation

and feminist re-definition of the term “cope” and “heal”. “Coping” and “Healing” as it is

defined by western psychology does not always translate to the experiences of Sierra

Leonean women. The course Sia is on towards healing does not offer any promises or a

clear resolution,

“Healing is a process. It is really difficult. I am not sure whether there is

any one that you will forget but I am not sure whether you will be healed

throughout. I am not sure. I don’t think so cause even me. They are times

when I sit down and ask myself, what am I doing here? For someone to

say, you are going to be healed. I am not sure...”

Sia’s self-reflective outlook on healing articulates the greater uncertainty in Sierra

Leone’s overall post conflict transformation. Her words also speak to an unspoken

powerlessness that no one can predict the collective outcome despite their personal

efforts. Most recently, the subtle and overt reminders jar the sense of stability in the

outwardly recovered nation. The most recent reports out of Sierra Leone tell of violations

56

against women during a recent political clash in the capital city of Freetown. Months

later, three men were convicted in a Special Court for their participation in crimes during

the 1991-2001 Civil War. Between the violations and the convictions, each woman is

grappling with ways to best use her personal power and move the collective forward

toward long term recovery.

Conclusion

The process of recovery is facilitated by social norms that compel women to

habitually address the emotional and psychological needs of others. Recovery includes a

spiritual relationship that empowers, comforts and fuels women as they navigate the

terrain of post conflict rebuilding. Most importantly, the spiritual relationship between

trauma and recovery leads to individual and social transformation. At the root of women's

strength lies a spiritual oasis that women collectively define as a crucial component for

their participation in national healing.

The term "transformation" is as a vital piece in African women's empowerment,

liberation and equality. Philomina E. Okeke (1997) called the new era of African

women's participation the "Age of Transformation" seeking to hear the voices of

indigenous African women and a push to activists and scholars to move beyond topics

such as post-colonial rhetoric. Okeke notes that the "old problems are still with us" but

asks African(ist) scholars to develop solutions that reflect the realities of African women.

My analysis bridges the gap between realities and solutions asking if the answers to real

problems are in the process of being solved by marginalized African women themselves.

African women who exist on the margins either due to ethnicity, national origin, class or

57

gender are gradually being pulled to the center of social change narratives within

academia and the development industry. As economic and humanitarian efforts fail,

African women are (re)creating solutions with the intention to sustain and improve their

lives. Rural and urban women face the realities that compromise their quality of life

while waiting in limbo for changes in structural adjustment programs or for international

development to take root (Modupe-Kolawole 195). Their hope for an external rescue

mission is often kept afloat by their internal will to sustain long enough to survive Yet,

women navigate the issues of food production, land ownership, reproductive health with

resourcefulness and flexibility. The process of transformation starts from within and in

the case of Sierra Leone within a historical and cultural context of gendered spirituality

(Modupe-Kolowole 199).

In communities where women disproportionately bear the burden of emotional

care for the sick, nurturing children or caring for the elderly, the society's gendered

expectations require that women continue to be mentally and emotionally stable to

function in the role as caregivers. The burden of care, the power imbalance between

genders and religions entrenched in patriarchy indicate that women are often forced to

develop secret, private and alternative strategies for emotional self-sustenance.

Spirituality and the modes through which women choose to implement it, commonly

serve as a backdrop for women to explore their deep emotional and psychological needs.

Cultural theorist Chandra Mohanty's advice to feminists is to avoid monolithic

images of "third world" women. This has overtly influenced this discussion about Sierra

Leone women's "complex relationships between their historical materiality on the level of

58

specific oppressions and political choices… and their general representations on the other

(37)." Mohanty's argument for Western feminists to apply a "careful historically specific

generalizations responsive to complex realities" is noteworthy for the case of Sierra

Leone considering the countries' periods of stability, social unrest, shifts in emigration,

and the socio-political impact of trade on its natural resources. But, aside from being

targets of sexual brutality, spirituality as a coping and recovery tool is a vital collective

tool that links women's experiences with the civil war in Sierra Leone.

Women's spiritual activity in a post-war environment is as a representation of

women's capacity to replenish the emotional reserve in order to offer care and

compassion. During a crisis, women's self-care is stretched thin in their attempts to

address the basic survival needs of others. Throughout the civil war in Sierra Leone,

women experienced traumatically high levels of material loss in women's lives. Losing

family member, one's home, land and even one's body has had a devastating impact on a

women's sense of wellness. The transition from material loss to immaterial self-care

women evokes an elusive spiritual building block toward the healing process. Spirituality

and religion present a source of comfort that cannot be overlooked or lumped together

with the narrative of third world indigenous resilience.

[i] Okeke, P. E. (1997). African women in the age of transformation: Voices from the continent. Issue: A Journal of Opinion, 25(2, African Women in the Age of Transformation: Women's Voices from the Continent), 5-7. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1166735

59

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