KATHMANDU BABY

Drinks in East Freetown: an ex-child soldier

East Freetown is the cheapest area of the city to live in, we go for drinks at a bar there with one of Emmanuel’s relatives, Mr Kamara. 

I go for ‘star’ beer locally brewed.

There is a teenage  boy dancing violently, shouting, dancing wildly, I catch some of his repetitive shouts,

’I don’t support your government’

The  boy is dragged out of the bar by staff.  No one seems to have paid much attention. People are good at minding their own.  But I ask Mr Kamara, what  was happening with the crazed dancer,

‘ he is not correct in the head, these children were given guns and drugs by the rebels.  The UN gave them a Disarmament and disengagement programme at the end of the war.  The programme gave them a set of tools, they left them.  The boys sold the tools and now they have nothing. During the civil war many killed their families.  They can-not return to their villages where they acted so wicked. There is one psychiatrist in the entire country.’