Emily's words:
I was born in 1995 during the war of Sierra Leone and I was given the name Fatmata Kamara. When I was little, I had no idea about the war. I was so happy living in the village of Tombo with my family. Every night when the moon was shinning, my friends and I would take a drum and go to the big wide open field. We’d play, goof around, dance and sing. Every now and then we would go fishing with our bare hands and swim until it was time for dinner. My mom always made my favorite dish, cassava leaf. I remember my mama would always give me piggy back rides and I loved her so much.
Then came the rebels. We ran away so many times. One day I was in my aunt’s home playing with my cousins when my aunt came in yelling for us to run. I was in a daze and I had no idea what was going on. The next thing I can remember is we were being rushed out of our home into the jungle. As we were running, I heard the gun shots behind us and then I knew the rebels were coming closer. We hid in the jungle behind some brush in the middle of a swamp. I remember holding my breath under the muddy water as the rebels passed by. After a few days, we went back to our village and found everything to be burned down and gone. The war got really bad after that and my parents sent us to live with our grandmother. So my older sister, my older brother and I took a boat to an island called Shenge to stay with my grandmother.
When the war was over in 2002, I was 7 years old and I started to get really sick.
My parents had 12 children and 9 of them had already died.
They thought I was going to die too and they couldn’t take care of me. That was when my parents made the decision to give me up to save me…I moved to an orphanage when I was 8 years old.
Emily holding Lucy during one of her return visits to Sierra Leone!
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