When you spend much of your professional life witnessing violence, hardship and everyday instances of mankind's capacity for brutality, you somehow become insulated against the barbarity that surrounds you. The two of us have spent years in the some of the world's worst conflict zones, including Central and South America, the Middle East, Northern Ireland, India, Iran, Afghanistan and South Africa, among others. But it's fair to say that neither of us has ever come across scenes such as the ones we witnessed while reporting on the agony of Sierra Leone. The camp for amputees and their families sits on what effectively is a mud hilltop in the heart of Freetown, Sierra Leone's battered capital. Small fires burn all day long for cooking and for warmth.
Many children are victims of the ongoing war in Sierra Leone.
Of course, there's not enough money, equipment and time to tend to every one of the hundreds of men, women and children who are survivors of the amputations. Led by an extraordinary American volunteer named David Evans, humanitarian workers are slowly helping to make artificial arms and legs for the survivors. Evans is himself a double amputee, wounded in the Vietnam War, and he spends much of his life traveling the world to aid the handicapped injured in war. The most bewildering and excruciating detail are the teenage rebels, who make up the bulk of the fighting force called the Revolutionary United Front. They seem to have caused the current misery almost on a cruel whim.