We have come to the crossroads.
I must either leave or come with you.
- Kwesi Brew
1 START HERE
My father died shortly after we arrived in the refugee camp in Guinea after fleeing Sierra Leone.
Not every child had a family pushing them toward education. My father was a teacher. We had no choice but to take learning seriously. The camp staff offered theatre practice to take our minds away from the difficulty of daily life in a refugee camp.
→ Play soccer: go to 3 → Go to theatre: go to 2
2
My teachers used to say: your father is an intelligent man—you do not have the option to be stupid. So I chose theatre. In the refugee school it became a true refuge from the tragedy around us.
The refugee education system was supported by the International Rescue Committee. My mother’s brother, Mohamed Vandy Tongi, a highly educated man who loved poetry, introduced us to African literature and Shakespeare. Through poetry, I learned about love, hate, prejudice, and began to understand the world through language.
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3
Children love soccer. Not many children want to leave the soccer field. We could have just ended up playing with our friends, eating, going to school without applying much effort towards our studies.
Normal didn’t exist. Some paths end before they even begin.
→ Return to 1 and choose again.
4
My uncle, Joseph Tolno, who lived in Freetown, wanted me to go there and enroll in high school. I left the refugee camp in 1998. The morning I was meant to begin at the Sierra Leone Grammar School—January 6, 1999—the rebels entered Freetown and turned the city to Armageddon. Only months later was I able to start school.
My survival there felt miraculous. My uncle paid my fees, but for many days, I did not know where food would come from. At lunch, I went to the library so my classmates would not realize I could not afford to buy food. They assumed I was a nerd who loved reading. By the time lessons came to a textbook, I had often read it twice.
Years later, I encountered Viktor Frankl’s concept of logotherapy, particularly the idea that a person with a “why” can survive almost any “how”. I realized that was what had sustained me. I had made education my “why”.
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5
After three years, I obtained a scholarship to complete high school at the Red Cross Nordic United World College in Norway. There was no Norwegian consulate in Freetown. To obtain a visa, I had to travel to the Ivory Coast. My uncle had almost nothing. He sold a mobile phone someone had given him and handed me forty dollars.
“This is all I had.”
I boarded a plane to Abidjan booked by the program, with no contacts and forty dollars in my pocket. When I arrived at the airport in Abidjan, a Nigerian man approached and began listing hotels.
→ Even though he believes you are a rich man, talk to him: go to 6 → Walk away and find your own way: go to 7
6
After eliminating every option I could not afford, he took me to the cheapest guesthouse. He spoke Pidgin English—close enough to the Krio we speak in Sierra Leone that we could understand each other—and that familiarity made him willing to help me even though he never fully believed my story. He found me a reasonable room and, knowing the city, guided me to the consulate by the cheapest transport. At one point during the night he was convinced I had hidden money and even sent prostitutes to test me.
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7
I had nowhere to stay, and none of the guesthouses would take me in for the money I had. I spent a day and a night on the streets trying to reach the Norwegian Consulate.
When I arrived, I realized I had lost my papers. The woman at the Consulate did not believe me and offered no help. I tried to contact the school, but time ran out as my second flight approached. Without a visa, I could not fly. I was stranded and homeless in Abidjan for many weeks before the Red Cross Nordic United World College was able to pay for my return to Freetown.
8
At the consulate, a woman told me to return the following week for my visa. I explained that I only had today. After seeing that school had already begun, she told me to return that afternoon, and she issued the visa.
You have the visa. You have $40. You still need to reach Dakar and stay there for one night before your flight to Norway.
Take your decision quietly and continue reading:
→ Give $20 to the Nigerian man, much less than he was expecting.
→ Give him everything after he threatens you.
At the Dakar airport I met a group of boys who assumed I was looking for a hotel. When I told them I had no money, one eventually invited me to stay with their family. They resided in a compound with traditional huts constructed in a circle. They believed I probably had something hidden away.
→ If you have money in your pocket now, go to 11A. → If you don't, go to 11B.
11A
Before my flight, I gave them my last $20. Most were furious, but the older man among them told them that if I had more money, I would already have handed it over. He believed me. That is how I boarded the plane to Brussels.
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11B
They could not believe I was traveling without any money. Upset, they searched my belongings and kept me under close watch. I missed my flight to Brussels while being detained. I was eventually released. With no money, no place to stay, and no way to contact the school or return home, I spent weeks on the streets of Dakar until kind strangers helped me return to Freetown. By then, the school had tried to reach me, but it was too late. Devastated, I lost hope for months and had no motivation to do anything.
→ Continue to 14
12
The year I arrived in Norway, Sierra Leone was ranked among the hardest places on earth to live, while Norway stood near the top. The transition felt like moving from hell to heaven. For the first time, food and peace were not daily uncertainties.
The contrast changed me. I began to imagine dedicating my life to helping people from places like the one I had left behind. Yet I carried deep trauma. Loud sounds brought me back to the war. I slept badly and spoke little.
→ Trust your friends: go to 13 → Keep the trauma in. Do not speak: go to 14
13
Eventually, I realized silence was not sustainable. I trusted my friends with my story, and storytelling became a way of building allies. If people were going to help, they needed to understand what drove me. That led to the creation of Save the Future Generation (SAFUGE), a student organization to raise money for scholarships and relief in Sierra Leone. It still exists today.
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14
I kept my trauma inside, internalizing it as many Sierra Leoneans do. Over time, it began to manifest on its own, and I lost control of it. I never finished my education—a sick person cannot help others heal. It was a disappointment when I returned. I felt ashamed of myself for wasting a great opportunity. Later, I found an administrative job, but in the evenings I often drank alone, struggling with my own mind.
15
After Norway, I received another scholarship, this time to a college in upstate New York. I had imagined becoming an actor and playwright. My theatre teacher, Peter Wilson, encouraged that dream.
In the United States, I discovered that theatre demanded complete devotion. I admired it, but I wanted a versatile college life and also needed time to continue fundraising to help my country. Law began to attract me for the same reason theatre had: performance, persuasion, and narrative.
→ Become an actor: go to 16 → Turn towards law: go to 17
16
I became a superstar, and stardom gave me reach and resources. I could not live without helping the people of my country—so I created a foundation and funded the work from a distance, delegating to others. It was difficult to control where the money went because I didn’t have enough time to check in myself. We had some scandals around people embezzling money. I wish I knew better how to help.
17
I studied International Affairs with a minor in Law and Society. I had started studying Philosophy in Norway, which remained important to me, but I decided it was something I could continue outside the classroom.
In the United States, I created the Jeneba Project to provide educational opportunities, especially for girls in Sierra Leone. The organization now runs a high school for girls.
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18
My life split in two: one part tied to war-torn Sierra Leone and its needs, the other immersed in the privileges and opportunities of America. One moment I was remembering places without electricity, water or food; the next, I was in Manhattan, with the parents of a friend living in extreme luxury.
→ Let the American life take over: go to 19 → Hold the duality. Stay bound to Sierra Leone: go to 20
19
I tried to enjoy my new freedom and leave the past behind, but deep down, I was in constant agony. I became distant from my friends and sometimes lashed out at my partner for no reason. The problem was not them. It was the life I was living and my inability to face it.
My agony turned into passivity as I continued to be tormented by the ghosts of war. As I withdrew, my relationships deteriorated, leaving me isolated. My work as a lawyer became a facade. I went home only to numb myself.
20
I got by with a little help from my friends. Mentors, donors, and collaborators repeatedly appeared when I needed them. More than my education or effort alone, they carried me forward. My friends truly cared about me and supported my efforts to help Sierra Leone rebuild.
→ Imagine the path if those friends had never appeared: go to 21
→ Carry on, carried by them: go to 22
21
The mentors and friends were absent—no Michael Marx, no Kate Graney, no Peter Brock, no Liat Krawczyk. There were no shoulders to lean on. I tried to build everything alone. Progress was slow, and many ideas remained unrealized for years, sometimes fading before they could take shape. Without quiet allies or people willing to take a leap of faith with me, my work in Sierra Leone was fragmented and uncertain, dependent only on what I could personally sustain—which is not much. I still try my best, but I can only reach a limited circle.
22
My work with civil war victims and survivors began with a visit home during one of my summer breaks from college. I saw war victims begging in the streets while much of society tried to move on. The distance between suffering and public memory struck me.
What do you do with this situation?
Do you start documenting without a clear aim → Continue to 23
Do you build another organization directly? → Continue to 24
23
Back in the United States, I created the Memory Project with the help of Liat Krawczyk to record the stories of victims and survivors and bring them into public discussion. Through that work, I discovered that many recommended reparation mechanisms had never been implemented. Advocacy became unavoidable.
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24
There were mass graves across Sierra Leone to be identified, mapped, and protected. The civil war and its transitional justice processes documented, a younger generation educated. It was difficult to convey that victims who bear the brunt of our civil war were begging in the streets, ignored by their fellow Sierra Leoneans.
All I had were my words. Funders demanded proof I could not yet provide, and I nearly exhausted myself trying to gain support. At times, I lost faith that such urgent work would be funded. Over time, I built credibility, but it would have been far easier with tangible material. I still feel the drain of that time.
25
I later attended law school in Vermont to understand International Law, the transitional justice mechanisms created after the war, including the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. I knew I wanted to contribute to that process.
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26
After law school, I returned to Sierra Leone and founded the Center for Memory and Reparations with broad support and energy. We documented mass graves, helped amplify the voices of victims advocating for reparation, called for the government to proclaim a remembrance day, taught civil war history, and eventually created the Sierra Leone Civil War Museum.
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We collected these stories. We need to make people hear them. The goal is to prevent future atrocities through memory, remembrance, and community peace-building work.
But when one goes into a village and meets someone who has been through enormous suffering, and she tells her story—I’d have the problem of saying: oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. Over the years, I’ve reflected that that is not enough. It’s nice to say I'm so sorry that happened to you. But is that sufficient? That’s the question I'm trying to answer. Now it is yours to answer.
→ Your turn.
//
- Cover Image
Portrait: Joseph Ben Kaifala
