You can learn about the IRC’s work in the Darfur region and see more photos and video here.

The Indian-built jeep struggles to negotiate the steep and muddy path leading to the village of Dhuseni in eastern Nepal. The track winds though a landscape of majestic hills and terraces lined with tea, the major crop here. Only a few kilometres away, across the border with India, lie the famous tea plantations of Darjeeling. We pass women in colourful saris carrying large baskets with tea leaves across rickety bamboo bridges straddling fast-flowing streams.
 
But the beautiful landscape sits in stark contrast to the realities of life here. Nepal, one of the world’s poorest countries, is only slowly recovering from the civil war which rocked this small Himalayan nation for ten years. Like many other rural parts of country, this area was a hotbed for the communist insurgency that pitted Maoist guerrillas against the Nepalese army.
 
Many of those who fought on both sides were under the age of 18 and after the peace accords, signed in late 2006, the International Rescue Committee came here to support the former child combatants as they began their difficult transition to civilian life. Because most of them had been unable to attend school or get a job, the IRC launched programs here and in other parts of Nepal to provide the former child soldiers with schooling or vocational training.
 
“This is especially important now, since many of them risk being re-recruited into the Maoist army,” says the IRC’s field manager Chandra Nath Sapkota, as our vehicle slowly makes its way higher into the hills. “They also risk being recruited for underpaid and dangerous work in the Gulf states, the Middle East or Southeast Asia.”
 
Chandra says that children served not only as fighters but also as porters, messengers and spies or took part in cultural and indoctrination programmes. They often joined the rebel movement - sometimes as young as nine years old - initially as entertainers and political workers, but later ended up in its armed wing.
 
Although the villagers in Dhuseni have been understanding about the plight of the former child soldiers, some communities have been less welcoming. Chandra tells me that the IRC supports youth groups that perform street plays explaining how many children were pressured or lured into the armed groups. And asking communities to give them a chance to reintegrate.
 
“Many of the former child combatants suffer from trauma and stress and require psychosocial support,” Chandra says. “The message of the street plays is that the children are victims of the war and that the communities must help them get back to normal again.”
 
We pull up in front of Dhuseni’s only store, a small shack selling mainly instant noodles and wash detergent, and a group of villagers quickly gather around the vehicle. The surrounding hills are dotted with women picking tea and goats graze freely in the shrubs. The Maoist party flag, emblazoned with a hammer and sickle, flaps on a bamboo pole marking the village entrance. There are still a lot of Maoist supporters here, according to the store’s owner, Rakesh Basnet.
 
“Others are just too afraid to say that they don’t agree with their politics or methods,” he adds.I sit down with 19-year-old Padam on the lawn outside the village school. He tells me that he joined the Maoists in 2003 when he was only 14 years old.
 
“I was being harassed by the police a lot because they suspected us of sympathising with the Maoists,” he said. “So in the end I thought that I might as well join them.”
 
“It was very hard. We fought a lot but I was brave. One time we were attacking a group of army soldiers over there,” he said, pointing at one of the surrounding hills. “Someone threw a grenade and I got shrapnel in my face. My left eye was destroyed.”
 
Like many other in the Maoist army, Padam stayed with his family throughout the conflict.
 
“When we came down from the mountains after a raid or a patrol, we would send our sentries out first, in civilian clothes. They were checking that the police or the army wasn’t around,” Padam says. “Then we would eat and sleep in our homes.”
 
Store owner Rakesh Basnet shakes his head when I ask him what life was like here during the war.
 
“There was so much fighting,” he says. “One time, a couple of years ago, 15 rebels and two government soldiers died in a clash here.”
 
“The guerrillas forced us to give them transport, lodging and food,” he continues. “They still control a lot of things here. Whenever they have a political rally we are forced to attend, even if we are busy working.”
 
Padam and a dozen other former child soldiers have just graduated from an IRC course in electrical wiring. They are among 1,400 former child soldiers and other vulnerable children across Nepal that the IRC is helping to go back to school or enrol in vocational training programs.
 
“We are confident that most of them will be able to find work, because the government has promised to soon provide electricity to this and other surrounding villages,” says Rabindra Gyawali, the IRC’s child protection officer here. “All the houses in this area need to be wired and hooked up to the main lines.”
 
Padam is positive about his future as a civilian. He shows me his new tool kit and tells me that the training has given him more confidence.
 
“I missed most of my schooling so I was very happy to learn a trade,” he says. “I have swapped my rifle for tools.”

UPDATE: MSNBC is now streaming the story here.

Part 8 - Kailahun, Sierra Leone  It’s nearly showtime again.  Time for the women and girls to review their photos and pick two—just two apiece—to present to their community at a final exhibition.  Choosing is never easy.  Think about it.  These women rarely if ever get to decide anything.   And they’ve got a lot to choose from.  Altogether 17,792 photos to be exact.  How fast could you do it?  I know they’ll need a lot of patience and support.

The photographers of the Women’s Action Group of Pendembu.  That’s Christiana Gbondo (Chris G.) on the left and Christiana Massaquoi (Auntie Chris) in red on the right. Photo: Ann Jones

Trouble is, I can’t get out of bed.   One by one my African colleagues stick their heads around the doorframe, lift the mosquito net to peer at me, and say: “Malaria.” They’re used to it—this scourge that kills more Africans each year than does that other plague HIV/AIDS.  I’ve seen my colleagues break into a drenching sweat, pop a couple of pills, and carry on working.  Not me.  I’m flattened.  If malaria attacked Americans at home, the US would launch another “war” against it.  But to our shame, we spend our wealth on other wars.
 
Chris G. perches on the bed, notebook in hand, for some quick computer instruction.  Then she and Auntie Chris set off for Pendembu to help the photographers choose their photos and make plans for the show.   IRC’s Dr. Jeff Kambale Mathe, a physician from the Democratic Republic of Congo, drives four hours over rough roads, carrying a plastic bag full of pills, to save my neck.  Thanks to him, I get up again in time to print the chosen photos and hang the shows.

Our eager girl-photographers occupy the front row in the packed assembly hall of the
Girls’ Primary School—ready to begin the show. Photo: Ann Jones

Then, as we saw in Cote d’Ivoire, what happens next depends largely upon the community leadership.  In Pendembu, the progressive chief tells a large crowd gathered in the Court Barrie about the country’s new gender laws that raise the legal status of women.   He goes beyond the new laws, which don’t recognize rape in marriage, to admonish men: “Do not force yourselves upon your wives.  That is rape, even if the law does not say so.”   Then he hands off to his wife, Auntie Lucy, the chairlady of the Women’s Action Group.  She wears a fabulous hat for the occasion. The chief and his wife are the ultimate power couple, bravely hauling their ruined village into a new century.  Aunty Lucy summons the women photographers one by one to present their photographs, and then she holds forth herself, making sure that no one misses the point or the message of gender equality.

Gender Club advisor Mr. Shariff holds the megaphone and listens attentively as 12-year-old Isata Amadu presents a photograph she took of him.  Isata is about to bring down the house. Photo: Ann Jones

Two days later at the exhibition in Kailahun town another chief rises angrily to warn the audience, “You must not speak of female genital mutilation.  It is our tradition.”  The audience applauds.  Even women of the Women’s Action Group applaud.   The Global Crescendo team hasn’t spoken a word about FGM; we leave it to women participants to talk about what they will.  But since the chief has raised the issue, Amie Kandeh, the GBV country manager, and Navanita Bhattacharya, the regional GBV technical advisor, try gently to respond.  A prominent woman leader shouts to drown them out.  The chief stalks out of the meeting.  Later, when Amie and others go to talk with him, he says he knows that FGM is wrong and that it must be stopped—but gradually.  How will he justify to himself, I wonder, the hundreds or thousands of girls who will be mutilated, their lives irreparably wounded, while he lets the practice he knows to be “bad” phase out?  Surely the last girl mutilated, like the last soldier to die in a mistaken war, will be an enduring rebuke.  Yet African “tradition,” here as in Cote d’Ivoire, rests on the courage or backwardness of men like these chiefs.

The photographers of the Women’s Action Group of Kailahun. 
Christiana Massaquoi is on the right in the front row. Photo: Ann Jones

The girls’ show comes last, before a packed house in the assembly hall of the Girls’ Primary School.  Parents attend, all dressed up, and teachers from other schools.  The Pendembu chief sends a representative, as does the District Office of Education, and the Family Services Unit of the police—a uniformed policewoman who delivers a rousing diatribe against rape and sexual exploitation.

Then it is the girls’ turn.  One by one they speak about their photos, displayed on the blackboard, while their Gender Club advisor Mr. Shariff holds the megaphone that carries their reedy voices to the corners of the big room.  They speak of early pregnancy and sexual exploitation.  They speak of the importance of girls’ education.   Then 12-year-old Isata Amadu connects the dots.  Pointing to a photo of Mr. Shariff, she says:  “He gives us information to help us in our lives.   I took his picture because all teachers should follow the example of Mr. Shariff—and they should desist from impregnating schoolgirls.”

Parents gasp.  One mother shrieks.  The room buzzes.  The headmistress puts her head in her hands.  Isata returns to her seat while the other girl photographers cheer and throw her high fives.  Shy little Isata has voiced the unspeakable truth that everybody knows.  She speaks for every girl in the room.  She speaks for every girl who wants to get an education, every girl who wants to contribute to her community, every girl who wants to be all she can be. Isata herself wants to be a teacher.

Girl power: the photographers of the R.C. Girls’ Primary School Gender Club on Exhibition day. 
Christiana Massaquoi is on the left, Christiana Gbondo on the right, and Isata Amadu
is third from the left in the front row. Photo: Ann Jones 

Later all the schoolgirls sit under the trees in the yard, sipping Kool-Aid—provided especially for the occasion.  It’s a Kool-Aid kind of day.  Something has happened.  Something different and special.

That’s what this Global Crescendo project is all about: Women’s Voices from Conflict Zones.  Girls voices too.

Part 7 - Kailahun, Sierra Leone The girls are way cool.  I ask each one in turn to come sit with me at the computer.  Musu is first.  I put her memory card in the card reader, and soon her photos are flashing fast on the computer screen, visible only to Musu and to me. Auntie Chris and Chris G. have been continuing the discussion with the other girls, but now the room is silent.  I look up to find all the girls gazing intently at Musu who is gazing at the screen.  She has shot 330 photos; she and I see every one of them.  There are a lot  of shots of her pals—girls at school making faces at the camera or peeing in the bush—and some interesting ones snapped in the village.  All the while Musu’s face is a perfect mask.  What is she thinking, this pert little girl, seeing pictures of her own making?  I can’t tell.To me this is strange and disappointing.  I’m also working with two groups of women photographers, one here in Pendembu and another in Kailahun town.  There are twelve women in each group, ranging in age from 20 to 55.  I’ve already shown the women in both groups their first photos, and their reactions were completely different from those of this small enigmatic girl, Musu, who now rises, puts her memory card in her pocket, and saunters back to her seat.  Her sister Mattu comes  next with 176 photos, then Bintu with 431, and later Comfort with 542.  It seems to me you have to enjoy snapping to do it 542 times in a single week, but Comfort is just as enigmatic as the rest.

Girls are smart.  They size up their teachers, and they help one another. Mattu Koroma, age 11

The women, on the other hand, had skyrocketed out of control.  At the Pendembu meeting, Habibatu shook her fist and shouted “Yes!” at every photo.  Fatmata grinned and said “Fine!” 310 times.  At the Kailahun meeting, Mamie Sampha put her arm around me as I downloaded her photos, and as each one of her 248 images flashed by, she squeezed me tighter and tighter and tighter.  I knew the Kailahun women were serious and working hard because I live in Kailahun and I often meet them in the street, snapping like mad.  Sometimes Theresa or Mariama or Aminata shows up at the IRC guesthouse, where Auntie Chris and I live, at 7:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning, needing a battery change.  But their excitement at seeing their photos is off the charts.  As Sattu’s images flashed by, she shouted “Fine!” to each one, and for emphasis she brought her fist down hard on my left thigh.  Sattu had 310 photos.

So that day in Pendembu, downloading images for the girls’ group, I was a wreck.  My shoulders and ribs ached from being squeezed by substantial women.  My left thigh was black and blue and the muscles ached.  My ears hurt, still reverberating with shouts of “Fine!” and other less intelligible whoops and cries.  But here came these little girls, one by one, apparently as calm and disinterested as could be.

Girls are cool.   Gender Club girls learn about sexual coercion and violence. 
Armed with information and attitude, they have a chance. Photo: Jenifer Manso, age 10

I had to ask Auntie Chris, “Can you tell how they feel?”

“They are happy,” she said.  “Can’t you see?” 

“No,” I said.  “I can’t see how they feel.”  What is it about their lives, I wondered, that makes them have to hide a feeling as simple as joy?

But the older girls had a harder time containing themselves, and Lilian, the last to come forward, broke into a big smile.  “I think my photos are very fine,” she said.

Gratefully I slapped her hand.  “Yes, Lilian,” I said, “Your photos are very fine.”

Girls really are way, way cool.