So I am in the middle of working on a documentary that is inciting a serious existential crisis!! What’s new, I guess?

The film is actually an assignment for a class I am taking, but it has become so much more than just a school project. As I mentioned before, I have been volunteering (or maybe, just hanging out is more accurate) at the Liberian Refugee Camp right outside of Accra. During my days there, I befriended a few former child soldiers that live there and run a farm way out in the backwoods of the camp. They are really wonderful people although they have been completely isolated by the camp and are sort of socially pressured back into the bush where they say they feel the most comfortable. My group decided to make our film about them back in February, but it wasn’t until the last few weeks that we seemed to be in over our heads.

While this was intended to be a pretty uncomplicated student film, in the last three weeks, the situation on the camp was heated up considerably when the refugees staged a protest against the UNHCR (the division of the UN that is responsible for caring for refugees) demanding more money to be able to go back to Liberia. Their demands come at a vital time because after 18 year of existence, the camp is being closed down. The refugees either have the opportunity to integrate into Ghanaian society or go back home. The UNHCR offered them $100 each to be able to go back to Liberia, if that is what they chose to do.

$100. Are they serious? How could you expect to be able to restart your entire life on that amount of money when a half bag of rice costs $20. And many of these people don’t have any idea if their relatives are still alive. Not to mention the fact that it is doubtful that the Liberian economy is capable of accommodating many thousands of refugees. This protest must have really offended the Ghanaian government because the amount of international press coverage it got insinuated that the Ghanaians in some way were mistreating the refugees. Why else would they so adamantly refuse to just settle in Ghana…

It offended them to the extent that the national police came in and arrested many of the protesters on false charges starting riots, taking their clothes of in some tribal ritual, etc. Having been there for the protests myself, I know that these charges were false. But many people were arrested and deported back to Liberia (with nothing) as a result.

For the former child soldiers, this protest really endangered them because; knowing that there are ex-combatants living on the camp, the Minister of the Interior declared them a national threat to security. His declaration assumed that they, being ‘rebels’ were planning some movement against the government. As a result of all this tension, international volunteers have been banned from the camp for fear that we are investigators of some sort. So how are we supposed to make a film about people being targeted by the government when we are barred from even getting near them?

Well we sneak on the camp, that’s how. So every time we go there, with our cameras and boom mics! (how conspicuous!), it’s a mad dash off the bus through a side entrance. Also, because many of the former child soldiers are really concerned about their safety, they are worried that their identities will be revealed in our film. The fact that they even agreed to participate is a great indication of just how much they trust us. So we have such a heavy duty of protecting them because if the film were to get in the wrong hands, they could be in real danger.

Besides having to be very sneaky to get this film done, I am just so struck with sadness the more I come to understand the situation that the people I have come to know as friends are in. I had always known that they were former child soldiers, but I had never heard their stories in such detail. What I found out was just really disturbing.

Everyone’s story was so incredibly different. Some of the guys had seen their parents killed right in front of them and were then kidnapped and forced to fight. Some being as young as 12 years old at the time. They were then beaten and force fed drugs. They were forced to carry out extremely violent orders under the threat that if they didn’t cooperate, they would be killed themselves. Talk about kill or be killed. Other people volunteered themselves to fight because the rebels were the only people with access to food, and their families would otherwise starve. In these cases, it was like they were forced to cooperate with the enemy as a means of survival.

And some of the specific stories. My god. One of the guys was telling me about how he had to witness rebels kill a pregnant women and cut up her stomach, taking bets on whether the child would be a boy or a girl. And what was he supposed to say in that situation? Nothing,

And what is more disturbing is that I don’t really know the truth in terms of to what extent these guys were involved in the violence. There is so much that I could never understand and so many pieces of the story that I am not hearing. But all I can do is accept the truth that they have created for themselves. Because if that is how they get by, than it’s good enough. Right?

But wait, documentaries are supposed to be about exposing the truth. But what if the truth is more of an acceptance of half-truth? I really don’t like this process because honestly, I feel like I am manipulating these people’s life stories to fit my own understanding of the ‘truth’ when in reality I don’t even understand the half of it.

And I am so sad for them. While everyone else in the camp is making arrangements to go home, they are forced to keep running away from home, many of them are afraid that if they go back, other Liberians will seek revenge on them for having killed relatives. Or even worse, that they will be convicted of their crimes by a government that may hold it against them that they essentially ran away. They frequently have little education because they haven’t been able to afford it, have no jobs because nobody will hire former child soldiers and have little sympathy as many people don’t care that they were just children when they committed such violence. And not to mention the sad reality that former child soldiers are too frequently recruited to fight as mercenaries in other countries’ civil wars. And let’s consider how many countries around us are engaged in such conflicts. So what are they supposed to do when all many of them know how to do is fight?

Besides just being confused about how I am supposed to portray their situation through such a seemingly shallow medium as film, I am worried because I care about these people. They aren’t just characters or ideas. And yet I feel so helpless because I just don’t know how I could possibly help them. Any suggestions?