Freetown Part 1: Release

Samura's journey begins in Freetown, the capital of his country, Sierra Leone

By Sorious Samura

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (CNN) -- To begin our journey, we travel from the Sierra Leone capital of Freetown to Makeni, the headquarters of the rebel forces.

Makeni was once a thriving market town, but in 1998 the RUF invaded it with the help of renegade soldiers from the Sierra Leone army.

Everyone who lived here fled, and now it's the RUF's headquarters in the whole of Sierra Leone.

Until recently anyone who set foot in rebel country did so only with RUF permission -- or at their own risk. But now that the United Nations is here, it's supposed to be safe.

Even with the peace process, though, people are frightened to travel the roads here. Everyone's still nervous because of the RUF's occasional raids and ambushes.

At RUF headquarters we will see if we can persuade some of the commanders to release three children to me.

1,000 and counting

SPECIAL REPORT Follow Sorious Samura's Return to Freetown:  • Introduction  • Part 1: Release  • Part 2: Reunion  • Part 3: Beginnings  • Part 4: Memories  • Part 5: Doubts  • Part 6: Hopes    EXTRA INFORMATION Read Samura's account of his meeting with a rebel leader  in CNN Traveller  magazine   IN-DEPTH • Cry Freetown  • Exodus from Africa    RELATED SITE Sorious Samura's Africa

We have been sent to Makeni by Caritas, the agency responsible for getting abducted children back to their families, to meet Muckson Sesay.

Muckson is a very impressive man -- he's one of my heroes in Sierra Leone at the moment. He was an RUF commander, but the plight of the children got to him so he left the RUF started to pressure RUF commanders to release the children.

Since then he has been responsible for the release of over 1,000 children.

In a meeting with RUF commanders, Muckson successfully negotiates the release of three children.

"These three child combatants, two of them are boys and the other one a girl," Muckson says. "Today the commander has agreed to release them to us."

Rebel home

We head to one of the many houses on the outskirts of Makeni where groups of rebels live together. Here we will pick up two of the three children: two boys who live in the house, both now 18.

Everyone who lives in the house is under the control of one commander. The boys were abducted to be his soldiers, and the women were abducted to become his wives and the children's mothers.

I'm nervous now. How will we get on with these kids -- children who have been abducted, drugged, even forced to eat raw gunpowder to make them so violent they would kill. I want to be able to understand what's happened to them.

Whatever they have done together, for the boys this has been their close family through the years of war.

They have fought together and nearly died together on more than one occasion. Now, we're taking them back home.

Captured at 15

Sasko Simba was 15 when he was captured by the RUF and forced to fight in and around Makeni.

There he met up with his father, a former government soldier who had also been captured and forced to fight for the RUF.

But his father escaped, changed sides and ended up fighting with the Sierra Leone army against the RUF -- and his son.

"What would you have done if you had come against you father in a fight?" we ask Sasko.

"I wasn't thinking about that because once they've drugged you, that's it. You don't think about nothing else," he says. "You don't remember about family, you don't remember about nothing unless after you have done it, or sometimes that is where you would be when the drugs have started leaving you, then you will just burry your head, and then you start remembering, then you feel it."

'My mother is dead'

Tamba Fengai was abducted at age 8 by the RUF when they attacked his village in the east of Sierra Leone. That was 10 years ago.

As well as taking Tamba, they took his mother and an older brother.

"Did your mother see you before you were taken away?" we ask Tamba.

"Yes, we were all captured together with my mother," he says.,

"They captured you and your mother?"

"Yes."

"Where is your mother now?"

"My mother, she is dead in Guinea. At the time they took us to their base. She kept worrying and then she died."

Slave at 7

We travelled to another part of Makeni to pick up the third child. We found her at another rebel house in the outskirts. Her name is Mariama Conteh and she is quieter than the boys -- more troubled.

Mariama was 7 when she was captured by the RUF and forced to become a domestic slave. Although she says she wants to leave with us, she seems very confused.

"Don't you want to stay with your family again?" we ask her.

"I want to stay with them."

"But you still want to return to the rebels in Makeni."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"The woman in charge had given me orders to return and not to stay with my family, even if I see them. Therefore I will return to Makeni."