Bush Wives and Girl Soldiers

Women's lives through war and peace in Sierra Leone

Bibliographic Data

ID6019640
AuthorsMeredeth Turshen (0000-0001-7116-3606, Rutgers Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume110
Issue438
Pages149-150
Publication date2011-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAfrican Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0001-9909 • E-ISSN: 1468-2621
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/afraf/adq074
OpenAlexW2334704271
LanguageEN
Citations received13

This well-written account of the experiences of abducted women in the north of Sierra Leone during armed conflict is based on Chris Coulter's 2006 doctoral dissertation, Being a Bush Wife: Young women's lives through war and peace in northern Sierra Leone. It hits all the right notes on key – contextualization of women's war experiences in the history of Sierra Leone and the specific background to the conflict that began in 1991 and ended in 2002; attention to the post-modern problematics of revisiting events that took place years before and are likely to have been told and retold, giving a nearly uniform narrative structure to stories that were often shaped by NGOs (for their own public relations and fund-raising purposes); and sincere sensitivity and respect for the women interviewed. Coulter conducted fifteen months of fieldwork over the period 1998 to 2004, mainly in Koinadugu, a northern district bordering on Guinea that did not possess the major diamond and gold mines that attracted rebels elsewhere. First attacked in 1994, Koinadugu was repeatedly overrun by RUF (Revolutionary United Front) guerrillas. A rebel camp was based in Koinadugu village where many of the women Coulter interviewed lived. Their experiences of camp life form the central focus of the book; the women tell of serving in the RUF forces or, more commonly, working in camps as unfree domestic workers. Rape and sexual abuse were inescapable. Irony of ironies, to be picked as a ‘wife’ by one of the commanders meant one was ‘protected’ from repeated gang rape and spared the hardest chores; but a ‘wife’ must be available for sex ‘several times a day. ... If you refuse you will be killed’ (p. 107).

Art · Ethnology · Girl · Narrative · Political science · Sierra leone · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Wife · Gender Studies · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · History · Law · Political Conflict and Governance · Psychology

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