I travelled in Sierra Leone in February 2010. It was my first time. I went there with a couple of friends hosted by HURRARC (www.hurrarc.org), a local NGO dealing with human rights. I get there to shoot videos about their different projects for their website but I didn't have precise plans since I knew the country very few. Then I discovered that Sierra Leone is an amazing place, with such a complexity and millions of stories to be told.
In Freetown, through HURRARC, I met Josephine and we easily became friends. She told me about the different projects she was involved in, and we talked about female genital mutilation. She's a victim of this practice and she has been brave in accepting to talk about her situation in front of my camera. While I was travelling across the country I met Hawa in Kenema. I was impressed by her counsciousness and will of figthing to protect the other women. I choosed their stories because they are two emnacipated women figthing for their rights without any kind of support.
But most of the challenges I faced were due to the fact that in that country travelling from a village to another is very hard, routes and cars are in bad conditions, I needed to be careful constantly with food and other source of infections as malaria. But people are amazing, and everyday there was something new to discover and to impressed of. Because of my constant curiosity I choosed this job, in order to travel and communicate the world complexity.
Francesca Gentile
www.francescagentile.com
