John Caulker is a busy man. Criss-crossing Sierra Leone every week or two between the bustle of Freetown and remote villages along barely passable roads in Kailahun District, the seasoned human rights activist and founder of the NGO, Forum of Conscience, is constantly in demand. In Freetown he juggles media interviews, meetings with international donors and agencies, discussions with staff and interns, and frequent requests for interviews and assistance from researchers like me. We are all interested in the reconciliation project that is his brainchild: Fambul Tok. When he travels up country, largely out of reach, he and his staff coordinate, train and assist teams of local Fambul Tok volunteers to promote reconciliation for, and dialogue about, war-related crimes in their villages.

Fambul Tok – “family talk” – is a Krio expression that means a family meeting to resolve a dispute. According to Caulker, traditionally, when Krio families had an internal conflict they would call a family meeting and talk it out. Many cultures in Sierra Leone had similar traditions, he argues, and these need to be resurrected to deal with tensions both from the war and after, especially those that arise when victims, perpetrators and their families live in the same community (interview, Bo, May 16, 2008).

Six years after the war ended, Forum of Conscience staff and community volunteers were organizing community reconciliation ceremonies in villages across Kailahun District, a region that was particularly devastated by the conflict. Appropriately the first ceremony was held on March 23, 2008 in Bomaru, along the border with Liberia, which was the first village that the rebels attacked when they launched the war exactly 17 years earlier.

When I heard about the Fambul Tok program, I was preparing to fly to Sierra Leone for a follow-up visit five years after my original research. This was exciting news. If perpetrators were apologizing for their acts and if people were talking publicly about war crimes within their communities, this would indicate a dramatic shift from the situation five years ago when perpetrators were largely unwilling to apologize and Sierra Leoneans frequently asserted that they do not traditionally talk about past conflicts.