Babah TarawallyTommaso Segantini (TS): When and why did you flee from Sierra Leone, and what kind of life did you leave behind you?
Babah Tarawally (BT): I lived in Sierra Leone with my family and my community. I had to leave Sierra Leone because of war. There was a civil war and my town was attacked. I also had some problems with the authorities there because of my political activism; I was a student activist, and opposed the military regime, which came to power in 1992. People in the military regime were all very young; the President was just 27 years old, and his colleagues were around 22 or 23 years old. They became very dictatorial and brutal. As the war was pressing on, the rebels were pushing in, and our town was taken over, I had to leave the country in 1995.
TS: How did you get to the Netherlands and what was your first impression of the country?
