The Peacekeeper

Linda and her 1-year-old son. Photo courtesy Ichi Vazquez.

Linda was 4 when her parents sent her from the interior to Monrovia in search of a better life. The strangers who took her in forced her to work. She remembers they woke her with a bucket of cold water. At 15, she ran away. She had nothing but at least she was free. She ran back home but soon after her mother died and her father disappeared. She started selling sex for as little as $3 to pay for school. She sold herself all the way through the ninth grade. In 2007, she quit the streets. She had met someone -- a German peacekeeper -- and she vowed to sleep with no other man. The first time the peacekeeper paid her $50. She did not charge after that. In 2009, she got pregnant, but the peacekeeper had vanished. She appealed to the German Embassy to find him. He sends $500 through wire transfers from his base in Afghanistan. If he doesn't marry her, she'll continue on her own, alone, raising her two children, selling coal and purified water. The streets are behind her. She's found Jesus. She wants to be a journalist. At 29, her life has perhaps just begun.