Women's Advocacy Network Beaded Memory Project
The Women's Advocacy Network (WAN) members are survivors of the northern Uganda civil war fought for over 20 years. During the war, they were kidnapped and forced to fight and to "marry" commanders. Decades later they want to tell their story. To help heal, the women survivors bonded together and decided to record their war memories and stories on a large cloth using paper beads. The women started out by making thousands of paper beads. Then using chalk, they designed on a large black cloth, their images from the war. They then proceeded to sew the beads onto the black cloth. Stitch by stitch and bead by bead, they captured their war memories and stories on the cloth.