Reconstructing life as a one-foot man: reflections on the role of football

Abstract

This article is one of a series of personal construct investigations of the aftermath of the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone. It is based on interviews conducted with nine members of the Sierra Leone Single-Leg Amputee Football Club, all of whom lost a limb during the war. Interview themes concerned participants’ construing of this event and its perpetrators, the constriction of their lives and the emotions they subsequently experienced, the choices that they made, and the role of football and of forgiveness in their recovery and in posttraumatic growth.