Sia was born on the 21st February 1975 in Guéckédou, a Guinean city near the border with Sierra Leone and Liberia. Her father taught French in Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital, and it was there that she spent most of her childhood, which was far from idyllic. Beaten by her extremely severe father and persecuted by two stepmothers who bullied her relentlessly, Sia kept to herself and tried to make sense of her constant ordeals in writing. "I don't remember a single day that went by without a fight, suffering or sadness. I began to write stories because it was the only way I could escape from that burden for a while." She was a gifted pupil and performed impressively in drama lessons at school. At 19, she passed her baccalaureate despite having fled her home to stay with an uncle in an apartment shared by thirty people. "Eating, sleeping, dressing: everything was difficult." Then Steady Bongo, a singer looking for a backing vocalist, got in touch and Sia made her début in the world of music while studying information technology. Sadly, the experience was short-lived. Fighting raged between local warlords as they battled for control of the diamond mines. The conflict lasted from 1991 to 2002 and claimed 100,000 to 200,000 lives, including those of many child soldiers recruited by force. It also displaced about 2 million refugees. Sia was forced to escape from Freetown and Sierra Leone in 1995. For a while, she found shelter in her birthplace, Guéckédou, on the other side of the frontier, but then it too fell prey to fierce fighting and was partly destroyed by bombs. The terrible tragedy inspired her to write many songs and organise benefit concerts for the refugees with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the French Embass