TIME.com: Why did TIME decide to do a story on families separated by West Africa's ongoing wars?

Nadya Labi: It was part of an ongoing project to draw our readers' attention to humanitarian crises around the world. We want to inform them about these situations, and also to tell them about ways in which they can contribute to help address the problem. That's why we work in collaboration with Netaid — you can go to their Web site and buy "reunification kits" to finance the efforts of aid agencies to reunite a lost child with his or her parents.

TIME.com: In reading the story, it's difficult to comprehend the motivation of Fatim, the woman who steals the child Aisha. She tricks people into handing the child over to them, then travels with the child for a long time and behaves extremely abusively, but just as suddenly abandons Aisha. What did she hope to gain?

Nadya Labi: The answer to that question is that we really don't know. Fatim has disappeared. From speaking with people familiar with the situation, we were told that she may have been scared by the family who lived at the store where she abandoned Aisha — that people may have discovered she was not Aisha's mother.

Fatim's objective may have been to take the child to work in her own home, or else try to sell her for some other purpose. The fighting in neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia have created so much insecurity for Guinea that it's not uncommon for a child to be kidnapped by a predator like Fatim. Often we don't really know why.

TIME.com: The story describes scenarios almost unthinkable to a Western readership...

Nadya Labi: It is difficult for us to comprehend because for the most part we don't commonly see children being abducted for purposes of slavery. But West Africa is so poor that children are sometimes viewed as a form of currency. But it's also important to understand the situation against the backdrop of the cultural differences in the way family life is organized — it's not at all uncommon or unacceptable in many parts of West Africa for a child from a poor home to be sent to live with wealthier relatives in a different town, where they will be expected to do household work in exchange for being able to benefit from the advantages, for example in education, of the situation of the wealthier relative. That obviously would not happen in the U.S. because there's a different conception of the family unit.

Of course those cultural differences don't in any way excuse predators like Fatim. But they may help explain why West Africa is more vulnerable to them. After all, Fatim came to the area where Aisha was staying and posed as the child's aunt. And in the local culture the tradition is to welcome a family member, not to ask for credentials. And Fatim took advantage of that hospitality.

TIME.com: What was the strangest experience of your trip to Guinea?

Nadya Labi: It was at a refugee camp called Kolomba, near the border with Sierra Leone. There are tens of thousands of refugees there in what looks like a lush tropical paradise — but being so near the border the refugees are actually very vulnerable to attacks by Sierra Leonean rebels. And while we were there, a group of Kamajors arrived. The Kamajors are a militia of tribal hunters from Sierra Leone who fight against the rebels. You hear all this local mythology about how they can't be killed by bombs or bullets because they're protected by magic. Even educated people believe this. But marching through Kolomba they looked like kids dressed for Halloween, but carrying real rifles. It was sad and yet strangely compelling.

TIME.com: Was there any hope amid this despair?

Nadya Labi: The reason why I feel close to this story is that it is all about hope. It's a beautiful thing to reunite a family that has been separated. We spent a lot of time trying to witness a reunification, and at some point began to wonder whether these things actually happen. Then, one day, we flew to Freetown in Sierra Leone with the International Committee of the Red Cross, which was taking two young girls there to be reunited with their mother who they hadn't seen for three years. When they saw their mother at the airport, the kids just raced over to her and she enveloped them in this huge hug — it was an incredibly moving and beautiful moment that for me underlined the importance of doing the story.