FREETOWN, Sierra Leone -- The camp for victims of mutilation lies on a hill in the most scenic stretch of Freetown, a favorite spot for British vacationers before war destroyed Sierra Leone. The palms dotting the surrounding hills, the nearby wide white beach, the faded resorts promising respite, all stand in contrast to life inside the camp: a one-legged girl hopping along one a labyrinthine walkway; a young man with one arm sitting on the porch of his tarpaulin tent-house; an older man with arms hacked off below the elbows; yet another with very short stumps.

Most of the people missing limbs in this camp -- there were 516 when Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright paid a visit Monday -- were mutilated by rebels who advanced on Freetown last January. Many were taken to the city's main public hospital where they languished for days; then many went to a refugee camp at the national stadium where they languished for weeks. Eventually they arrived at this camp, which is run by Doctors Without Borders.

With the help of another international relief organization, Handicap International, the victims are learning to use prosthetics with surviving muscles, to wash themselves, to raise a spoon to their lips. Some tasks the armless might never master, though, like buttoning a shirt or tying a knot. But there is more here than grinding work to relearn the basics. Isatu, a 13-year-old girl with no arms, plays with her younger sister and friends on the beach, touching them with her stumps, digging into the sand. A 46-year-old man, who in July said he would never wear unsightly artificial arms with metal hooks, now takes a pen from a visitor with his prosthetic and proudly writes down his name on a reporter's notepad: Lamine Jusu Jarka. In a country where less than a third of the people can write, isn't it a shame that Jarka's handwriting is now barely legible? It will improve, he vows.

So far, the Government has done almost nothing for those who have been mutilated.

A few months ago, rumors swept the camp that the Government had gotten German surgeons to come here, and that transplants were being performed in Europe.

They became angry at the Government when the Germans never came.

If the current peace agreement between the Government and the rebels holds -- hopes were raised Friday by a United Nations decision to send 6,000 peacekeepers -- what will happen to these people? Will the Government take care of the thousands who are estimated to have lost limbs to machetes? Even if the will exists, what can the Government do in a nation that is regarded as the world's poorest and where everything must be rebuilt? The question is complicated by the peace agreement, which granted amnesty to all combatants. Foday Sankoh, the head of the rebellion responsible for most of the war's atrocities, acknowledged his group's guilt months ago. Recently, though, he has been backpedaling. Atrocities? Not me. He appears more interested in the commission on mineral resources that he will head. He has never visited this camp.

In the end, the mutilation victims might have to rely on the system that the vast majority of ordinary Africans rely on: the extended family. In the world's poorest continent, relatives help one another out; sometimes a sole member supports a large number of relatives or close friends. If someone lucky enough to have a job loses it, 15 people suffer, the saying goes. Here in the camp, most of the victims live with their families, secure in the knowledge that they will never be abandoned. A few, however, have lost all their families. No one knows what will happen to them.