Relief group encounters trauma, hope in Sierra Leone
7/24/2002 News media contact: Linda Bloom · (646) 369-3759 · New York By Carol Fouke-Myopo* FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (UMNS) -- Members of the Church World Service delegation to West Africa traveled the throughout Sierra Leone July 9-15, to see for themselves how the country is faring in the aftermath of a brutal 11-year civil war.
The Sierra Leone visit was the third in a tour of the troubled Mano River region that includes the West African countries of the Republic of Guinea, the Gambia, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
"Peace has come to Sierra Leone," the delegation concluded. "But the struggle to recover goes on."
Elections -- judged free and fair -- were held in June, and the newly elected President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah was inaugurated July 12 to a five-year term. Ex-combatants are being reintegrated into communities, and refugees are returning home from Guinea, Liberia and beyond.
Ex-combatants from the Sierra Leone conflict, defined as "anyone who carried a gun," number between 30,000-45,000 people, according to Albert Kanu, development director for the Council of Churches of Sierra Leone.
People are trying to put on a brave face, group members found. A war amputee, with three fingers missing, told them, "You have seen for yourself the pains and struggles we have borne. Today we are happy. We let go what happened to us because there is peace in this country."
But just beneath the surface a great deal of pain is evident. "Everyone in Sierra Leone has been deeply traumatized by the war," observed the Rev. John L. McCullough, a United Methodist pastor and CWS executive director.
Homes, hospitals, schools and businesses from north to south have been looted and burned. Unemployment in the formal sector is high, the church council reported. Survivors of the war ask how they can forgive.
The CWS delegation came to Sierra Leone by invitation of Council of Churches of Sierra Leone, as part of a combined invitation last February by the respective councils of churches of the Republics of Guinea and the Gambia, and Liberia and Sierra Leone.
"There's been so much pain in this region for such a long time," McCullough said at a meeting of the church council's executive committee.
During visits to all four West African countries, Church World Service representatives affirmed its intention to return to the United States and advocate for greater world attention and financial support for Sierra Leone and its troubled neighbors.
Peter Chaveas, U.S. ambassador to Sierra Leone, told the delegation that the new Kabbah administration "is a government with much more credibility," given its mandate in June in elections that were basically free and fair and "almost devoid of violence."
This government "has five years ahead of it and the prospect to do something," Chaveas said.
Chaveas and others said international intervention is crucial for restoring peace in Sierra Leone, and that ongoing international interest and presence is essential in order to consolidate peace. Without it, he said, "Sierra Leone would regress. This is not even considering what the Liberia conflict could mean. Consolidating peace in Sierra Leone is a long term project."
Chaveas emphasized, "There's no substitute for getting this economy running again. This economy is devastated. I lack the words to express how bad things are.
"It's going to be a long, hard process to rebuild," he added. "We are resisting the notion that the humanitarian assistance phase is over."
Delegation visits war sites, refugee and amputee camps
In Sierra Leone, delegation members spent two days visiting the Kono, Kenema, Kambia and Koinadugu districts. Delegation members visited recent returnees from Guinea, sites of devastation from the war, and met refugees newly arriving from Liberia.
They sat with paramount chiefs and other traditional leaders and met police and border guards, local church members and humanitarian aid workers. One group slept in tents with United Nations' peacekeepers from Pakistan. Another shared groundnut stew and other "road food" brought along by council of churches' staff.
In Freetown, the Church World Service group visited a camp for war amputees, where 230 amputees and 2,000 family members were crammed into tents and fragile shelters. There is a need for food, medical care, trauma counseling and prostheses.
The Rev. Susan Sanders, a delegate and United Church of Christ executive from Cleveland, expressed her concern that Sierra Leone may want to put its amputees out of sight, considering them a painful reminder of a war everyone wants to forget.
She expects there will "be follow-up in the ecumenical community to get prostheses for these people. They are heroes and should not be hidden away and forgotten.
"As the daughter of an [World War I] amputee," she said, "I know that amputees can live good and full lives."
At the amputee camp, Ishmael Darami, a middle-aged man with a bright smile who had lost both hands, told delegates, "We are concerned first and foremost for the children. They need education.
"As for me," said Darami, who is Amputees' Association national coordinator, "I take courage for the future. God can do something good for me."
The delegation also met a 15-year-old girl whose family had moved to Freetown from the Gambia. When the rebels entered Freetown in 1999, they killed her mother, father and brother in front of her, then swung a machete at her and cut off her right arm from the shoulder. She ran and was the only member of her family to survive. Another youth, Mohammed, 16, lost a leg in a land mine while fleeing rebels. Asked his hopes for the future, he said he wants to study computers.
The Church World Service delegates concluded their Sierra Leone visits wrestling with issues of forgiveness, impunity, and what is needed for healing, trauma recovery and lasting peace.
The Council of Churches of Sierra Leone has been assigned responsibility for reintegration work in four chiefdoms in northern region of that nation. The council says that communities to which ex-combatants are returning need practical, social and psychological support, given the brutality of the war-- especially that imposed by the rebel forces as they looted, raped, killed and amputated on their sweep from Sierra Leone's north to Freetown along the Atlantic Ocean to the nation's south.
The CWS delegation heard considerable disgruntlement, says McCullough, that ex-combatants were getting all the attention and help to reintegrate, but that those who were hurt by them, especially the amputees, are getting nothing or almost nothing.
Sensitive to that concern, the council of church is serving both ex-combatants and those who suffered at their hands. Its reintegration work has reached 350 ex-combatants and 150 impoverished youth in host communities.
In Sierra Leone, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and a special court are preparing to undertake the difficult task of balancing the need for justice with the need to forgive.
United Methodist Bishop Joseph Humper, who is president of the council of churches and the truth commission chairman, told the CWS delegation that the war ravaged "not only the infrastructure but the lives of the people. In order to avoid a repetition of what happened, we need every ounce of support," he said.
Humper added that the country needs "experts and resources to address the needs of children and aged and to address this great enemy called the HIV/AIDS pandemic. We need help to revitalize our churches and to not lose our young.
"As long as young boys are roaming our streets with no job, our work is not finished," he noted, referring to reintegrated young men and child soldiers. "They have to expend their energy somewhere, for good or bad."
Shirley Gbujama, a United Methodist and Sierra Leone's minister of social welfare, gender and children's affairs, briefed the delegation on her ministry's work to locate lost children and reunite them with their families, and reintegrate child soldiers into their communities.
"We get children back to school," she said, "and get older children involved in skills training so they will be able to support themselves." She described a workshop for street children organized by the ministry, saying, "We don't just give them food and clothing, but find out why they are on the street."
A related project, headed by Bintu Magona, executive secretary, National Commission for War Affected Children, and an expert in child counseling, is organizing psychological care and initiating an innovative "Voice of Children" radio and television station that will give children airtime to ask their questions and speak their minds.
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*Fouke-Myopo served as media liaison for the Church World Service delegation to West Africa.
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