Some good news:
Va. Camp Helps Heal War-Wounded Lives
Art Puts Sierra Leone Refugees on the Mend
By David Cho
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 2, 2003; Page B01
The oldest of the 30 children from Sierra Leone attending the Leaders of Tomorrow summer camp in Alexandria are in their mid-teens; the youngest is 7. Yet each has witnessed more horrors during their country's decade-long civil war than most people will experience in a lifetime.
They have seen corpses and severed heads littering the streets outside their homes. They have heard the screams of their parents and others being tortured, in some cases killed, before their eyes.
Eleven-year-old Damba Koroma remembers her part of her left arm being cut off by a gang of gun-toting teenagers five years ago. When her mother cried out in protest, they chopped off her left arm in the same spot as well.
Another of the refugees, Fatu Sankoh, 16, recalls watching helplessly as a friend bled to death from a gunshot wound while the two hid from rebels under a bed.
After fleeing to the United States, these war-scarred children from West Africa -- among the more than 2 million people, more than one-third of Sierra Leone's population, displaced since fighting erupted in 1991 -- were left to cope with their trauma largely on their own. All but a few have been separated from their parents, who were killed, are missing or could not afford to flee with their children.
Living now with U.S. host families, most of these children had tried to bury their horrible memories; that is, until attending the four-week camp set up at Francis C. Hammond Middle School by the Falls Church-based Center for Multicultural Human Services. There, therapists and others are giving the children a chance to talk about their experiences and vent their fears and feelings in healthy and creative ways.
The program, which concluded yesterday, is one of the few in the country that assists refugee children from Sierra Leone, administrators say.
"They're survivors," said Marion W. Chew, a program director at the center. "To live through the experiences they've had, you have to have a powerful desire to keep on going."
As summer camps go, this one -- offered at no cost to the children -- is more than a bit unusual. It includes the customary pool time and field trips, but the children spend most of each day on tasks such as writing about themselves, learning about the culture of their homeland and drawing self-portraits, an exercise in art therapy, said camp director Kacie Fisher.
The activities break the ice on some difficult topics. For instance, when the campers were asked to draw scenes from their country, most sketched stick figures with severed limbs or heads and gushing blood, which opened the door to discussions about what they were thinking and feeling as they drew.
Sometimes the youths vent in less orderly ways. One boy plugs his ears or runs from the room whenever he hears Krio, a Creole language spoken in his country. Another child was unsure how to react to Damba's missing arm, so he laughed. Some of the older boys have hair-trigger tempers, Fisher said, and two have spent time in a juvenile detention facility.
The years of pent-up grief and terror have affected the children physically as well as emotionally, Fisher explained. Some jump at the slightest touch, their wariness having turned their muscles into tight little knots.
"The war severely interrupted the normal behaviors of childhood -- being carefree and playing or creating a fantasy world," said Fisher, noting that all of them "had to hide out" and bear physical scars from their flight for survival.
Damba's amputated limb is the most noticeable link to their past. None of the others had to ask her what happened, Fisher said; they all knew
"I feel so angry when I see it," said Wusu Dumbuya, 16, a counselor-in-training who also fled Sierra Leone. "I feel blessed it hadn't happened to me, but every time I see her it just pains me."
Her presence in camp has become a salve. During crafts and physical activities, the older campers watch out for her. "Most of the children have witnessed an amputation, but this is the first time [they] have been able to help an amputee, so it's been healing for them," Fisher said.
Sierra Leone has seen several conflicts since its independence from Britain in 1961, the most brutal of which began in 1991 as an uprising over the country's rich diamond mines. A rebel force took over half the country, with its warlord, Foday Sankoh, employing shock troops -- many of them just children -- to keep the people in line.
The war lasted more than a decade and claimed tens of thousands of lives. As the fighting waned, the United Nations sent in 17,400 peacekeeping troops. Sankoh was arrested in 2000 and died in custody on Tuesday.
One of the goals of the Alexandria camp has been to rekindle a love of country and culture in the children. On one outing, counselors took some campers to the District, where they painted a mural celebrating their homeland's history and heroes. It is standing in the 300 block of Constitution Avenue NW.
The adjustment is easier for some than others. Damba, for one, says her nightmares about Sierra Leone have stopped, but that she will never live there again because "the rebels might attack again, and they might kill me or cut off my other hand or do something bad to me."
Some of the other children say as much. But when a camp experience breaks through the fears, small miracles can happen.
During one session, Auntie Oye, an African storyteller, took the campers on an imaginary journey to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. As the children sat around her with eyes closed, Oye related how the city is bustling with cheerful people, its markets full of food. Smell the "bittah leaf" (a vegetable dish) and taste the fu-fu (porridge), Oye beckoned.
"Mmmmm!" she murmured as she lifted an empty wooden bowl to her nose and sniffed the pretend aroma.
The children are caught up in the story.
"Where are we going?" Oye asked suddenly.
"Freetown!" they shouted happily, without fear or hesitation.
On Oye's signal, a group of drummers in the corner got a beat going while African music poured out of a nearby boombox. Oye's hips swayed, her feet pounded the floor.
The kids stood and began bouncing and clapping. Then they joined her in an energetic circle dance, stomping on the memories of their past.
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