Mohamed (SL)
Mohamed is 23. Mohamed werd door de rebellen ontvoerd toen hij 12 jaar oud was. Hij was op school toen de rebellen hem uit de klas haalden en hem dwongen zich bij hen aan te sluiten. Hij vocht vijf jaar lang, dag in dag uit, zonder echt te weten waarvoor hij eigenlijk vocht. Onder invloed van drugs en alcohol werd hij erop gestuurd om te moorden en vernielingen te plegen, terwijl de rebellen hem tegelijkertijd hersenspoelden met hun doctrine. Aan het einde van de oorlog moest Mohamed ontwapend worden en kreeg hij honder dollar in ruil voor zijn geweer. Die honderd dollar was net genoeg om in de eerste levensbehoeften na de oorlog te voorzien. Hij had helemaal niets meer. Mohamed had op een bepaalde manier geluk, hij vond zijn ouders terug. Maar zijn vader is nooit helemaal de oude geworden en zijn moeder kan de zorg voor het hele gezin niet in haar eentje aan. Mohamed moet daarom hard meewerken om te kunnen overleven en zijn scholing te kunnen betalen.
Door de verkoop van brandhout, constructiewerk en bedelen komt Mohamed aan zijn geld. Hij houdt weinig tijd over voor zijn huiswerk. Hij gaat er vaak ’s nachts op uit om bij gokkers te bedelen voor geld, wat lucratief is, maar zijn scholing niet ten goede komt. Mohamed moet nog één jaar en dan heeft hij zijn middelbare school voltooid. Hij moet nog kiezen wat hij daarna zal gaan doen. Waarschijnlijk is een beroepsopleiding voor hem het best haalbaar. Mohamed is een lieve, behulpzame jongen, maar zijn leven bij de rebellen was zwaar en dat zit hem nog steeds dwars. Hij heeft concentratieproblemen en bovendien is het gezinsleven verstoord omdat zijn vader de gebeurtenissen in de oorlog nog niet heeft verwerkt. We hopen naast scholing ook een andere manier te vinden om Mohamed op weg te helpen. Wellicht heeft hij een ander talent die hij kan ontplooien, waardoor hij zijn gedachten kan verzetten en op een positieve manier met zijn toekomst bezig kan zijn.
In zijn eigen woorden:
"It was on the 27th of March 1991 when the war started at the eastern part of Sierra Leone closer to the Liberian border at a village in Kailahun district where the first bomb was dropped. Before the war my father was a successful trader and my mother. My father was having a shop filled with different types of stock and my mother was travelling from town t town buying and selling goods. Life was much more better everything was comfortable with us, we were having a beautiful and complex house in town. I was attending one of the best private schools in my town. We were not having a car. Our father bought for us a bicycle to go with to school. We were not aching our heads for anything that is been ask at school. We were the first to go with it. We didn’t knew what was hardship or even work by foot for 50 metres without our bicycle and our father was the top ranking man in town. Proper care was taking for us. We were brought up not to beg people on the streets for our living or even our own friends. We did not know how to handle a cutie for cultivation of a farm. We were living an independent life before this devilish act of our brother Sierra Leoneans, because of bad ruling of some parties in government during that time and the want to over throw the government for the day and mineral struggle for survival.
It was on Friday the 7th March 1997. We where in school at around 11:30 am when we heard a gun shut sounding like a music “boys, girls” came to school, but we were playing and causing noise when our teacher came in and ask us to keep quiet and sit down and she close the classroom door on us, at that time I was in class four (4). When the attack and we were in class all doors close when the rebels came and open the doors on us and captured us and went with us away tie our faces and put us at the back of the lorry and went away with us to an unknown place. After the tension our parents came into the school compound and check on us at that time we were far away.
And when I was away I got and information that my fathers shop has been cleared and it was set on fire and they again went and clear our house and put it on fire. All my fathers documents were burnt down and most of all left in the house, during the time that the house was put on fire, our father escape and he was seriously chased all my brothers ran away for their lives, at that time my mother travelled for her business on her way back. She fall in an ambush. So everything was destroyed in her hands. They tied her up, give her an serious beaten and she was with them. So our whole family scattered everybody was living different way.
When we reach the unknowing town they tied up our faces and then I saw strange faces talking to us and then threatened to slaughter us and then we all started crying and they started shouting at us to keep or mouth shut. They started telling us that we are going to treat you until your government reach our demand or change power, because if not that blood is going to overflow like river Jordan and there is going to be a new Sierra Leone and history will be tell how their were people living in this country.
After a few months they started learning us how to shout and lay ambushes for our enemies, after that guns were given to us. These guns were heavy for our arms, so we use t drag them because we can’t be able to lift them. We were removing peoples foods from their hands and after a year foods became to be less and we started suffering from hunger. It takes days without eating good foods except palm kernel which was our constant food and we were eating foods without salt which let us to swell by part. Some of our friends didn’t stand the swelling and die in the jungle, some get tired and asked their colleague to shut them because their is no food at times even sometimes when there is food s not enough. I used to go to the corner and cry when I imagine how I was leaving. If I’m found crying they beat me seriously and ask me to get up and move sometime we were sent to the bushes to look for bush jams and dig up cassava’s just to survive we were eating all types of foods that I have never seen before in my life. Life during the war was very nasty and bad off, thanks be to good survive and all hope are about to go now, but I’m trying for them not to go.
After we surrendered to the ECOMOG military from Nigeria they went with us to their base give us some medical check ups until the time for disarmament when we went to the centre our guns were taken from us and registered our names and give us money $ 100 (hundred dollars each) which in our currencies is and promise to put some of us who want to go to school and pay our school fees and other who wants to go to skills training to learn me skills and give them tools to start with after the finish learning. Those of us who went to school our school fees was paid for a year. After hat they forgot about our business and our parents started taking heir responsibility at that time my father was not acting normal again. Up till now he is frustrated he can not say any sense talk our mother too started doing little business. We walk one mile to go one to come so every morning we walk two miles every day to buy fire woods. Split them and putt hem for sale just to have our daily bread and the little for our school fees and later our mother change their business. She sells food on the street (cookery) and in holidays we use to work for people make seed breads for people for money help masons in building, help people to do business, people pay us to brush their lands. We use to go to the casinos where people play gamble and praise the highest winner will act like boys (battle man) after he wins he will give us money and we will go and buy bulgur, because rice is too expensive. We did things that we had never done before the war. But any was God will help us to fight the borbor pain feelings if there is the upper hands to support me to each my future."
