Middle of Everywhere - Mary Bray Pipher [112]
MOHAMED AND BINTU
"Sierra Leone is the worstest place on earth."
I picked Mohamed and Bintu up at their basement apartment, which was in the same building as the Kakuma family's apartment. Their place was sparkly clean and African-style in arrangement with several couches and a small television tuned to cartoons. They had been in America about two weeks and already colorful stuffed animals were on display and library books were piled up on their coffee table.
This was a gentle couple, clear-eyed and kindhearted. Mohamed had a wise, respectful demeanor. He was formal and unfailingly polite. Bintu was small, round, and effusive. She smiled and hugged easily. Bintu wore her hair in tight braids laced with colored beads. They spoke English, but Sierra Leone English is different from Nebraska English and there were times we had trouble understanding each other. Still, we muddled along on our mutual goodwill. I gave Bintu some jonquils and she laughed and put them in a juice glass.
We drove to a small coffee shop not far from the employment office. I bought us hot tea and we settled into a corner table. I asked where they were from and what brought them to Lincoln. Mohamed was born in a village in 1970, which made him one year older than my own son. Bintu was born in Freetown in 1973, which placed her age between that of my son and daughter.
Mohamed said he had a happy peaceful childhood. Many people remember their lives before a war or tragedy as a sort of Eden or Camelot, a time of innocence and happiness, and Mohamed was this way. He remembered that at dusk all the people in his village would gather and tell stories. He said softly, "They were very good stories."
He described his school without any irony as "built by our colonial masters for the sons of chiefs." He said it was an expensive school and his parents worked hard to pay his tuition there.
Bintu also had a happy family with four sisters and three brothers. Her mother stayed home to care for the family and her father ran a shop. She attended a private school, but what she remembered with a smile was how much her family liked soccer. She said, "I grew up watching soccer."
Then the war came to Sierra Leone, first to the rural areas, then to the cities. The war was started by outsiders who wanted to destabilize Liberia and Sierra Leone. At first, the people accepted the rebels. They'd had twenty years of a dictatorship and were ready for a change. The military overthrew the dictatorship and they invited the rebels to join them. But later there was a split between the military and the rebels. Civil war broke out. Sierra Leone became, to quote Bintu, "the worstest place on earth."
Mohamed explained that he had encouraged people in his little hamlet to vote and work for democracy. Thus, he was targeted early as someone to be killed. When the soldiers came to his house he was away at a meeting. Perhaps his family would have fled earlier but they were waiting for him. He had heard that if the family didn't stick together they could lose each other forever, so he had warned them to wait until he returned.
Mohamed wasn't there when two of his brothers were stabbed with machetes and his two sisters were "raped to death" in front of his father, who was forced to applaud while this happened. It took Mohamed three months to get back home. First he heard everyone was dead, then he discovered that one brother had survived. He said, "I tried to focus on my joy about that brother."
Mohamed escaped to Freetown where he met Bintu. She was lively and pretty and had her own fabric business. They decided to marry and later they had three children.
Bintu told me what happened next. As part of her business she traveled in the provinces to sell and buy cloth. She said, "One day my car was ambushed. I was abducted by the