sierra leone

Home for Yeayebu
By Cynthia Glocker, press officer

In war-torn Sierra Leone, 6-year-old Yeayebu Koroma remembers the flames that engulfed her house, forcing her to flee her neighborhood of Kissy near Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital city. In January, her home was torched by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels, who were battling the unified West States peacekeeping forces for control of Freetown.

During an offensive by the rebels, Yeayebu’s aunt was forced to carry the young girl on her back away from their neighborhood, which had become a war zone.

“I was very afraid when Aunt Fatama carried me,” says Yeayebu. “We saw dead people on the streets and trash everywhere.”

The two were forced to walk many miles for many days. They sought shelter from the fighting in public buildings and under trees. They stayed in camps established for displaced people, but did not want to remain because of the threat of disease.

Separated from other family members, Yeayebu and her aunt could not find comfort without the rest of their extended family. Despite the danger, they decided to return to Kissy.

“The house was not there when we came back,” remembers Yeayebu. “But we did not want to stay in a camp, so we stayed near our house.”

After the fighting subsided weeks later, other families returned to Kissy to assess the destruction on their lives. Immediately, CARE began helping them rebuild their homes by providing them with plastic sheeting to repair their roofs, nails to secure their homes' structure and tools to do the work.

To help facilitate the rapid reconstruction of homes, CARE initiated a cooperative program, where small groups of men and women work together to restore a house or multifamily structure one at a time.

In exchange for their work, CARE provides food to each of the laborers and to the family whose house is being rebuilt. This team concept allows homes to be rebuilt faster because there are more people to accomplish the work, and it allows other adults to earn a much-needed supply of food for their families.

“CARE is helping to rebuild more than 1,400 houses,” says Stephan Crisan, who oversees the project for CARE. “At the end of the project, we estimate 1,900 homes will be rebuilt. CARE also is helping to rebuild schools, churches and health clinics in the same way.”

Yeayebu’s uncle, Briman Kanu, a proud man, is thankful to CARE for help in rebuilding his family’s house, but insists he would have done so, even without help.

“CARE gives to people so they can finish their house quickly,” says Kanu. “We would manage to rebuild our house no matter what our income, but the place would be leaking very seriously without the supplies from CARE.”

After their house is complete, Kanu will begin working on a neighbor’s home in exchange for food for his family, including his niece, Yeayebu.

For Yeayebu, the swift reconstruction of her house has meant that she is not forced to live in the camps and can remain near her house with her siblings and cousins.

“I don’t want to live in camps,” says Yeaybu. “There are seven of us, and now we are home.”