The 4-year-old who donated heart to Sierra Leone’s amputees

By Umaru Fofana On 6 January this year, as I covered a commemorative protest march in Freetown by dozens of men and women whose arms and limbs were hacked off by the rebel war of the 1990s, I spotted in their midst a very smart-looking boy. He looked well fed and well dressed. Even in drought situations there can germinate a baobab tree, I said to myself. I wondered how come such a boy could have kept his chubbiness amidst the reduced circumstances under which his parents lived. Thanks to the rebel horror, public deprivation and state depravity. As I went closer to him to say hello, a lady arrived from the back of a van that had loud speakers and played pretty loud music and would stop intermittently to make some pleas for the welfare of amputees to be addressed. “Hello” she greeted me. I responded and enquired whether she was the boy’s mum. “Yes please” she answered, rather politely, with a tinge of an American accent. Then she drew my attention to a banner pasted in front of the van which, it was now clear, served as the public address system. (See photo of banner – IRASL)And the conversation went on until the march past started. The boy’s name is Ibrahim Barack Mansaray. I suspect his middle name is that dream of prosperity every parent has had for their child since Barack Obama’s audacity to aspire to become president of the world’s greatest nation. He was born on the 17 June 2008 in Calgary, Canada to Sierra Leonean parents. I wondered why he had not been born some 24 hours earlier in view of the significance of June 16 – the day of the African child. Anyway…The four-year-old is perhaps, four times his age –both in sharpness and passion. His is a passion the Sierra Leonean Government and public must imbibe. His is a heart already very large to accommodate even the downtrodden. His is a story too hair-raising to ignore. But in a country where insensitivity to the plight of anyone not directly connected to us is the norm, it is a matter of hoping against hope that this little boy’s humanity can touch us all, especially those who can make that change to better the lives of our compatriots who have been abandoned by no fault of theirs. All because they are amputees. The story of Ibrahim starts where one would have hoped those of the hundreds of people whose arms and limbs were hacked off should have long ended. It all started in January 1999. Man’s inhumanity to man was given a new meaning and ascribed a new definition. Rebel soldiers looked at their fellow Sierra Leoneans and hacked off their bodyparts with no intent to kill them instantly. They wanted them to die in anguish and anger. On this day – Jay 6 as it is commonly called – the amputee women and men were marking the day to draw attention to their plight. Today, fourteen years on, there is hardly any tangible effort Sierra Leoneans have made for them. Simply put, successive governments have reneged on their responsibility to these people and broken promises ingrained in the peace agreement of Lome in July 1999and the follow-on Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommendations to tend to the most basic needs of these people and their children. Today they beg on the streets not to buy cocaine or heroin but to feed. Today they would also be sleeping on the streets if not for some kind-hearted Norwegians who built them a home – perhaps the only thing that keeps their dignity. The question is: why must help to such people always come from abroad? Unfortunately it continues with 4-year-old Ibrahim who saves from his weekend money back in Canada, and recycles cans if only to tend to the amputees of Sierra Leone in his own little but impressive way. According to his mother, Isatu Gibril Koroma who now lives in Canada but is on a visit to Freetown, Ibrahim had apparently taken notice of the fact that some of his colleagues in school would be picked up by their grandparents, sometimes, while he was always being picked up by his mum. He wanted to know from her why. He wondered why his own grandparents were not around. She told him they were in Sierra Leone and could not go to Canada. He wanted to know why not. She told him because they didn’t have immigration papers to be there. He wanted to know how come she was there and her parents could not be there. She told him because she was an immigrant. He asked why. She said because of the civil war that raged in her country. He asked about the meaning of war. She tried to explain to her until she decided to go on YouTube to let him see some scenes of the documentary CRY FREETOWN. Ibrahim never recovered from what he felt when he saw someone in the documentary being beaten up by an ECOMOG soldier and the amputees he was to later see. One weekend, he told his mum that he wanted to start saving part of the money he would receive to buy his weekend snacks which he started putting inside a piggy bank. He collected cans of all sorts and sizes even in cold temperatures and would sell them and put the money in his piggy bank. He even stopped drinking his regular juice, money for which he also put into his bank. His dream: To organise a Christmas Party for the amputees in Sierra Leone, as well as buy toys and books for their children. In less than one year he achieved that first part of his dream by travelling to Freetown with his mum and organising a Christmas dinner for the amputees at one of their settlements at Grafton outside Freetown. When I met Ibrahim on 6 January he looked happy to be with the amputees even if he felt sorry for their plight. Now he says he wants to do a lot more for them. “How do they bathe themselves” he asked. He also wanted to know how the armless ones eat by themselves but that had apparently been addressed by Alhaji Jusu Jarka the former president of the amputees who has prosthetic arms which enable him eat and answer to phone calls unaided. Ibrahim wants to continue with his passion to help the amputees. He wants to develop his idea – I Recycle for the Amputees of Sierra Leone (IRASL) –to tend to especially the medical, schooling and clothing needs of the children of men and women who are the most afflicted by ten years of a brutal civil war that has exposed not only the inhumanity in man but the insensitivity in those elected to lead and care for the people. It is hard to fathom how people appointed into offices get rich overnight and their families become wasteful and arrogant, while a more permanent solution is not being thought through to tend to our less fortunate amputee compatriots who languish on the streets or in remote communities with barely anything to feed on. Add to that the fact that their children drop out of school without being able to help them or themselves. Ibrahim’s heart only exposes the heartlessness of our society and those who inflicted this woe on people many people frown at today as if they were responsible for their predicament. God save our amputees and bless all those who genuinely support them.