Photos by Mark Gilliland & Maura Murphy
Mariama Sesay’s first warning that her family’s life is about to change forever is an urgent whisper from her husband: “Mariama, wake up! Rebels!”
It is midnight. The electrical power to the village has been cut, plunging it into darkness and chaos. The air shakes with machine-gun blasts fired by the Revolutionary United Front.
Six months pregnant, Mariama moves slowly. Her husband, Sambajuma Jallow, helps gather their children: 2-year-old Abubacar, who has been sound asleep, nestled between his mother and father, and, in the next room, Abubacar’s twin brother, Thaimu, and the two older boys, Alusine, 10, and Mohamed, 8. Mariama grabs Abubacar; one of the older boys takes Thaimu.
They join the other villagers fleeing to the bush. There, breathless and dazed, Mariama and her husband discover that they have only Abubacar. The other three boys are nowhere in sight. Of course, it is pitch black; they cannot see, and the bush is filled with panicked villagers. Sure that the boys must be somewhere nearby, they gather Abubacar close and wait for daylight.
When dawn breaks and there is still no sign of the three boys, Sambajuma announces that he is going back into the village. “Don’t go!” a man from their village urges, convincing him that to return will mean a certain run-in with the rebels.
Years later, human-rights groups will describe, in unflinching, graphic detail, the unspeakable crimes committed during the civil war in Sierra Leone. The BBC will call the carnage in this former
British colony “worse than Kosovo.”
But long before these official reports, Mariama knows what could befall her boys: “They take paper and write, ‘Die, cut hand, cut foot, cut arm, free.’ They fold the paper and put it in a big container. To women, men, kids, they say, ‘Pick one.’ If the paper says ‘Cut arm,’ they ask you, ‘Do you want long sleeve or short sleeve?’”
Mariama motions to her arm, showing that “long sleeve” means cutting the arm off above the hand, “short sleeve” below the shoulder. A missing hand makes it more difficult to take up arms against them.
“They cut out eye, they cut off leg,” she says. “If the paper says ‘Die’? Pow-pow-pow-pow!”
The rebels also rape girls and women, draft young boys into their army and force some families to return to their own homes, where they are locked inside while the house is set ablaze. If they manage to escape, they are finished off with machine guns.
Perhaps the boys are with neighbors, friends or family, Mariama and Sambajuma tell each other. Perhaps they are dead,
Mariama tells herself.
“We keep moving,” she says firmly.
The displaced villagers walk in a long line. Because of her swollen belly and clinging toddler, Mariama falls behind, separated from her husband by about 100 yards.
Then she hears the rebel helicopter hovering overhead.
Slicing the air with a loud unnatural whir, a bomb drops, and people in the line ahead of Mariama fall to the ground like dominoes.
As soon as the smoke clears, Mariama and Abubacar rush ahead to find Sambajuma. He is lying on the ground, his body severed at the midsection.
“Run! Another bomb coming! Run, another bomb coming,” he gasps with his last breath.
She has no time to bury him.
She grabs Abubacar and runs.
For 15 days, they wander the jungle, eating bush apples and drinking from waterfalls, before reaching Guinea. They go on to a refugee camp in Gambia, where Yoroh is born and nearly dies. Mariama doesn’t have a name for the condition that threatens his life, only symptoms: quick, panting breaths, and all day and night, “his body is like fire.”
Her husband, a tall, good-looking middleman who used to go from village to village buying one of the country’s few resources, diamonds, is dead. Three sons are missing. Mariama has two boys to care for, and her homeland is beginning a war that
promises to last for years.
Days in the refugee camp turn to weeks, to months, to almost six years. Abubacar celebrates his ninth birthday. No first day of school, no new clothes, no soft-sided lunch box. Still, he plays, running around with the other kids in the camp. Mainly they
play soccer.
St. Louis, 2005
At 15, Abubacar Jallow is a slender young man of average height and striking features. His hair is closely shaved, and his face seems to radiate light. Unlike most of his peers, who are filled with nervous energy, Abubacar doesn’t fidget.
He’s calm, his body loose yet guarded. Like a young lion basking in the sun, he manages to remain both languid and alert.
When Abubucar smiles, the corners of his mouth turn up slightly; instead of giving up a full-fledged toothy grin, he flashes this quick, serious smile. His eyes, like his body, convey a deceptive stillness, like the peace inside the eye of a hurricane.
“Abubacar has seen a whole lot—and he is very resilient,” says Christy Finsel, a service learning consultant at Saint Louis University who helps students land internships in social justice or service work. Finsel befriended the family a couple of years after they arrived. Her role, which she says is rooted in “friendship and empowerment,” is personal rather than professional.
Since the Jallows landed at Lambert Airport on May 27, 1999, they’ve needed both.
They are settled in an apartment on the South Side, near Tower Grove Park. For fun, the boys head to the park and kick around a soccer ball, just as they did when they lived a world away. Soon their moves catch the attention of Rich Wurm, a neighbor and construction-company owner who coaches soccer at St. Margaret of Scotland grade school. He asks them to join the team. This is how they meet Alexandre Todorov, the assistant coach, an immigrant himself and an associate professor in psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine. He starts a pattern that continues to this day, inviting the boys to spend weekends with his family.
Admire a pair of shoes Abubacar is wearing, and he’ll tell you that Alex bought them. Ditto the boys’ GameBoy. “He is a good coach and a good man,” Mariama says of Todorov.
As Abubacar and his brother throw themselves into soccer, Mariama dwells on her three missing sons. She was offered one flimsy piece of hope the month before the family was accepted to the United States: A recent refugee said he’d met her brother. So Mariama asked the director of the refugee camp in Gambia to help her find them. Now she has scraped together money and sent it to the director, who has sent someone back to Sierra Leone, now resting in an uneasy cease-fire.
Her emissary goes to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, and to Makeni. He finds Mariama’s brother and sister—and her three sons are with them.
The phone conversation came soon after. “Where’s Dad?” Mariama’s boys blurt right at the start. Minutes go by before she can answer. “Hello?” they repeat. “Hello? Where’s Dad?”
She gathers herself and tells them their father is dead. They hear about Abubacar and Yoroh, the little brother they’ve never met. Abubacar learns for the first time about the twin he has forgotten.
Mariama hears that her grandfather, mother, father, uncle, aunt and oldest brother are all dead—and that her niece was burned to death. The homes the family once owned, hers included, are gone.
She wants to tell her sons to hop on a plane and fly to St. Louis right now, but first the family must pay back $3,300 for plane tickets furnished by the U.S. government to bring them over. There will be complicated paperwork—this is the post-9/11 world—and legal fees.
There is enough love and enough desire. But not enough money.
The family in Sierra Leone needs money to scrape together shelter for her kids. Because she is in America, Mariama says, they think she is rich.
The reality is that Mariama is black, without an education or car, suffering from chronic health complaints and psychic war wounds that run deep. She struggles to make ends meet with minimum-wage jobs. She sends $500 to Africa so that her
children and siblings have a place to live for one year. Her meager budget is stretched beyond its means; when she falls sick, there is no money.
In 2001, the family winds up in a homeless shelter. Once again, they live like refugees. Mariama struggles to regain her footing and eventually finds a place in the Ville neighborhood of North St. Louis.
And as he did in the camp in Gambia, Abubacar plays soccer, only now he plays on a team. Even when he’s at the shelter, his coaches come and pick him up for practices and games, inserting a few hours of ordinary schoolboy activity into his
otherwise extraordinary young life.
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Other concerns surface: worries about whom Abubacar is befriending and how he spends his time.
He now describes 2002 as a time when “Yoroh and I acted like clowns.”
As Bob Sweeny, executive director of De La Salle Middle School at St. Matthew the Apostle Church, puts it, “Abubacar is a leader. He was either going to be leading people in a bad way or in a good way.”
What tips the scales is De La Salle Middle School, a place that Finsel found and urged the Muslim family to consider.
Located in the Ville neighborhood, the coed Roman Catholic middle school is part of the innovative Nativity and Miguel school movement. Children attend school 10 months a year. They begin their day at 7:30 in the morning and end at 4:30 in the afternoon. Teachers go above and beyond the call of duty, providing not only instruction but mattresses, eyeglasses, safe havens and, above all, as graduate Darryl Adams said in a speech this past summer, “attention and love.”
Sweeny, who is white, moved into the mostly black neighborhood. He married and now has a 2-year-old daughter. Several faculty members also live in the neighborhood, even though it is one of the more dangerous in St. Louis, a place where bars shield windows, drug deals take place on the street corners and gun shots ring out in the streets.
Instead of skimming the most gifted students from the public schools, De La Salle tries hard to fill its student body with children who have promise but aren’t performing up to their capabilities. The school reaches out to families who place
a premium on education but don’t have the financial means for private school and charges only the barest of tuition, typically $50 a month, fundraising for the rest. De La Salle students are expected to sacrifice their afternoons and summers to bring
themselves up to speed.
The Jallow boys—especially Abubacar, with his late start in school and English as-second-language remedial work—fit the De La Salle criteria. The combination of academic rigor and a stable, warm environment proves exactly what Abubacar needs. His academic skills improve.
On Tuesdays, high-school kids from Christian Brothers College come to tutor the middle-school students. Both the private West County high school and De La Salle are sponsored by the Christian Brothers of the Midwest and share a commitment to
educating economically disadvantaged kids.
Abubacar is impressed with the CBC students. “All these people are getting along and liking each other,” he muses. The CBC teachers who run the tutoring project are impressed with Abubacar. He begins to think that CBC might be a possibility for
him. And maybe—maybe he could even try out for the soccer team.
He dreams about it for months. In January 2005, a letter from CBC arrives in the mail, announcing that Abubacar has been accepted. Classmates Darryl Adams, John Collins, Garrett Green and Darion Watt receive the same letter.
Now the CBC-bound boys sit together at lunch, talking about what it will be like, how hard they’ll have to study, what sports they’ll play. On weekends, Todorov pushes Abubacar harder than ever, building stamina for the competitive tryouts that will begin in August.
As Abubacar’s July 22 graduation date approaches, the adults surrounding him pinch and scrape to cover high-school tuition. CBC provides financial assistance, but that leaves $1,500 for the family to raise. De La Salle donates some money through an
account set up for each of their graduates. Finsel spearheads an effort to raise the rest. For freshman year, they get it covered.
A few days before graduation, Abubacar makes a speech to the faculty: “Three years ago, my math skills were behind everyone else’s in my class. I had trouble with multiplication, division and decimals. I remember Ms. Robershote spent time every day tutoring me in math in the winter of 2003. Today, I have a B-plus.”
He singles out something else instilled in him at De La Salle: “respect for others. I have learned to solve my problems in a nonviolent way. If I see classmates having a conflict, I try to stop it and explain to them that they can solve their problem without
fighting. We have studied Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. I try to follow their example.”
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On July 22, Abubacar’s class gathers in St. Matthew’s. There is thundering applause for the opening procession, and every time a graduate’s name is called, the church vibrates with emphatic clapping, whoops of congratulations and shouts of joy.
Mariama wears a traditional African top and pants of the brightest pink, embroidered with purple and gold thread. A gold necklace, earrings and bracelets shine against her dark skin. Her hair is braided in tiny cornrows and swept up into a ponytail on top of her head, fastened with a white band.
Earlier she said to Abubacar, “You have high school taken care of. But what can I give you after that?” Now she hears his answer over and over in her head: “Mom, just give
me your love and support.”
A string of awards is announced. Reading, Language Arts, Social Studies, Science and Valedictorian all go to Darryl Adams. The most prestigious award, the LaSallian Award, is saved for last. The recipient is someone
known for spirituality and devotion to family, someone who gets along with teachers and students. The award is chosen by both faculty and eighth-graders.
“From the moment I met this star, I was impressed,” Sweeny says in his lead-up, describing a student with “a great worldly perspective who is wise beyond his years.” He pauses. He smiles. “Abubacar Jallow.”
The crowd jumps to its feet in a standing ovation. Abubacar, his serious smile tinged with bashfulness, strides to the podium, accepts the award and shakes hands. Mariama shouts, grins and dabs her eyes with a tissue.
Before the ceremony closes, the Rev. Mark McKenzie, pastor of St. Matthew the Apostle, asks the graduates to stop and reflect on how they feel, wearing their deep-blue gowns and tasseled caps, at their first graduation ceremony. “How many more
will you have?” he presses, urging them to “dream of three: high school, college and graduate school.”
Inside a church filled with hope, it seems there is nothing these kids can’t do.
Then they step outside.
Reality comes like a sucker punch, unexpected and hard. Outside in the sweltering heat, the short walk from the church to the school is quiet and tense. People sit on their porches, many glaring at
the passersby.
Abubacar keeps walking, unfazed. In the gym, he opens his gifts from family and friends: a CBC sweatshirt, the just-released Harry Potter book and gifts of clothes, the sort that will serve him well at CBC.
Mariama takes Abubacar into the
hallway and serenades him in Krio, the language of Sierra Leone, its roots coming from repatriated slaves from Jamaica who were settled in the country. It is a song of celebration, thanks to God and good friends, one that might’ve been sung to him at home, had they not been forced to flee. That dream is long gone. But now he has new dreams. He’d like to be a doctor so that he might “help other people.” In the near future, there’s the soccer team.
August comes, and the tryouts. Abubacar makes the cut and is named to the team.
Thursday, August 25, 6:50a.m.
The sky is overcast, the air cool. Abubacar and another De La Salle graduate sit outside their old middle school on a cement stoop, waiting for the yellow bus that will take them out to CBC. Abubacar’s collared green-and-blue-striped shirt is already tightly tucked into his khakis, and he wears new brown dress shoes in place of his usual green sneakers. His expression is serious and tranquil. He reaches into his gym bag and proudly pulls out a hooded sweatshirt emblazoned with “Christian Brothers College” across the chest in purple.
His friend eyes it with approval: “Where’d you get it?”
“A gift from my mom,” he says with teenage nonchalance.
Darryl Adams joins them just as the school bus stops outside De La Salle. A few minutes later, Darian, another freshman, arrives. The boys head to the middle of the bus.
Darryl looks around slowly. “You know this is a good school bus because they don’t have any duct tape on the seat,” he announces.
Abubacar smiles and turns his attention to the new CBC official-issue laptop he’s pulling from its CBC bag. He takes out a DVD and inserts it. As the upperclassmen— older, bigger boys—banter about girls, cell-phone plans and the 50 Cent concert,
Darian, Darryl and Abubacar crowd around the laptop to watch the Three Stooges in Simply Hilarious.
“The guy in the middle is the funniest,” says Darian, pointing at Moe.
“Huh-uh,” argues Darryl. “The big one is.”
Abubacar doesn’t take sides. Instead, he watches as the Stooges, dressed in Santa suits, cavort across the screen, bonking, poking and bopping each other. Then, for the first time in the four months he’s been shadowed by a writer, Abubacar laughs—out loud, long and hard.
But the minute the bus passes Skinker, heading west on Highway 40, his face turns serious again. Abubacar removes the DVD, turns off the laptop and gently stows it back in its case. The bus talk falls to a low murmur.
The bus exits the highway at Ballas, Missouri Baptist Medical Center looming to the left, fashionable homes in gunfire-free neighborhoods off to the right. Darryl and Darian stand up and frantically begin tucking in their shirts.
The bus pulls up to the school’s side entrance and the kids alight, joining boys who have just parked their cars. Compared with De La Salle, the school is overwhelming. There’s a well-appointed cafeteria, a chapel, a gift shop and a seemingly endless maze of hallways. When Mariama visited in the spring, she looked around and said flatly, “You’ll get lost.”
But today he isn’t lost. They’ve had a few days of orientation, and Abubacar knows where he’s going. Is he nervous?
“Huh-uh,” he answers.
How’s soccer going?
“I had to quit,” he says, any hint of disappointment carefully concealed. “I had no ride back and forth.”
He reaches the crowded main hall and becomes just another bobbing head in a sea of boys on the verge of becoming men.
In one respect he’s just another freshman mastering his combination lock, searching for his class schedule and hustling to homeroom.
And yet he is also different. He carries with him the story of a father who urged his family to keep running even though he could not; the story of a mother who brought one piece of her broken heart to St. Louis with her and left the other half in Africa; and the unfinished story of two older siblings and a twin brother left behind, still waiting.
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