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The War Next Door: A special Report
Yellowknife teacher struggling to get family out of war zone

Northern News Services

Yellowknife ( Jun 07/00) - The Dumbuya living room is like any other living room in any other home in Yellowknife. There's a love seat, one sofa chair and a coffee table.


Door-to-door campaign

As of Monday, June 5, the Dumbuya family has raised about $5,000 from their door-to-door campaign.

Corner Mart, Radio Shack and Northern Souvenirs have each contributed to the campaign.

Donations can be made through the Relocation Dumbuya Family Campaign at the Royal Bank. For information on this, contact Debora at the Royal Bank: 873-5961.

The Dumbuya family would like to welcome anyone willing to help in the door-to-door campaign.





Only one thing, a mask, a profile of a man's face in the shape of an elongated oval, stands out and echoes Africa. Around it are school photographs of their two children, Aisha and Amadu.

Foday Dumbuya sits on the loveseat with his wife Sandra. With heavy eyelids he stumbles over words, recounting the story of his country and family. He repeats himself, forgetting what he just said. As he sinks into the cushions, his body seems to shrink.

A box of Kleenex sits on the coffee table. A few minutes before, his wife was crying.

Foday comes from Sierra Leone, a small, diamond-rich country ripped apart by a vicious civil war.

His family still lives in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, a city of about one million and ground zero of the civil war. The eastern part of the city is now nothing more than burned-out concrete buildings. Crows pick at dead bodies and machine gun fire rattles flat on the rubble.

His mother, sister and brother are there somewhere.

"It's not been easy, I don't know if they're dead or alive," says Sandra, her voice breaking. She reaches for a Kleenex as the edges of her eyes gather tears.

Foday puts his arm around her.

He's been in Canada for nine years. He remembers his mother crying when he left. She didn't go to the airport. It was too hard for her.

A family torn

He always knew he could go back and she would be there waiting, living on Falcon Street, in the eastern district of Kissy.

That was until January 6, 1999, when the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) attacked Freetown, throwing the city into chaos. Images flashed across the ocean into the living rooms of the west. Babies with no hands. A teenage girl with no feet. A teenage boy, gunned down by an RUF rebel.

Sierra Leone sits on the African east coast, bordered by Guinea to the north and Liberia to the south. A colony of Great Britain, it gained its independence on April 27, 1961.

A campaign of torture

From 1967 to 1996, Sierra Leone was ruled by one- party governments.

A coup in 1996 established a democratically- elected government.

Civil war began in 1991, when RUF forces entered the country from Liberia.

From that day until today, RUF has waged a brutal campaign of torture, mutilation and murder, defying peacekeeping efforts by the U.N.

The government signed a peace treaty on July 7, 1999, allowing RUF representation in government. But the fighting continues, with RUF controlling the diamond mines in the eastern hills.

In Sierra Leone, control over diamonds equals power.

Over 90 per cent of the population have never seen a diamond.

Yet Foday's family, among thousands of others, are paying the price with their bodies.

"One of my cousins was hacked to death," says Foday.

"On January 6, 1999, the rebels burned down my mother's houses. Her and my sister ran out with nothing on.

My sister ran back to get her some clothes, and the rebels got her. They lay her down and put gasoline on her. But one of the rebels knew her and they let her go," he says, eyelids falling.

"I'm afraid to answer the phone and hear someone say my mother is dead, or my sister and brother."

He wants to get nine of his family members into Canada: his mother, sister, and his brother's family.

"Canada is their only hope," he sighs.

It will cost $27,000 to get them here and Foday is ringing doorbells trying to raise that money.

He has $5,000 so far. He started last June 1.

The Salvation Army pledged to do the paperwork in order to find his family and bring them over to Canada.

He asked MP Ethel Blondin-Andrew for help, but has received no reply.

Foday has a lot on his plate. He's the director of the elementary program at the Yellowknife Montessori school. He's also working on a master's degree in Education from Loyola University in Maryland, U.S.A.

"I admire your drive," says David Butcher to Foday from his doorway, after helping Foday out.

"We've known him for years, he taught our children," says Daryl Dolynny after chatting with Foday and pledging support. "The town has to come together."

"I know $27,000 is a lot of money for nine people, but a billion dollars cannot wake them up from the dead," says Foday.

The smile Foday flashes is sometimes tough to maintain.

"Once in awhile I need to get away and just let it out," he says. On some days he goes up 48th Street until the pavement gives way to dirt, ending at the Ingraham Trail.

"Sometimes I just go to the Wal-Mart when it's closed to just cry in the parking lot."

He has a faded colour picture of his family.

There are blotches on the background of sky. Of the 25 people in the picture, he's only sure three are still living.

He has a sharp colour photograph of his mother wearing a square-patterned head-wrap and dress.

The squares, each its own design, are full of oranges, reds, blues and yellows. She's smiling, thick lips pressed together, cheeks bulging beneath eyes, green leaves in the background.

He hasn't talked to any family back home in almost year.

He last heard they were alive a month ago through a second-hand account given to another brother (he has two brothers), who escaped to Spain when war broke out.

"I have to raise this money as soon as possible before it's too late," he says quietly.

Most of the blinds in the neighbourhood are pulled down for the evening as he gathers his pouch and papers after a couple hours of canvassing.

Driving home along the Yellownknife streets he gazes into the Arctic grey-blue horizon. Somewhere, beneath African skies, his brother, sister and mother wander through echoes of streets like these, in a country maimed by a stone they've never touched.

"I'm their only hope," he says.