A Mother-And-Child Reunion

By NADYA LABI

It is a custom in some parts of West Africa to plant a seed when a child is born. The seed is buried deep in the ground along with the umbilical cord. It takes root, slowly growing into the sturdiness of a coconut or a mango or a kola-nut tree. The tree is the certificate that proves this child existed in this village. It is stability in a region that has been rent by war for more than a decade. In its shade, no fighting, no hurt should come.

In Coyah, a town in Guinea blessed with springs of the purest water, Ibrahim and Marie ignored the tradition. Not defiantly but without thought, because Aisha was their first child and they were distracted by worries. No one was buying the beds Ibrahim built, and refugees from Liberia and Sierra Leone were spilling into the country, carrying with them tales of brutality.

Life seemed full of grace nearly a decade ago, when Ibrahim caught sight of a slim schoolgirl at the local academy. Marie carried herself with such ease that Ibrahim, 22 years eager, proposed on the spot. She demurred at first, but later, over her guardian uncle's opposition, she married him.

Marie began to grow full at the waist two years later. Secretly she hoped for a girl. The bellyache came and passed--the labor lasted not even an hour--and she called the baby Aisha. Aisha was a lively child with huge brown eyes and a flashing smile. She ate whatever Marie prepared, whether it was a stew of pounded cassava leaves or a soup of ground peanuts; but like all children, she loved sweets, and would charm her mother into buying her cakes at the market. She slept in the same bed with her mother, always staying close. And when her little sister came along, she nicknamed her Bobo.

When Aisha was five, Marie left her daughter in the care of her husband's aunt while she visited nearby Conakry for a few days. While she was away, a woman named Fatim appeared in the village. She told everyone that she was Marie's sister and settled in. Then, the day Marie was to return, Fatim roused Aisha, promising the child treats if she came along quietly. When the neighbors asked Aisha where she was going, she responded lightly, "I'm going to get some fried doughnuts."

Aisha didn't return. It was the kind of disappearance that is all too common in this part of West Africa, where war and chaos are as routine as the peace of an American suburb. Children disappear, sometimes kidnapped like Aisha by traders who sell them into slavery, sometimes split accidentally from their parents at refugee camps or nabbed by passing soldiers to join the fight. Thousands of children have been separated from their families by the civil war that started in Liberia in 1989, spread to Sierra Leone in 1991 and has now infected Guinea. Children with no parents and no protection roam the streets of Conakry.

The situation is worsening. Guinea became the battlefield last fall as rebels from all three countries attacked and burned the refugee camps that line the country's southern borders. Everyone ran whichever way seemed away from the sounds of gunfire: south to Liberia, north to Guinea's interior and south to Sierra Leone. The 460,000 refugees, added to tens of thousands of newly displaced natives, amounted to a crisis.

The refugees in Parrot's Beak, a region in southeastern Guinea that borders Sierra Leone, inhabit a lush tropical splendor that belies encroaching danger. The Revolutionary United Front, the rebels in Sierra Leone who mutilate civilians to instill fear--double arm amputations are a favored tactic--may be approaching if U.N. troops push them to the north. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees is in the process of transferring refugees by truckloads to Guinea's interior--an ambitious plan that is sure to tear apart more families. "You cannot avoid separation," says Alfonse Munyanza, who works for the agency. "You can minimize it, but there is no exodus that is done with people smiling." There are things that can be done by donors in other countries to help stitch these families back together (see following story). But for now, West Africa is filled with parents and children searching desperately for one another.

When the bad woman came for Aisha, she didn't understand what had happened. One day there was food and Bobo and Mamma, braiding her hair, washing her, cuddling her. And then nothing except angry shouts in a strange tongue and hard hands. Hands that landed on her backside and her face, hitting her if she cried or walked too slowly or asked for food or just because. She walked with the woman, who talked about doughnuts that never appeared for a very long time. She walked and walked until she ended up in a strange place where no one spoke Susu and no one looked familiar. She spent her days cleaning and helping with domestic tasks. The time passed.

Then they started walking again. The woman took her to a store with big bales of dried fish and posters of a big man in a yellow robe, the President. They went to sleep and woke to an angry man shouting. He didn't want them dozing on his fish. The angry man took them to another place and told them to sleep there. Then the bad woman left.

Aisha tried to keep quiet so the bad woman wouldn't come back. She stayed with the angry man and his wife and children. She began to feel very bad and hot all over. She didn't eat. She didn't play. She just kept very quiet in the corner.

A child without an identity cannot be found. In the refugee camps and the streets of Guinea there is no tree that locates a child and acts as an address. It is for humans to find the roots of a lost child.

After Aisha's disappearance, Marie refused to eat for a week. Ibrahim went to all the mosques in the area, offering sacrifices for his daughter's return. He gave a bag of kola nuts and 5,000 Guinean francs to each mosque that he visited. He asked all the local radio stations to publicize Aisha's disappearance. After six months and six mosques, he ran out of money and hope. Marie, for her part, believed her daughter had died.

The International Rescue Committee specializes in this kind of detective work from the other end of the equation--starting with the child. Since 1999 it has identified more than 1,600 separated children in Guinea. "The family is the best guarantor for the protection of these children," says Jacqueline Botte, the country program director for child tracing. If no biological relatives can be found, the IRC places the children with foster families or, as a last resort, at a transit center. But blood and memory exert a special pull. Kids separated from their families for as long as 10 years want to go home--home to the community of their earliest remembrance.

The journey back usually begins at a mosque or a church or a camp, when the names of children--and whatever scraps of information can be ascertained--are read over a loudspeaker. At an outdoor mosque in Conakry on a recent Friday, an IRC worker, Sheku Conteh, intoned the names of some 30 children. A lizard scurried up a tree whose base was ringed with well-worn plastic sandals and sneakers, while a woman performed her ablutions with a kettle. The men stood barefoot on a makeshift dais; women wearing scarves on their heads sat on the ground behind them; all listened intently. "If you don't know anything, it's O.K.," Conteh blared out. "But if you know something, anything, about this child, this is a big, big blessing."

The blessing of a reunion begins with the business of tiny scraps. A man faintly recalls the name of a child and thinks he might know the family. A woman remembers seeing a child with bright eyes heading off with that woman who sold cassava leaves. And with this small scrap, the IRC teams begin to try to undo a heartbreak. The work is painstaking, as it takes days and perhaps weeks to check out every lead.

By the time Esther Toure, an IRC worker, collected Aisha in Kissidougou, in southeastern Guinea, the child was running a fever from malaria. She barely spoke except at night, when she would cry out in her nightmares and wet her bed. She had been found only because the storekeeper with whom she had been abandoned called the local police. Amid the tidal wave of refugees moving from place to place, Aisha had been parked for a crucial moment in the vicinity of someone who cared enough to help her. Esther took Aisha back to Gueckedou, about an hour's drive south, where she and her family spoke Susu. She gave Aisha peppermints to gain her trust. Finally, one day Esther asked, "Who is your mother?" and Aisha responded, "My mother is Marie."

The word went out. On the radio stations in Kindia, Forecariah and Coyah, every place in Guinea where Susu is spoken, the announcement was made that a young girl named Aisha whose mother was Marie had been found. Ibrahim's brother Mamadouba heard the news. He went to the station to look at the accompanying picture of the girl. It was Aisha.

The family sent Mamadouba, the most educated of them all, to Gueckedou with a family picture of Aisha, her birth certificate and Marie's identification card. As he approached Esther's house, Mamadouba saw Aisha eating at the table and shouted her name. She continued eating. He showed Esther the papers, but she was wary. Why didn't the girl respond? She refused to let him take Aisha. He wept in disappointment.

Marie and Ibrahim were desperate. They pressed the IRC for Aisha's return. Esther decided to bring Aisha to Coyah to find out if Aisha's mother had truly been located.

This time there could be no mistake. As the IRC jeep approached the yard, Marie flew to meet it. She rushed for her daughter with no thought of the metal tonnage heading toward her. She raced to the vehicle and slammed into its door as it braked to a halt. So as not to be knocked over, Esther took Aisha out the other side.

Aisha began to run. She met Marie's waiting arms and cried, "Oh, N'Gah." Oh, my mother.

Weeping, Marie responded, "Woh, M'Deeh." Oh, my daughter.