©InfoAlusine Foday Bangura, 18, is a shy boy. Standing in the carpentry workshop, he focuses on the chair he is making and says: “I lost my father to the war and my mother was killed as well. I had no one to take care of me. I had no one to cry to.”
Alusine joined the Sierra Leone Red Cross child advocacy and rehabilitation (CAR) centre in 2008. He chose to study carpentry and when he graduated his teacher, Peter Bangura, helped him get an apprenticeship.
Peter Bangura says: “When Alusine first came to us, he was so withdrawn. When he was given food he would take it to eat on his own. Only later did he start joining in with the group. I’ve seen great changes in Alusine. At first he wouldn’t even talk to me. But now if he has a problem he will come and tell me; he’s not frightened to speak up anymore.”
Recognising loneliness
When Alusine approached the CAR centre, he had no one to look after him. Peter recognised something of himself in Alusine and invited him to live with his family. “I grew up a lonely child. My mother left when I was nine months old,” Peter explains. “My dad had two other wives and more children, but I was not included and I had no one to talk to. It was easy for me to see that Alusine was also a lonely child.
“During the war I was caught by the rebels. I was 25 and the rebel who took me away was a boy just 10 years old, but he had a gun and I was forced to go with him. They rounded up a lot of people and we were asked to form three lines: one for the pregnant women and young children, one for women and one for men. I was last in the line and earlier I’d seen them leave behind a young boy with polio. So I pretended to be deformed, which is how I escaped.
“After the war, I did a carpentry course and later I got the job at the CAR centre. My own experience has helped me to talk to the children here.”
Moving on from war
The CAR centre helps children who lost out on an education because of the war. In the first six months, they have literacy and numeracy classes in the morning with vocational training in the afternoon. As they get closer to graduation, they focus solely on the vocational skills, which include construction, hairdressing, weaving, tailoring and carpentry.
The one-year programme also helps children work through their traumatic experiences of the war through counselling and drama. After graduating, the children are supported in their next steps. Some choose to return to school and others get apprenticeships or, if extremely capable, set up their own business. Although a lot of them do go back to school, they continue with their vocational skills by doing apprenticeships in the afternoon, after school hours.
Peter, who already has three children, is paying for Alusine to go to secondary school. “Alusine is doing extremely well; in a class of 70, he is in the first five,” he says proudly.
Crafting a future
After classes, Alusine carries on with his carpentry apprenticeship. “I’m able to sell the chairs and make some money,” Alusine says. “It means I’m able to buy clothes; I can enjoy my life and go out and meet my friends.
“Peter is a kind person. What he has done for me I could never explain.”
Watch a video about a girl affected by war in Liberia