wfn.org | Doctor opens doors to the victims of Sierra Leone's rebels

[Daphne Mack <dmack@dfms.org>]

For more information contact:
Episcopal News Service
Kathryn McCormick
kmccormick @dfms.org
212/922-5383
http://www.ecusa.anglican.org/ens

99-050
A doctor opens his doors to the victims of Sierra Leone's rebels
by Kathryn McCormick
(ENS) Despite the searing television images of exhausted refugees and
the rubble created by NATO missiles, Kosovo remains far from the only
trouble spot in the world today.

Dr. Kojo Carew knows that only too well. At two small, overworked
clinics in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, he and his wife, Dr.
Lynette Palmer, treat victims of the vicious warfare that has plagued
their country for more than eight years.

"I decided in 1997 that those who have received the brunt of the rebel
war should benefit from the best that the country has in private care,"
said Carew, who opened the doors of the 20-bed clinics he heads to take
in hundreds of patients who had been wounded or maimed by marauding
rebels.

The most recent wave of violence by the army of rebels seeking to
overthrow the country's government began in northern Sierra Leone in
late December. On January 6, rebels attacked Freetown. Fighting forced
many out of their homes, he said, recalling that his clinics, Netland
Hospital and Curney Barnes Memorial Hospital, were packed. 

"At the peak, we had 111 patients in beds all around," he said. "We used
the garage space, utility rooms, the corridors. Wherever there was
space, there were patients. And we had the relatives of patients who
stayed, too. They were terrified to go back to their homes.

"And apart from the bed patients, we had 70 to 80 others who had less
serious wounds but who had nowhere else to go, so they stayed on the
hospital campus for protection and for feeding because we provided meals
to patients."

At one point about 300 people filled the buildings and grounds, he said.
People arrived in a steady stream, many bearing wounded relatives on
pushcarts or on their backs.
"Often people came late to the hospital," Carew said, meaning that many
were trapped in their homes, unable to get to the hospital until days
after they had been wounded. By that time, he said, they had become weak
through loss of blood and were susceptible to infections. Rebels struck
in many neighborhoods, inflicting the machete wounds-cutting off hands,
arms, ears, tongues, and feet-a technique for which they are infamous.

For a few days at the beginning of the recent attacks, Carew said, he
and his wife worked on their own, bearing the brunt of the costs. "The
International Red Cross came to my rescue, and they have been at my side
since the present onslaught began on January 6."
Deep commitment
The couple's commitment to caring for their patients runs deep. During a
recent interview, Carew studied a photograph of a young woman lying in
one of his hospital's beds and remembered her story-just one of the
thousands of stories of people he has heard and helped.

"This is a 23-year-old mother," he said. "She has a three-month-old
baby. The rebel soldiers put their house on fire, and they took the baby
from her in order to throw it into the fire. She resisted, and they shot
her. We managed to save her leg, but she was so sick when she arrived at
the hospital that she couldn't nurse her child. So I went to my house
and got some of the milk that my wife and I had for our six-month-old
son, Jermaine Nnamdi, and gave it to the woman's child. 

"They're still in the hospital, but they're doing fine now," he added,
pointing with a smile to the picture of mother and baby, who was
peacefully nursing again.

Another patient's story brought Carew to the United States for a recent
short visit. Sylvester Kaikai, a 24-year-old, had been shot in the head
by rebels. Although his condition had been stabilized at the hospital in
Freetown, it was clear that a neurosurgeon would be needed to remove the
bone fragments embedded in the man's brain and to deal with the bullet
itself, which was resting on the floor of his skull. A way was found to
airlift the man to a Little Rock, Arkansas, hospital, where a
neurosurgeon performed the work without a fee. Carew accompanied his
patient and watched the operation.

The man's prognosis is good, said Carew, noting that while the bone
fragments had been cleaned out, the bullet was left in place. "It is
near a very delicate area," he said, "but it is at the bottom of the
skull, so it won't move. It's best to leave it there."

Carew took time during the man's post-operative recovery to fly to New
York City for a brief visit with, among others, Richard Parkins,
director of Episcopal Migration Ministries, who toured Freetown and a
number of refugee camps in Sierra Leone last year.
Beyond evil
The conflict in Sierra Leone is unusual, Parkins said recently, because
"it's not ethnic, it's not tribal, it's not even political. It's about
greed." At the center of it all are the country's rich supply of
diamonds as well as Sierra Leone's growing importance as an
international transfer point for illegal drugs. And, Parkins added, the
exploitation of the country's large pool of very poor people, who are
being recruited to fight.

This includes children, Carew said, explaining that often the rebels
kidnap youngsters, feed them cocaine, arm them with machetes and send
them out to hurt as many people as they can.

"This is beyond evil," Parkins said. "There's almost no way to explain
it."

Further, it poses problems for future attempts at reconciliation. "What
do you do with a nine-year-old who has seriously wounded people in his
own village?" Parkins said. "Even their own mothers won't take them
back, and there are thousands of these kids."

Carew nevertheless retains some optimism, in part because of his faith.
He is an Anglican, a member of St. George's Cathedral in Freetown. "My
father is still a member of the choir there," he smiles.

While the atmosphere remains tense in Freetown, the violence has abated
slightly in recent weeks so Carew's hospital campus now houses only 76
patients. Some patients have been moved to the country's national
stadium in Freetown, a sports facility that is now home to 40,000
displaced persons, most of whom live there without shelter.

Asked if he would flee the country with his wife and son, Carew replied
that he will stay, "Sierra Leone is my country, and it's a beautiful
country," he said. "I cannot see ever leaving it."

Donations to support efforts to aid displaced persons may be mailed to
the Society for the Advancement of Culture and Welfare in Sierra Leone,
P.O. Box 752, Dayton, OH 45401. The society was set up by Williamson
Ademu-John, who accompanied Parkins to Sierra Leone.
--Kathryn McCormick is associate director of the Office of News and
Information of the Episcopal Church.