Children coming to school - SL Freetown, Sierra Leone…

Children coming to school - SL Freetown, Sierra Leone

Healing takes times, but it's a process fully integrated in the support given in a children's village. Read the stories of two children from SOS Children's Village Freetown, in Sierra Leone.

Our past is finally behind

Favour and Blessing witnessed the atrocities of the eleven years of civil war that stroke their country from the very first. They are two out of thousands of children who suffered in various forms and shapes, during a war which claimed the lives of 50,000 innocent civilians including women and children. Traumatised by what they saw and what happened to them, this young boy and young girl found security and regained a bit of their childhood in SOS Children's Village Freetown.

"Playing football is one of the ways I forget about my past"

Favour saw his father struggling to die when a grenade fragment hit him in his home during the civil war in Sierra Leone. His father's death left a big scar in his mind.

"My father was bleeding and I could not hide my feelings and cried. I was very close to him and people always tell me when they see me that they will always remember my late father," says Favour.

When he lost his father in this tragic incident, his grandmother took up the responsibility to care for him despite the odds she had to face.

Favour did not only lose his father but the cruel hands of death also snatched his mother away a couple of hours after he was born. "My father's death affects me more than my mother's because we used to spend a lot of time together. He liked to play football and I also love playing football. I was always with him on the football pitch in the evening," he recalls.

Before he was admitted into SOS Children's Village Freetown, while staying with his grandmother, Favour explains that he was keeping away from his friends and didn't feel like playing his favourite game (football) anymore. "For my grandmother and I to survive, she had to give me second hand clothing to go and sell so that we could get something to eat. When my father was alive, he did his best to care for me and my relations at home", recalls Favour.

Today, the life of ten-year-old Favour has changed and he is gradually putting the dark side of his life behind him. The assistant village director, when asked about Favour, has this to say: "When we took him in, he had behavioural problems. He was fighting with some of his brothers and sisters in his family house, was hot tempered and withdrawn. We soon understood that he was traumatized by his father's death and what he had gone through before he came to SOS Children's Village Freetown. But through our regular counselling and frank discussions with him, he has made remarkable progresses in his behaviour."

"I am now happy to be in the children's village. I eat enough food, sleep on a clean bed and I am going to school. I have started playing my favourite game again. Any time I am free at home, I call my brothers who also love to play football and we form a team. Playing football is one of the ways I forget about my past", concludes Favour.

"My past suffering is gone"

Blessing is a 13-year-old girl who suffered sexual exploitation in a camp for internally displaced people in Freetown for three years, while she was 'in the hands' of relief workers. She could not withstand the exploitation anymore and ran away from the camp. She stayed in the street, and had to beg passers-by to survive.

"One day, a woman took some children including myself to her home and promised us that she would take care of us. But she was not treating us well. We had no proper food and sleeping places. And, I was not going to school", explains Blessing. "Somebody told me that she was using us to get outside financial support. But the money she got was used for something else and not to improve our lives", she reveals.

Blessing is now living happily in SOS Children's Village Freetown and her past situation has been turned around for a better future. She is now loved and cared for, like any child deserves to be.

"I can no longer be used by adults now that I am in the Children's Village and my past suffering is gone," she assures.

For privacy reasons, we have changed the names the two children.