ABBIE WAS BORN fatherless into a world reeling from war, disease, poverty
and disdain. She spent the first half of her life rigged to her mother’s back. Her
mother managed the small bundle in spite of 7.7-pound prosthetics fitted over her
legs and a crutch propped under her left arm. She lugged Abbie and herself around
to beg, appealing for sympathy or pity or just a few coins.
Abbie spent the second half of her young life in bed in a hospital ship’s ward as her mother recovered from surgeries meant to repair injuries incurred before Abbie was conceived. The girl drew an onslaught of attention and a legion of women vying to fill in as mothers to the quiet baby who never, ever cried. Abbie’s life can be split in two, just as her mother’s life has a before and an after –
before, when destruction reigned, when the innocent were preyed upon and hope
was suffocated with each additional death; and after, when hatred faltered, lost its
footing and healing began.
Ten-month-old Abbie will first watch and then learn from her productive mother
how to put her hands to use, clothing and feeding and providing for a family. She
won’t remember her mother’s life as a beggar or her mother’s slow recovery on the
hospital ship. She’ll hear the stories and see the photographs and whenever her
mother walks by, Abbie will get a glimpse into her mother’s life before and after;
she’ll learn about the arbitrariness of evil, but even more about the prevailing
power of good, of how love can heal.
To her mother, the lessons will take the shape of memories. She won’t have to
ponder them as abstractions. She will remember it. She lived it. It’s her story,
Salamatu’s story.
***
Four month old Abbie was born just two years after Sierra Leone's 11 year civil war ended.
Her mother, Salamatu, was a civilian victim of the war.
SALAMATU WAS BORN the eldest of five children in Sierra Leone, West
Africa. Her parents planted and sold cassava, rice and potatoes. Salamatu liked
school. She liked the music classes and the friends she made. But as more children
were born into her family, it became more difficult to pay the school fees and keep
up with the uniform requirements, let alone pay for the basics, like feeding the
family. Salamatu was 12 years old when she was told she must quit school to help
support her family. She wasn’t happy. She says she will always remember the
friends she made in school, some of whom are now university graduates.
Sometimes she thinks that if she had stayed in school she, too, would have a
degree.
up with the uniform requirements, let alone pay for the basics, like feeding the
family. Salamatu was 12 years old when she was told she must quit school to help
support her family. She wasn’t happy. She says she will always remember the
friends she made in school, some of whom are now university graduates.
Sometimes she thinks that if she had stayed in school she, too, would have a
degree.
Instead, Salamatu learned to trade. Herhands would never again be idle. She
walked from her home in a village outside
Makeni to the next village, where she
bought palm oil. Then she walked home to
sell the goods.
Salamatu met Mohammed in the next
village, where he also did business, buying
and selling dresses and shoes. The two fell
in love and married during an era of uncertainty, in the midst of their nation’s civil
war. She was 15, he was 17. They had one child. For four years, they lived
together, content.
But fighting inched toward their city. In 1997, a peacekeeping force stayed in
Makeni for several months. The people of Makeni heard the rebels had agreed to
peace and then heard the peacekeeping force would be pulling out and moving to
Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, and to Kono, the diamond-rich rebel stronghold
bordering Liberia. The people of Makeni, Salamatu says, didn’t believe the rebels
would keep the peace. “Let’s see,” the people said. When the peacekeepers pulled
out, the people of Makeni were afraid.
One day, as Salamatu returned home after bathing, she saw thousands of people
moving about frantically, attempting to leave Makeni. She had heard the stories of
rebels sending messengers ahead of them on their way to an area. The messengers
would write letters, stating “the rebels are coming, get ready”, and post them to the
doors of homes. They did this to create chaos, to make the people panic. Salamatu
heard that messengers had posted these warnings in Makeni.
She ran home and started gathering her belongings. Mohammed was away on business in another city so the 19-year-old took her child and joined her parents and her siblings in the mass exodus. The nine family members began walking to a village 13 miles away, thinking they would soon find refuge. They didn’t realize yet that the rebels had surrounded Makeni before sending their messenger to alert the people. The rebels hid in the forests, waiting to ambush the civilians as they fled.
Salamatu and her family walked straight into the path of the rebels.
The rebels demanded money from Salamatu’s father. ’s father.
He told them he didn’t have any.
“What if we find money on you?” they asked. “What will we do?”
Salamatu’s father didn’t answer.
The rebels searched him and found bills stuffed into his shoe. They taunted him,
asking why he had made them search to find the money. They shot him in the chest.
His life was taken for a deception and the equivalent of $125 US.
Salamatu’s mother, her younger brothers and sister and her infant son watched. The
rebels turned their attention to the rest of the dead man’s family. If any of you cry,
they said, you’re next. In order to save their own lives, they were forced to act
unmoved by the patriarch’s murder. No one cried. They suppressed their horror,
their fear, their sadness and anger.
Finally, the rebels moved on. The seven family members continued on to the
village they hoped might still provide refuge. Salamatu walked ahead of her family.
She sobbed, mourning for her father, for what she had witnessed and for her
family’s future. Her vision veiled by tears, Salamatu walked into the path of
another group of rebels. She screamed. Her family, trailing by about 50 meters, ran
for cover in the bush.
“I was praying,” Salamatu, a Christian, says through a Krio translator, “but
whenever you meet with the rebels you think but you don’t know how to pray.
You’re not able to pray. If someone is holding a gun or a knife or a machete, what
would you say?”
Salamatu was taken into the bush. A woman was among the rebels. They called her
Adama Cut Hand. The men began to argue, fighting over what they should do with
Salamatu. Some wanted to amputate her hands and feet. Some wanted to cut off her
feet and buttocks. They decided to make Salamatu choose her own fate. They held
a “ballot”. On pieces of paper they wrote “hands and feet”, “hands and waist” and
“feet and waist”. Salamatu was forced to pick one of the pieces of paper. She
picked the one that read “feet and waist”. Salamatu remembers seeing the rebels
dance in jubilation.
Salamatu’s brother, Sorie, who had hidden with
his family, snuck close to his sister and the
rebels and hid in the bush about five meters
away. The 11-year-old watched as Adama Cut
Hand sliced off his sister’s buttocks with a
machete. Then he watched the rebels lug a block
of iron toward Salamatu. They placed the block
under her legs and Adama Cut Hand hacked
away at each foot, striking three times on the left
foot and three times on the right foot to
dismember her. Sorie came forward out of hiding and told the rebels to do the same
to him. Take an arm, he said. He wasn’t thinking right, he says now; he wasn’t in
his “complete sense”.
The rebels refused to touch Sorie. Salamatu lay bleeding. “She was at least on the
point of death,” Sorie says. The rebels left.
Sorie went into the bush and cried. He returned to the place where his family was
hiding and told them what he had seen. His mother said they should all go to
Salamatu. When they found her, her lifeblood seeping out of her, they wept.
Salamatu had fallen into unconsciousness. Her mother wrapped a piece of cloth
around Salamatu’s stumps and then covered her buttocks with leaves to slow the
bleeding.
hiding and told them what he had seen. His mother said they should all go to
Salamatu. When they found her, her lifeblood seeping out of her, they wept.
Salamatu had fallen into unconsciousness. Her mother wrapped a piece of cloth
around Salamatu’s stumps and then covered her buttocks with leaves to slow the
bleeding.
Sorie helped his mother carry Salamatu to the village they originally hoped would
bring them safety. They bought drinking alcohol to pour over Salamatu’s wounds
to stop the bleeding. The next day, Salamatu awoke. She stayed in the village a
week before her family heard the peacekeeping force had returned to a city near
Makeni. They knew a hospital would be based nearby and so they set off in search
of help.
MEANWHILE, WORD WAS sent to Mohammed that his wife’s legs had been
sliced off. He rushed to meet her at the hospital. “He cried,” Salamatu says. “He
was grieved. ... He had compassion and took good care of me.”
Mohammed spoke with a doctor at the hospital and explained what the rebels had
done to his teenaged wife.
“They were just sorry for me,” Salamatu says.
Although Salamatu didn’t
have any money, the
doctors agreed to assist.
They stitched up the skin
where her feet had been
and performed four
operations on Salamatu’s
buttocks. Each time they
stitched up the wounds
and each time the stitches
loosened and came out.
Salamatu stayed at the
hospital for a month,
recovering in a ward filled
with other victims of
mutilations. Their hands,
their feet and their toes
had been amputated. Some
had had their thumbs
chopped off but the rest of
their fingers left intact.
Others had had all their
fingers amputated but their
thumbs left intact. They
formed a fraction of the
victims of the country’s
civil war, in which an
estimated 60,000 were
killed and 10,000 suffered
amputations.
Salamatu dries Abbie after giving her a bath.
None of them understood why the rebels were doing what they were doing. “It’s
just wickedness,” Salamatu says. “I don’t think they had a cause. They said they
were going to liberate the country.”
“It’s
just wickedness,” Salamatu says. “I don’t think they had a cause. They said they
were going to liberate the country.”
When Salamatu was finally discharged from the hospital, the wounds on her
buttocks had not healed. Sores developed over what was once padding. In spite of
her injuries, in a country where spouses frequently leave one another because of
illness or deformity, Mohammed stayed with Salamatu. He loved her. Salamatu
enrolled in a batik (tie-dye) school and she and her husband worked together to
make money to provide for their small family, as well as Salamatu’s mother and
siblings. As the eldest, and especially because she was married, Salamatu became
responsible for everyone in the eternal absence of her father. Her younger siblings
stayed in school and were clothed, thanks to Salamatu and her husband.
Once the wounds closed over Salamatu’s feet, Sorie bought her a pair of prosthetic
legs. Salamatu says he paid the equivalent of a few American coins for the shoes,
which quickly “spoiled”. The family combined their earnings to pay $165 US for a
new set of prosthetics, sturdy but unbending legs that weighed almost four pounds
each.
Life became normal, Salamatu says, because her husband took good care of her.
Salamatu got pregnant and gave birth to a girl.
And then things started improving in Sierra Leone. In 2001, the rebels signed a
peace treaty, bringing the 11-year civil war to an end.
A year later, Salamatu got pregnant again. But then, even as the family found more
reasons to be hopeful, Mohammed became ill. He had survived the war unscathed,
even escaping from the rebels once when they caught him, only to fall prey to
malaria. It didn’t last long; he was ill only two days. Salamatu went with her
husband to the government hospital in Makeni. He was awake one day and dead the
next. Salamatu was four months pregnant when her husband died. She became a
25-year-old widow.
Her third child, Abigail, was born on May 30, 2003.
The family entered into a state of crisis. In spite of Salamatu’s disadvantages – she
was a woman and she was disabled – everyone looked to her to provide for them.
Perhaps it didn’t occur to her family that Salamatu might not be up to yet another
challenge, in the wake of her husband’s death, with the arrival of her infant,
enduring not only the challenge of walking, but the pain of sitting.
“We all depend on our elder sister,” says Sorie. “We do survive under her because
she used to pay our school fees and used to buy clothes for all of us. And today,
look how she is today.”
Salamatu deemed herself capable. Unable to tie-dye clothes on her own, she
fastened on her prosthetic legs and took Abbie on public transportation to the
capital, Freetown, to beg. She stood on the streets and held out her hands.
Sorie went to work on a farm. The children sometimes sold salt or sugar with
Salamatu’s mother, making the equivalent of a dollar a day. Sometimes they went
to the neighbors’ homes to ask for food. Sorie says the neighbors treated the
children as slaves, making them run errands before feeding them meager portions.
Salamatu often returned to Makeni from Freetown with her earnings. She found she
could no longer pay her siblings’ school fees.
Even as Salamatu tried fending for her family, her family was discriminated against
because of her. After her husband’s death, property owners became less willing to
let a cripple rent from them. “Since our sister is in this type of sorrowful
condition,” Sorie says, “people do not accept her any longer to live in the house.
They drove us out of the house. She is our sister. If she leaves, we leave.”
Salamatu, her mother, four siblings and three children found themselves homeless,
evicted from what they believed to be their final home. They moved into a farm
hut.
Salamatu, the bedrock of the family, felt she could tolerate no more. “At one time,
because she felt so sorry for our family,” Sorie says, “because all of us cried
bitterly, she said our family is so sorrowful she was going to drink soda poison to
kill herself.” Her faith kept her from taking her own life.
Salamatu says she sometimes became discouraged when she thought about her
condition. “But when I think of God,” she says, “I forget.”
Salamatu joined the Handicap Youth Development Association in Makeni and
visited with the other members, either affected by polio or civilian victims of the
civil war. Santigie Buya Sesay, chairman of the organization’s headquarters in
Freetown, says the members fight to be self-reliant. They attend school to learn a
trade. To manage, though, they support each other; they depend on one another.
It was at the association for the handicapped in Makeni that Salamatu heard about
Mercy Ships. She heard a hospital ship would be docking in Freetown for the third
consecutive year to provide free surgeries. Salamatu thought about attending the
medical screening because her right heel had become infected. Rumors spread,
though, that Mercy Ships could only help people with problems from the neck-up,
like facial tumors. Then someone told Salamatu the ships also provided orthopaedic
surgeries. She decided to travel the 112 miles to Freetown, a three-hour journey by
bush taxi.
Salamatu brought Abbie to the capital one week before the Mercy Ships medical screening at Freetown’s National Stadium. They stayed at the Handicap Youth Development Association’s headquarters. Salamatu arrived at the stadium the first morning of the two-day medical screening and joined thousands of Sierra Leoneans in line. Some had staked their hopes of being selected on lining up the earliest. They arrived the evening prior and saved spots in line by sleeping on the sidewalk. Daylight revealed a motley assortment. Fathers stood with daughters losing their eyesight. Mothers clutched infants suffering the malnourishment and stigma of cleft lips. Some bore the weight of tumors. A man stood upright next to his younger brother who crouched on the ground, his legs useless from polio; he draped his arms in front of his legs, grabbed his ankles and walked his feet with the strength of his arms.
Salamatu stood in the midst of her countrymen, all of them hoping to be among the
750 people selected for free surgeries onboard the hospital ship. Salamatu stood all
day in the 90-degree Fahrenheit heat with Abbie strapped to her back and the
cumbersome prosthetics on her feet. She never got near the front of the line.
The next morning, Salamatu went to thestadium again, a crutch under her arm and
Abbie on her back. She stood for several hours
before deciding to give up. She turned to leave.
As she walked away from the stadium, Neva
Snyder, an American Mercy Ships volunteer,
walked toward the stadium. Salamatu
determined to try once more to get into the
stadium and be seen by a surgeon
Salamatu caught Neva’s eye and approached
her.
“Ma’am, ma’am,” she said.
Neva stopped.
Salamatu reached into her bag and pulled out a
photograph. She held in her hand the evidence
that revealed her condition, her need. Neva
studied the photograph, unsure at first what it
she was looking at. Then it dawned on her: She was looking at Salamatu’s
mutilated buttocks. “Why would anyone do that?” Neva thought. “It didn’t make
sense.”
Neva had been told to only let those people with appointment cards, given the
previous year when Mercy Ships was in Freetown, into the stadium. She called to
Dorothy Logans, a counselor/discipler in the Outreach Department, and gave her
the photograph.
“How did this happen?” Dorothy asked Salamatu.
“The rebels,” Salamatu said.
The two led Salamatu past Mercy Ships security and through the stadium gate to be
seen by a plastic surgeon and an orthopaedic surgeon.
When Sierra Leonean Mickey, a Mercy Ships translator, saw Salamatu, she
thought, She is like me, she’s small. So is her daughter. But for them, she thought,
it wasn’t stature that made them small, it was lack of food; they looked thin, as if
they hadn’t eaten enough.
ELAINE METZGER, AN American nurse, took Salamatu’s history. Elaine lived
in Sierra Leone in the 1980s as a missionary with her husband and son. During
Sierra Leone’s civil war in the 1990s, Elaine and her husband, horrified at news in
the United States of the rebels’ hallmark of terrorizing the public with random
amputations, gave money toward the amputees. When Salamatu walked up to
Elaine with her crutch, her legs were covered under a long skirt. Elaine didn’t
realize she was talking with a war victim until Salamatu explained her injuries.
“How was she possibly managing?” Elaine thought as she looked at Salamatu and
her baby. “And yet, she obviously had adjusted to her situation because she wasn’t
on the brink of tears, like I was.”
When Salamatu moved to another station in the screening process, Elaine watched an entourage follow; one carried Abbie, another carried a pillow for Salamatu to place between herself and the wooden benches. The captain’s 10-yearold son saw the commotion and approached. “This is amiracle,” Dorothy told the boy. “She’s strong. She’s come very far. She knows Jesus. She prays. But it’s still hard. It’s amazing she didn’t bleed to death. It’s a miracle. She’s a miracle.”
Salamatu was seen by surgeons, selected for two operations and given an
appointment card to return to the ship one month later.
Dorothy and her translator, Henry, decided to
ease Salamatu’s journey across Freetown to her
accommodations. They helped her into a Mercy
Ships Land Rover and drove on potholed roads,
past a woman throwing a rock at a dog, to a
store, where they bought provisions for
Salamatu and Abbie. Then they drove to the
Handicap Youth Development Association.
Salamatu leaned on her crutch as she walked
through the building’s entrance, smiled and
greeted other members sitting in the shaded
concrete corridor, escaping from the sun’s rays.
“These are all her friends,” Henry translated for
Salamatu. “They help her.”
Dorothy asked Salamatu to show her where she
and Abbie slept. Salamatu dangled her crutch
and pulled herself up a flight of stairs. She walked into an open room and pointed
to a corner on the floor.
Dorothy determined to meet Salamatu before she traveled back to Makeni. She
wanted to equip Salamatu to provide for her family until she returned to Freetown
for the operations. Then Dorothy decided to take Salamatu home to Makeni,
herself. Dorothy bought a 120-pound bag of rice, which she told Salamatu to sell in
portions, and fish, cassava and tomatoes, so Salamatu could feed her family.
About a week later, when the Mercy Ships Land Rover bearing Salamatu and
Abbie drove into her village outside of Makeni, neighbors screamed and jumped up
and down. Once they saw a mound of goods tied to the top of the vehicle, they
shouted louder. Salamatu’s mother came forward, dancing and thanking Dorothy.
She looked thin and worn. She looked old. Dorothy didn’t ask her age. She thought
it might not be years that had aged the woman.
shouted louder. Salamatu’s mother came forward, dancing and thanking Dorothy.
She looked thin and worn. She looked old. Dorothy didn’t ask her age. She thought
it might not be years that had aged the woman.
Several weeks later, Salamatu returned to
Freetown. She walked up the hospital ship’s
gangway, leaning on a crutch, wearing her hair
in plaits and weighing about 106 pounds –
almost eight of which she lost each night when
she slept but hoisted back on during the day in
order to move around. Without her prosthetic
legs, Salamatu weighed only 98 pounds. With
them, and with her baby strapped to her back,
Salamatu carried an extra load of 20 pounds.
Salamatu was led to the hospital ship’s Admissions
Office. Beverly Kohl, an American nurse, talked
with one patient while another nurse talked to
Salamatu. Salamatu recounted her story. Soon, the
nurse started crying. Beverly started listening. “It
was all so overwhelming I could hardly control
myself,” Beverly says. “Oh, what this poor woman
has been through.” Almost as startling as the details
was Salamatu’s straightforward way of relating
them. Salamatu appeared unmoved, almost stoic. She
seemed to indicate, “It happened. It’s what happened.
... That’s the way things are in Sierra Leone.”
Those who met Salamatu learned her faith sustained
her, breathing life into her patchwork body. God, she
believes, has protected her life. “It’s a miracle that up
to now I’m alive,” Salamatu says. “It’s God.”
When Salamatu received her bed assignment in the C-Deck ward, she started her
stint as the ship’s longest-standing patient during its seven months in Sierra Leone.
She occupied one of the ward’s 43 beds for four months. Her family would have to
manage without her. Salamatu worried for them.
Dorothy visited with Salamatu and learned
what she had done with her gifts. She used
some of the goods, sold some of the goods and
spent the profit on material to tie-dye. Dorothy
was impressed by Salamatu’s business sense.
Then Salamatu told Dorothy her family was
homeless. Dorothy asked what she wanted.
“Mama Dorothy,” Salamatu said, “I need a
house so I don’t keep getting kicked out.”
“Okay,” Dorothy said. She wrote about Salamatu on a poster board and appealed to
the ship’s 300-plus volunteer crew. Individuals, impacted by Salamatu’s spirit in
spite of what she had endured, donated more than $1,200 US towards a house.
“Salamatu’s story is really poignant, really,” says Dr. Tony Giles, a Maxillo-facial
surgeon from England. “She nearly lost her hands. Instead she lost her buttocks,
which in the end is better.” Practically every task during her day – from cooking to
dressing to changing Abbie’s diaper – would have become impossible if she didn’t
have hands. Salamatu picked the right piece of paper, Dr. Giles says, as feet are
easier to replace than hands. “What a world,” he says, “to think about what you
would lose.”
” Practically every task during her day – from cooking to
dressing to changing Abbie’s diaper – would have become impossible if she didn’t
have hands. Salamatu picked the right piece of paper, Dr. Giles says, as feet are
easier to replace than hands. “What a world,” he says, “to think about what you
would lose.”
“Physically,” says Dr. Tertius Venter, a plastic surgeon from South Africa, “it’s
amazing she could suffer the amputations of two ankles at the same time when she
could have bled to death from one amputation.” Dr. Venter performed Salamatu’s
first operation on her buttocks. After the rebels’ initial assault, Salamatu developed
secondary injuries – pressure sores and pressure ulcers where once she had
padding. Plastic surgeons commonly treat people for pressure wounds, Dr. Venter
says, but Salamatu’s injuries had not developed as most of his paralytic patients’
had; hers grew from “horrific circumstances”. “When we see any of these war-
injured, it’s just horrific,” he says. “It’s quite disturbing what one human can do to
another.”
The major trauma Salamatu underwent the night the rebels caught her would have
made her bed-ridden for months, Dr. Venter says, which would have caused the
two sores, each about five centimeters in diameter, to form, then become chronic.
She had no potential to heal on her own. Sitting, Dr. Venter says, would have been
painful and she would have had to care for the wounds daily, keeping them clean
because of the risk of infection.
When Dr. Venter interacted with Salamatu, he was struck by her demeanor. She always smiles, he says. “She went through all this and still smiles.” Dr. Venter explained before the operation that her movement would be restricted for several weeks while she recovered. If she were to heal properly, she would have to sit and lay and sleep on her side. She couldn’t stand or bend. Ward Supervisor Sorina Fadden says Salamatu was upbeat as Dr. Venter listed her restrictions.
“What else do I have to do?” Salamatu asked.
In an operation onboard the Anastasis, Dr. Venter cut out the ulcers and the scar
tissue surrounding them. Then he cut “defect flaps”, using tissue from an adjacent
area, to give her buttocks padding.
THE WARD'S NURSING staff dubbed Salamatu’s bed “Party Corner”. Mickey,
the Sierra Leonean translator who met Salamatu at the medical screening, visited
her almost every day. “Everyone loves Salamatu,” Mickey says.
Salamatu would prop Abbie in bed with a book in her lap and tease that her
daughter could read. “I want her to teach me,” she laughed. daughter could read. “I want her to teach me,” she laughed.
Teenaged burn
patients
recovering
from plastic
surgeries found
their way to
Salamatu’s bed,
as did women
recovering
from Maxillofacial
operations.
Alimamy, who
thinks he’s
about 13 years
old, suffered
injuries and
was orphaned when the rebels burned down his family’s house five years ago. As
he recovered from operations onboard the Anastasis, he found himself drawn to
Salamatu. “I can joke with she like brother and sister because I like she and she like
me,” Alimamy says. “She can advise me to be to school, to do good at home, to not
dwell with the bar friends.”
The patients gravitated toward Salamatu, Sorina
says, because she had lived through so much.
“She’s not alone,” Sorina says. “They all could
relate to the horror of living through the war.
Everyone, they all are such survivors.” Yet
Salamatu had proven resilient and maintained
her bubbly spirit.
Doctors and nurses from around the world cared
for Salamatu as she recovered. They brought
their accents and their cultures to the bed of the
26-year-old who had never ventured beyond her
country’s borders. Mona Stusvik, a ward nurse
from Norway, once heard Salamatu talking with
some other patients about what it was like on
ship. “They said they were no longer in Africa,”
Mona says. “They were in Europe. Being on the
ship was like a trip to Europe.” The ward
provided air conditioning, televisions, Western
food, at times, and Western medical staff. “I
think in one way it was a big adventure for her,” Mona says. “In a way she has been
in Europe and the U.S. and all over.”
Salamatu’s story also circled the globe. Crew wrote home to family and friends
about the 26-year-old war victim. Fernanda Casulleras, an 18-year-old from
Mexico, remembers the first time she told her mother the details of Salamatu’s
injuries. Her mother cried. Fernanda told her mother that Salamatu was a strong
woman who worked hard and believed in God. For four months, Fernanda visited
Salamatu almost every day. The two opened up to each other, communicating in
English, which wasn’t either woman’s first language. “For me,” Fernanda says,
“she’s the coolest lady I ever met because she really worries for your feelings.”
Fernanda e-mailed her mother dozens of photographs of Salamatu and Abbie and
constantly updated her mother about Salamatu to the extent that her mother felt she
was living the same experience as Fernanda. When her aunts and uncles visited her
parents for a family reunion, her mother took out the photographs of Salamatu and
showed them off. “She loves her as much as I do,” Fernanda says of her mother.
“She loves her like if she was here.” Her parents sent money for Salamatu to buy
food for her family. Her grandmother sent money toward the construction of
Salamatu’s house.
As other crew, hailing from more than 30 nations, wrote e-mails home about
Salamatu, more money trickled in. Dorothy’s translator, Henry, drove to Makeni
and paid for some land next to Salamatu’s aunt’s home, where Salamatu’s family
was staying. Each time Salamatu received a gift, she would call Mickey over.
“Write thank you,” Salamatu would tell Mickey. “I’m her secretary,” Mickey
joked.
Salamatu busied her hands, knitting and
crocheting her own thank you’s. When she
didn’t have visitors, which was rare, Salamatu
made bags and hats and doilies for crew, and
skirts and shirts and dresses for her daughters.
Abbie sat, content, on her mother’s bed, or was
toted about the ship, content, on the backs of
nurses and crew. She rarely made a sound. Ann
Giles, a palliative care nurse and the wife of Dr.
Tony Giles, visited the two in the ward one time and found Abbie hot with a fever.
Most children would have put up a fuss, says Ann, a mother of six girls. Ann heard
Abbie whimper once. “I would say the chances are Abbie is such a good baby
because she has had to become one,” Ann says. “Salamatu was in the condition she
was in way before she had Abbie.” Abbie’s father died months before her birth and
Salamatu could not have physically tended to her infant’s every whim. “She’s just
sort of adapted to the situation,” Ann says. “Salamatu couldn’t cope if she was a
whiny child.” Or, Ann says, Abbie’s easy-going nature could be her God-given
temperament. “God knew what Salamatu could cope with or not cope with.”
A month after Salamatu
boarded the Anastasis, she was
taken to the Seventh Day
Adventist Hospital east of
Freetown to recuperate for
several weeks while the ship
sailed to the Canary Islands for
a mid-point break. Ann Giles
trained Nathaniel, a Sierra
Leonean nurse, to care for
Salamatu in the absence of the
Mercy Ship. The 22-year-old
became responsible for Salamatu recovers in a local hospital while the Anastasis sailed to the cleaning and dressing Salamatu’s wounds. For Nathaniel, Salamatu marked the first severe war injury patient he had ever cared
for. As Nathaniel prepared to dress Salamatu’s wound one day, she started to tell
him how she had been injured. “She wanted to explain about the trouble and
tragedy,” Nathaniel says. “I asked her to stop and forget about it. ” Nathaniel says. “I asked her to stop and forget about it.
“If she started explaining that problem,” he says, “she might also start to remember
about it. And when she started to remember about it, it would create more problems
for her. It was too pathetic.”
When the Anastasis returned to Freetown, Salamatu returned
to the hospital ship to continue her recovery and wait for her
second operation. Salamatu walked up the gangway, her
crutch propped under her arm, weighing 117 pounds – 11
pounds more than she had two months earlier when she first
boarded the ship. Once in the ward, she was told she had
been moved to another bed. She refused. “Thirty-three is my
bed,” she insisted. The nurses complied.
Salamatu hadn’t liked the bed in the corner at first because it
sat directly under a television. Salamatu said she couldn’t see
the films the nurses played throughout the day. Then she
discovered she could see the films if she simply turned
around and looked up. One day The JESUS Film played
overhead. Salamatu watched in intervals. Roman soldiers
hammered a nail through Jesus’ hands onto the cross. Jesus screamed. Salamatu
said she didn’t like watching the film. “These people are acting like the rebels,” she
said.
But Salamatu wasn’t bitter toward the people who had maimed her. “Everything is
God,” she says. “If God has allowed something bad to happen, I don’t have
anything to do. I only have to look to God.”
Several days
after returning to
the Anastasis,
Salamatu
underwent an
operation for a
right stump
revision. Dr.
Douglas
Sammon, an
orthopaedic
surgeon from
Scotland, says a
leaking sore, a
hole half a
centimeter in
diameter, had
formed in the
heel of her right foot. The rebels had cut through Salamatu’s left shin but had
hacked through the joint of Salamatu’s right ankle. It swung about, rubbing against
her prosthetic shoe, creating the sore.
Ideally, Dr. Sammon says, he would have amputated her right leg just below the
knee to give her more control and ease her mobility with a prosthetic leg. But he let
Salamatu choose how long she wanted her leg to be. She told him to make it the
same length as her left leg. She wanted to be made symmetrical in her deformity.
“Now,” Dr. Sammon says, “limb fitters can help her choose how tall she will be.”
Several weeks later, Salamatu was fitted with new prosthetics at Mercy Ships News
Steps, a land base that provides free limb rehabilitation to victims of disease and
war. At first, the legs were made too long. Salamatu was too tall. She felt unsteady.
Salamatu walked into the ward and promptly pulled her new white gym shoes off
the brown plastic feet to show off the new legs. The shoes fit tightly, though, and
the nurses struggled to pull the shoes back over the plastic feet. One nurse noticed
Salamatu eyeing someone’s flip-flops and advised her that the flip-flops would be a
little too adventurous. “Well I have got toes,” Salamatu retorted.
News
Steps, a land base that provides free limb rehabilitation to victims of disease and
war. At first, the legs were made too long. Salamatu was too tall. She felt unsteady.
Salamatu walked into the ward and promptly pulled her new white gym shoes off
the brown plastic feet to show off the new legs. The shoes fit tightly, though, and
the nurses struggled to pull the shoes back over the plastic feet. One nurse noticed
Salamatu eyeing someone’s flip-flops and advised her that the flip-flops would be a
little too adventurous. “Well I have got toes,” Salamatu retorted.
It was as if she had realized for the first time, her nurses said, how crude her other
prosthetics had been. Beverly Kohl remembers seeing Salamatu’s old prosthetics
when she was first admitted to the ward. “They looked like stumps,” Beverly says.
It looked as if someone had whittled down a log and stuck some clunky black high
tops on the end.
Salamatu’s prosthetic legs were shortened during a subsequent fitting at Mercy Ships New Steps but she was still several inches taller than she had been before. Two days before her discharge date, Salamatu returned to Mercy Ships New Steps for her final fitting. She left 10-month-old Abbie in the care of the ward nurses. “She has so many mothers on the ship,” Salamatu said,
smiling. Abbie, Salamatu said, would wonder when they went back to Makeni,
“Where are all my mothers?”
Ann Giles drove Salamatu to the appointment. Salamatu sat in the Mercy Ships
Land Rover and crocheted until the vehicle pulled out of the port. Then, the white
yarn hung limp as her eyes wandered, lingering over the scenes outside. When she
walked into the Mercy Ships New Steps office, Ann told Richard, a prosthetic
orthopaedic technician from Liberia, “She’s developed a squeak.” Salamatu
demonstrated. Her right leg sounded off.
Richard repaired the leg, altering the screws then tightening them “so when she
goes,” Richard said, “she will be in the hands of God and there will be no
loosening.” The squeak stopped in the right leg but a snapping sound started in the
left one. For two hours Richard worked on the prosthetics, fitting them just right
and then asking Salamatu to walk around.
The prosthetic legs weighed less than a pound and would have cost about $125 US
if she had to purchase them. “It’s better,” Salamatu said as she held up the ends of
her skirt and looked at herself walk, without a crutch, in a full-length mirror. “Now
God will heal everything for me,” Salamatu said. “And I thank God.”
As Richard fixed Salamatu’s legs, Salamatu ’s legs, Salamatu
said she was eager to return to Makeni in
two days, on Sunday. She had received
news from her mother the previous day,
when someone from Makeni visited the
ship, that her brother had been ill with a
stomach ache.. “Everything is hard for
them,” the messenger relayed. Salamatu
missed her family and friends and was only
eager to go home. She didn’t say she would
miss the ship. She simply said of the crew,
“I’m thinking good things. ... They
encourage me. Everything I want they give me.”
The next day, Saturday, Salamatu finished packing the belongings she had
accumulated during her time on the ship. Friends on the ship had given her clothes,
material and tools for tie-dying and an additional $830 US toward the building of
her house. Salamatu would once again return to Makeni – as she had after begging
and as she did when Dorothy drove her home – with more than she had taken to
Freetown.
Salamatu asked Fernanda to drive with her the three hours home to Makeni and
speak with her mother. “She always cries,” Salamatu said of her mother. She cried,
Salamatu said, because of Salamatu’s condition. This, in turn, saddened Salamatu.
“Tell her, ‘Don’t cry,’” Salamatu told Fernanda. “She has to be positive.”
At 6 a.m. on Sunday, Jitske Timpers, a Mercy Ships volunteer from the
Netherlands, sat on bed 32, next to Salamatu. Jitske had provided Salamatu with a
steady stream of her staple: yarn. She held Abbie in her lap, reached over and
touched Salamatu’s right wrist, where the patient identification was clasped.
“You can take
this off now,”
Jitske said.
“It’s my
watch,”
Salamatu joked.
“It’s about time
to go home, it
says,” Jitske
said.
Salamatu hugs Jitske Timpers goodbye.
“A day like today is great,” Salamatu said, “because I am able to sit by myself. I
tell God tenki (thank you) for that.”
Salamatu said her faith had increased while staying in the hospital ship’s ward.
“The time I had this problem I was crying at that time and seeking for a way God
could help me. While I was thinking about that, I came to the ship and received
healing. I just believe my faith in God caused the people to touch me.
“Now it’s really good. God will work for me. God will work everything for me. I
know God will continue to do it for me.” She will marry again, she said, if God
brought the right man to her.
Salamatu walked up two flights of stairs and was greeted by Mickey, the ward
translator she had befriended. Mickey woke up at 5:30 a.m. so she could travel
across town to the port and say good-bye to “Sali”. “She is now my sister,” Mickey
said of Salamatu. She promised to visit Makeni soon. “I pray that God will give her
strength because this is the starting of a life,” Mickey said.
translator she had befriended. Mickey woke up at 5:30 a.m. so she could travel
across town to the port and say good-bye to “Sali”. “She is now my sister,” Mickey
said of Salamatu. She promised to visit Makeni soon. “I pray that God will give her
strength because this is the starting of a life,” Mickey said.
Nurses lingered in the ship’s reception area as Salamatu and Abbie prepared to
leave. They said the ward would seem empty without them – without Salamatu,
who was dubbed the queen of the ward, and her little girl, fittingly called the
princess of the ward. Donna Shippie, an eye nurse, walked by and said she would
miss baby Abbie. “I call her Miss Anastasis,” she said, “because she’s been here so
long she thinks she owns the place.”
SALAMATU WALKED DOWN the gangway without her crutch. She wore a
Western-style wig with black and red braids, a jean skirt and Adidas running shoes.
Her legs were lighter and longer than when she arrived four months earlier.
“I think she’s been given a really good start,” one of her nurses said.
“Or a new start,” Mona added.
But the nurses were concerned for their charge when she left the ward. On the ship, Salamatu’s meals were provided, her clothes were washed and she had ample help with Abbie. Salamatu never demanded anything, the nurses said, but over time she became familiar with the care. Abbie had become institutionalized during her four months onboard, but she was a baby and would readjust. Sorina thought it had almost reached the stage where Salamatu, too, was institutionalized. “She had to go back to her own life,” Sorina said of Salamatu, “because here it was
a vacation for four months, which is a long vacation.”
Some feared how Salamatu would respond once she moved out of the ship’s
limelight. “I think she liked being special,” Mona said.
“She’s still going to be special,” Sorina said, “because we’re building her a house.
She will have a step-up on life.” But, Sorina added, Salamatu’s neighbors would
see her return after four months on the hospital ship with her new legs and a new
house and they might find it hard to relate to Salamatu. Or they might grow jealous.
“A lot is going to be expected of her because she’s been given a lot,” Sorina said.
Salamatu joked as she and Abbie got into the Land Rover with Fernanda, Alimamy
and several other Mercy Ships volunteers. As they drove toward Makeni, Salamatu
sang. As they got closer to Salamatu’s aunt’s house, where Salamatu’s mother and
siblings and children were staying, Fernanda thought she could see her friend
growing anxious.
When Salamatu stepped out of the Land Rover outside her aunt’s house, her mother
danced in joy, happy to see her daughter “normal”. Abbie was passed to Salamatu’s
aunts but she cried for Fernanda and cried because a heat rash had developed on her
neck. Salamatu, who had thought the temperature too cold when she first boarded
the air-conditioned ship, felt too hot in her home environment. She stripped off her
shirt to cool off.
After several hours, Fernanda and the others
prepared to leave Salamatu for the evening and
stay the night in a nearby village. Salamatu
said she wanted to go along. She feared they
wouldn’t return the next day to visit her. They
promised they would. Salamatu told Fernanda
she was afraid to be left alone without any
means of communication.
The next day, Salamatu’s friends returned.
in Salamatu’s eyes. She didn’t cry. Abbie did.
She flung herself into the Land Rover.
Fernanada said she hoped to return once more
before the ship sailed from West Africa to
Europe.
Back on the ship, the nurses talked about how
Salamatu might fare.
“It would be interesting to know six months from now what happens to her,” Sorina
said, “but we won’t.”
“Still, she will find a way,” Mona said.
“Oh yeah,” Sorina said, “she will.”
Salamatu’s caregivers were convinced that even if Salamatu’s hands had been
amputated in place of her feet or buttocks, she would have prevailed over her
circumstances. “Without her hands,” Beverly said, “she would have adjusted just
like she has without her legs.”
“She’s a survivor,” Sorina
said.
Two weeks after
depositing Salamatu back
into her village, Fernanda
returned to Makeni for one
final goodbye. She went,
bearing gifts. The Mercy
Ships Land Rover pulled
down a dusty road and the
Land Rover’s headlights
shone through a veil of
rain onto Salamatu, sitting
on the porch of her aunt’s home, and her children being bathed. Nearby, Salamatu’s
plot of land sat empty of a structure; the dirt was covered with a layer of mud
bricks.
Her Mercy Ships friends gave Salamatu a bank account card and a cell phone to
stay in contact once they returned to their homelands. Salamatu immediately put
her hands to work crocheting a cell phone holder to wear around her neck. She told
them she had tie-dyed almost 60 yards of fabric they had given her. Neighbors in
the village helped. The only reason she had refrained from dying all of it was so she
could show them how it’s done.
Salamatu recounted her family’s struggles
since returning. A sty had grown on her eyelid.
Her sister had contracted malaria. Her
daughter, Abbie, had gotten ill and Salamatu
sold a bag of rice to have the 11-month-old
seen at a local hospital. Her family again faced
the possibility of eviction, she said, if they
didn’t pay the equivalent of about $2 US for
the next month’s rent. She pointed to the area
where her home would be built. She had hoped
construction would be further along, as the
rainy season had just started.
Once Salamatu tie-dyed her few remaining yards of material, with the assistance of
some neighbors, her Mercy Ships friends loaded up the fabric to take to Freetown
and sell; they would deposit the profits in her bank account. Salamatu’s family and
her friends waved them off. Salamatu sat on the porch. She lifted her hand to wipe
away the tears that spilled onto her cheeks.
***
SALAMATU'S STORY ENDS even as a new chapter begins.
At 26, Salamatu begins the
process of assimilating life in
Sierra Leone “before“ – her
father’s murder, her own
victimization and her husband’s
death – with life “after” – her
months onboard a hospital ship
of foreigners and her return to
the village she grew up in.
Salamatu and her children face poor chances of survival in a nation where the average life expectancy is 43 years
old and more than 30 percent of the population dies before the age of five. She
continues to confront the challenges of discrimination even as she assumes
responsibility for her mother, four siblings and three children.
But already Salamatu had survived – and thrived – when the odds indicated she
should have died. Although disabled, Salamatu had triumphed, in the spirit of so
many of her countrymen, over her circumstances. Her unrelenting spirit had
buffered her from trauma and her faith had preserved her. She had embodied joy
when bitterness could have ensnared her.
Now, Salamatu’s body has been altered, relieved of pain. Now, she has been given
a financial footing with the promise of a home and the beginning, once again, of
her business. And once again, she occupies her hands, which so narrowly escaped
destruction, to care for her dependants.
’s body has been altered, relieved of pain. Now, she has been given
a financial footing with the promise of a home and the beginning, once again, of
her business. And once again, she occupies her hands, which so narrowly escaped
destruction, to care for her dependants.
Salamatu hasn’t changed, really. She’s only been strengthened.
