I Tell My Story to Change the World
One teen’s journey from a civil war to foster care

By Ishmael Kamara

I grew up in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, in Africa. I lived with my great-grandmother and my stepmother. My father and my grandmother had already moved to the United States.

In 1991, a civil war started in the villages. People were unhappy with the government and were trying to overthrow it. We thought we were safe, but in 1997, 10 days after my 11th birthday, rebels attacked the city. Everyone was surprised. There were guns, bombing. It was like that all morning.

The rebels killed all the government and business people. My great-grandmother had had an affair with the Minister of Finance, and she owned many businesses. So the rebels destroyed our businesses and bombed our family home.

Some of my cousins were raped, the rebels killed my great-grandmother, and my uncles and I fled before they could catch us.

The Land of Milk and Honey?

My uncle and I walked from Freetown to Guinea, a neighboring country. We walked by foot in the forest for a month. We encountered the war as we walked through the villages. I lost my uncle along the way but found my stepmother, fortunately. We decided to walk together.

In Guinea I lived in a refugee camp for two weeks and then moved to the city. I lived there for three years and went through a lot of struggles. It was really hard. When we came to New York to live with my father in 2000, when I was 14, I thought life would be better. I thought I could go to school, get a job. Basically, I thought America was the land of milk and honey, you could find money everywhere. I didn’t know you have to work so hard to get it.

When I was little, my great-grandmother had told me that my mother abandoned me when I was 2 years old. But when I came to New York, my mother started calling the house. I don’t know how she got my grandmother’s number. She was still living in a village in Sierra Leone. But she started calling saying she wanted to talk to me. My grandmother would tell her, “No, you’re not going to do this to the boy. Why do this? He’s all the way here.”

Finding My Mother

But my mother kept calling, expecting that one day I’d answer the phone and she would talk to me. Finally, one day I did. That’s when I found out the real story about my mother.

It turned out that my mother came from a very poor family from a small village with only 50 people. And my father was from a wealthy family. My great-grandmother and grandmother were not proud that my father was dating a poor girl from a village.

When I was 2 years old, they forced her to leave me. They didn’t want her around me anymore.

‘This Isn’t Happening’

When I found out the truth, I was like, “This isn’t happening.” But two years ago I went back to Sierra Leone and I met my mother. We spent one month together, and I met my two brothers. She told me everything that happened. That’s when I believed her.

I was expecting to develop a relationship with my mom. I thought that trip would be a second beginning for us. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. Four months after I came back, my brother called me and said she passed away. She had cancer. It was really hard for me.

Relying Only on Myself

My relationship with my family here fell apart, also. Just one month after my stepmother and I arrived, my father left. He just moved out one day and we didn’t know where he was or where he went. I haven’t seen or heard from him since.

A couple months after he left, my grandmother kicked out my stepmother, my younger sister and my uncle’s wife. I don’t know why she did that. When it was just me and my grandmother, she abused me. My teachers noticed something was wrong. My academic performance was going down and all my teachers were concerned because I had been one of the best students.

One day my grandmother locked me out of the house. I told my guidance counselor and the guidance counselor called the Administration for Children’s Services. We had a meeting with my grandmother, my counselor and a foster care caseworker. My grandmother said she was not going to take me back. So I ended up in foster care.

Foster care wasn’t much better. In my first foster home, my foster parents treated me like a roommate, not a foster kid. They didn’t guide me from point A to point B like a parent should. If I wanted to go to the dentist, I had to make the appointment myself. I had to do it all myself. It taught me to be independent and rely on myself.

Changing Who I Am

Walking from Freetown, my struggles in Guinea and my experiences in the U.S. changed how I see myself as an individual, how I see other people and how I see the world. Growing up, my great-grandmother was my role model. I wanted to be wealthy, to be the owner of 10, 15, 20 businesses. As a young child I never had to struggle for anything. I was naïve.

My great-grandmother told me I shouldn’t be friends with anyone who wasn’t from my economic class, and I didn’t have any respect for those not of my class. She chose my friends for me, and I couldn’t have friends from other classes. I also didn’t like school. I thought I didn’t need education because I believed that I would become the next CEO of my grandmother’s businesses and live a comfortable life.

But once I came to the United States, I realized I had to work hard. As a senior in high school, I was going to school full-time and working full-time—37 hours a week—to support my two brothers back in Sierra Leone. Now I’m in college at SUNY Oneonta upstate.

Now that I’m 20, I don’t want to go into business. Seeing the war, all that changed. Now all I want is to help people. I’m an education major, so I can be a teacher and teach what I experienced so we can join together to make the world a better place.

Reaching Out

I’ve spoken at the United Nations twice, and I do outreach with UNICEF, the United Nation’s charity for children. At first it was really hard to talk. All the memories were coming back. But I decided to talk because this is the only way I know to educate people, so this won’t keep happening in our world.

When I talked about my story, I met people with similar interests. We started a documentary program for refugees. We created a website, made videos and communicated with people from all different parts of Africa. They created their own groups in Africa.

In Somalia, teens traveled to different villages to tell their stories and explain to people why war is bad. Even in Sierra Leone, some teens came together to make videos about war, displacement and refugees. I went to Sierra Leone this past Christmas. It was a lot different than how it was when I was 11. It’s changing.

There’s more to be done everywhere. But the fact that people are not keeping quiet—that’s a start. Many times people are afraid to speak. They say, “I’m not going to do anything.” But you don’t have to be in Sierra Leone to do something to change Sierra Leone. What you do can help make change all over the world.

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