For eight years, Salaymatu Bah believed that her two young sons were dead, that they'd been killed in Sierra Leone during that country's civil war.
Bah, who was raised a Muslim, had been forced to split from her children and their father, a Christian, because her parents didn't approve of the match. As her country plunged deeper into war, she lost track of her family.
Believing that Mallam and Alpha were dead, Bah fled to neighboring Guinea in 1999. Five years later, she traveled to the United States as a refugee.
With the aid of the IRC, Bah settled in Boston. She was 24 years old and alone in a strange country.
"When I got here, I never knew that my boys were still alive," Bah says, "I was dying inside."
Bah was not alone in her anguish. The war in Sierra Leone lasted nine years and killed tens of thousands. More than two million people became refugees and thousands of families were separated in the chaos.
In 2007, Bah received the stunning news from a family friend that her husband had died of disease and that her sons were living as refugees in Guinea. She turned to Rita Kantarowski, IRC regional director, for help in finding the children and bringing them to Boston. Kantarowski contacted the American Red Cross, which in turn contacted the Guinean Red Cross. The Red Cross located the children in a squalid camp, struggling but indeed alive.
After filling out scores of forms, Bah was shocked when immigration authorities rejected her application to bring her sons to America. The reason? With the war in Sierra Leone now over, the children could no longer qualified as refugees through their mother.
"When we got the decision, she sat in my office and cried and cried," Kantarowski recalls. "I told her I couldn't guarantee anything, but that I would do everything in my power to bring her children to her."
The IRC mobilized quickly on behalf of Bah. The State Department was contacted as was U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass). With their help, and the help of IRC staff members in Sierra Leone, the two boys were granted a hearing to determine if they could qualify as refugees on their own. At one point, when doubt arose about the children's parentage, Kantarowski arranged for DNA tests that proved Bah and the children were related.
Finally, in September 2007, Mallam and Alpha were granted refugee status. Just before Thanksgiving, the two boys, dressed in pinstripe suits, beaming and crying, stepped off a jet at Boston's Logan Airport and into their mother's arms.
"I was full of joy," Bah says. "It was the whole beginning of my life. This is the time I'm going to start being a mother again to my kids."
Bah knows that her battle to survive in the United States is just beginning. She lives in a sparsely furnished apartment, works a minimum-wage job and doesn't always have money for food.
But the boys are beginning to feel secure in their new home. They are addressing Bah as "Mommy" - a development that brings tears to her eyes — learning English and playing basketball at school.
Recently, Kantarowski and a group of IRC volunteers and Boston-area refugees gathered in Bah's small apartment to celebrate Mallam's ninth birthday. They surprised the family with streamers, balloons and cake.
"Mallam was so excited, he'd never experienced anything like it before," Kantarowski says. "This is one of the happiest stories I've ever seen. Salaymatu has focused her whole existence on these children. She is a good mother."
This story first appeared in the IRC 2007 Annual Report [PDF]
