by Sumo Kupe, National Director

My exposure and practical experience with psychological issues came along when I volunteered with the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CAMA Services, Guinea Project) rendering relief and counseling services to both Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees between 1996-2000.

I started to realize and understand the implications of basic trauma related issues affecting refugees through my on-the-job training as a ‘skill developing’ trauma counselor. My job at the time included data collection on the influx of refugees from various bordering towns and villages on the Guinean side. As such, I had the opportunity to carry out informal debriefing with anxious new refugees crossing through both illicit and legal borders.

Stories of gruesome killings, rape, sex slavery and forceful conscription of children as child soldiers, systematic killings of people due to tribal and religious backgrounds, malnourished children, the critically ill old agers, wounded civilians and rebel militias in search of a peaceful oasis were the order of the day’s world news. These stories created in me a psychosomatic reaction that I now understand better……. those horrifying stories caused me sleepless nights, nightmares, mental exhaustion, and, in extreme cases, stupor. I witnessed cross-border attacks and the resulting lack of distribution of food and essential non-food items due to the outbreak of renewed hostilities right across the border from the region I resided.

As days grow into weeks, months and years, the influx of refugees kept growing as well as the number refugee camps. Relief assistance (security, food, shelter, medical servies, etc.) was organized mainly by international NGOs and a few local ones. My mind and body began to get adjusted to my job after a series of training workshops. From those trainings, I got to learn first, that I was in a safe environment and, second, that my mind and body were reacting to the overwhelming trauma stories I heard during my field visits and interaction with other refugees and the things I saw in my time as a refugee.

Gradually, schools came into operation and lives of refugees as well as my own life were going through a period of revival. Smiles of playing refugee children at school and elsewhere, as well as mothers and fathers began to be show up in magazines of UN reports. These reports mostly featured health centers, school campuses, the distribution of food and non-food item (clothes, cooking utensils, toolsets), and educational materials.

Life was proportionally good according to African refugee standards until September 2000 when a rebel insurgency, believed to have come from Liberia, attacked several towns in Guinea. Both Liberian and Sierra Leonean refugees, whose governments were blamed for the cross-border insurgencies, were again on the run for their lives and safety.

I quickly decided not to go to Liberia but rather to go to Ghana primarily because I wanted to see my son “Team Kupe” who was there with his grandmother. I arrived in Ghana in December to start life all over again, and after 6 years I returned to Liberia. I am presently working as the National Director of Second Chance Africa. I joined Second Chance Africa because the organization’s project activities are directly in areas of my academic interest, the organization’s investment in the development of skills and capacities of its local staff, and because of the mission “peace-building through free mental health services”. In my country, this is particularly important because of the overwhelming number of war perpetrators and survivors without an opportunity for rehabilitation.

My job in Monrovia is challenging, inspiring and provides a learning experience of real scenarios of post-war psychological impact on survivors and perpetrators. It’s helping me understand the critical link between peace building and psychological conditions. If my services at Second Chance Africa can help someone – a former child warrior, an inmate, a “ghettozee”, a parent/ teacher association – to make a possible change, than I have helped them to access a second chance in life. The need for such services is enormous in Liberia.