11/17/2006

Stopping at a small ramshackle settlement alongside a busy highway near the town of Grand Bassam, about an hour outside of Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire’s capital city, Refugees International staff met Sister L, a 48-year-old Liberian refugee, the mother of 13 children, who has survived without any assistance through her own initiative, resourcefulness and hard work.

Pictured with three of her four children in Cote d’Ivoire, Sister L fled the war in Liberia fifteen years ago and had to leave behind five of her children. She has no news from them, but hopes they may have survived in Liberia. On the journey to safety, Sister L gave birth to a daughter who was two weeks old when they reached Cote d’Ivoire. Then, lacking French, she did not approach the UN or government agencies to register as a refugee or to seek assistance. Instead she moved to the countryside and did small jobs and trading to support herself. She built a small mud hut, married a man from Benin and had three more children for whom she obtained birth certificates permitting them to attend primary school. Her youngest son was doing very well at school and she was anxious for his education to continue. Unfortunately, her daughter with no birth certificate could not attend public school and private school was too expensive.

She told RI that since the political crisis in the Cote d’Ivoire her life had become harder. There were police checkpoints at every town requiring documents and/or bribes; she had difficulty traveling beyond local areas to trade. Her Benin-Wa inlaws, who had neither Ivorian nor Benin consular documents, could not travel at all and her husband did small jobs in the bush to help support them.

RI asked if Mrs. L if she would consider going back to Liberia? "Oh yes," she said wistfully, “But it is very expensive and I have no money... Life is too hard now in Cote d’Ivoire, I’d like to return to Liberia, to familiar surroundings, to my language, to eat cassava leaves...perhaps find my other children.”

Fortunately, RI was accompanied by a staff person of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, who agreed to send someone to enroll Sister L and her family (including her husband’s dependent parents) for the assisted repatriation program to Liberia. The Tripartite Repatriation agreement between Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire and UNHCR permitted all the members of a Liberian’s family to return and receive assistance with transportation, four months of basic food supplies, small household items like kitchen sets, mats and plastic sheeting to aid the refugees for the initial phase of reintegration in Liberia.

Sister L smiled, took the UNHCR phone number, and said she wanted to go home.