In the days since a deadly mudslide struck Sierra Leone on Monday, Kemoh Mansaray has been haunted by flashbacks of the civil war in his home country.
“Some of this trauma, it just brings flashbacks of what we have gone through,” said Mansaray, president of the Sierra Leone Association of Alberta.
“It may not be that a bullet is chasing you but it just brings back the suffering.”
More than 400 people have died and 600 are still missing after a mudslide swept away thousands of homes on the edge of Freetown, Sierra Leon’s capital city.
The grim work of extracting the bodies from tons of debris continues after powerful storms left areas of the city buried, in one of Africa’s worst flood disasters in living memory.
Kemoh Mansaray came to Edmonton from Sierra Leone as a refugee in 2002. (City of Edmonton)
Watching the gruesome aftermath from afar has not made the disaster any less painful for Sierra Leoneans living in Alberta, Mansaray said.
The disaster is retraumatizing a people still reeling from the Ebola crisis and the ravages of a years-long civil war that ended in 2002.
‘I’m afraid for my people’
“It is a terrible situation,” Mansaray said Thursday in an interview with CBC Radio’s Edmonton AM.
“The friends that I spoke to, they say the dead, the bodies that they are seeing are making them think of what they have seen during the war.
“We had the rebel war for years, that brought us here as refugees, and we had the Ebola crisis, and so many deaths.”
People inspect the damage after a mudslide in the mountain town of Regent, Sierra Leone August 14, 2017. (Ernest Henry/Reuters)
Mansaray has been unable to make contact with his eldest sister since the mudslide. He’s praying she made it to the high country before the deluge.
He said many Sierra Leoneans here are fearful for their families back home. There is a feeling of helplessness within the community.
“In our families, during the war, we were separated because we were running for our lives. It just brings back that memory and I’m afraid for my people,” Mansaray said.
“Anything that happens in Sierra Leone affects us here. It’s one thing after another.”
The civil war, which began in March 1991 lasted 11 years, spanned the country, and left more than 50,000 dead.
Before coming to Canada in 2002, Mansaray survived more than a decade in the conflict.
He still bears a scar across his neck from when he was shot by a rebel bullet and left for dead.
Recovery crews were picking up bodies from the area when they realized he was still breathing.
‘We’re praying for the country’
Mansaray fears that others in his community with physical and psychological scars of the war will suffer in silence.
He’s helping the Sierra Leone Association of Alberta to organize community prayers and a fundraising drive while lobbying the Alberta government to provide disaster relief.
He hopes the campaigns will give his community purpose, and allow people to heal from yet another disaster.
“We’re praying for the country. And we’re praying for everyone in Freetown that God will help them through this situation.”
“Even though we are here, we are still feeling the tragedy.”