Mohamed: My name is Mohamed. I'm from Sierra Leone. I live in the capital, Freetown. The time I come in America, the war bring me in America. So now I'm talking what happened to me in my country. What happened to me in country, I won't say everything, I'm just gonna say little bits of those things. I won't say all those things, because if I do, I get mad, so I say little bits.

In my country, people in America, some things that happened to me never happened to them. In my country people steal for money, all the bad things people do in my country. My country, they fight three times, all those fights I was in my country. The times the fights in my country, this last fight I come in Guinea, we were sitting in my house then bad people come in my house, the rebels. Because they're attacking my country. They was fighting to kill them, but they never did. We are the same people, we live in the same country. But when they fighting, they kill us to make the country to blood. No more men in the street, they fall in the streets, that's what the president said. Everybody was killed. The president said he was gonna kill everybody. Everyone dead in the streets. He said you're not gonna see no persons, everyone dead in the streets. Maybe a dog left. A chicken. No one left.

People come in my house and say if we have any money. My father said we have no money, we so poor, no money nor something to eat. They say if my father don't give money, they kill my father. My father don't have any money because my father was rich in my country. Because my father rich, people tell they have a lot of money in the house, then they go to the house, they say if my father don't give the money, they kill you. I'll kill you. My father keep the money in the ground then my father has no money, then they shot my father, then my father died.

After they kill my father, that's it, then they kill my sister then they take me then beat me first. See my hand. Then beat my hand. My hand is broke. This is my hand, this is the bone. The gun, they hitting my hand.

Then they took me to [carry] all the guns for them and the ammunitions and the bullets then they give me drugs in my head here and then tell me to fight for them. They say if I don't do that, they will kill me. Then they stop to beat me, they beat me first a lot. They say if you don't join us, we'll kill you, then they put a gun in my face. Then they sent me to follow them, they give me AK47. I go, I show everything to the people, those things are so bad. They went to the his houses and all the guns, I'm so tired to hold all the guns, they're so heavy. I tell them I say I'm so tired, in my country in my language, I say I don't want to hold this, it's so many, they say if I don't hold it, we're gonna kill me, so I say okay, okay, I hold it. Then they take me in

the corner and put a drug in my head so I'm gonna become bad. In my head, then they plaster it like this, so I'm gonna be bad. So then I was be bad, I'm not talking about this, it was bad bad things. Then they give me guns. Then they catch us because we were fighting against the Nigerians, after they catch us, they take us. The Nigeria people [save] me. I don't understand what they do.

I do some kind of bad things to people, but I don't want to say those. This is not my fault. This is their fault, because they make me bad, then they keep kill people, kill people, kill people, then they shoot people like what. They tell me to kill people, but I don't want to, I killed a lot. So many people. I killed a lot of people. But now I sit right here nothing is good, because my foot is still right now.

They catch a man, they beat a man, they put him on the floor, then take tires, you know car tires, then put him on fire, the man, the man is dead like what. Then I smell it. Then they beat girls, they beat so many girls and men beat girls and men kill girls in my country. The men cut arms like this, like this, I can't believe this. A little boy like me that killed the father and the mother, a little boy like me, because it's not the fault, the people give them drugs to kill their father and their mother, because if they don't kill their father and their mother, they gonna kill them too. Then the boy that killed their father and their mother some are dead.

My country --Nigeria bombed, bomb, bomb, people crying, people crying, go in the place. All the fights, fire, house are burning, the car is burning, any side, drunken, people dead in the streets. You don't have a place to go. Everywhere you go, you see people dead, see houses burning, They take your money, burn your house, burn your car, take everything of you, then kill you, leave you. The president don't know how to do nothing. I think so that in America needs money first to stop the fighting in my country.

You know what saved me? My father. Because my father a big chief in my country. Everyday they catch me then the police, all the children of my father, then they say who's your dad, then I tell them my daddy's name and they say oh, I know your dad, the men that come they are the same five people, they catch me, they gonna kill me, then the same friend come and they say they know my father and they take me and take me to my house.

I can't talk no more. They take me to school, to the hospital. In my country, the kids were scared of me. If I say those things, I think I cry, I don't say those

things, sometimes I say those things, but not now, Maybe when I'm big, I say those things. In the fight, the fight is not even nice to see.

That's why if I'm here, the same kind of things [happen] in America, I'm scared. If I hear those things, I'm scared. If I hear about fights in this country, I don't want to hear no fights anymore, in my life. Because that building [World Trade Center] fall down, people say that war is coming back in America. People are gonna come in America to fight. Let's go to my country back, my uncle say that. I'm scared to see fight again.

Because I see fights many times. I went one mile walking, no food, just walking around. People ask, why did you decide to go. If you go south side, boom, bomb gonna kill you there, that's why you have to stay to your house. Don't move, don't stay. If God said if you stay there, the bomb gonna come for you, you're gonna be dead, but if you walk, you just walking, remember the bomb is coming, because I hear the bomb coming, if it's coming, it's whistling, then boom. If it's coming boom boom, then my family said let's go, let's go. People in America, they gonna save, because they're gonna go underground, they have underground house, in my country, we don't have those. See? In my country, people bring ammunition, the gun. If they shoot the gun you call the President's name. One person got ten shots in his back. I saw so many things. I can't even say this. I don't think if my country nice. It take me a long time to see my country. I want to see my country. The place stink, so many dead. As soon as you go, you see dead people. There are white British in my country. There are so many-, that's how we know to speak English. The British are in my country, so many of them.

Raeshma: It wasn't enough to stop the fighting. Nobody was stopping the fighting,

Mohamed: Because the British have to fight, they [the rebels] were catching the British too. They were white. If you're white in my country, you have money, so they catch them too. Cause in my country, the whites have so much money and tall buildings, they have so many money, so many shops, buildings, buildings. In my country, the white people are good, but now they burn the houses, all the big house, they burn it.

Raeshma: Do you still want to go back?

Mohamed: I want to go back, see my country.

Raeshma: Do you want to wait until you get older to go back?

Mohamed: It's so far. Now if I go to my country, I be happy, because I want to see my friends, my sisters, my cousins, I want to see those people, I want to see my country back.

Raeshma: What made you happy in your country?

Mohamed: Because in my country, I was play, everytime play. We play ball, soccerball, we play the team, people coming to watch every morning, with our friends, it was nice, I was happy. But in America, I never did what I did in my country. I only stay in the house. Because in my country- [here] we have a TV, but [there] we have cinema, we watch movie that [we] have my country, I like those movies. You have to pay five dollars to get in. My best movie [star] is Ashak Kumar (?) and Sunny. In my country, it's always ‘gentleman, gentleman, let's go.'

People will know what happened to me in my country, what happened to me in my life. Everything what happened to me. In my country, we walk from my country to Guinea, we take some kind of month, some kind of year. Then my uncle was in America, he file for us, he brought us. Because people were in Conakry there was… because people from my country was having a big place [refugee camps]; they have to go look for their family there. Then my family it was in Guinea then it's our house, then he took us in his house then he called my uncle then my uncle said okay, I'll file for you. My grandma, my mom-- I don't know where my mom is.

Me, I shot a ‘RPigeon' in my country with an AK47. I don't even know what an AK47 in my country, but they tell me, they tell me every bad thing in my life. They tell me what ‘RPigeon', AK47. ‘RPigeon,' if you shoot it, it's like a big thing comes out. Voom. At the time, I was a baby, I was 10, 11 years old.

Raeshma: They took away your childhood, they took that away from you, those years, your youth. Forced it out of you. But you're so brave, you know, so strong, the way you lived through what you did in your life, most people never-.

Mohamed: I didn't want this to happen to my life ever.

Question: And you didn't surrender also, that's the brave thing also.

Mohamed: In my country, they were looking for little boys, because little boys are scared people. They weren't looking for the big people, they were looking for the kids. Because the kids, they were having a mind to kill people. The big people can say to the kids go fight, go kill that man, if you don't kill them, then I kill you. Then the kids, they just shoot. They show them how to shoot, how to use a gun. It's for power, because they want to be the president, they're fighting for president.

Raeshma: So they're using all the children, right?

Mohamed: Like George Bush. Maybe Bill Clinton want to fight, if Bill Clinton want to invade, then they fight, then they begin to get soldiers, then they fight, like my country, that's what happened in my country. The president, they want to put him in the chair, they say it's finished, he don't want to, so they fight. Only him want to be the president, but his time is finished. In America, they never do that, right? The president want to be the power, be the leader, then they say it's finished, then he says he don't want to. If Bill Clinton did that, he would have been a subject to fight, I guess in America.