War child leaves ghettos behind

Abdul would try the patience of any teacher.

His mistrust of authority figures makes him disruptive in class. Pupils are instantly drawn to his unpredictable nature, often goading him so that he loses his temper and lashes out. At other times he sits catatonic at the back of the class, impossible to reach.

In the West he would be categorised as a juvenile delinquent. But Adbul's problems are not born out of the inner cities.

The clues to understanding his misbehaviour are the strange scarrings found on the top of his head. A 7.5cm scar that runs down his forehead is the mark that was left by a soldier's bayonet, while a round indentation at the back of his head is where a bullet was deliberately fired across his skull.

Neither the bayonet nor the bullet was meant to kill Abdul, just punish him for his disobedience.

In 1999 Abdul, then only 9 years old, was abducted by the rebel soldiers fighting in Sierra Leone's vicious civil war. They wanted him to join their forces and to test his loyalty one of the soldiers told him to shoot a woman prisoner. "I did not like to do it so I didn't," says Abdul.

A soldier of the Revolutionary United Front took his bayonet and swept it across Abdul's face. He then repeated the order. Despite the bleeding wound Abdul continued to refuse to obey the order. Another soldier grabbed the boy, placed the barrel of his AK47 along the back of his head and fired a bullet across his skull.

"The soldiers had ways of punishing people without actually killing them," says Adbul's teacher, Forday A Korama, the headmaster of a primary school in Makani, in the north-east.

"Abdul has had a terrible time, lived through some horrific circumstances, and has been very difficult to teach. Because of his head injury he stopped growing as quickly as the other children and so they used to tease him about his size. This made him mad and he reacted violently. But we kept working on him, putting him at the front of the class and giving him more responsibility."

This year Abdul will be taking his first exam. "We think he is ready. He has made excellent progress and has now become a role model for other children in the school."

Many other child victims of the war that cost 50,000 lives have not been so lucky. They have ended up in amputee camps or war victim ghettoes, educated in isolation where they have little expectation of passing anything.

More than two-thirds of Sierra Leone's children have been affected by the war. Some, like Abdul, are orphaned and bear the physical scars of conflict. Many more are still suffering from the psychological trauma of what they witnessed and experienced. But in nearly every case the child's education has been disrupted.

After the end of the war in January 2002 the new Government, overwhelmed by a refugee crisis, decided to send the victims to special schools that had traditionally catered for all those considered to be outside mainstream education - such as children with polio or other "disabilities" including shortsightedness or unruly behaviour.

The Government has now ended the school apartheid system where children find themselves stigmatised at a very early age. It is working with charity Education Action International to ensure that the teachers are equipped to deal with the special needs of boys like Adbul and thousands like him who will become part of the country's mainstream education.

- INDEPENDENT