It is a custom in some parts of West Africa to plant a seed when a child is born. The seed is buried deep in the ground along with the umbilical cord. It takes root, slowly growing into the sturdiness of a coconut or a mango or a kola-nut tree. The tree is the certificate that proves this child existed in this village. It is stability in a region that has been rent by war for more than a decade. In its shade, no fighting, no hurt should come.
In Coyah, a town in Guinea blessed with springs of the purest water, Ibrahim and Marie ignored the tradition. Not defiantly but without thought, because Aisha was their first child and they were distracted by worries. No one was buying the beds Ibrahim built, and refugees from Liberia and Sierra Leone were spilling into the country, carrying with them tales of brutality.
Life seemed full of grace nearly a decade ago, when Ibrahim caught sight of a slim schoolgirl at the local academy. Marie carried herself with such ease that Ibrahim, 22 years eager, proposed on the spot. She demurred at first, but later, over her guardian uncle's opposition, she married him.
Marie began to grow full at the waist two years later. Secretly she hoped for a girl. The bellyache came and passed--the labor lasted not even an hour--and she called the baby Aisha. Aisha was a lively child with huge brown eyes and a flashing smile. She ate whatever Marie prepared, whether it was a stew of pounded cassava leaves or a soup of ground peanuts; but like all children, she loved sweets, and would charm her mother into buying her cakes at the market. She slept in the same bed with her mother, always staying close. And when her little sister came along, she nicknamed her Bobo.
When Aisha was five, Marie left her daughter in the care of her husband's aunt while she visited nearby Conakry for a few days. While she was away, a woman named Fatim appeared in the village. She told everyone that she was Marie's sister and settled in. Then, the day Marie was to return, Fatim roused Aisha, promising the child treats if she came along quietly. When the neighbors asked Aisha where she was going, she responded lightly, "I'm going to get some fried doughnuts."
Aisha didn't return. It was the kind of disappearance that is all too common in this part of West Africa, where war and chaos are as routine as the peace of an American suburb. Children disappear, sometimes kidnapped like Aisha by traders who sell them into slavery, sometimes split accidentally from their parents at refugee camps or nabbed by passing soldiers to join the fight. Thousands of children have been separated from their families by the civil war that started in Liberia in 1989, spread to Sierra Leone in 1991 and has now infected Guinea. Children with no parents and no protection roam the streets of Conakry.
The situation is worsening. Guinea became the battlefield last fall as rebels from all three countries attacked and burned the refugee camps that line the country's southern borders. Everyone ran whichever way seemed away from the sounds of gunfire: south to Liberia, north to Guinea's interior and south to Sierra Leone. The 460,000 refugees, added to tens of thousands of newly displaced natives, amounted to a crisis.