When I read the touching real life story of Richad Cole in one of the old magazines I felt that such a man and his story should be saluted and his good and noble deeds brought to the attention of other people as well. So I decided to write his story in my words.
The Story of Richard Cole
In war ravaged Sierra Leone in West Africa a good Samaritan Richard Cole helped the brutalized child combatants regain their hope and find a meaning for living. This is a story and a real life account of a man who tried to bring in some kind of normalcy in a country that had only seen death, violence and every other kind of degradation of humanity for almost 12 years of civil war that took the lives of more than one million people by the end of it. Things are normal now but the painful past brings back many memories including that of amazing people like Richard Cole.
To go back into the history of Sierra Leone, which covers a total area of roughly about 72,000 sq kms, the country is famous for its diamond mines and also the De Beers Diamonds controversy (The same was also the subject of a recent film Blood Diamonds most of which was filmed in Sierra Leone and had Leonardo De Capiro in the lead as a mercenary diamond smuggler).The country gained its independence in 1961 from the United Kingdom and was showing a promising growth after that because of its diamond mines.
However, Sierra Leone's brutal 1991-2002 civil war destroyed almost all the infrastructure and political, social, and economic development came to a total standstill. In the recent years it is noteworthy that the country has made substantial progress in transitioning from a post-conflict nation to a developing democracy, with a lot of help from countries like the USA. It has also made notable economic gains in the past decade and is now emerging as one of the most stable countries in a volatile region that is Africa where most nations are still interlocked in civil wars and unrest.
The School and the Commander
School is over and a group of boys sprawl over wooden benches on a sun baked hillside above Freetown, Sierra Leone. The children watch as a stocky man in his fifties , wearing T shirt and Khaki shorts approaches and one of the boy quips “ Here comes the commander..”. The man grabs him and they both wrestle like puppies until the boy slaps his shoulder in surrender, saying ‘stop daddy, stop’ and laughing! Daddy being Reverend Richard Cole – the tough talking, self appointed father of a huge and unusual family. The mutual feeling of love is appraent with the boys adoring their commander who is like a father to them !
Through eleven years of devastating civil war in Sierra Leone and before that, during continued conflicts in the neighboring West African states of Liberia and Gunea – Cole and his wife Yeakah, have sheltered ,cared and raised more than 700 children. Some are orphans, some refugees, some rape victims and kids rescued from the streets. Many of them are child soldiers as young as eleven. All the boys live in their school, a cement block building on the hill side above the Sierra Leone’s capital city Freetown.
Day time activities for these children include getting ready for the school and other activities as well. They press their clothes with an iron filled with hot charcoal since Cole is particular that they look neat and presentable all the time. After a meal they go out to dig and weed the vegetable garden that provides them the essential daily meal and side by side struggle with their school work. Some of the stories are extremely horrifying and blood curdling and these children have seen so much in their young lives that is not easy for them to erase the unpleasant past from their mind and start afresh with ease, and that’s where the school helps them since it has brought them all together. They all share a kinship , a shared violent past and now working towards normalising their lives.
The horrifying tale of child soldier(s)
Tamba – In 1996 Tamba was a ten years old innocent boy who was happy with his family doing all the normal things that a boy of his age does. But when the civil war began to spread the family began to face hardship but carried on nevertheless. When the Revolutionary United Front attacked his village one day a few weeks later Tamba fled without knowing what to do. He was caught by the squad of boys not much older than himself carrying rifles and sub machine guns which they promptly pointed at him.
Tamba was frightened and remembers that the teenage commander told him “ You can either die or come with us, what do you want ?” Of course the boy chose to live and he was taught how to use a rifle and a few days later he and the others rounded up a group of runaway villagers. Too late, he realized that the group also included his father and two brothers and the teenage commander said “ They are spies , blow them away”. Tamba apparently locked his eyes with his shaking and fearful father not daring to speak, and within minutes the other boy soldiers gunned down the entire group and Tamba turned his back on the bodies blinking back his tears.That was the beginning !
He had become one of the estimated 3,00,000 child soldiers in the world, nearly half of them in Africa all of them forced to play war games with real guns. It was a cruel and cynical exploitation of innocence, because the adults knew that without education nor any normal sense prevailing there, the children could be pushed to do things that no sane adult would accept. Children were often sent ahead to face battle, to soften the enemy and it was no concern of the leaders how many of them died during this confrontation.
To come back to Tamba, for the next few years Tamba and his army of child soldiers robbed and killed civilians as and when they wanted, and they were advised by their commanders to make themselves brave and courageous by shaking gunpowder out of cartridges and mixing it with drugs like Marijuana and Jamba and smoke it up and this worked since the boys’ senses were far gone ! The civil war which started as a revolt against a corrupt and bankrupt regime had turned into something even far more sinister and when it finally fizzled out in the year 2001 up to one million were dead. Tamba surrendered and tried to track down his remaining family consisting of his mother and sister. He tracked down his sister who had become a street walker to keep herself alive and about the mother they had no clue. It was during such a time that he came across Richard Cole, who after taking one look at the boy and his tortured eyes knew exactly what his background was. Tamba was taken in without any questions asked and given a home, love and care by the couple along with the other children who shared more or less the same kind of horrifying past.
Story of Richard Cole the Commander/Soldier
In fact the story was almost similar except with a little difference regarding geographical locations, but they all had gone through the same experiences and lived a violent and horrific life. There were many others like Tamba at the school including their daddy and commander Richard Cole himself who was not a child soldier but a child criminal who lived by the gun.
Who else would be better able to understand the trauma and the mental anguish of these teenagers other than Richard Cole, who had been through similar experiences in life, seen it all, experienced it all and knew how difficult it was to get adjusted to the normal every day life. It takes a long time to dull the pain and ro erasee the mental scars , also needs a lot of understanding and effort to do it!
A runaway from his home at the age of 12, Richard Cole joined a gang of teenage hoodlums who were all involved in serious crimes like looting ,organised robbery, even killing without remorse when things turned unfavorable. He was arrested and sent to a reform school in Freetown, and after coming out , if anything became a full blown criminal. He drove a taxi as a front carrying a deadly spear as his weapon and was known among his gang as The Spear...When he was 25 years old he happened to meet a missionary while he was trying to loot a church ,who spoke to him and about God to begin with and later about the concept and virtues of living with a vision. Cole was understandably scornful in the beginning but the missionary asked him to visit his church just once more without any biased feelings. Cole did so and what was more impressive to him was the happy and peaceful atmosphere that he encountered within the church premises. Then he began to analyse life and decided to give it a try, starting with educating himself with the help of the missionaries in the church. He also met his wife who was actively involved in social work which paved the way to his complete attitude and personality change.
Cole became a missionary himself with the vision of trying to bring some order and hope to people in the war torn zone. Cole and his wife began by collecting destitute children and according to him , in every child he saw himself as he was a few years back. The children were given food and shelter and also made to do lessons in Cole's kitchen and all of them slept in the long veranda. The couple would grow vegetables and fish in the early hours of the morning to feed the children and themselves the next day. And then came civil war and the Cole's had to flee nine times and four times they lost even the little that they had built. However, they kept on doing what they could sheltering child soldiers and giving them hope and security through their presence because everything else was momentary . In 1996,after much persuasion the government of Sierra Leone gave Cole a cement block building ironically in the very reform school, where once he had been imprisoned. Supported by other social work units from London, Cole started a Nehemiah project – a home and a school for the child victims of civil war, where most of the inmates were child soldiers who had escaped the fighting.
Within a few years it has grown into a huge community day school with nearly 800 pupils including the 87 boys in Cole's 'Family' who live in the classrooms, 24 girls , who were mostly rape victims, who are separately cared for in an apartment nearby.Most children would find it difficult, even loathe the discipline that has to be followed at school and some have even tried to run away several times only to come back, realising that the outside realities were eve worse.
Cole and his wife have had a very tough job getting the child soldiers, most of who had lived by the gun, to get themselves adjusted to the new life where guns had no meaning nor use. They normally left the difficult ones alone to introspect and come to terms before asking them to follow the rules of the school. They had to wear uniforms and sing National Anthem each evening and speak to each other about their horrifying tales,families killed,houses burnt down , sisters and mothers raped and left to die in front of their eyes and comfort each other. It is Cole and his wife , who try to reassure the boys by telling them, they cannot be blamed for what they did since they were robots in the hands of the Revolutionary army, who would kill them mercilessly if they disobeyed them.
Later years
To help young people weighed down by such heavy burdens, Cole had to really look for methods on how to accept and go on without making them feel that there was something psychologically wrong with them , which was not the case.There was nothing wrong wit their minds, it was their hearts and soul that were broken and that had to be mended with understanding ,love and care. Cole was of the opinion that the boys had to be given the freedom to choose what they wanted to do even within the premises of the school and pertaining to their daily chores like sweeping the floor,cleaning or gardening. He felt that even these small jobs and the pride that they take in doing them was part of the healing process for their minds.
Although Cole is a fervent christian his church has neither a religious name nor denomination. He draws no salary, the school's modest budget is raised by the British social group which in turn receives donations from the rich and famous people, also some of the members from the British royal family. The local police often bring in a child who needs the healing touch given by Cole and his school.
With peace now prevailing in Sierra Leone, Cole has some ambitious plans for his school - a heath clinic, a few more class rooms, a library and study room stocked with computers donated by business organisations from UK and other countries as well, in effect make life better for his children. As he often speaks about life and its trails to his children he had this to say " My prayer is that each of you will be someone - someone who can help put your nation back on its feet, you may come from anywhere or nowhere and still do it, since only you can decide what you want to do, once you are sure 'Go for it !
That is the real life story of a great human being who lived amidst chaos,violence and degradation , changed himself for the better carrying a message of hope and determined to spread enlightenment for others like him !