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Overwhelmed by Emotion
When a rebel retreat allowed Joseph to return to Bumpe, he found devastation. The RUF had burned down much of the village, including the Kposowa family compound. One of Joseph's sisters had been killed in the fire. At Bumpe High School, the rebels had taken the zinc roofs to make weapons, used the desks and books for firewood, and smashed the lab equipment and dormitory cots. Founded in 1963 by Joseph's father, the school had once been a magnet for 600 students from across Sierra Leone and neighboring countries. Now it was a charred hulk. Joseph and his neighbors began rebuilding, but progress was slow.When his relatives in America forwarded Sarah's letter, in 2004, it was a ray of light after a long stretch of darkness. Joseph had long dreamed of reconnecting with the daughter he had forfeited, but he'd had no idea where to begin looking. Now, somehow, she had found him.
He used his cell phone to call Sarah, and when he heard her laugh, it reminded him of the woman he'd loved so many years before. Joseph told Sarah how he and her mother had agonized over giving her away, and how they'd finally decided it would be irresponsible for a couple in their situation—a penniless freshman on a student visa and the cafeteria worker he'd been dating—to try to raise a child together.
He also explained the line of chiefly succession and recounted the tragedies suffered by Sarah's kinfolk. "When she said she'd come visit," says Joseph, speaking on the phone through the hiss of intercontinental static, "it was one of the happiest moments of my life."
That December, after a 20-hour plane ride, Sarah, accompanied by her good friend and acting coach, John Woehrle, landed at a tiny airport near Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital. Her father, whom she'd always imagined as tall and exotically handsome, stood by the baggage carousel. He was, in reality, a small man with a sensitive face. "I looked in his eyes," Sarah says, "and he seemed so vulnerable."
The two shared a long, warm embrace. Seeing—and touching—seemed more urgent than talking. Joseph seized his daughter's hand, and they went to meet the dozen family members waiting outside.
The night was dark, and Sarah was too overwhelmed by emotion to register much about her surroundings on the way to her hotel. The next morning, she, Woehrle and her father set out in Joseph's battered Range Rover. Then she saw it all: the city's squatter camps and bullet-pocked buildings, the ragged children selling oranges along the road, the lush countryside carpeted with trash.
Bumpe, five hours away, was a cluster of thatch-roofed houses surrounded by fields of yam and cassava. At the edge of town, hundreds of locals swarmed the Range Rover. Joseph translated the song the villagers were singing: "Sarah, you have come to your homeland. Welcome home."
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