Everyday Ruptures: Children, Youth, and Migration in Global Perspective

3. Transnational Fosterage: The Novel Care Arrangements between Guinean Caregivers and Ivorian and Liberian Children Fleeing War

63 Chapter 3 Transnational Fosterage The Novel Care Arrangements between Guinean Caregivers and Ivorian and Liberian Children Fleeing War Susan Shepler Globally, there is growing evidence that many separated refugee children are not embraced within programmes providing care and protection or family tracing. In many contexts, there are large numbers of boys and girls who have become separated from their families and have never come into contact with agencies or interventions to assist them. These children may be living within their extended family network, or with others who fall outside their traditional system of care, such as unrelated families, groups of peers or siblings, or on their own. Some may be living, for example, as street children within their own countries or in the cities of neighbouring states. Others may provide domestic service for strangers, in exchange for food or shelter, or work as farm labourers in areas bordering refugee camps. —Gillian Mann, “Not Seen or Heard: The Lives of Separated Refugee Children in Dar es Salaam” Starting in 1989, conflict has affected the nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Côte d’Ivoire. The effects of these interrelated conflicts have overrun national boundaries; flows of resources, armed combatants, and refugees have made this a subregional issue. Hundreds of thousands of people in West Africa have fled across borders to escape war. A large fraction of these refugees are children. Many unaccompanied children, 64 Everyday Ruptures rather than seeking shelter in camps, seek support wherever they find it, perhaps from international extended family or ethnic networks, perhaps from strangers. Especially in the early stages of a migration crisis, during periods of self-resettlement, fleeing children turn to such solutions out of necessity and are frequently absorbed into communities. This chapter focuses on a set of children who fled war in their own country (either Côte d’Ivoire or Liberia) and ended up separated from their families and spontaneously settling with Guinean families.1 In the sample studied, Liberians were in the minority, trickling into this part of Guinea over a decade of conflict. The majority, from Côte d’Ivoire, had fled during a spike in the conflict that lasted several weeks in 2002. At the time of my interviews, more than three years had passed since they left their homes. A handful of personal stories from children and their foster caregivers about how they met and arranged their fostering relationships introduce the population and foreshadow some of the themes I discuss later. I was in school when we heard gun sounds. The teachers released us to go home. I ran to the house, but I couldn’t find anyone. I saw some people running, so I joined the group. We took the Guizé road, that is, we passed through the bush. In the bush we came upon a small village. The people I came with joined a vehicle and left me there. I started crying. Someone in the village called me over and said I could spend the night. I explained my story to him and said, “I will live with you and work so you can feed me.” After a few months, the man asked if I had been attending school before. The man brought me to Nzoo to register me for school. The whole time the man was afraid that my parents would come and accuse him of stealing their child. (A sixteen-year-old boy from Côte d’Ivoire) When the war came, I was at home, but my father and mother were out. My neighbor said, “Let’s find somewhere to go,” and we came together all the way to Nzoo. My neighbor was from Kaolenta near Nzoo. The woman continued on, and left me in Kaolenta. I was sitting in the market in Kaolenta, wondering what to do. I went and sat next to a woman who was selling and explained my problem. The woman said, “OK, you can come and stay with me.” (A fifteen-year-old girl from Côte d’Ivoire) Transnational Fosterage 65 Three years ago, I went to the waterside to wash dishes and I found four boys there crying. I had some extra rice in one of my pans so I gave it to them to eat and asked what was wrong. They explained that they had fled from Côte d’Ivoire with a group of people but had been left behind...