Samuel Kabia drags a buggy behind him full of soil, plants and trash bags. Smiling, he goes on his way to tend to Belmont’s landscape. He is slow and gentle as he passes the Pembroke boys throwing a Frisbee in the quad and the girls lying on blankets in the early spring warmth. Kabia passes these students unnoticed, but on another side of the world, in another country, in the village of Rufoindu, Sierra Leone, Samuel Kabia is more than noticed: he brings hope; he brings change. But be sure to note that he didn’t achieve this status on an easy road.

Sierra Leone, 1991
The diamond-rich nation had imploded into a civil war between the Revolutionary United Front rebels and the military government over control of the diamond mines (which meant control of the country’s economy and eventually, the nation as a whole). The RUF went on a murdering, mutilating rampage, leaving their signature mark on the villages and communities they attacked: severed limbs, lips, ears and the recruitment of child soldiers. The war would last until Jan. 18, 2002.
In the meantime, tens of thousands of people would be slaughtered and approximately two million people (more than a third of the nation’s population) would flee their homes and become refugees in neighboring countries.

Kabia, a high school economics and geography teacher at the time, and his wife and child were among the two million.

“In a war situation, everyone moves for their lives,” Kabia said.

The young family took what they could and fled by foot. They walked through the day and through the night in the bush for months until they reached the small peaceful nation of The Gambia. Here, because the Gambians couldn’t tell who was a rebel and who wasn’t, Kabia’s family was scrutinized and questioned before being put in a refugee camp with about 300 others like them. Even here, things would not be easy.

“In the camp, you had to fight for your food. You had to go into to the bush and hunt to feed your family,” Kabia said.

A while later, the United Nations recognized and registered the camp and began sending food, but 50 bags of rice for 300 people was still not enough.

Kabia continued to teach, this time in The Gambia at Hermitage High School, the only government-funded high school in the country.

In 1995, Kabia applied to Catholic Charities of Tennessee, Inc., a humanitarian organization that had been helping refugees in The Gambia, for relocation to the United States. It took six years, five interviews and a barrage of health screenings before they approved the Kabias, who had added one more child to the family.

America, 2001
And on Sept. 11, 2001, the Kabias waited in the Gambian airport to catch a flight to the United States. Of course, the series of terrorist attacks in America that day would not allow them to travel. 

“It was the worst time I had experienced in my life,” Kabia said. “I have no words to describe it.” Before they left the camp, certain they would not be returning, they had sold all their food, their mattresses, their home, everything, and now they had nothing and didn’t know when they would be traveling. So they borrowed and asked friends for help until Sept. 26 when word came that it was time for them to go to America.

“I didn’t know we were coming to Nashville until we got to immigrations,” Kabia said. At the Nashville airport, Catholic Charities of Tennessee, Inc. received them.

“Catholic Charities helped us find a place to stay and a job for three months,” Kabia said. After that they were on their own.

They helped Kabia find a job at Belmont University working in landscaping. He met Belmont’s director of international education, Kathy Skinner, who was able to have his college credits transferred from Sierra Leone to Belmont for him to do his undergraduate studies in business administration. Beginning in 2002 when he began his classes, he has helped tend Belmont’s gardens. Belmont paid for his undergrad studies, a benefit to university employees.

“[The job] serves a dual purpose for me,” Kabia said. “It is a job I get paid for, and it allows me to go to school here: I wouldn’t be able to pay [the fees] otherwise.”

Kabia says his boss is also very flexible with his hours, which helps him juggle school life as well as home life. Kabia is also grateful to be working outdoors because he always worked indoors as a teacher back home and he appreciates the different environment.

Sierra Leone, 2005
In 2005, he graduated and decided to go back “to visit my people.” What he found in Rufoindu in Sierra Leone was not the village he remembered.

“[The rebels] had burned the whole village… [and] many children had become orphans,” Kabia said. The war had left the people with nothing but “extreme poverty, diseases” and little or no educational resources. The Catholic Charities had built some houses for some families, but one fact was clear:

The village would never be as it once was.

Kabia decided to do whatever he could to help the orphans who had survived the war. So he returned to America, began graduate school at Belmont, and founded the non-profit organization,
“Rufoindu Education Project for Orphan Children.” Its mission is to “provide functional literacy for orphans and vulnerable children and educational resources to communities in Africa.” Essentially, Kabia would start a school in Rufoindu from American soil with the help of the American people. The first group of people Kabia turned to for assistance was the Belmont community.

Belmont gave him chairs, tables and school supplies to fill 10 suitcases. But the problem came when he didn’t have enough money for shipping. Kabia went into overdrive, working in landscaping from 7 a.m.- 3 p.m., then from 4:30 p.m. to midnight, he would work at Burger King and then deal with homework and class projects through the wee hours. “I would sleep between one and three hours a day, sometimes I didn’t sleep at all,” Kabia said. “All I could think of was getting the money to pay for the shipping.” In 2006, he shipped the supplies.

He wrote letters to people and organizations that he thought could help, trying to get them to understand the situation in Rufoindu and the importance of education for the orphans in a few paragraphs. He worked hard to get the organization approved as a non-profit with 501(c)(3) status so any funds donated to its cause are tax-deductible. In the letters, he coaxed people with this fact; he let them know exactly where their money was going and what it was being spent on. Any extra money he made, he sent to the development of the school. Rufoindu provided labor to build what is now a five-classroom school, and he provided the money for the material that would be used, food, and other needs. The current project on the site is a library.

Kabia acknowledges that it is a challenge to keep this up and running, but he is willing to make the sacrifices because he realizes the importance of education.

“I want to make [the orphans] self-sufficient,” Kabia said. “If somebody is hungry you do not just send food to them all the time, you teach them how to make food.”

A family’s future, 2008
Kabia also uses this project to remind his three children – the last was born in America – of where they come from.

“I don’t want them to forget about Africa. I always want them to remember that we came from a poor family. I want to give them culture and responsibility and let them know that America is not everything: there are people suffering in the world.”

Kabia hopes that one day he will be able to take his children to Rufoindu to see their home for themselves. But these are not the only people he hopes to take to the once-crippled village. He is trying to organize an exchange program where people interested in teaching as well as people who have contributed to the school in some way will be able to visit the school.

“It is important for them to see where their money is going,” he said. This is still in the works.
Now he is trying to raise money to ship the 20 computers Belmont donated to his school. Then a Belmont student from Kenya, Kipkosgei Magut, got involved.

“I helped Samuel with coming up with ideas for the fundraising event, we had many meetings on deciding what was a good event for [the] Belmont community,” said Magut. “At first we thought of having a running competition, but that didn’t sail through. We wanted something that would capture the talent in Belmont and would also enhance its learning.”

They settled on a rock show scheduled for April 10 where Belmont students will be able to sing, play music and raise money for the orphans in Rufoindu. Magut and Kabia are trying to make it so that students can get convo credit. For Magut, this project is more than a pastime.

“I got involved with this program because I was so touched by what Samuel Kabia is doing,” said Magut. “I felt that the orphan children of Sierra Leone need someone to stand for them. They need me… and they need us: they need [all] of Belmont to help them attain their goals in life.”
As for Kabia, as he still tries to scrub images of the war from his memory, he does what he can to make the memory of the war fade for the orphans as well.

“I am alive and that is all. There is no point in carrying the sorrow of it on my head,” he said. “Many people are dead now and those people who have been killed suffer more than I do because they cannot help make the world better. Now is the time to move ahead. All I can do now is help those who are alive.”