|
Christmas Eve, 1992: In the PaLokko Orphanage of Sierra Leone, West Africa, about two dozen children wait eagerly as Joe Skasko, in Santa Claus costume, visits each one. Skasko digs into his sack and hands Isatu Kamara, 7, a gift. He can't tell if she smiles. She hides behind her hands to cover the tumor that disfigures the right side of her face. Although he'd never donned a St. Nick outfit before, Skasko has been a year-round modern-day Santa to the children of PaLokko since 1984.
Forty minutes outside the capital city of Freetown, people live in thatched-roof huts and tend small farm plots with rudimentary tools, much as their ancestors did. Skasko first came to this remote place. With 15 other members of a Pennsylvania church to build an orphanage, literally from scratch. First, they formed mud into bricks. Then they mortared them, one on top of the other, with cement mixed by hand. It's grueling to labor in tropical heat, but Skasko, then a 37-year-old cop, found the work more enriching than anything he'd done before. From then on he came about twice a year, bringing supplies, digging wells, and constructing new buildings in the 52-acre PaLokko compound.
Even when he was home with his wife, Marilyn, and his own children, Jesse and Sara, the people of Sierra Leone Stayed with him. "They're my second family," Skasko says.
Fortunately, his actual family was supportive - even though he ran up his credit cards paying for airfare and stocking up on food, toys, clothing and building materials. One year, after using up all his vacation, he took two weeds without pay. " There was a lot of work to do," he says, "but it wasn't the wok that kept me coming back. It was the people."
In 1991, civil war wracked his adopted country. Undeterred by the threat of danger, or recurring bouts of malaria, Skasko kept returning. At first, rebels fought for control of diamond mines in the east. But by 1994, the war headed west, toward Freetown.
Machete-wielding rebels, some just children who had been kidnapped, drugged and forced into service, swarmed into the villages, destroying everything and everyone in their way. They chopped off the arms, legs and hands of thousands of men, women and children those who resisted and those who did not.
Back in Pennsylvania, the news tormented Skasko. After many desperate calls, he learned that Desmond and Cordelia Coker, the couple who cared for the kids, had hidden them in their cramped basement. Battles blazed daily all around them. But they were alive.
As the rebels took over more of the country, their general gave their brutal missions horrific names - "Operation: Scorched Earth," and "Operation: No Living Thing." By 1998, thousands had fled. Skasko, however, was doing everything he could to get in. At last, he got a flight. He borrowed a four-wheel-drive vehicle and drove to PaLokko. Almost every structure had been looted and burned. In the distance, the rapid spit of automatic gunfire warned him it was time to go.
Yet war was not the only danger to those Skasko had grown close to. Isatu Kamara, by then 14, confronted another threat. The tumor disfiguring her face had grown. To survive, she needed medical care hr country couldn't provide.
Surgeons at a Pennsylvania hospital agreed to donate their services. Skasko lobbied until he got Sen. Arlen Specter to intercede with the Immigration Department. It took five surgeries to reconstruct Isatu's face. But on her flight home, she proved it was all worthwhile. She was smiling.
The war is over now. The orphanage has been rebuilt in Freetown. But Skasko has more to do: most urgently, build a hospital to fit prosthetics for people whose limbs were amputated by the rebels. He's starting Arms around Africa to keep the work going.
It's aptly named. Joe Skasko has had his arms around this small West African country for almost 20 years now. And as long as the Sierra Leonians need him, he's not letting go.
|