Springfield man finds wife after 9 years

SPRINGFIELD — One morning about two months ago, Matthew Sisusa was on his way to his job as a medical assistant at Southern Illinois University Medical School. There was an incoming cellphone call. He looked at the number. It was an international call from a number he did not recognize.

He had to get to work, had no time to talk and politely tried to explain that to whomever was calling. But the man on the other end of the line insisted that someone desperately wanted to talk with Sisusa.

A few minutes later, Sisusa pulled his car to the curb, unable to drive or even think. He just sat there, not believing he was really awake and not dreaming.

The caller that morning was his wife, a woman he had not seen in nine years and had all but given up for dead.

Matt Sisusa, 40, fled armed violence between African rebels and their government not once, but twice.

The first time was 1989, when he left his native country of Liberia. By the time that civil war ended in 1996, 200,000 Liberians would be dead. A million others were refugees. Sisusa was one of those million.

He went to Cote d'Ivoire, where he started a new life. He met and married his wife, Princess, in 1995. By 2002, the Sisusas had three children, two girls and a boy.

Rebel soldiers in 2002 took up arms to topple the government of President Laurent Gbago. The fighting eventually reached Sisusa's town of Danane.

At 10 a.m. that day, he was at school with his daughter, Josephine, who was 7. Princess had taken the other two children to day care a couple of miles away. Rebel fighters were literally a block or two from the school, shooting people, when Sisusa grabbed Josephine and headed for home.

“Several times on the way we had to lie flat on the ground to avoid the shooting,” Sisusa says. “When we got home, the doors were open and the walls were riddled with bullets. There was nobody there. The neighbors were gone. The houses were empty.”

He had been trying to reach Princess by cellphone, but one of the first things the rebels did was cut cell service. He saw a crowd of people headed out of town. Their goal was safety in Guinea, a short trip to the north. He and Josephine fell in with them, hoping that Princess and the two other children were doing the same.

At a refugee camp in Guinea, there was no sign of his wife. Sisusa and others gave their contact information to aid workers, some of whom had contacts back in Cote d'Ivoire.

“I was optimistic that I would hear something,” he said.

Some parents who gave their information, Sisusa said, were eventually reunited with their children. He was not as lucky.

It was a sad and frightening time, both for him and Josephine. Other children would ask the girl where her mother was. When they learned she was missing, they sometimes told Josephine her mother was dead.

“She cried for three days,” says Sisusa.

Before the war, Sisusa had begun the process to emigrate with his family to America, where he has family. From the camp in Guinea, months after being forced to flee ahead of the gunmen, he continued the process and eventually received permission to come.

That was an extremely emotional decision because it meant leaving the rest of his family half a world behind. Chances of ever seeing them again would be close to nil. But Sisusa still didn't know what had become of Princess. Sisusa, who is devoutly religious, kept asking God for a sign about his wife. When no sign came, he believed it was best to go on with his life in a new place.

He and Josephine arrived in the United States in 2003. They lived in Chicago and in Connecticut before coming to Springfield in 2004 to join Sisusa's brother and sister. He got a janitorial job at Hope School and sent his daughter to school.

Sisusa was finally able to establish contact with his two children back in Ivory Coast. He learned that they were safe and being cared for by one of his relatives. They have been writing and calling each other for the past eight years, but they have not reunited.

Sisusa never completely accepted that his wife was dead, though that seemed more likely as the years went on. He told Josephine to keep hoping that her mother would turn up. He knew his daughter needed a mother, but never considered having his wife declared legally dead so he could remarry.

“I kept it open with my daughter,” he says, “because I never had a definite answer to give her. I didn't know. I told her to always keep hope alive that someday we would be reunited with her mother.

“A child has so much attachment with their biological mother. You must be careful. I was very careful not to make any decision that would offend my daughter.”

Eight years after fleeing one step ahead of rebel guns, that cell phone call from his wife arrived.

“I was very quiet,” Sisusa says of that first phone call. “She said `Are you there?' I said yes. It began to dawn on me, but first I had to realize I was not dreaming.

“I pulled over and sat in the car. The only thing I can remember saying was `Thank you, Jesus.”'

Princess was calling from Liberia. But every time she tried to tell Sisusa where she had been for the past nine years, she began crying so hard she could not speak.

In the two months since then, Sisusa still has not heard the whole story of what happened to his wife. But he knows that it was ugly.

“She was held against her will,” he said. “She was between Ivory Coast and Guinea. She suffered.”

After the phone call, he knew he had a big job to do — tell Josephine. She is 16 and a sophomore at Sacred Heart-Griffin High School. She had always done what her father asked — keep hoping that someday .

“We sat down,” Sisusa said of their talk, “and I told her, `Do you remember what I have always told you? To hope? To keep hope alive?' She said yes. I told her, `Your mother will talk to you tomorrow.'

“She said, `How?' I said, `Your mother will talk to you tomorrow. I always told you to keep hoping.”'

Alice Martin, well-known as a horse trainer and riding instructor at StarWest Stables west of Springfield, met Matthew Sisusa at New Salem United Methodist Church.

“Our pastor used to be Roosevelt Smith, who was from Liberia,” she says. “We had quite a few Liberians going there then. Matt always looked so thin and worried that, one day, I sat down and said, `Tell me your story.' Boy, was it a story. We've been friends ever since.”

When he first arrived in Springfield, Sisusa signed on with a temp job service and worked at the Illinois Department of Revenue. Then came the janitorial job at Hope School. He took classes at Midwest Technical Institute with hopes of becoming a medical assistant.

To complete the course, he trained temporarily at the SIU medical school. When a position as a medical assistant came open there, he got the job. He works in the infectious diseases department.

Before “The Phone Call,” Sisusa had already started the process of bringing his two other children, Veronica, 13, and Joseph, 10, from Liberia to Springfield. He has been working with staff at U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin's Springfield office. He will add a third person, Princess, to the immigration process.

The American Embassy in Monrovia, Liberia, is helping as well, but there is much red tape involved. The latest hurdle requires Sisusa to get DNA testing to establish parenthood over Veronica and Joseph. There are no records left in Liberia to prove the two are his children.

He is being asked for $1,000 to pay for the DNA test. That has Martin suspicious it might be a shakedown.

“That's what worries me,” Martin says. “We don't really know if it's the U.S. government demanding this $1,000 or some official in Liberia demanding this. But it shouldn't cost $1,000.”

One of the agencies that helped Sisusa get from Africa to the United States is the Swedish-based Liberia Dujar (which translates to “wake up”) Association, which provides a variety of aid to Liberian women and children affected by war. The association has asked Sisusa to establish a branch in the U.S., so he has been working on that as well.

But it is being reunited with his wife and children that is foremost in his mind. That story is just beginning.

___

Story By David Bakke

The (Springfield) State Journal-Register