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BROOKLYN CENTER, MN — Victor Peacock’s calm, friendly face is marked by physical scars that hint at his painful history. During Sierra Leone’s Civil War in the ’90s, Peacock was captured and tortured before coming to the U.S. as a refugee. Since arriving in Minnesota 14 years ago, he’s become a youth leader in after school programs and holds down steady factory jobs when he can find them. But Sierra Leone is still very much on his mind and in his heart — Peacock calls his family, who are scattered across the coast of West Africa, whenever he can, and sends money home to support his eight siblings.
In July 2014, he found out over the phone that his close friend Kemah Senessie died of Ebola in Sierra Leone, just two days after she had asked Peacock if he could send $50 to help her pay for food.
“When I heard about her passing, I thought, ‘Oh my God. I really want to go to Sierra Leone,’” said Peacock. He’d spent three years of his country’s civil war carrying people who were injured on his back and in wheelbarrows, to the gates of the Red Cross, about three miles from his home. How could he sit back now, he wondered, while the people he loved most were in danger again?
