Saidu Barrie: former refugee, current student, future humantitarian

 Freshman pharmacy major Saidu Barrie approximates that he was about two years old when he and his family fled north to Guinea from his birth country of Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone is one of the African countries that has been facing conflict over its natural supply of diamonds.
Barrie doesn’t remember much about his early life in Sierra Leone and, he said, he prefers not to ask his family too much about it.
“I don’t ask a lot about it, because it just upsets my family,” said Barrie. “I think it’s better to just let it go and move on.”
However, Barrie said that growing up in Guinea wasn’t bad. He received a good education—attending a French school—and excelled in his studies. By the time he was ready to think about life after high school, his father had moved to the United States, so Barrie looked at some of the schools around the U.S, looking for a school with an attractive program in pharmacy.
“I chose Wilkes because it has a really good pharmacy program,” said Barrie.  “Also, I applied to schools like Temple, but they wanted me to complete some kind of cultural requirements and I just wanted to start school. I didn’t want to wait.”
Barrie wanted to start as quickly as possible, but has had a little delay.
“I had to go in as an undeclared science major,” said Barrie.
There are lots of reasons that Barrie wants to start and finish school with haste. The most important reason is that he would like to start making money as soon as he can. Not for the sometimes selfish reasons people want money, however. Barrie doesn’t want to buy a huge house or expensive cars; he wants to help the people of Guinea. He considers Guinea to be his home country and he wants to give back in any way that he can.
“I want to help them build things. They could use schools and hospitals. I would also like to build mosques,” said Barrie.
Though he doesn’t have a lot of free time as a student, Barrie signed up as a member of Wilkes’ branch of Circle K, a community service program. “I have a very busy schedule, but I am still part of it,” said Barrie.
He also plans on helping to support his family, as is customary in Guinea. “People here, when they get jobs, they support themselves and their children,” said Barrie. “Where I’m from, we help cousins and aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews.”