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HEALTH FAMILY PROBLEMS RELATIONSHIPS EDUCATION & CAREER I am the 47 year old father of six. My wife and four of my children were parted from me during the civil war in Sierra Leone, eight years ago. As the violence of the war spread across the country and things became increasingly dangerous, my wife and I decided that we should all leave Sierra Leone and seek sanctuary in nearby Yemen. We split into two separate groups to try and make it easier for us to travel and to try and increase our chances of getting a boat to Yemen. I took care of our two older girls and the three of us successfully made it to Yemen - unfortunately my wife and my remaining four younger children did not. I've been trying to track them down ever since - they were last spotted in an Ethiopian village. I raced to the scene but when I got there I was told I had missed them by seventeen days. I remained in Ethiopia, searching for them for a further six months but was unable to trace them. I am now living in Mombassa in Kenya. I am desperate to find the other half of my family. My wife is uneducated and a very shy woman who would have no idea of how to find me - I worry about her and my children all the time. I frantically need some advice on how to establish contact with them. Please can you help me? Mohammed M Wali, Kenya. Advice : Anita Fornby, Project Officer for The Red Cross. *The International Red Cross has a service that operates throughout the world and which is designed to re-unite families who have been separated because of war or other natural and man-made disasters. *Mohammed should contact the Kenyan Red Cross who will launch a tracking service for him. They will talk to him about his situation and ask him for all the relevant information such as full names and dates of the birth of the missing members of his family. They'll also need to know the last place his family were spotted. The Kenyan Red Cross will transfer all this information to the Red Cross in Ethiopia. *Because Mohammed is from Somalia there is a link between the International Red Cross and the Somali Service of the BBC World Service. So what Mohammed could do is fill in a Red Cross tracing form, which would then be sent to the BBC Somali Service in London. The information on the form should then announced over the airwaves on the Somali Service and hopefully Mohammed's wife might be listening or maybe someone who knows her and they will then relay the information to her. The What's the Problem? website is providing general information only. It should not be treated as a substitute for the medical advice of your own doctor or any other health care professional. The BBC is not responsible or liable for any diagnosis made by a user based on the content of the What's the Problem? website. Always consult your own GP if you're in any way concerned about your health.		FURTHER INFORMATION   Who are the ICRC? The International Committee of the Red Cross is an impartial, neutral and independent organization whose exclusively humanitarian mission is to protect the lives and dignity of victims of war and internal violence and to provide them with assistance. It directs and cordinates the international relief activities conducted by the movement in situations of conflict. It also endeavours to prevent suffering by promoting and strengthening humanitarian law and universal humanitarian principles. BBC Somali Service contact address: Somali Service BBC World Service Bush House London U.K    INTERNET LINKS The International Committee of the Red Cross   BBC Somali   The BBC is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites