`Shouldn't somebody care?' OR The house that Jack built

Man once was lost and wandering; now he takes in troubled youths

Story by Michael Humphrey

For most of us, plights such as homelessness, starvation and abandonment never get closer than our television screens. For Ibanibo Jack, they are as close as the memories of his childhood in Nigeria.

Now they're as close as where he lives and works. Jack, 43, is director of Haniel's Home of Hope, at 75th Street and Prospect Avenue, where he helps young men who walk the edge of tragedy every day.

But even their struggles usually cannot compare to Jack's.

In 1967 while the United States fought a war in Vietnam, Nigeria was embroiled in the Biafra War, a civil conflict that killed more than 1 million people.

One day the war hit Jack's village of Buguma, near the city of Port Harcourt.

"One moment I was sitting in my chair in my family's home," Jack says. "The next, I woke up, flat on the ground, and the home was gone. No mom. No dad. Everything was gone."

It was only the beginning.

"You have probably seen pictures on television of African refugee children walking in groups, just wandering," Jack says. "I was one of those children. I joined a group, and we wandered to the next town, until that got bombed. Then we wandered some more."