BAR HARBOR – Marcelle Hutchins looks, sounds and acts like any typical teenager who grew up in Down East Maine.

She talks quickly and says “Oh my God” when she gets excited. She works out and runs track with her twin sister Danielle. She’s hoping to study creative writing in college and has a page on Facebook, a social networking site on the Internet.

But despite the many ways in which she may be similar to her classmates at Mount Desert Island High School, Marcelle also has qualities uniquely her own.

Like her sister and mother, she originally is from the African country of Cameroon. Many immigrants move to America seeking a better life, but for Marcelle it was a case of life or death. She was 7 years old in 1997 when she and her mother came to Maine seeking treatment for Marcelle’s congestive heart condition, which doctors in Cameroon were unable to cure.

Coming to America, where Maine media had taken an interest in her condition, was a jarring experience, Marcelle said last week. She remembers being swarmed by reporters and television cameras when she stepped off the plane with her mother in Portland, where doctors at Maine Medical Center had agreed to perform the necessary surgery free of charge.

“It was crazy,” she said.

A surgery scar on her sternum reminds Marcelle of how she made the transition from being a young African girl to a Maine teenager.

Now 18, Marcelle recently has been revisiting her past because of her high school senior project, which is aimed at drawing attention to children in Africa who need help, as she once did. For the project, she has raised $1,600 for Invisible Children, a nonprofit group that uses a documentary film shot by its founders to help raise awareness and aid for Ugandan children who have been kidnapped and forced to take up arms against their own families, neighbors and government.

Marcelle is bringing the group to MDI to screen the film – first at the high school and then at College of the Atlantic – and to talk to people about what can be done to help. The film will be shown at the high school for students and staff at 1 p.m. Wednesday, April 2, and then at 7 p.m. at COA where the public also can attend.

The story of how Marcelle, her mom and her sister came to Maine dates back to 1996, when Bar Harbor residents Bobbie Lynn Hutchins and Susan Coopersmith traveled to Cameroon as Coopersmith was completing her doctorate in anthropology. There they met Marcelle’s mother, then known as Lucie Ndzana, who was a food vendor in a local village market, and bonded with her. Lucie became Coopersmith’s research assistant during their stay.

But soon after they returned home in the spring of 1997, Hutchins and Coopersmith received a distressing e-mail: Marcelle, who recently had gotten sick, was getting worse and could die if she didn’t get the help she needed soon. The pair scrambled, calling doctors, politicians and anyone else who could help and arranged for Marcelle and her mother to fly to the U.S. so Marcelle could have emergency surgery.

Marcelle’s experience – coming to America, getting medical treatment and recuperating and then living in Washington County while her mother was taking classes at UMaine Machias – was part of the reason she wanted to get involved with Invisible Children, the teenager said last week. It was Bobbie Lynn Hutchins, who is now her aunt, that first told her about what was happening in Uganda, she said.

“I’m originally from Africa,” Marcelle said. “I was clueless about [the child soldiers] until I watched the movie. I couldn’t believe this was going on there.”

Calling the movie an “eye-opener,” Marcelle said that after seeing it, she wanted her classmates to see it, too. Sometimes she hears other MDI High School students complain about not having their own car, she said, even though children elsewhere don’t even have shoes.

“I wanted to give a lot of kids the heads up about what’s going on in the world,” Marcelle said. “I was given a chance to have a better life. Everyone deserves to have a happy life.”

Bobbie Lynn Hutchins, whose brother Jon Hutchins eventually married Marcelle’s mother, is the mentor for her niece’s senior project. Hutchins, a local restaurateur who also runs the nonprofit humanitarian organization United World Citizens, said that going to Cameroon 12 years ago inspired her to get involved in humanitarian efforts.

She said that after the twins and their mother had settled into their new lives in Maine, she tried to get the girls to watch documentaries about humanitarian issues whenever they came to her house to visit.

“They were little girls who wanted to play with Barbie dolls,” Hutchins said. “[But Marcelle] always watched them [the films] from beginning to end.”

Hutchins said when she saw the “Invisible Children” documentary, which was made by three 20-something American film students, she knew it would resonate with young people. She said she was “thrilled” when Marcelle decided to take up the cause for her senior project.

“I’m very pleased and very proud,” Hutchins said. “Invisible Children is doing amazing work. They’re raising awareness and they’re raising money.”

Marcelle, her aunt and officials at the high school acknowledge that the film is not always easy to watch. There is no violence shown in the movie, they said, but it does depict some children in desperate situations.

But Hutchins added that the filmmakers also were able to display some of their wit and charm in the movie.

“Really, it’s very uplifting in the end,” Hutchins said.

Marcelle said even in real life there may be hope for things improving in Uganda. The insurgent Lord’s Resistance Army still is using kidnapped children to fight their war, she said, but their leader, Joseph Kony, was recently captured and the fighting is decreasing.

She said she would like to go back to Africa one day soon, to see relatives who still live there and to volunteer for Invisible Children programs in Uganda.

“This war’s been going on for 21 years,” Marcelle said. “It’s time for it to end, I think.”

btrotter@bangordailynews.net

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