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My story is a mixture of here and there. Before one can understand an individual’s story, it is important to have a history of events that contributed to the creation of that story. I am a twenty-six year old Liberian male living in St. Cloud, MN. I am from Bong County, Liberia and Kpelle by tribe. I was born in Kakata, Margibi County. I have lived most of my life in Liberia, Ghana and the United States.

Growing up knowing nothing but the sounds of different guns, all begin in 1989 when ex-president Charles Taylor launched a military revolution against ex-president Samuel Doe’s government. I was just five years old then. Many people believe that president Doe was not treating every tribe fairly in his government. He was accused of corruption, killing innocent people, having more people from his tribe (Krahn) in the government and thus the other tribes were under represented. Therefore, some saw Charles Taylor as a liberator while others saw him as a problem. Many people believe that Taylor was supported by many international leaders. One of those leaders was Muammar Qaddafi of Libya (Pham, John-Peter. Liberia Portrait of a failed State, 2004). There are different perspectives about the cause of the civil war.

The theological perspective believes that the war is a punishment from God for all the sins Liberians have committed against him. The political perspective believes that the war is a result of the Liberian government’s failure to meet legitimate demands of the Liberian people. Others believe that the war was an end product of the struggles for power (Adedeji, Adebayo, ed. Comprehending and mastering African conflicts, 1999). For whatever reason, the war has had a great effect on me personally.

When the war started, I was living with my grandparents in Kakata. Both my father and mother were in the capital city of Monrovia, attending college. My parents and I got separated because there was no way they could come back to Kakata. My grandparents and the rest of the family fled Kakata to a village in the Margibi County, deep in the Gibi Mountain. We walked over three hundred miles. I walked by myself and when I was tired, my grandfather carried me on his shoulders. My cousins and I took turns being carried on our grandfather’s shoulders. When night came, we slept in the forest with other displaced people who were fleeing their homes. We ate roots and leaves from different plants, some of which we did not know.

Upon arrival in a strange village, my grandfather, older cousins and uncles all went into the bush to cut some tree branches to build a mud house for us to live in. They built a four bedroom mud house for the family. Our family was over forty in number, so we had to manage the little space we had to live in. We did not stay in the house in the daytime for fear of being harassed by the rebels. If you were male captured by the rebels, they make you their worker; on the other hand women/girls. Therefore we would hide in the bushes during the day and come to sleep in the mud house at night. Families living in the village took turns keeping watch for the rebels at night. We were very scared at night and couldn’t sleep well because of this. When they alarmed us that the rebels were coming, everyone had to run and hide in the bushes.

There was not enough food to feed on and the water we drank was not safe for drinking. No clothes, no shoes, no toys, no story books, nothing that a child my age would need was available to me when I growing up. We lived in the bush/village until my cousin’s father got ill and passed away in 1993. All this while, we did not know the whereabouts of my parents. In early 1994, one of my uncles finally located us after searching for us for more than a year. He informed us that he and my mother escaped to Ghana on a ship that came to take Ghanaians back to their country when the war started in 1989. He said that our uncle who lived in New York gave him some money to come and find us.

We left shortly after his arrival in the village. We again begin another long walk from the village to (Ivory Coast) a country bordering Liberia; which is five hundred plus miles away. It took us weeks to get to the border but we eventually got there. My grandfather was sick and had to be carried on my uncle’s shoulder. I was only ten years old at the time. I had no schooling; nothing at all since the war broke out. We got on a bus from the Ivory Coast border to Ghana where I met my mother for the first time in five years. A month after our arrival in Ghana, my Grandfather passed away after a long illness. He was laid to rest at the Buduburam Refugee Camp cemetery in Ghana in 1994.

Starting my life as a refugee in Ghana, was another big chapter in my life. I can admit that life in the Buduburam Refugee Camp was by far better than what I had known in the bushes. There was safe drinking water and food was sometimes provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). I remember getting so excited just to see the white UN trucks loaded with rice, beans, oil, sweet energy biscuits, milk powder and other high protein foods. Our uncle in New York would also send money consistently for the family to buy food and supplies.

At the refugee came, I started school for the first time in 1994 at the age of ten. I was the oldest in my class because it is not common to see a ten year old in kindergarten. Though I was sometimes made fun of by some of the kids, I was determined to graduate from kindergarten by all means necessary. Once I had settled in school and made some new friends, I began living a normal life. Of course, there were challenges at the Refugee Camp as well. I could not understand the Ghanaian native language. My cousins and I had to sell goods to raise money and do other things to help the family, and we were forced to learn the native language to make profits.

The story of little Handfull Saydee as told by her aunt Jarteh told of some of the tragic things that happened at the refugee camp. Handfull’s mother fled the civil war in Liberia while pregnant with her. Her mother and father got separated while escaping. Her mother died shortly after giving birth to her due to complications and the lack of good health facilities on the refugee camp. Handfull now lives in New York with her aunt, who is her legal guardian, in the United States (Heydarpour, Roja. “From the Ravages of War in West Africa, 5-Year-Old Orphan Starts Over With Aunt’s Help.” Lexisnexis.com 10 Jan. 2006.) Like little Handfull, I also lived on the refugee camp, until 1998 when my mother and I were fortunate enough to move back to Liberia.

Life in Liberia had gotten a little better I guess. There were peace keepers from other countries and they had just had a presidential election that elected Charles Taylor as the Head of State. I finally got the opportunity to know my father and began to build a relationship with him. When I moved back to Liberia, I was in sixth grade. I started school in Monrovia and after a year, I asked my father to send me to a boarding school outside Monrovia. My friend and I had planned to attend the boarding school together the following school year in September 1999. My father worked for United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as a project director for Phelps Stores. He agreed to provide school fees so that I could go to the boarding school. Life was going well until 2000 when another bloody civil war was lunched against Charles Taylor’s reign by Liberia United for Reconciliation and Democracy; a rebel group that accused Taylor of being a dictator.

That war left Liberians thinking they had no-where else to go, yet again. When the war was close to Monrovia, I came back home from school. In 2003, the war reached Monrovia and we had no other option but to flee again to Ghana. Upon arrival to Ghana in 2003, my father rented a house for our family and left for the United States to resettle there and later send for my siblings and I. I was able to complete my high school in Ghana and we joined our parents in the United States in 2004. Since my arrival in the United States, life is getting a little better as time goes by. I lived in Philadelphia for a year and moved to St. Cloud to continue my education.

Even though I was not able to have a normal childhood due to the civil war in my country, I believe the war has helped to make me see life from outside the box. I, like many young Liberians in the United States, have come to the realization that war is not the answer to any problem. It only destroys things that took years of hard work to build. Sometimes people wonder why I am twenty-six and still in college. I don’t blame anyone for what I have gone through and all I can say is, “It’s part of my story.” Although I was forced to flee my country, I had the opportunity to learn about cultures of other countries; that alone is a great learning experience. I also made a lot of good friends while living in Ghana. Some of these friends have had a big impact on my life and we will be life long friends. I have met people from almost all parts of the world. Moving to the United States has been a life changing experience for me.

I try not to just concentrate on the negatives of the war because it is going to make me blame others for my situation. I believe I am still young and have the potential to reach my peak in life. Whatever that peak is, I don’t know but God knows. I would love to go back to Liberia to help those who are less fortunate. Liberia now is not as it used to be before the war,but if we the youth of Liberia can try to get some education while we live here, we can make a big difference in the lives of many Liberians back home. It’s my story and it’s my turn to make an impact.