I've been thinking a lot lately about our evacuation from Liberia in 1990. Next month, it will be 19 years ago. When we first moved back from Liberia, I cut out every little occasional mention of Liberia in the newspaper and taped them all into a scrapbook. Now Liberia is almost over-aided. I don't have to look around much at all to find a blog or a book by someone who claims to know Liberia. I'm not going to lie: sometimes I love reading them and sometimes I read them and think, "I was there first. Stop talking about Liberia like it belongs to you." Which is ridiculous, of course, since plenty of people were there both before and after me.
For years after we came back from Liberia, it was nearly impossible for me to sleep over at a friend's house. I used to say that I was homesick, but recently I realized that I wasn't homesick so much as panicked that everyone would have to leave in the middle of the night and I would end up somewhere different from my family. It happened before, after all, although that time I was lucky enough to be with my family when we evacuated. I still feel it when I get on a plane, or even when I drive away from my parents' house for a weekend in Chicago or Detroit. The panic comes back to me. There is a wrenching moment when I think that I can't leave, and then I'm gone and it's fine.
We were in Monrovia for Christmas in 1989, staying at a house in Sinkor. (A house that I used to drive by on my way to work in 2006 when I wanted to avoid traffic on Tubman Boulevard.) There were lizard eggs in the artificial Christmas tree and we planned battles with the L. boys and I spun in circles for five full minutes because Uncle K. bet me that I couldn't and my mom read us books on the upstairs veranda and I was proud to have outgrown another pair of tennis shoes. "You can call me Duckfoot." I said, clomping down the street wearing a pair of my mom's size 10 shoes that were only a little too big. "I don't mind." I felt an uplift of patriotism as I watched the Liberian flag go up on the day that we heard that the country had been invaded.
In March, my teacher went on vacation to Cape Mount County and never came back. Instead, she got on a plane and went back to the US. In my head, this was somehow linked to the fact that she had sprained her ankle, but that only makes sense to a ten year old.
My mom started packing our big metal barrels full of everything we owned, and ripping photos out of the photo albums to throw in a box. "We'll take this all with us now," she said, "so we don't have to take so much when we leave for good next year." This only made me nervous - I was in revolt about the intended repatriation to the States in 1991, particularly since it was supposed to be for me, for my education and social life. I hated the thought of living in the US; I loved my life, and it seemed particularly unfair that it was somehow my fault that we had to move back, even though I didn't want to move back at all. I was far more upset about the possibility of moving back to the US than about some war that was happening far away and didn't really affect me. It seemed like someone was always attempting a coup during the 1980s in Liberia.
An older couple who had stayed in our guest house a few months before was ambushed and shot up-country. I wasn't afraid, although I felt like I should be.
And then came April, and every night we listened to the Voice of America, and on April 21 they said it: US citizens were advised to evacuate from Grand Bassa County. The rebels were getting too close.
We left Buchanan the next morning, and it took ten years to get back. It's no wonder, really, that a part of me still panics at the thought of being far from the people I love. A part of me knows that war can come at any time.
For years after we came back from Liberia, it was nearly impossible for me to sleep over at a friend's house. I used to say that I was homesick, but recently I realized that I wasn't homesick so much as panicked that everyone would have to leave in the middle of the night and I would end up somewhere different from my family. It happened before, after all, although that time I was lucky enough to be with my family when we evacuated. I still feel it when I get on a plane, or even when I drive away from my parents' house for a weekend in Chicago or Detroit. The panic comes back to me. There is a wrenching moment when I think that I can't leave, and then I'm gone and it's fine.
We were in Monrovia for Christmas in 1989, staying at a house in Sinkor. (A house that I used to drive by on my way to work in 2006 when I wanted to avoid traffic on Tubman Boulevard.) There were lizard eggs in the artificial Christmas tree and we planned battles with the L. boys and I spun in circles for five full minutes because Uncle K. bet me that I couldn't and my mom read us books on the upstairs veranda and I was proud to have outgrown another pair of tennis shoes. "You can call me Duckfoot." I said, clomping down the street wearing a pair of my mom's size 10 shoes that were only a little too big. "I don't mind." I felt an uplift of patriotism as I watched the Liberian flag go up on the day that we heard that the country had been invaded.
In March, my teacher went on vacation to Cape Mount County and never came back. Instead, she got on a plane and went back to the US. In my head, this was somehow linked to the fact that she had sprained her ankle, but that only makes sense to a ten year old.
My mom started packing our big metal barrels full of everything we owned, and ripping photos out of the photo albums to throw in a box. "We'll take this all with us now," she said, "so we don't have to take so much when we leave for good next year." This only made me nervous - I was in revolt about the intended repatriation to the States in 1991, particularly since it was supposed to be for me, for my education and social life. I hated the thought of living in the US; I loved my life, and it seemed particularly unfair that it was somehow my fault that we had to move back, even though I didn't want to move back at all. I was far more upset about the possibility of moving back to the US than about some war that was happening far away and didn't really affect me. It seemed like someone was always attempting a coup during the 1980s in Liberia.
An older couple who had stayed in our guest house a few months before was ambushed and shot up-country. I wasn't afraid, although I felt like I should be.
And then came April, and every night we listened to the Voice of America, and on April 21 they said it: US citizens were advised to evacuate from Grand Bassa County. The rebels were getting too close.
We left Buchanan the next morning, and it took ten years to get back. It's no wonder, really, that a part of me still panics at the thought of being far from the people I love. A part of me knows that war can come at any time.
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