I waited for months for my turn to read President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's book This Child Will Be Great. There were dozens of holds in front of me at the library. And now I have it, and I find myself unable to read it. Oh, I can read the words. I have been reading words for over 25 years, and with a few exceptions, one word is pretty much the same as another, for difficulty-of-comprehension purposes. The words are not the problem.
The first night after I picked the book up from the library, I sat down with it and read. I read about the President's childhood, and marriage, and early career. I read about the early 1980s. And then it was bedtime, so I laid down.
I didn't sleep. I laid there, anxious, unable to sleep, and it didn't occur to me until the next morning that the reason I could not sleep is because the early 1980s in Liberia is too close.
The last time I was in Liberia, in 2006, I spent some time reading cover letters and CVs for an open position. When you advertise for a job opening in a country that values education and has very high unemployment, you get an overwhelming number of applications, many from vastly over-qualified people. I spent much of my day holding back tears, because I saw so much hope in the things people had been doing in the 1970s and 1980s: they had been going to school, and working, and trying to build a life. And they didn't know what was coming. I wanted to weep for a time when education gave a person hope for finding a job and taking care of her family and doing valuable, enjoyable work. For 24 years, there were very few such opportunities.
I was doing the same thing during those years. I was a little girl in a home that I loved. I went to school, and I played, and I loved people, and yes, I was a brat sometimes. And I didn't know what was coming, either. I had it easiest of all. I had a US passport, and money, and on the day the US Embassy told us to leave, we did.
So very many people could not leave. So very many people were trying to make the best life they could, but war was inevitably coming. They just couldn't see it yet, how it would destroy everything they had been building: the kids who sang the spider song with me as we patted sand over our feet, my dad's coworkers who fed us fufu and palm butter when we came to their houses for dinner, the girls who taught me to cook rice begged from our moms in a tin can on a kid-sized fire, the boys who swung upside down from the treehouse with R.
The book has been sitting in my apartment for nearly three weeks now. It's due back at the library in three days, and I've just today picked it up again and tried to read, but only during the day. I'm not sure I'll make it through. I don't have this problem with books about war in Rwanda or Sudan, even though I've lived in those places. It is only Liberia, because I lived in Liberia before. I saw Liberia before, and I saw what war did. I can't read about the 1980s in Liberia because we were all there, living, and the war was coming.
...
I've been trying for three days to write this, and today I found this post from Scarlett Lion about the six-year-olds in Liberia who are starting first grade this fall. They are too young to know war. They were not even born when the war ended in 2003. Can you imagine? There are school-aged children in Liberia who are too young to know war. That has not happened in two decades, maybe three, depending on what counts as war. I feel like I could almost read the President's book now, knowing that in the end, in 2009, there will be children in Liberia getting up, going to school, who do not know war. There is hope, at the end.
I just won't read it right before bed. I still don't think I would sleep.
(Non-internet savvy people: click on the word POST. Yes, that one in all caps that you just passed. Go back and click on it.)
(Did you click on it?)
The first night after I picked the book up from the library, I sat down with it and read. I read about the President's childhood, and marriage, and early career. I read about the early 1980s. And then it was bedtime, so I laid down.
I didn't sleep. I laid there, anxious, unable to sleep, and it didn't occur to me until the next morning that the reason I could not sleep is because the early 1980s in Liberia is too close.
The last time I was in Liberia, in 2006, I spent some time reading cover letters and CVs for an open position. When you advertise for a job opening in a country that values education and has very high unemployment, you get an overwhelming number of applications, many from vastly over-qualified people. I spent much of my day holding back tears, because I saw so much hope in the things people had been doing in the 1970s and 1980s: they had been going to school, and working, and trying to build a life. And they didn't know what was coming. I wanted to weep for a time when education gave a person hope for finding a job and taking care of her family and doing valuable, enjoyable work. For 24 years, there were very few such opportunities.
I was doing the same thing during those years. I was a little girl in a home that I loved. I went to school, and I played, and I loved people, and yes, I was a brat sometimes. And I didn't know what was coming, either. I had it easiest of all. I had a US passport, and money, and on the day the US Embassy told us to leave, we did.
So very many people could not leave. So very many people were trying to make the best life they could, but war was inevitably coming. They just couldn't see it yet, how it would destroy everything they had been building: the kids who sang the spider song with me as we patted sand over our feet, my dad's coworkers who fed us fufu and palm butter when we came to their houses for dinner, the girls who taught me to cook rice begged from our moms in a tin can on a kid-sized fire, the boys who swung upside down from the treehouse with R.
The book has been sitting in my apartment for nearly three weeks now. It's due back at the library in three days, and I've just today picked it up again and tried to read, but only during the day. I'm not sure I'll make it through. I don't have this problem with books about war in Rwanda or Sudan, even though I've lived in those places. It is only Liberia, because I lived in Liberia before. I saw Liberia before, and I saw what war did. I can't read about the 1980s in Liberia because we were all there, living, and the war was coming.
...
I've been trying for three days to write this, and today I found this post from Scarlett Lion about the six-year-olds in Liberia who are starting first grade this fall. They are too young to know war. They were not even born when the war ended in 2003. Can you imagine? There are school-aged children in Liberia who are too young to know war. That has not happened in two decades, maybe three, depending on what counts as war. I feel like I could almost read the President's book now, knowing that in the end, in 2009, there will be children in Liberia getting up, going to school, who do not know war. There is hope, at the end.
I just won't read it right before bed. I still don't think I would sleep.
(Non-internet savvy people: click on the word POST. Yes, that one in all caps that you just passed. Go back and click on it.)
(Did you click on it?)
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