I remember when my mother used to take me to the library to get books, when I was about 7 or 8. I would dash straight for the comic book section and spend ages agonizing over which 5 books I could take out that day. This was usually early Saturday morning. It was always sunny, as it is most of the year in Liberia.
Afterwards we would always go to the swimming pool club where would spend the day. I would meet up with my friends there; from the moment we arrived until we all went home, we didn’t stop playing, making up worlds and places, pretending to be all the wild and crazy things that live in the imagination of kids.
When we went home at night, the streets would be livening up for Saturday night as I would be slipping into my own bubble of tiredness and my mind still buzzing with the games I played with my friends.
From the balcony of our apartment, I could watch the sunset, so I always did. Each one was different but always beautiful. It was a daily live postcard, the gigantic tangerine sun disappearing behind the sea, on the beach by the Coconut Plantation. The name sounds pastiche, but that’s what the street was called, as it was on a beach, by a plantation of a few dozen coconut trees that someone left behind a hundred years ago.
The trees are gone now; someone tore them down to build houses. The sun still sets there but this magical place has been torn by war and heinous atrocities. I’m torn between sadness for the people who have suffered and still are, and the sadness for losing my small part of paradise. Beyond the veil of bittersweet reminiscence, I feel grateful for having grown up in a such wonderful place, where the bizarre and the ridiculous often passed off as ordinary as none knew any better. ‘The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here’ say the Coat of Arms of Liberia. Hollow words that I hope and pray one day will gain real meaning again.
