by Ishmael Beah
The buses to Conakry waited on the other side of a checkpoint that had been erected by Guinean soldiers. There were men standing near the checkpoint selling Guinean currency at whatever rate they pleased. I thought the soldiers would be against such black-market foreign exchange, but they didn’t seem to care. I changed my money and walked toward the checkpoint. The border was crowded with soldiers who either didn’t speak English or pretended not to. They had their guns in ready positions, as if they expected something to happen. I avoided eye contact, afraid that they might see in my eyes that I had once been a soldier in the war that I was now leaving behind.
There was a dark brown wooden house through which I had to pass to get to the bus. Inside this house the soldiers searched people’s bags, and the people would then go outside and present their documents to the officers. When I was in the wooden house, the soldiers tore open my bag and threw all its contents on the floor. I didn’t have much, so I had little difficulty repacking: two shirts, two undershirts, and three pairs of pants.
I emerged from the wooden house and felt as if all the soldiers were looking at me. We were to present our documents, but to whom? There were too many tables. I didn’t know which one to go to. The soldiers sat under the shade of mango trees dressed in full combat gear. Some had their guns hanging by the straps on their chairs, and others placed theirs on the table, the muzzle facing the wooden house. This way, they made people nervous before they asked them for money.
A soldier who sat on the far right of the lined tables, a cigar in his mouth, motioned for me to come over. He put his hand out for my passport. I gave it to him without looking at his face. The soldier spoke a language that I couldn’t understand. He put my passport in his chest pocket, took the cigar out of his mouth, placed his hands on the table, and sternly looked at me. I looked down, but the soldier lifted my chin. He took the cigar out of his mouth and examined my passport again. His eyes were red, but he had a grin on his face. He folded his hands and sat back in his chair, looking at me. I smiled a bit and the soldier laughed at me. He said something in his language and put his hand out on the table again. This time the grin on his face had disappeared. I placed some money in his hands. He smelled the money and put it in his pocket. He pulled my passport out of his pocket and motioned for me to go through the gate.
On the other side were a lot of buses. I was confused about which one to take to Conakry. Everyone I tried to ask for directions didn’t understand what I was saying. The only word I knew in French was bonjour, which did me no good.
I was confusedly looking for a bus to the capital when I bumped into a passerby.
“Watch wussai you dae go,” the passerby grumbled in Krio.
“Me na sorry, sir,” I replied. “How de body,” I continued, shaking hands with the stranger.
“Me body fine en waitin you dae do na ya so me pekin?” the man asked me.
I told him that I was looking for the right bus to Conakry. He told me that he was heading there as well. The bus was overcrowded, so I stood for most of the trip. In over fifty miles to the capital there were more than fifteen checkpoints and the soldiers were unmerciful. All of the roadblocks looked the same. Jeeps with mounted guns were parked along the road. Two soldiers stood by the metal pole stretched across the road from one gutter to another. On the right, more soldiers sat under a shack covered with tarp. There were a few compartments of the shack, where the soldiers searched people. They had set a fixed price for all Sierra Leoneans; those who couldn’t pay were kicked off the bus. I wondered if they sent the people back to the other side of the border. Under the auspices of the man I had boarded the bus with, I was able to pass some of the roadblocks for free. Most of the soldiers thought I was the man’s son, so they checked his documents and not mine and charged him for both of us. I don’t think he noticed; he just wanted to get to Conakry, and it seemed money wasn’t a problem for him. At one of the roadblocks the soldiers took me into a room and made me undress. At first I didn’t want to take off my clothes, but I saw them kick a man to the floor and rip his shirt and pants. One of the soldiers took my belt. The belt buckle had the head of a lion on it and it was my favorite. I held my pants with one hand and ran back to the bus. I pressed my teeth hard together and folded my fist, holding back my anger.
At the last roadblock a soldier asked me to put my hands on my head so that he could search me. When I raised my hands, my pants fell down and some of the passengers laughed. The soldier picked up my pants and tied them with a shoelace that he had in his pocket. After he was done, he put his hands in my pocket and took out my passport. He flipped the pages and gave it back to me. I followed behind the people who waited in line to get their entry stamps. I was shaking with anger, but I knew I had to calm myself down if I wanted to make it into Conakry. I overheard people saying that the cost of the entry fee was the equivalent of three hundred leones. I had only a hundred leones and needed it for the rest of my journey. What am I going to do? I thought. I had come all this way for nothing. I couldn’t even afford to return to Freetown if I wanted to. Tears had begun to form in my eyes. I was nervous and couldn’t see a way out of this. I was beginning to feel anxious when a man whose passport had just been stamped accidentally dropped two of the many bags he carried as he was going around the checkpoint to reboard the bus. I hesitated for a bit but decided to take the chance. I left the line and picked up his bags, following him to the bus. I sat in the backseat, slouching in my seat, and peeked to see if the soldiers were looking in my direction. I sat on the bus until everyone had reboarded it; the soldiers didn’t come looking for me. The bus began to pull away slowly and then gathered speed. I had entered the country illegally, which I knew would later become a problem.
As the bus headed for Conakry, I began to worry, since I didn’t actually know what to do once I got there. I had heard that the Sierra Leonean ambassador let refugees sleep temporarily in the compound of the embassy, but I had no idea where the embassy itself was located. I was sitting next to a Fulani fellow by the name of Jalloh, who said he had lived in Freetown. We talked about what the war had done to the country. Afterward, he gave me his phone number and asked me to call him if I needed help getting around the city. I wanted to tell him that I had no place to stay, but he got off before I could summon the nerve to confide in him. I looked about the bus for the Sierra Leonean man I had bumped into but I couldn’t find him. A few minutes later, the bus came to a halt at a huge station, its final destination. I got out and watched everyone go. I sighed and placed my hands on my head, then walked to a bench and sat down. I covered my face with my hands. “I can’t sit here all night,” I kept mumbling to myself.
There were lots of taxis, and all the people who arrived at the bus station took them. I didn’t want to stand out as a lost foreigner, so I took a taxi, too. The driver said something in French. I knew that he was asking where I wanted to go. “Sierra Leone consulate, ahh, embassy,” I told the driver. I looked out the window at the utility poles and the sloppily hung streetlights; their lights seemed brighter than the moonlight. The taxi stopped in front of the embassy and the driver pointed to the green, white, and blue flag to make sure that I was at the right place. I nodded and paid him. When I got out, the guards at the embassy door, speaking Krio, asked me for my passport. I showed it to them and they let me into the compound.
Inside were more than fifty people, probably in the same situation as I. Most were lying on mats in the open compound. Their bundles or bags stood next to them. Others were removing their mats from their luggage. I assumed people only slept here at night and went out during the daytime. I found a spot in the corner, sat on the ground, and leaned against the wall, breathing heavily. The sight of all these people reminded me of a few villages I had passed through while running away from the war. I was scared and worried about what turmoil the next day might bring. Nonetheless, I was happy to have made it out of Freetown, to have escaped the possibility of becoming a soldier again. This gave me some comf
ort. I took out the remaining raw rice from my bag and started chewing on it. There was a woman sitting with her two children, a boy and a girl no more than seven years old, a few paces from me. She was whispering a story to them, as she didn’t want to disturb other people. As I watched the elaborate movements of her hands, the tide of my thoughts took me to a particular telling of a story I had heard many times as a boy.
It was nighttime and we sat by the fire stretching our arms toward the flames as we listened to stories and watched the moon and the stars retire. The red coal from the firewood lit our faces in the dark and wisps of smoke continuously rose toward the sky. Pa Sesay, one of my friends’ grandfather, had told us many stories that night, but before he began telling the last story, he repeatedly said, “This is a very important story.” He then cleared his throat and began:
“There was a hunter who went into the bush to kill a monkey. He had looked for only a few minutes when he saw a monkey sitting comfortably in the branch of a low tree. The monkey didn’t pay him any attention, not even when his footsteps on the dried leaves rose and fell as he neared. When he was close enough and behind a tree where he could clearly see the monkey, he raised his rifle and aimed. Just when he was about to pull the trigger, the monkey spoke: ‘If you shoot me, your mother will die, and if you don’t, your father will die.’ The monkey resumed its position, chewing its food, and every so often scratched its head or the side of its belly.
“What would you do if you were the hunter?”
This was a story told to young people in my village once a year. The storyteller, usually an elder, would pose this unanswerable question at the end of the story in the presence of the children’s parents. Every child who was present at the gathering was asked to give an answer, but no child ever did, since their mother and father were both present. The storyteller never offered an answer either. During each of these gatherings, when it was my time to respond, I always told the storyteller that I would think it over, which of course was not a good enough answer.
After such gatherings, my peers and I—all the children between the ages of six and twelve—would brainstorm several possible answers that would avoid the death of one of our parents. There was no right answer. If you spared the monkey, someone was going to die, and if you didn’t, someone would also die.
That night we agreed on an answer, but it was immediately rejected. We told Pa Sesay that if any of us was the hunter, we wouldn’t have gone hunting for monkeys. We told him, “There are other animals such as deer to hunt.”
“That is not an acceptable answer,” he said. “We are assuming that you as the hunter had already raised your gun and have to make the decision.” He broke his kola nut in half and smiled before putting a piece in his mouth.
When I was seven I had an answer to this question that made sense to me. I never discussed it with anyone, though, for fear of how my mother would feel. I concluded to myself that if I were the hunter, I would shoot the monkey so that it would no longer have the chance to put other hunters in the same predicament.
CHRONOLOGY
It is believed, though not recorded in written form, that the Bullom (Sherbro) people were present along the coast of Sierra Leone before the 1200s, if not earlier—before European contact with Sierra Leone. By the beginning of the 1400s, many tribes from other parts of Africa had migrated and settled in what came to be known as Sierra Leone. Among these tribes were the Temne. They settled along the northern coast of present-day Sierra Leone, and the Mende, another major tribe, occupied the south. There were fifteen additional tribes scattered in different parts of the country.
1462 The written history of Sierra Leone begins when Portuguese explorers land, naming the mountains surrounding what is now Freetown Serra Lyoa (Lion Mountains) due to their leonine shape.
1500–early 1700s European traders stop regularly on the Sierra Leone Peninsula, exchanging cloth and metal goods for ivory, timber, and a small number of slaves.
1652 The first slaves in North America are brought from Sierra Leone to the Sea Islands, off the coast of the southern United States.
1700–1800 A slave trade thrives between Sierra Leone and the plantations of South Carolina and Georgia, where the slaves’ rice-farming skills make them particularly valuable.
1787 British abolitionists help four hundred freed slaves from the United States, Nova Scotia, and Britain return to Africa to settle in what they call the “Province of Freedom,” in Sierra Leone. These Krio, as they come to be called, are from all areas of Africa.
1791 Other groups of freed slaves join the “Province of Freedom” settlement, and it soon becomes known as Freetown, the name of the current capital of Sierra Leone.
1792 Freetown becomes one of Britain’s first colonies in West Africa.
1800 Freed slaves from Jamaica arrive in Freetown.
1808 Sierra Leone becomes a British crown colony. The British government uses Freetown as its naval base for antislavery patrols.
1821–1874 Freetown serves as the residence of the British governor, who also rules the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and Gambia settlements.
1827 Fourah Bay College is established and rapidly becomes a magnet for English-speaking Africans on the West Coast. For more than a century, it is the only European-style university in western sub-Saharan Africa.
1839 Slaves aboard a ship called the Amistad revolt to secure their freedom. Their leader, Sengbe Pieh—or Joseph Cinque, as he becomes known in the United States—is a young Mende man from Sierra Leone.
1898 Britain imposes a hut tax in Sierra Leone, decreeing that the inhabitants of the new protectorate be taxed on the size of their huts as payment for the privilege of British administration. This sparks two rebellions in the hinterland: one by the Temne tribe and the other by the Mende tribe.
1951 A constitution is enacted by the British to give some power to the inhabitants, providing a framework for decolonization.
1953 Local ministerial responsibility is introduced, and Sir Milton Margai is appointed chief minister.
1960 Sir Milton Margai becomes prime minister following the completion of successful constitutional talks in London.
April 27, 1961 Sierra Leone becomes independent, with Sir Milton Margai as its first prime minister. The country opts for a parliamentary system within the Commonwealth of Nations. The following year, Sir Milton Margai’s Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP), which led the country to independence, wins the first general election under universal adult franchise.
1964 Sir Milton Margai dies, and his half brother Sir Albert Margai succeeds him as prime minister.
May 1967 In closely contested elections, the All People’s Congress (APC) wins a plurality of the parliamentary seats. Accordingly, the governor general (representing the British monarch) declares Siaka Stevens—APC leader and mayor of Freetown—the new prime minister. Within a few hours, Stevens and Albert Margai are placed under house arrest by Brigadier David Lansana, the commander of the Republic of Sierra Leone Military Forces (RSLMF), on grounds that the determination of office should await the election of the tribal representatives to the house. Another group of officers soon stages another coup, only to be later ousted in a third coup, the “sergeants’ revolt.”
1968 With a return to civilian rule, Siaka Stevens at last assumes office as prime minister. However, tranquility is not completely restored. In November, a state of emergency is declared after provincial disturbances.
1971 The government survives an unsuccessful military coup. Also, a republican constitution is adopted, and Siaka Stevens becomes the first president of the republic.
1974 Another failed military coup is launched against the government.
1977 Students demonstrate against government corruption and embezzlement of funds.
1978 The constitution is amended, and all political parties, other than the ruling APC, are banned. Sierra Leone becomes a one-party state, with the APC as its sole legal party.
1985 Siaka Stevens retires and appoint
s Major General Joseph Saidu Momoh the next president of Sierra Leone. Momoh’s APC rule is marked by increasing abuses of power.
March 1991 A small band of men who call themselves the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), under the leadership of a former corporal, Foday Sankoh, begin to attack villages in eastern Sierra Leone, on the Liberian border. The initial group is made up of Charles Taylor’s rebels and a few mercenaries from Burkina Faso. Their goal is to rid the country of the corrupt APC government. Fighting continues in the ensuing months, with the RUF gaining control of the diamond mines in the Kono district and pushing the Sierra Leone army back toward Freetown.
April 1992 A group of young military officers, led by Captain Valentine Strasser, launches a military coup that sends Momoh into exile. They establish the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) as the ruling authority in Sierra Leone. The NPRC proves to be nearly as ineffectual as the Momoh government at repelling the RUF. More and more of the country falls into the hands of the RUF fighters.
1995 The RUF holds much of the countryside and are on the doorstep of Freetown. To control the situation, the NPRC hires several hundred mercenaries from private firms. Within a month, they have driven the RUF fighters back to enclaves along Sierra Leone’s borders.
1996 Valentine Strasser is ousted and replaced by Brigadier General Julius Maada Bio, his defense minister. As a result of popular demand and mounting international pressure, the NPRC, under Maada Bio, agrees to hand over power to a civilian government via presidential and parliamentary elections, which are held in March 1996. Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, a diplomat who worked at the UN for more than twenty years, wins the presidential election under the banner of the SLPP.