Eric Gibson escaped from Liberia’s civil war only to end up on a different battlefront: the Park Hill Apartments in Staten Island.
As he looks around the brick buildings and tall fences of the projects, Eric, 34, says he feels trapped. The people, the smell, the gunshots outside his window remind him of Liberia.
Welcome to Park Hill – the place where the realities of life as a refugee collide head on with the American dream.
Cholo Brooks worked for the BBC African Service during the war. Now he runs a local news agency, Global News Network in Liberia. His book "The Rise and Fall of Charles Taylor" will be out early next year.
He took the time to speak to us about the challenges facing Liberian youth after the war.
Continue reading "Q & A with Cholo Brooks: A Liberian Journalist" »
David has his jeans rolled up where his right leg should be. He's working Randall Street, dodging traffic, trying to hit up his old standbys for his weekly handout of 5 Liberian Dollars. His first two attempts wield nothing. Then the jackpot: A woman at a kitchenware store hands him a 5. Security guards, who themselves make barely enough to feed their families, see David and give a little, but the relief is short-lived -- two more storeowners who usually give are nowhere to be found.
At the next shop, a security guard sees David and Peter coming and hands them both a 5. But David had been by earlier and sees the man's generosity as a trick. He hands him back the money and whispers to me, "He's tryin' me to see if I take it." On the streets all a man has is his integrity.
As the Mighty Conquerors climbed the bleachers to accept their award, Mabel was dancing. "I love that!" she repeated over and over, unable to hide her excitement. "That's Charles," she added, as if I hadn't met him several times previously. As we descended the stairs to follow the team outside she grabbed my hand -- always the caretaker, always ready to lead the way.
Mabel takes my hand as we march into the Antoinette Tubman Stadium in downtown Monrovia to watch the championship game between the Amputee All Stars and the reigning champs, The Mighty Conquerors. Charles is the assistant coach of The Mighty Conquerors and as we head into watch the game he proudly hands me a team t-shirt.
It's the first awards ceremony for the Amputee Football Federation's league and everyone's on the edge of their seats.
As Junior stands up in front of his fifth grade class at the Christian Bible Faith Mission High School he has a piece of chalk in his hand and a look of authority on his face. He's teaching the students about how to write a complete sentence and as he makes x's and lines on the chalkboard his words are drowned out by the sound of the history class next door. The walls do not reach the ceiling and as the students in the next room get a lesson in the founding of Liberia, Junior struggles to teach his students English. Beads of sweat form on his forehead and he begins to pace. When a student comes to the front of room and scribbles "My Mane is Patience" on the blackboard, the room breaks out in hoots and hollars. It looks like Junior's going to have to have a lot of patience to get through this day.
Continue reading "Where Patience Is More Than Just a Virtue" »
With a name like Comfort she shouldn't be crying. But her aunt died recently leaving her to fend for herself and her 5-month old baby, Varht. A family friend told her to seek help at THINK, a safe home for ex-combatants, girls in trouble with the law, runaways, and victims of violence, which provides an education and training to 25 girls over the course of nine months. But just because Comfort's doing the right thing doesn't mean it always feels right.
Meet Michael Jackson. The police brought him to a juvenile transit center run by Samaritan's Purse after his mother burnt his fingers with a candle flame because he peed in his bed.
The transit center is a a temporary home for girls who are ex-combatants or who are having trouble with the law. But it ends up being a drop off center for children like Michael Jackson who have nowhere else to go and no one else to turn to. The staff can't bring Michael back to his mother -- truthfully, they don't even know where she is at this point. So he must stay at the center with the other children -- some mentally challenged, others suffering from trauma after the war -- and hope someone can offer him a chance at a better life. Is reintegration possible for children like Michael? How do we train young people to be parents after the trauma of war? And are the next generation of children suffering at the hands of a generation of parents who were not given the proper tools of parenting?
In case anyone thought journalism was a glamorous job, here's a photo of our car stuck in the mud on the way to our meeting at the Don Bosco Homes.
Andre and I had a good laugh when our car finally broke down, a quarter of a mile from our destination. Thompson, one of the social workers, put it perfectly when he said, "Africa has a way of bringing you out of your comfort zone."
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