Courage.

Politics and violence.

How does one get so desperate as to kill his fellow man? I see it here and I saw it before in Rwanda. Former neighbors, former friends turning on each other in the name of some far-fetched ideology that promises to take them away from the poverty that is life in too much of Africa. Yet country after country realizes much too late that the violence does nothing but ruin the country, and does little to address the root causes of the conflict, the hatrid, and the all-too common poverty.

Patience is a virtue.

In the tinderbox that is Freetown, most sit idly by as the clock ticks. Life in this land of abject poverty is simply a matter of survival. Enough money for food, for a taxi, maybe for a bread and butter breakfast. Three years after peace was declared they still have nothing. Young men who were once rebels, sit idly waiting for something that may never come, work, school, anything to get them off the streets. But as everyday passes the threat that someone will drop the match rises, the paper house swaying gently in an Atlantic breeze…. Nothing to lose….

Karoake.

How I’ve ended up in this Karoake bar with a handful of soldiers is beyond me. Nonetheless I’m now watching them take their turns belting out god-awful renditions of Hits from the 80’s. But this isn’t about sounding good. This is about, albeit momentarily, forgetting whats going on outside. Forgetting that beyond the walls of this fortress lies a country in shambles and neck-deep in poverty. So thousands of miles away from home, here they are, a proverbial united nations of peacekeepers – Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Guatamalans, Nepalis, Nigerians and a few Brits.

Beyond comprehension

What does it feel like to be scared, truly scared? To know that someone is trying to kill you – that you are the hunted? I can’t imagine what the people of Sierra Leone felt like for nearly a decade, knowing that somewhere over the hills were a people that wanted nothing more than to wipe them out. Fear is something very relative. We can only compare that gut wrenching feeling to our own experiences. What scars it must leave behind on its victims, both the perpetrators and those who feared the latters violence.