“You are smart because you were born in a school house….you were born in a school house…don’t worry yourself, you know what to do, you will be fine…you were born in a school house and you swallowed up all the knowledge in that building and many more that day, you will do well…”

My sisters and brothers remind me that I was born in a school house whenever I start to doubt myself. Whenever I start to question myself. Whenever I start to let my nerves and my anxieties run wild and start to take over, whenever I start to stop dreaming and hoping, whenever I start to feel like my head’s under water for a long period of time and I can’t breathe, whenever I start to feel tired of riding the waves, and cried out for help from the distance-

Their first words to me are always– “you are smart, you were born in a school house” and my reply, being stuck between laughter, annoyance, frustration, helplessness, homesickness, and love is- FINE,  I will do nothing and see how “You were born in a school house and you are smart will play out”

I was born through love but I was born into chaos, hatred, and a huge mess. I was born on August 12th, over 28 years ago, in a town called Foequelleh, located in Panta District during the heat of the civil unrest. The terror and bloodshed of Liberia’s history that came about from alienation between the freed slaves immigrants mainly from the United States of America and the indigenous people that were on the land many centuries before the arrival of freed slaves immigrants. 

Mid July about a month before I was born, my father and other men from the town were arrested and taken away by armed soldiers. My mother who was very pregnant was left to care for six young children, with one on the way, without food.  Without knowing if my father was alive or dead? Without knowing what the armed men were doing to him or making him do? Will they ask him if he wanted long trousers or if he wanted short trousers? Will they ask him if he wanted short sleeves or long sleeves? Have they already asked him those questions and have cut off his legs and his arms? Have they forced him and pointed a gun to his head and demanded that he pick up a gun? 

Or is he doing what he knows and was taught to do? Being a medical person? Are they using him as a combat medic? Is he alive? Please keep him alive and bring him back.  I can not raise these children by myself in this chaos, and in this mess. I have one on the way, and there is no food and no one to help. Please keep him alive and bring him back to his children, and to me with all his body parts. My mother prayed. My parents made a small rice farm in this town. My father’s farming days ended in 1956, when he was six years old, and his father, grandfather, grandmother, and the rest of the family decided that he should pick up pencil and paper, go learn, and get the English language education. That he should go and embrace the new.

My mother’s farming days ended in 1983 when she got pregnant with her first child and moved in with my father, to Gbarnga, Jarhpanmue Community. But they now both have to learn how to farm to stay alive. Something they haven’t done for a very long time, in a place they haven’t lived for a very long time.  Seconds have turned into minutes, minutes have turned into hours, hours have turned into days, days have turned into weeks, still no sound or word about my father and his whereabouts. Is he alive? Does he have all his body parts? Will he come back? Will he be able to see his children? Will he survive? Will we survive another day?

Now, my mother has her fourth child on the way, and she is on the way to the little rice farm she and my father had planted to weed out some grass from the growing rice plant. My mother started walking to the farm the morning of August 12th. Alone. My great grandmother from my mother father’s side of the family, saw my mother’s walking and decided to follow my mother to the farm to help her weed out some of the grass. The contractions became more frequent. One after the other. My mother could not make it to the farm to ask one of the children to go call for help. And she could not make it back to the town to go call for help. There was no going forward and no going backwards. I decided that I was on my way out. The closest thing my mother could see was the St. Thomas Lutheran Church School building. The first English learning school that was built in the town by Lutheran Missionaries- during the campaign of the Western World to bring religion and civilizations to the “dark continent”. During the “literacy campaign”. The same school where my father started his English learning education. Many many years ago.

My great grandmother, noticing what was happening, ran back to the town to call for help. She ran as fast as she could, and called upon the wife of the then pastor of the Church, a midwife, whose husband was also arrested and taken away along with my father. Both women ran as fast as they could towards the screaming and crying of my mother. They found her in the emptied school building. And I was born, in a school house on August 12.  My mother almost died. I almost died. There was no food. There was no medical care. There was no sound of my father.  It has been over a month now, still no word, and still no news. Is he alive? My mother was too weak to care for me. The after-birth pain was too severe, and the other children, my aunty and my siblings, were too young to care for me but that was all my mother had, so I was left at their mercy as our mother fought to stay alive. All she had was water to drink. No other food, no medication, no one but her and us children.  So she had to fight to stay alive. To fight to stay alive for me, to stay alive for the other children, to fight to stay alive and to keep hoping and praying for my father’s return. She fought and she won.

My mother is a fighter. A fierce, hard headed, stubborn, strong, determined, outspoken, and loving fighter. 

My mother’s favorite thing she loves to say is “your head can not fit in my mouth, so I will tell you what I think, you can take it or leave it, but you can not shut me up, I will speak my mind”

Happy Thanksgiving Mama. Thank you for not giving up, and continue to fight!!

Love you, 

Me, Lawuo, Yemah-Gbokwoh, Zorkleene, Aalafayiah, Dolokolliemah, before Cummings–Your smart daughter that was born in a school house!!