October 2011
6 posts
Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War
Was what we were about to do dangerous? Opposing Charles Taylor always was extremely dangerous. His Special Security Service and the Anti-Terrorist Unit, run by his son Chuckie, took opponents to a military base prison in the center of the country, where they were tortured and killed. There were stories of prison cells...
From Liberia to Staten Island: A Former Child Soldier Shares His Story
Christopher Jacob lives in a boxy, red-brick apartment building in a low-income housing complex on Staten Island. His home is spare and immaculate; the cream-colored carpet stain-free, the furniture cheap but new. Above an oversized flat-screen TV hangs a painting of Jesus and Mary. The walls are otherwise bare, save a family...
The Mysterious Death of Sammy Wanjiru
Despite visible pain, Sammy made it a duel with Kebede. One would surge ahead, then the other, and both seemed to be moving at close to a sprint. In the final half-mile, Sammy pulled away, steaming ahead in a kick that turned Kebede into nothing more than a memory. Sammy broke through the red ribbon at the finish line with a toothy grin cutting across his...
Everyday Is For The Thief
A phrase I hear often in Nigeria is idea l’a need. It means: ‘all we need is the general idea or concept.’ People say this in different situations. It is a way of saying: ‘that’s good enough, there’s no need to get bogged down in details.’ I hear it time and again. After the electrician installs an antenna and all we get is unclear reception to one station, CNN, instead...
Fighting For Survival
No one could blame Ellen Johnson Sirleaf if she hated to leave New York after this year’s U.N. General Assembly opening. Outside her home country, the Liberian president is Africa’s most admired public figure since Nelson Mandela. Her inauguration in January 2006 made her the continent’s first woman head of state in modern times, and for Liberia it marked a decisive shift...
Wangari Maathai’s Nobel Lecture
It is 30 years since we started this work. Activities that devastate the environment and societies continue unabated. Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own – indeed, to embrace...
