Constance

As I sat down to wait for my delayed flight to Monrovia, a woman asked what the confusion was all about.  I spent the next couple hours talking to Constance, a Liberian woman who lives in Ghana and was coming home for her mother’s funeral.  As I continued to ask her about herself, her experience in the Liberian civil war unfolded.

She escaped on foot to Sierra Leone.  Walked from Monrovia.  She had left the suburb her family lives in to visit friends for the day when the rebels took over.  First they overtook the area where here parents lived, then where she was visiting. She wasn’t raped, but her friend who was three months pregnant was.  The rebels forced everyone to leave their homes and took them to refugee camps.  She stayed there for a few days, without food, in rooms so cramped that you wouldn’t dare leave your spot on the floor lest you would have to stand from there on out.

Then she escaped and walked to Sierra Leone.  There wasn’t really food or water.  They ate rats.  They crossed rapid filled rivers in canoes so laden with people she feared they would drown.  The final stretch was a treacherous bridge crossing at the border (she says it was about as big as a rope), only to find it was closed.  And then they were told the rebels would come to kill them.

Fortunately they didn’t, they managed to cross the border, and Constance now lives in Ghana with her husband and two children.  She was the sweetest woman. 

But what impressed me most was her resilience.