Liberia, Bulgaria And Common Ground
TMM producer Monika Evstatieva
Lee Hill, NPROn Thursdays, we like to focus on international news; we call it our international briefing. We talked about the bombings in India. A coordinated series of bombings there in Ahmedabad on Saturday made headlines, but it turns out that in recent years more people have died from terrorist bombings in India than from any other country except Iraq. You can read the story that got our attention here.
... And we talked to the article's author.
But now I'm going to turn it over to two of our producers. Later here on the blog, Douglas Hopper is doing some important work in Mexico and he's going to tell you about it. But first, here's Monika Evstatieva on the segment we did today about two women from Liberia who became fighters during the country's civil war.
Here's Monika ...
Very often during our Thursday international briefings we bring you sad news. I am a producer on the program, so I often get a chance to hear these stories, while I sit on my computer and cut taped segments. Sometimes I cut and cry, cut and cry. But then the sadness somehow slips away like a silk scarf from a firm hand grip and I forget about it.
Today, we talked to two women who were forced to take up arms, when they were barely teenagers, in Liberia's bloody civil war. When Florence and Jackie came to our studios and I heard their stories, I knew right away I did not want to forget. I wanted to lock the memory of them in my head. I wanted desperately to associate it with something in my life, so I can remember.
And I asked myself where I was when this happened. The first Liberian Civil War ended in 1996 and it suddenly struck me. I was barricading the streets of my hometown Sofia at this time. I barely went to school for these couple of months.
There was hyperinflation in three digits and it was freezing cold. All students were protesting. I was all day with my classmates blocking the traffic. People were stopping to give us money on their way to work in sign of support. And we were jumping all the time. We did it to stay warm for once and also we were singing cheerfully: "Who does not jump is red", referring to the color of the communist party that reclaimed control in 1994.
One day, I remember, there was no public transportation. The drivers were protesting, too. I think I walked for hours home. I remember walking on that steep incline alone and I felt like it would never end.
But then, I got home and I took a shower. My mom came home and my dad and my brother. We all had dinner and I was ok. Everything was just fine.
And then I thought of Florence, sitting in that camp by herself. Her mom, her dad, her sisters and brother were dead and she was alive and lonely and scared, serving to the needs of some strange and brutal man.
I tried to imagine how she felt. Was she in shock or did she comprehend the painful reality that was unfolding around her? And then I thought about the rebels that caused all that suffering to her and her family...and how she must have felt fighting next to them. Did she kill anyone? Or how many?
I do not know. But I want to remember. Do you remember where you were?
--Monika Evstatieva
1:26 PM ET | 07-31-2008 | permalink
1:26 PM ET | 07-31-2008 | permalink
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