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DANIEL
POAWALIO: OUR STORY We were prevented from crying, not even to
drop a tear. I went unconscious
after the rebel… landed
the axe on the boy’s head… |
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It is home to my family and myself. My parents were subsistence farmers in northern Liberia. With my own family, I was forced to flee my homeland in 2002. We experienced terrible atrocities we now share. My family and I sought refuge in a foreign land in 2002. We traveled four days by bus with only backpacks. We are now in the Buduburam Refugee Camp, Accra, Ghana. We fled Monrovia, Liberia with the help of the Friends of Daniel, Denver, in July 2002. It was the Friends of Daniel who suggested we reach Ghana, an English-speaking country, where our mentor and American mom thought we could go to school or work in this transition. None of this has been possible for us in Ghana. 200,000 Liberians fled outside Liberia due to the ethnic tensions, civil war, hunger, and lack of safety in my country. I built our two–room mud–brick house upon arrival in July 2002. We are here without any opportunity. Even here I have been rounded up and made to stand in the hot sun for long periods. Our daily life consists of manual labor to fetch the bare essentials of life. We are the poorest of the poor. I’ve taught my family to value education. I am an educated Liberian with a B.Sc. in Economics and a minor in Demography. I have twenty-three years of work experience. We are a professional team. My wife, Jemima, has worked for an international bank in Monrovia as secretary, and subsequently, as signature verification officer. She studies accounting and wishes to complete further degrees. We married late and we are of a mixed–ethnicity marriage. My four-year-old daughter, Siahwanda, has been uprooted too many times and suffers critical medical conditions. In fact, the family suffers from malaria and typhoid fever. We suffer much trauma from the endless war. My mother, Ma Nessie, has seen the horrors of war and lost her husband, my father, in forced labor in Lofa County, Liberia. Many of my former classmates are already in America. I have no family per se in America. My American mom is part of our extended family. The Friends of Daniel provides monthly sustenance for my family. In late 2003, our family was granted refugee status (without priority) by UNHCR/Accra. We filed forms upon our arrival to this camp. My #UN is 1889101. I dreamed of studying for a graduate degree
in Public Policy in the USA for many years. It is a dream deferred.
I also dreamed of a reunion with my former Peace Corps teacher, "American
mom" and mentor, Nancy J. Vorkink of Denver, Colorado.
She was my teacher from 1977–78 and I was her ‘houseboy’ for
two years. Twenty-five years have passed; our reunion is also a
dream deferred. Nancy, 63, is aging and not in the best of
health, as I am aging. After my graduation in Economics from
the University of Liberia in 1989, I decided to serve my country
by taking a low–paying job in government with the Civil Service
Agency. It was also intended to familiarize myself with the public
sector, especially in the personnel, financial and economic management
areas. Unfortunately, it was at the close of the same year of 1989
(to be specific, December 24) that the Charles Taylor rebels entered
the country through Nimba County. The war that lasted for almost
one and a half decades (1989-2003: 14 years!) and claimed
many lives (at last count, 300,000) and property and caused internal
and external displacement of people, including my family and me
(IDPs. We survived the long war, but not without scars and bitterness.
The trauma will go on for years. Like others, we have our
own experiences to share. But more than that, there are apprehensions
and fear to return home particularly because of threat to our life. The following incidents highlight persecution, ethnic harassment, a well-founded fear, and many threats on my life and to my family. 1. I sought refuge in the Monrovia Free Pentecostal Church on 10th Street, Sinkor. For my part I suffered from mental torture from witnessing some horrible events. On July 31, 1990, soldiers of the late (beheaded) President Samuel Doe carried out a massacre of displaced people on the compound of the Lutheran Church, not far from my church. By 6:00 am that morning, a few survivals from the massacre disrupted our morning devotion when they entered our church in tears. They could not yell for fear of being hunted. The majority of those killed were of the Gio and Mano ethnic groups from Nimba County who were the target of the Doe soldiers. I joined a curious team of onlookers for a glimpse of the site only to see men, women, and children in a pool of a blood in and outside the church building. Some bodies were still hanging on the wall fence and windows of the building. It was so horrible. I became disturbed. This was just the beginning. At that moment, we had to leave the church to find another safe haven. Church compounds were no longer safe. 2. Later, in September 1990, my second major experience and serious disturbance occurred while en route on the Tubmanburg highway in search of cassava for food. I saw a woman being shot by Charles Taylor’s NPFL fighters on that wet day. Again, the crime was ethnicity. She was alleged to be Krahn (like the late President Doe) ethnicity. From the very inception, ethnic, political/social
and religious discrimination characterized the Liberian war. The
Americo-Liberians, referred to as Congo, and Gios and Manos (Charles
Taylor's group) were on one side and the Krahns and Mandingos (Doe's
group) were on the other side. Because the war was being fought
on discrimination lines, an individual's name, county of origin,
place of work, religious belief or even school attended was a big
crime that could cause one’s death or exposure to harassment
and intimidation. What actually caused me to flee Liberia in 2002? It was the threat posed to my life by some of Charles Taylor's security men for performing my professional and national duty. 5. It started as far back as 1996 when a man called Augustine Wuo (a Gio) claimed I denied him employment with the Ministry of Finance during the tenure of Liberia National Transitional Government (LNTG). He was believed to have been assigned to his brother-in-law, Momo Jibba, a one-time Taylor high-ranking security officer. Many misconstrued my responsibility of reviewing employment requests from various agencies of government and recommending for approval or disapproval for placement on or deletion from payroll. It was a matter of implementing a mandate of government through the Civil Service Agency. Apparently, many members and sympathizers of rebel factions were not prepared to go through the Civil Service scrutinizing process. They believed that the gun was enough to ascend to any position in government. This I was against. During the April 6, 1996 war of all rebel factions in Monrovia, Wuo and his cohort of gunmen kept hunting me in Vai Town, across the bridge where I resided at the time. With threats on my life again, I fled north as far as the country of Guinea. Here I accidentally met my mother and her granddaughter and my niece in a refugee camp. One of the grandchildren had died just after they reached Guinea. After the April 6 war, I returned to Monrovia, this time with my mother and her one granddaughter (niece). 6. In 1999, I was put into a further threatened position on my job. Through the Civil Service Agency, a special payroll audit team was established for the purpose of identifying and eliminating ghost names from the government payroll. I served as coordinator for this project. This exercise jeopardized my job and my life. My boss, himself a Taylor supporter, did not have much knowledge of the Civil Service system. So upon his appointment as Director-General, he decided to maintain me initially as special assistant. About two years later he asked me to act as deputy director for administration and recommended me for presidential appointment. The appointment was never made because I was not member of the ruling party. I however continued to function in that capacity since in fact most of their party members were not interested in taking appointments in agencies with no revenue intake. 7.
Frequent visits of gunmen and plain-clothes security to
my house scared me. The man, Wuo, had already discovered
I had moved on the Old Road after my marriage to Jemima,
February 28, 1998. Sometimes, while my wife and I had gone to
work, persons with no connection to us went to my house
and asked my illiterate mother for my whereabouts. My family
became more concerned when my brother-in-law, John Fello, who
lived not far from us was being harassed just a day after
his participation on a popular radio show (DC Talks). I spent
many nights out of my home. I had earlier planned to flee, but
not without my family. In early 2002, the same man, Wuo, met
me repeating his threat to me after which unidentified men began
frequenting our new apartment while we worked. This time I became
afraid of his stalking and explained it to a friend in the police,
who then advised us to leave the country, since I had no interest
in becoming part of Taylor’s NPP Party. Fortunately, My
American mom and former Peace Corps Teacher, Nancy J. Vorkink
of Denver, Colorado, together with her "Friends of Daniel",
were able to raise and send us US$600, which helped us out of
the danger. We left our homeland July 2002. President Charles
Taylor, indicted-war criminal by the UN, was deposed in August
2003. ABOUT NESSIE TEWAH ,
MY MOTHER 2. Not only did the rebels force them to feed them but also they killed, tortured, harassed and raped residents. By 1994 Ma Nessie was made a widow. 3. My father who was her husband (about 70) died from force labor (totting load for the rebels). She was also among people gathered in Foya. 4. To witness
the most horrible and brutal killing of three young men.
The three men (two brothers and a Pentecostal Evangelist, Thomas
Korfeh) were tied and put in a drum-fill-boiled water while residents
on-looked. What a torture of minds! "We were prevented
from crying, not even to drop a tear," she said. ABOUT TENNEH, MY
NIECE ABOUT JEMIMA, MY WIFE In 1990, Jemima tells, while fleeing Monrovia
city to join thousands of displaced people on the Fendell
campus of the University of Liberia, a very unpleasant incident
took place. However, it was a must to leave. ABOUT SIAWANDA,
MY OLDER DAUGHTER ABOUT NANCY KUMBA,
MY YOUNGEST DAUGHTER My wife and I have not been able to work or study in Ghana because of limited opportunities. We need a place of opportunities. Our children need to be educated. We ourselves need to pursue higher education. And we need to see our American mom, Nancy Vorkink, who has no children of her own, and we are her African children. She loves us very much as we love her. Considering the war experiences, we were afraid our children would have gone through a similar thing had we stayed in Liberia. We did not want them at the time to speak the language of war as others did. We did, and had to survive the most terror of our lives for many years, within Liberia. It takes its toll. We believe in God’s love and mercy. We had no choice but to flee; now we wait.
We had to flee to save our lives. We regard life as precious. As
a family, we can't live a good life in Ghana. Our physical
and mental stamina will decline here. It has been 25 years since I
saw our American mom. We miss each other very much. We wish
for our dream to come true to come to America. |
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A
DREAM DEFERRED What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Maybe it just sags Or does it explode? |
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