Struggling but Grateful, Liberia Welcomes Bush - New York Times
Liberia is my birthplace. And so I followed the coverage about the visit President George Bush made this week to Liberia with a great deal of interest. In the process, I was surprised and astonished by something I never thought I would experience.
I am a staunch Bush opponent but for one day I was proud of our president. I was overjoyed that Bush made a visit to the city where I was born. His presence there showed the world that Liberia is recovering from years of terrible civil war. Liberia is back!
I was a Peace Corps baby. My Dad oversaw the development of the emergency room at the JFK Hospital in Monrovia. My mother helped create the Liberian Supreme Court Library. Life changing events for my parents but until recently there has not been a great deal of clarity of the impact this far away place has had on my life.
It just seemed like my life had these dimensions that had such contrast. On the one hand, I was born in the city of Monrovia on the west coast of Africa but grew up in an affluent New York City suburb. The events in Liberia were so alien to me yet intimate in the reality that I had roots there. For instance, when the government was overthrown in 1980, members of William Tolbert , Jr.’s cabinet were tied up to poles on the beach and executed. The photo appeared in Life magazine. My mother and I looked at the photo of these people slumped over, shot to death. “I knew him, him, him and him,” she said.
It seemed hopeless for so long. I new someone who worked for the State Department. He called LIberia one of the worst places on earth.
I said for years that I wanted to go to Liberia. My Dad said it would be a while.
But the day I can visit my birthplace seems closer than ever before. Liberia’s new president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, is the first woman to be democratically elected president in modern Africa. She is a Harvard educated economist. Her followers call her the Iron Lady. She is close to President Bush, who has pledged significant support from the US.
And so, again, I have this odd feeling. I am a citizen of the United States, fiercely opposed to the destructive policies of the Bush administration. Yet, his visit does so much for my birthplace.
I think I need to think through this one.
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