Among the Refugees
Shelly Dick
July 1, 2000
I lay on my bed looking up at the holes in the zinc roof. Three buckets were strategically placed around the room to catch the rain. A single bulb struggled to light the tiny room and threatened to go out at any moment. Pockmarked turquoise blue walls surrounded me; the remains of a two-inch cockroach I had just killed were still on the floor. The plywood door radiated body heat from all the Liberian refugees stuffed into the small space on the other side, watching tv.
I was in Ghana, officially, to do research for my master's degree dissertation in refugee studies. But I was also there because I had a guilty conscience. I had lived in Liberia for nine years as a child. My memories of the mission station where I was raised were filled with images of the beach, coconut palms swaying in the breeze, the pouring rain, bamboo forts, and my missionary kid (mk) friends. But why didn't I remember rice and greens? Why didn't I have any memories of Liberian friends? Why didn't I know why the war happened in Liberia and what happened to Liberians in its aftermath? I did not know because I grew up at the elwa mission station. elwa, named for the call letters of the mission radio station run by Sudan Interior Mission, was an enclave of a fifty or so missionaries. It was not Liberia.
In 1989, our family was on furlough when war broke out in Liberia. My dad went back to ELWA in 1990 to assist with the large influx of Liberians seeking refuge on the elwa campus. I remember being at summer camp in the United States during that time. Mom would receive messages by ham radio from Dad. Everyone was praying as events unfolded, but for me, the experience was rather like reading about the war in Vietnam. It all seemed so far away. By the end of 1990, ...
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