{"id":79,"date":"2011-10-02T00:00:23","date_gmt":"2011-10-02T04:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sangamithra.wordpress.com\/?p=79"},"modified":"2011-10-02T00:00:23","modified_gmt":"2011-10-02T04:00:23","slug":"and-still-peace-did-not-come-the-power-of-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sangamithraiyer.com\/?p=79","title":{"rendered":"And Still Peace Did Not Come- The Power of Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Four years ago, when I first met Agnes Fallah Kamara-Umunna<\/a> in Staten Island, she told me she collected stories. She carried them with her on a flash drive that hung from a string around her neck. Later, I opened them on my computer and listened:<\/p>\n

\u201cWelcome to another edition of Straight from the Heart on UNMIL Radio, 91.5 Monrovia, Harper, and Zwedru; 90.5 Gbanga; 97.1 Voinjama and Greenville; and 95.1 Sanniquellie. Straight from the Heart is a live, phone-in program designed to air your true-life stories and look at how we can become reconciled to what happened to us\u2026. and, in some cases, the shameful things did to others\u2026with the hope that we Liberians can reunite with one another.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Agnes was a radio host for a UN Radio Program called Straight from the Heart focused on reconciliation after 14 years of civil war in Liberia. The program opened with the Bryan Adams pop ballad after which it was named, but later Tracy Chapmans\u2019 \u201cMatters of the Heart\u201d became the introductory tune.<\/p>\n

When we first met, Agnes had just come to New York to complete a course in trauma and recovery and also collect testimony for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as she did back in Liberia. Liberia was the first country to collect statements for their TRC from members of the diaspora, and Staten Island had the largest Liberian population outside of Liberia.\u00a0\u201cI collect stories, not statements.\u201d Agnes once qualified.<\/p>\n

Her recent book And Still Peace Did Not Come: A Memoir of Reconciliation<\/a><\/em>, shares the stories she has collected over the years as a radio producer and weaves them with her own narrative of life during and after the Liberian Civil war.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat war being two wars that left as many as three-fourths of our women rapes, more than 250,000 people killed out of a population of 2.5 million, thousands more killers, and everyone knowing someone buried under the earth\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Through her radio program, she wanted survivors to confront the past to forge a better future. But it would not be easy, and in the beginning, even she had her doubts:<\/p>\n

\u201cMany times people would ask me, What\u2019s the point <\/em>in talking about the past?\u201d Aren\u2019t you aware of the dangers? Our show was about reality, you see. Deep-seated hatred and painful memories, which many people, including politicians, wanted to push past as soon as possible\u2026There was no authority to say, yes, honesty after darkness is the proper path to peace. Quite the opposite, in fact. People were living in silence, prisons of paranoia. And now, after fourteen years of war, a radio show was going to dig up all the lies and hate? That was our solution?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But she believed in the importance of these stories. Each chapter in Agnes\u2019s memoir, opens with an excerpt of a story from her radio program. Rape victims, ex-fighters, child soldiers, war lords and politicians have all been on her show. It was important for Agnes to not only air the stories of victims, but also perpetrators of violence. She came to realize they were victims too, especially in the case of former child soldiers.\u00a0In the book, you learn how she earned their trust and got them to share their stories. But then something else happened too:<\/p>\n

\u201cThey would tell me their stories. And I couldn\u2019t just send them away. How would they eat? Where would they sleep?…And soon, what had started out as an assignment for my radio program turned into something else altogether. I became ‘mama.’ They became ‘my kids’.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And Straight From the Heart went from being a radio show to \u00a0a center, which \u00a0provided \u00a0basic necessities and a space for empowerment for some of these youth.<\/p>\n

Agnes approaches “her kids” with much compassion and concern.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt isn\u2019t easy to tell someone, ‘You have been used. You fought a war of lies\u2014for nothing!’ You Can\u2019t. Not all at once. You have to break down a belief system in stages, while keeping a person\u2019s hope intact. Deliver the shocking truth, but prevent them from spiraling into an even darker place. Find a way to say, ‘You killed, but this is not the end of you.'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Agnes\u2019 braids in her own family story into this narrative. \u00a0While she\u2019s tackling healing a nation, she\u2019s also reconciling how to be a daughter and a mother herself. There are heartbreaking moments when she has to part with her own children. I was reminded by a quote I read from Ken Saro-Wiwa\u2019s son who said:<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cAll of us have a choice, to make our children safe in the world or to make the world safe for our children, and there are implications to that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"Agnes writes: \u201cPerhaps we can never foresee the way violence starts to approach the safe circles of our worlds\u2026 and sometimes overtake them.\u201d \u00a0But through her past work and the work that she continues to do for her organization\u00a0Straight from the Heart<\/a>, \u00a0Agnes is trying to make the world safe for all<\/em> children. She has many dreams for Liberia and ideas for how radio, story telling and women\u2019s empowerment will help us get closer to that world.<\/p>\n

Happy Birthday Agnes! May all your dreams come true.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four years ago, when I first met Agnes Fallah Kamara-Umunna in Staten Island, she told me she collected stories. She carried them with her on a flash drive that hung from a string around her neck. Later, I opened them on my computer and listened: \u201cWelcome to another edition of Straight from the Heart on … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “And Still Peace Did Not Come- The Power of Stories”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,15,16],"tags":[29,58,63],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-2","category-women","category-writing","tag-books","tag-liberia","tag-memoir"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sangamithraiyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sangamithraiyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sangamithraiyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sangamithraiyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sangamithraiyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sangamithraiyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sangamithraiyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sangamithraiyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sangamithraiyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}