My Adventure In Liberia

By Leon Lee

According to www.historyofnations.net, Liberia, which means "land of the free," was founded by freed slaves from the United States in 1820. These freed slaves were part of the American Colonization Society. They first arrived in Liberia and established a settlement in Christopolis, now Monrovia (named after U.S. President James Monroe), on February 6, 1820. This group of 86 immigrants formed the beginning of the settler population of what became known as the Republic of Liberia. Thousands of freed slaves from America soon arrived during the following years, leading to the formation of more settlements and resulting in a declaration of independence on July 26, 1847 of the Republic of Liberia.

In 1999, when I was nine years old, my father, who is an African citizen, told my younger brother and I that we were going to take a trip to visit our relatives in Liberia, which is on the western side of Africa. But that wasn't really true. My father thought we were bad as hell and wanted his family to discipline us. My father did not come with us to Liberia because he said he had important things to do, so he let his friends who were going back to Africa take us.

We were on the plane to Africa for two and half days. We stopped in Ghana, another country in Africa, for breakfast and then got back on the plane and finished our trip to Liberia. When we arrived, we landed in Harbel, Liberia which looked a lot like Washington D.C. It had movie theaters, clubs, one-story red-brick houses, schools, and dirty streets.

My father's family was waiting at the airport. "Are you Bill's sons?" they said, and we said, "Yeah" and they started laughing and hugging us. We got in a taxicab and went to a big village call Harbel Firestone. We got to the house and outside there were a bunch of African kids looking at me from the doorway. I looked back and then I bucked at them. They got scared and most of them ran away. My uncle took us for a walk and the Liberian kids followed us. I said something to the kids and my uncle slapped me upside my head. That's how my life in Liberia began.

Liberia is a country that you would love to stay in if there was no war going down. It is almost like the U.S. because they have Mc Donald's, beaches, and banks and Liberia has some beautiful girls and coconut trees. Liberia is a country where, if you are lucky, you can find gold dust and some little diamonds too. One of the biggest differences was that there where 15 different languages and they did not have any showers in the houses. Before I left America, I thought it was going to be a safari but it turned out to be little villages and houses.

I liked it there in Liberia because it is like you are free to do any thing you want. My first night there my cousins took my brother and I to a soccer field to play "football," which is what they call soccer. They said they called it football because you kick the ball with your foot. Other things we did for fun were play hide and seek catch the bird, we went to the movies, and we told scary stories in the night or tried to go hookup with some girls.

My brother and I spent four years in Liberia. . I ended up coming back because there was a war in Liberia and also for other family reasons. I felt sad because I was having fun in Liberia and I didn't want to leave. When it was time to leave my uncle, my cousin's boyfriend, and my cousins were crying. When we came back to the United States I felt relieved. My trip to Liberia was a great experience, but my home is in the United States.

By George Telzrow |  March 1, 2007; 6:23 PM ET Community
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