Other than the several false alarms that caused fear and panic in the city of Monrovia in the early 1990s, my initial experience of the Liberian Civic War was from media renditions, and what I was told by the people around me.  It did not take long before I got first hand experience of the war.
 
 Most members of my immediate family left Liberia during the early stages of the war. We were aware of the many rumors floating around and it later became evident that the Mandingo tribe, of which we belong to, was a target. My mother and siblings jumped on the back of one of those big Toyota trucks in early 1990 and headed for N’zerekore, Guinea. They left my father and me behind, with the hope that things would return to normal and we would be reunited soon. My mother had been reluctant to leave us behind, but my ather insisted that the men were tough enough to stay. My father was not  ready to abandon everything they had worked hard for over several decades. He convinced my mother that it would be easier for him and I to leave the country if the need arose, and eventually join them in Guinea. Faced with an unpredictable future, she reluctantly agreed in the hope that it would be them returning to Liberia to be with us once again. It never happened.
 
 My father and I, now alone in Monrovia, had to adapt to a lot of new things that we were not used to: cooking, washing dishes, hand washing our own clothes or using a washboard, going to the market for groceries, fetching water from the pond, and many more. I was just a little boy at the time, so I did not have to worry about cooking. I wished mom had taught me how to cook before she left, because my father is one of the worst cooks I know. He always complained that it was too hard to satisfy my taste, a charge I informed him my mother did not share. God knows that woman can cook! Dad and I resorted to eating out in restaurants or cook shops, after he found out that I was not eating the food he had spent valuable time and money on. At the time in Monrovia, all people were talking about was the war, even in school. At that young age, I did not fully understand what war was; only that it was dangerous. I was still to witness the magnitude of horror and devastation brought about by war that was yet to come. Fears and tensions were on the increase as news of rebel forces gaining ground in the interior regions of the country spread. There were also the constant false alarms about the rebels taking over the capital. My father instructed me to head
 straight home to him after school and avoid wandering the streets. In case war broke out, I was to go into a house with older people, and we would try to get in touch with each other when things cooled down.
 
 One Tuesday morning in January of 1990, we were in class when news broke out that rebel forces were clashing with government forces at the city center. The news turned the school into chaos with students and faculty staff screaming and running for cover. Another terrifying incident happened in Waterside, on a crowded market day when word spread that an unmarked rebel vehicle had ran through a police checkpoint. Guns were fired as people ran over each other for safety in complete anarchy. My father and I
 unfortunately were in Waterside that day and were swept up in the panic. My father held me in his arms as we ran to a near by store for cover. Many  people were injured, and we later learned that some had lost their lives. This incident turned out to be another false alarm; however, rebel forces were indeed closing in on the nation’s capital. It was against this backdrop that my father made the decision that it was time to leave everything behind and get out of Liberia. By then, it cost double the previous amount to leave the capital, so we took a few of our personal belongings and headed out of  the country. We later heard that some of our neighbors had been slain, including a very funny and caring man called ‘B.K’., who had been my mother
 and sister’s tailor. Another victim was Sekou Sheriff, a young, smart senior student at the University of Liberia with a seemingly bright future ahead of him. Sekou had been the chief accountant at a gas station chain, owned by a man named Alimany Dukuly. There were countless others whose lives were cut
 short by the senseless war, and those who died of disease, or were starved to death.
 
 After a long and tedious day of commune, we joined the family in N’zerekore. We arrived in N’zerekore Guinea, during the day and a drive through the city engulfed our faces in dust. It was nice to be reunited with the family who came to greet us with hugs and kisses, expressing how worried they had been and their joy at seeing us alive. Holding me in her arms, my mother shed  tears of joy and disappointment, happy that we were safe but knowing that we had lost everything my family had earned over many years. Life in Guinea was
 very difficult and after a few months, my family decided to move to the Ivory Coast, leaving me behind this time because of education. Guinea at the time offered a better education than the Ivory Coast when it came to the Liberian Refugee school system that my uncle Joseph Sackor helped create and which I latter became a product of. During my high school years, my parents wanted me to get a good education. There were many breakdowns in the Refugee school system. In 1996, Monrovia had become relatively stable and my parents and I decided that I should go back to Monrovia to continue my education. Returning to Monrovia became one of the worst and unfortunate experiences in my lifetime. It was a gruesome scene; an experience filled with suffering and carnage.
 
 I arrived in Monrovia in February of 1996, after a total of six years in exile. The flight back, though just a few hours, was rough and filled with turbulence before we landed at the Spring Field Airport. Upon arrival, I was shocked by the level of destruction I saw at the airport. We had lived across the street from Spring Field, in ‘Fish Market’ and I had been a regular at a playground near the airport, so I knew the airport very well.
 The Spring Field I knew was gone. Changed beyond my recognition and even the runways and landing sites were now covered in tall grass.
 
 I walked through the grass on the airfield with other passengers holding a bunch of ripe plantains that I bought at the dusty airfield in N’zerekore, just before boarding the plane. We went through immigration processing in the single building that was left standing surrounded by debris. While in line waiting to check in with immigration, one of the female immigration officers asked me to give her some money.
 
 “What ever amount, please I really need this money for my children to be able to eat today.” She said.
 
 She might have been fooled by my sharp and fresh appearance, but I reminded her that I was just a refugee returning home from exile. This did little to sway her as she continued to plead. She revealed that she had not been paid  for months.
 
 “Where ever you are returning from, you had to be enjoying, looked at how  you look, she said. I am over here suffering. She added.
 
 She later requested that I give her some of my plantains, if I do not want to help her with some money. I conceded and gave her half of my ripe  plantains to which a smile crossed her face. “Thank you so much, me and my children can used this for dinner to night.”
 
 After waiting about an hour at the airfield, my cousin Kalifala S. Sackor  and some of his friends showed up and greeted me with joy. We walked across  the street to The Fofana’s resident, where they were living and where I had earlier lived and attended school. Some of the buildings in the yard had been partially destroyed. My cousin told me that fighters had ransacked the compound, taking everything they could lay their hands on. One of my cousin friends cut up the rest of the plantains and boiled them, which we had for lunch. They were very grateful for the meal; it was hard to get food in Monrovia those days. After lunch, we walked around the neighborhood, my hosts showing me destroyed buildings and telling horrific tales of the war. Most of them had stayed in Monrovia for most of the fighting in the early 90’s. They told me the brutal story of a local woman who used to sell fish in the near by Fish Market. She was gang raped and beaten severely by some
gunmen and later died at the hospital from the injuries and trauma. We later  met a childhood friend of mine who was now on crushes, the sight of which to tears. My friend told us how some gunmen broke in to their home demanding that they point out who the enemies were.
 
 We told them we did not know who the enemy was, they said we were liars and  they unloaded several rounds of AK-47 into my legs. He said adding that  they shot his sister point blank, as they walked out of the house. All my  family could do was cry over me and my sister as we bleed profusely; they
 (gunmen) wanted us to die in misery. He said holding back tears. He later  got help from some emergency medical team. He lived through the miracle of God, but had lost one of his legs. Many including his sister had not lived to tell their stories.
 
 A few days later, I moved to my uncle’s house in Clara Town, Bushrod Island, where I would live for the next three years. It was raining on the day of the move and as the cab drove us through Sinkor, then Center Monrovia, via the New Bridge to Bushrod Island, I could not believe my eyes. The city had
changed dramatically and it appeared to be an abandoned city from ancient time. I saw high-rise building covered in bullet holes. The Pan African Plaza and several governmental buildings had been turned into displaced  camps for people who homes were destroyed during the war. We navigated our  way through countless numbers of ECOMOG (African Union Soldiers) checkpoints. Through the drive to Clara Town, Bushrod Island almost every other building I saw was cover in bullets holes and had shattered windows.
 It looked to me like mad gunmen had just sprayed buildings with bullets at random to which my cousin agreed. I was disappointed to returning to an empty city; however, I kept an open mind and hoped for the better. My hope was shattered a short time later, when I came very close to death.
 
 Upon arrival in Clara Town, I met with my uncle, Dr. Ishmael Sackor and  his family. I barely knew them before coming to stay with him, but during my tay, I became very close to my uncle, his children, and his wives. My uncle, who is a pharmacist, also studies medicine at the universities in Conakry and Monrovia. Back than he owned two of the few pharmacies in Clara Town that served most of the locals. I came to Monrovia during school vacation and my uncle and his older son took this time to teach me how to dispensed medicine while I waited for school to open. Few weeks later, I was helping in one of the pharmacies. Life was becoming good, and there was a sign of a promising future, but that was before April 6, 1996.
 
 The only war I experienced first hand was the April 6 war. April 6, 1996 is a date that I will never forget. It all started when officers from the then government forces (Alhaji Kromah’s and Charles Taylor’s men) tried to arrest Roosevelt Johnson, the leader of the break away ULIMO fraction (a former warring fraction). They were all part of the inclusive government back then, but they each had their own gunmen. There might have been other  unknown reasons why the government wanted Mr. Johnson arrested, but they told the public that Mr. Johnson was wanted for questioning about a dead body discovered near his compound. Roosevelt Johnson was not willing to be question by his rivals and despite knowing that he was heavily guarded, the
 government issued an order for him to be arrested.
 
 When the government forces attempted to enter his compound to arrest him, his men fired at them. They fired back, giving birth to another bloody episode of the Liberian civic war. It came to be known as the April 6 war.
 Throughout that day, the government forces and Roosevelt Johnson’s forces exchanged fire, leaving scores of people dead. For the most part of the fighting on April 6 and the days that followed, government forces retreated,  leaving most part of Sinkor under the control of Mr. Johnson’s forces. The  fighting spread around the city quickly, dividing the city in to two.  Roosevelt Johnson was never arrested and the fighting did not stop,  continuing for weeks, every day bringing a different twist.
 
 At the beginning of the April 6 war, Clara Town was relatively safe, but as the war spread around the city, nowhere was safe. We started hearing very oud and constant gunfire and knew the war was closing in on us, but like many others did not know where to run. A few days into the fighting stray bullets were killing people in our area and we became very worried and felt  helpless. One night a bullet pieced through our house roof while we were sitting in the living room, leaving us wondering what would happen next. We thought we might lose our lives if we did not escape, but at this time, everyone’s movement was limited. One day my uncle sent his son and I to the market to get some food. We went scared, walking past two dead bodies in two
 separate areas along the way. One of them was the body of a woman that appeared to have been laying there for a couple of days. It was decaying and we could smell it from a distance. On another day, one of my friends fathers was trying to wash up in an open shower (common in Liberia) when a stray bullet killed him. The family kept his body in the house for days, not having access to a burial site. About a week into the fighting, a bomb landed in Clara Town at night, and killed almost an entire family. The next day we visited the site, which was too gruesome to look at; bodies of four children and their mother roasted, lying in the debris.
 
 The number of gunmen around our area was increasing day by day, and looting was at it highest. Some suggested that the government forces were concentrating on stealing that is while they were unable to over power Mr. Johnson men. They would loot car dealerships; sometimes taking every car in the lot, public transportation mostly taxis, even United Nations and  other NGO vehicles were looted. I once saw a gunman in a Land Cruiser with a diplomatic plate. Gunmen broke into uncountable numbers of stores and businesses getting away with millions of dollars in goods and cash. It was one of the highest looting sprees Monrovia had ever seen. People were getting rich from looting, and because of that, many people were taking up arms. People took up arms not to fight, but to intimidate others, and steal from them. Looting was so rampant that one of the architects of the war, Mr. Kromah order that any one caught looting should be shot on site. It did not work. Some of my own neighbors and friends joined the looting. I was
 frightened one day, when a friend from school along with some of his colleagues shows up at our house with AK-47s and others rifles. They were wearing irregular military uniforms, and some had masks over their heads. They asked me to join them, and I refused. My uncle told them we had some work to do in the pharmacy, and asked them to leave. They flashed bundles of Liberian dollars, and few United States dollars and took off in their looted cars.
 
 A couple of other uncles and some extended family members had  come to my uncle’s residence to seek refugee. Just like most residents of  Monrovia, we were running out of food. Rice was scare on the market because suppliers could not supply it, and the price of a bag of rice was outrageous. It was also becoming very dangerous to go out to find food.
 
 At the high of the fighting, another Uncle Kay, who is also a businessman, asked me to go along with him to his former residence on Front Street to retrieve some of his goods and personal belongings. To get to Front Street from Clara Town, one would have to cross one of the two bridges that link central Monrovia to Bushrod Island, but going anywhere near either bridge was very dangerous at that time. Our side of the city (Bushrod Island) was considered relatively safe, even though people were still getting hit by  stray bullets everyday. I am not sure what I was thinking at the time, but once we started the trip, I quickly realized crossing the bridge was a bad idea. We had no access to a vehicle, so we had to walk although no ordinary
cars were seen in the streets at this time. We walked passed several gunmen and others drove by us as we headed through Clara Town. After few minutes of  hiking, we reached the Old Bridge. There were a few other people crossing the bridge in both directions and as we walked on, we saw countless dead bodies floating in the river below. It seemed like gunmen were waiting for my uncle and I to set foot on the bridge, because after a few minutes on the bridge, the bridge was showered withbullets.                                                                                                                                                                 We laid flat on our stomachs and hoping the bridge railing would shield us. I was terrified; scared to death as I lay there biting my finger in regret, feeling like my family would blame me for putting myself in danger. I said my prayers all the while crying like a baby, asking God to spare my life and promising to be a better Muslim. I vowed to myself that if I ever made it out of there alive I would stay indoors until everything calmed down. We had to crawl the rest of the way to get off that bridge before shakily dusting ourselves off and continuing our trip. My uncle apologized for bringing me along and before I was done drying my tears, when we walked straight into a corridor of gunmen. These gunmen later identified themselves as government forces and asked what
 we were doing loitering in a war zone. My uncle told them that we were trying to retrieve our belongings from an apartment near by. At first, they did not believe us, detaining and interrogating us for about an hour. They  later escorted us to the apartment, when they realized that we were not enemy combatants. We retrieved some of my uncle’s belongings and loaded them on to two wheel barrow after which the gunmen escorted us back across the bridge to Bushrod Island. My uncle gave them a few pairs of brand new shoes
 from his merchandise and a ten US dollar bill in gratitude. We walked in disbelief through the abandoned streets of Bushrod Island till we got home. My uncle Dr. Sackor had grown worried, and I apologized for taking off with out his knowledge but never told him about my ordeal.
 
 As time went by in this very chaotic and senseless war, the danger increased and our movements became even more limited. There were rumors that  gunmen were breaking into people houses, raping women and stealing  properties from these homes or that some simply set houses ablaze. We got  very scared and my uncle decided that it was time to leave.
 
 One afternoon we gathered a few personal effects and went to  the nearby “ECOMOG” base to seek refuge. They turned us down, advising us to  stay indoors saying, they did not have room for displaced people. We started  walking away in disappointment, headed home for another night of fear and the sound of constant gun fire. “Please do not come back here daring us, you will be safe in your houses!” Shouted one of the military commanders. “You created this monster, face it’. He added.
 
 Many people were heading to Freeport, the sea port in Monrovia, in the hope that they might get on an overloaded ship or boat and end up in a nearby country like Ghana, Nigeria, or Guinea, as a refugee. We decided to try our luck, because the situation was getting desperate so we took a few things  and went to Freeport. We tried to get on the only boat available at the time named Bo-Challenge, but the ship was already crowded before we got there, so we had no chance to get on board. Thousands of people lingered in the port with no ship or boat in sight, getting hungry and sick. Many parents watched helplessly as their children withered before their eyes. Most people stayed there for days, with the hope that another ship or boat will come by, but we lost hope after only twenty hours and returned home. A few days later we
 found out that we might have been fortunate not to get on the Bo-Challenge because it had capsized off the coast of Ghana, few days after it left the port of Monrovia. The Ghanaians came out to help, but many people lost their lives.
 
 Few days after we left the port, I returned and tried to leave on another ship that was going to Nigeria. This was not a passenger ship, but people were getting on as stow-aways. I met with one of the employees on board who assured me that he could get me to Nigeria for a hundred US dollars. I was
 hopeful, but cautiously agreed to the deal upon which he took me to his room, which was the size of a small closet, where I was to stay for the entire trip. The room had a child sized bed and the gentleman informed me that I would stay in this room for few days, maybe weeks. He promised to bring me food and water for the duration of the trip and there was a waste bucket that I could use. It was unimaginable that anyone could spend more than 8 hours in this room, and I had heard rumors that one could be thrown
 over board if you were caught in a ship without proper permission. I feared that I could loose the very life I was trying to protect and decided to cancel the deal without telling the gentleman. I simply did not return at
 the schedule time to get on board.
 
 I returned home to my family, passing several gunmen, and hearing constant gun fire. We decided to stay in Monrovia till things cooled down. We were indoors for the most part, treating some of the wounded, mostly from gun shots. Me and my cousin would clean the wound with Hydrogen Peroxide, put some Tetracycline on it and dress it, and then my uncle, Dr. Sackor, would prescribe pain killers, or Antibiotics. We had several patients and of whom we would dress their wounds again after a couple of days. We treated
 everyone from rebel soldiers and government forces, to regular people caught in the cross fire. Most of the wounded were very hard to look at, but we did our best.
 
 The war came to an end when the government failed to arrest Mr. Johnson,  with the casualties and destruction increasing. There were small peace talks here and there, until Roosevelt Johnson, Alhaji G. V. Kromah, and Charles Taylor reconsidered and decided to settle their differences. Things gradually returned to some semblance of a normal life after uncountable  numbers of lives and millions of dollars worth of properties were destroyed. I pray everyday that no other generation would go through what we went
 through. I consider myself lucky because many lost their lives, and others  experiences were far more terrible than mine. I urge all that may be inclined to, to not choose the war approach. War is not the answer. Let us settle our differences peacefully.
 
 Sackor309@hotmail.com