When bullets hit Agnes Kamara-Umunna's home in Monrovia,
Liberia, she and her father hastily piled whatever they
could carry into their car and drove toward the border,
along with thousands of others. An army of children was
approaching, under the leadership of Charles Taylor. It
seemed like the end of the world.
Slowly, they made their way to the safety of Sierra Leone.
They were the lucky ones.
After years of exile, with the fighting seemingly over,
Agnes returned to Liberia--a country now devastated by years
of civil war. Families have been torn apart, villages
destroyed, and it seems as though no one has been spared.
Reeling, and unsure of what to do in this place so different
from the home of her memories, Agnes accepted a job at the
local UN-run radio station. Their mission is peace and their
method is reconciliation through understanding and
communication. Soon, she came up with a daring plan: Find
the former child soldiers, and record their stories. And so
Agnes, then a 43-year-old single mother of four, headed out
to the ghettos of Monrovia and befriended them, drinking
Club Beer and smoking Dunhill cigarettes with them, earning
their trust. One by one, they spoke on her program, Straight
from the Heart, and slowly, it seemed like reconciliation
and forgiveness might be possible.
From Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa's first female president,
to Butt Naked, a warlord whose horrific story is as
unforgettable as his nickname--everyone has a story to tell.
Victims and perpetrators. Boys and girls, mothers and
fathers. Agnes comforts rape survivors, elicits testimonials
from warlords, and is targeted with death threats--all live
on the air. Set in a place where monkeys, not raccoons, are
the scourge of homeowners; the trees have roots like
elephant legs; and peacebuilding is happening from the
ground-up. Harrowing, bleak, hopeful, humorous, and deeply
moving--And Still Peace Did Not Come is not only Agnes's
memoir: It is also her testimony to a nation's descent into
the horrors of civil war, and its subsequent rise out of the
ashes.
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