Word: sierras
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...night until it seemed safe to venture outside again. “All you could hear were bombs and all you could see was smoke,” says Edgar. The nightmare took an even more frightening turn when Edgar looked out the window to see the President of Sierra Leone’s helicopter over head. Though there were competing reports saying that the President was organizing a resistance movement from within the country, it was clear that he had simply “given up on the country” and fled...
Edgar, his mother and his brother eventually found a way to come to the US; from their new home in Memphis, Tennessee they watched as the political and economic situation in Sierra Leone remained dire. The RUF signed a peace treaty with the UN-supported government in July of 1999, but broke it in May of 2000 by capturing 500 UN peacekeepers. Then in November of 2000 another peace accord was signed and some of the violence in the western part of the state, including Freetown, subsided. The RUF still controls much of the east, however, including Sierra Leone?...
...find a house, a car, a school…and basically just start all over again”, Edgar says. “All I had were the clothes in my suitcase, because I had fooled myself into thinking we were only going to be away from Sierra Leone for a week or so”. Edgar had visited the United States before on vacation, but the move from war-torn Africa to the American south would prove difficult for him. “I had always wanted to live in the United States”, Edgar recalls...
...through it all together”, he says. “He was very important for me, because we were really the only constants in our lives”. Although Victor tried to immerse himself totally in American culture, Edgar made a conscious effort to retain and display his Sierra Leonian heritage—by keeping his distinctive accent, for example, and playing soccer instead of basketball. Keeping in touch with his father was more difficult. “Dad was still in Sierra Leone, and I began to play scrabble as a way to remind me him?...
...Harvard first-year, Edgar finds the ‘ordinary’ aspects of college life the hardest to get used to. “I had never seen snow before and the American food was hard to adjust to. We sometimes try to make Sierra Leonian food, but its just not the same over here”, he explains ruefully...