The Long Goodbye

The things that hurt, instruct.

Benjamin Franklin

Dear Readers,

This is one of the last few blog entries I’ll publish…until I start my new blog to report on new adventures, that is.

I arrived in Ouagadougou yesterday after saying goodbye to my village for good. The last several weeks have consisted of uncertainties, changes, a plethora of emotional highs and lows and more goodbyes than I care to recount. As my last week in Burkina Faso begins, I’m emotionally drained and have begun to feel acutely the weight of two years of challenges and growth. I’m simultaneously sad to leave, knowing that this is not an experience one can ever revisit or recreate, and elated at the prospect of a solid month of relaxing at home and then moving on to explore new corners of the world and, well, get on with life.

After working the last week of volunteer training, I headed to village for four days in order to ready my house for my replacement and to say my goodbyes in the way I wanted – individually, taking the time to visit with friends and their families, take photos and make my exit quietly. Some friends – mostly civil servants – gave me a hard time for not throwing a party or making more of my departure, but that didn’t appeal to me, being beyond my means and the means of the average villager. Instead, my goodbyes consisted of conversation; rehashing funny moments – cultural faux pas and foibles, insect-induced screams, lingual confusion - from my first months in village, promises to stay in touch and to send photos and thanks…many, many thanks.

The hardest goodbyes were with my female friends – the unique, dynamic women whose daily struggles and accomplishments never cease to amaze me – and my babies; the children in neighboring courtyards and my counterpart’s family, whose constant, unwavering affection and utter inability to judge me the way I’m so often judged as a stranger here, has been one of the absolute sustaining elements of my Peace Corps service.

I’m just beginning to realize how challenging moving on from and processing this experience will be. I’m the last of my group to leave Burkina – a few of us are already home, many others are traveling and will be for some time, but I think none of us yet fully realizes the challenges that reintegration and life after Peace Corps will present. I think my time at home and then out in the world again (traveling in SE Asia), will allow me to reflect on these 27 months, on the big questions that I hoped to pursue in coming to Burkina, on my place in the world, and on how I’ve changed; what I’ve learned about myself and how it will impact the choices I make and the path that lies ahead.



I recently received an e-mail from a good friend who had just finished his PC service in Mongolia. He was writing about his post-service travels; relaxing on a Cambodian beach, beyond content with a hammock, a good iPod playlist and some copies of The Economist. He wrote that he was just beginning to reflect on his service and those “big questions” pertaining to development, the efficacy of Peace Corps, the impact volunteers make, and countless other elements of the experience. He said those answers are slow in coming. Right now, it’s hard to imagine having answers to those questions at all – being able to generalize or summarize anything about two years of a life transplanted…it’s hard even to imagine actually being back in the States in six days. That said, I know that I’m tougher, wiser, and, grace of getting knocked down and picking myself back up time and time again, better than I was 27 months ago.

As many truths as men. Occasionally, I glimpse a truer Truth, hiding in imperfect simulacrums of itself, but as I approach, it bestirs itself & moves deeper into the thorny swamp of dissent.

David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

Warlord says he played part in Burkina Faso coup

International Herald Tribune

The Associated Press Published: August 26, 2008

MONROVIA, Liberia: One of Liberia's most infamous warlords admittedTuesday that he had trained in Libya and helped topple the government of Burkina Faso before overthrowing Liberia's president.

Prince Johnson, a warlord who has reinvented himself and is now a senator in Liberia's U.S.-modeled Congress, had initially refused to appear before the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

His testimony Tuesday before the packed hall was another turning point in Liberia's struggle to make the actors of its brutal 14-year conflict face up to the horrors they inflicted.

Although he is now a senator, Johnson is viewed by many as a warlord-in-a-suit. He is best known for the gruesome torture of Liberia's President Samuel K. Doe, who died in 1990 in Johnson's custody.

Johnson led the assault, taking Doe hostage and then videotaped himself drinking Budweiser beer as he ordered his men to cut off the former president's ears. The videotape was copied and sold on street corners. Johnson's men celebrated by parading Doe's body in a wheelbarrow.

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But since Liberia emerged from war in 2003 and he, along with other warlords, reinvented himself as a senator, Johnson has tried to distance himself from the president's death. On Tuesday he told the truth commission that although it was his forces that captured Doe, others are responsible for his death.

He argued that long before he led the Sept. 9, 1990 overthrow, an interim government had been formed in exile. Its goal was to overthrow Doe, who had become deeply unpopular by favoring members of his ethnic group and allowing government forces to brutally kill his rivals.

"They sat in exile and formed an interim government to replace the Doe government when Doe was still on the throne," Johnson said. "I was only the instrument that they used."

"We all were involved in this Samuel Doe matter," he added. "We all wanted a change."

To overthrow Doe, Johnson said he and the other Liberians-in-exile reached out to Blaise Compaore, the head of Burkina Faso's army and the trusted friend of Burkina Faso's President Thomas Sankara. Compaore helped Johnson and warlord Charles Taylor go to Libya for guerrilla training.

In his testimony, he does not say how or why he helped overthrow Sankara. But in his 2003 autobiography, Johnson explains that when Sankara learned of the planned coup, he refused to let his country be used to destabilize Liberia. So Taylor conspired with Compaore to assassinate the president, Johnson wrote.

The 1987 death of Sankara, who was widely considered one of Africa's hopes, was a blow for the region.

Earlier this year, Johnson adamantly refused to appear before the commission, saying he had already apologized to Doe's family. Doe's family has said that although they accept Johnson's apology, they would like him to show them where the former president's body is buried.

At the hearing, Johnson revealed that Doe was first buried on a beach, and was later exhumed and cremated. "Doe was cremated and thrown in the river," he said. "Let us not open wounds."

Although the country held transparent elections in 2005, Liberia is struggling to knit itself back together. With the exception of Charles Taylor who is now on trial at The Hague for war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone, none of the actors in Liberia's conflict is currently facing charges.

In an effort to heal the wounds of the past, Liberia's new government created the truth commission, where victims and perpetrators are invited to lay the past bare. Many have criticized the commission as toothless, pointing out that numerous well known warlords have refused to testify and even those that have come forward have been less than remorseful.