April 6, 1996 and Liberia's need for memorials & monuments
A reflection.
Today is April 6, a date that holds so much grief for many Liberians and a reminder of what was lost to the war. I called my father this morning - something told me that I needed to be a witness to his memory on this day. We talked about where he was on April 6, what he saw and what his life became as a result. He shared that while April 6 is a significant date for my generation, he had experienced others before. The rice riots or “April 14” occurred on April 14,1979. Then April 12, 1980, Samuel K. Doe led a coup overthrowing and killing William Tolbert. The entire month of April for his generation, was stitched with periods of violence. On April 6,1996, he came to the painful realization that he could no longer stay in Liberia and like many others, fled to Ivory Coast. He ended his reflection with “this new generation really don’t know the cost of war.”
Image: Rival factions clash again in Liberia: Heavy fighting threatens 10-day old cease-fire, The Sun (1837-), Baltimore, MD, 30 Apr 1996.
But Liberians cannot know the cost of war, if we do not remember. The war disrupted entire generations yet the collective trauma of it has become an individual one to bear. The remembering and mourning is done in closed spaces and sometimes not at all. Most cemeteries have been destroyed and the country is filled with unmarked graveyards. Beaches that now serve as places for entertainment were used as burial sites during the war. Hundreds of bodies remain under the sand with no acknowledgement of their lives.
How can we know the cost of war when our collective memory is not present in our cultural geography?
How can we know the cost of war when we do not have designated locations to give tributes and commemorate our dead?
Liberia needs memorials and monuments. They will serve as a reminder of what happened to Liberian people and signal to others that our lives are worthy of remembering. In memorials and monuments our collective memory is captured and embedded into our geography ensuring its place in history. For those who survived, monuments are a physical witness to our grief and a place to return to. They are also a grim but necessary reminder of the violence we are capable of. With this reminder, we provide context for the next generation to why we must never return to war again. Indeed it is painful and complicated to remember, but we pay a greater price when we choose to forget.