Our plan was to discuss the significance of the podcasts’ title. Instead, we discussed two books that have helped shape how Liberia’s story is being told - and its history is being remembered.
The first book, by Stephen Ellis, is well-known inside and outside the country. The other, by three young, inexperienced but enthusiastic, writers - including our own Aaron Weah - tries to make sense of their own experiences in the chaotic context leading to Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Our conversation is not just about history, but about who gets to define what a country remembers - and therefore what kind of future is possible.
Extract.
Aaron Weah (quoting Stephen Ellis): One of the difficulties with how Liberia’s war has been written about is that explanation can begin to replace listening.
Liberians today often look back to the mid-twentieth century as a golden age. But that period doesn’t offer a simple blueprint for the present. When people talk about wanting to return to the 1940s or 1950s, they’re not just talking about government or bureaucracy — they’re talking about a whole social world that no longer exists.
It was a time when society was close-knit, when children were raised by communities, not just by parents. That social order collapsed long before the war itself, and the violence exposed what had already broken down.
That’s why remembering the past isn’t straightforward. Memory carries longing, loss, and idealisation — and it’s very easy to mistake that for a practical plan for the future.
Links:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mask-Anarchy-Updated-Destruction-Religious/dp/0814722385#
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Impunity-Under-Attack-Imperatives-Commission/dp/1535198427
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