Word: edgar
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When it was clear the seizure had succeeded and the street violence had ceased, Edgar begged his father to take him to church. It was the first time he had been outside in days, and he could see bullets strewn over the road. Edgar remembers being surprised that there were “no dead bodies on the streets” because Red Cross workers had feverishly collected all those that had died in the gunfire. The rebels had set up a kind of order amid all of the chaos; The residences of the President and the Minister of Finance...
...originally from the US, discovered that an US jet carrier boat would be arriving the next day to transport all American citizens to the nearby Guinea. With RUF leaders declaring that no one would be allowed to leave the country because the entire state was on lock down, the Edgar family faced a perilous decision. “I really didn’t want to go”, Edgar recalls. “But deep down, I knew that if I stayed, I risked capture by the rebels, who wanted to force all young males to join their side?...
...Edgar, his mother and brother said goodbye to his father and traveled covertly to the beach through the scrub, watching and listening for rebel soldiers positioned to spy for civilians escaping the country. When they finally got to the beach, the Edgar family met snipers who were poised to protect them as they ran for the boat. “I honestly thought I would never see him [my father] again,” Edgar says, “and I felt worried and guilty at the same time about leaving...
...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?...
Separated from his father and living on the other side of the world, Edgar, his mother and brother had to begin life anew. “Once we settled in Memphis, we had to 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...