November 2, 2023 • 57 mins
From the tumultuous regions of Israel and Palestine to the terrains of Rwanda and Nepal, women are driving the fight for peace using innovative tactics. As we grapple with a violent world, how do we tap into our collective humanity? To gain some insight, we turn to those who have been tireless - and successful - in their fight for justice.
Leymah Gbowee shares how her upbringing, where she was taught the significance of education and standing up for her beliefs, paved the way for her to become a beacon of hope and change. From her youth as a spirited high school senator to a globally recognized peace activist and 2011 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, she demonstrates the formidable power of the human spirit and the immense potential of women in championing human rights and equity. Together we journey through the cataclysmic impacts of war, with unique emphasis on the pivotal role of women in bidding peace. We discuss the Second Liberian Civil War, the displacement it wrought, and the residual trauma that survivors grapple with. Despite these daunting realities, the spotlight remains on the unyielding courage of Leymah and the women who stood by her, protesting against the war - a testament to the potency of active nonviolence in instigating meaningful change.
A full video of Leymah's talk can be found here.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Music playing.
Welcome to what the World WillBecome, a podcast about the
humans who dedicate their livesto building a more free and just
world.
My name is Marie Berry.
(00:24):
I'm a feminist researcher andwriter, and I've spent the
better part of the past 20 yearsresearching and thinking about
how women experience war and itsaftermath.
I've done research in placeslike Rwanda, bosnia, kenya,
nepal and Colombia, and I'veinterviewed hundreds of women
whose lives have been shaped byviolence Along the way.
(00:44):
I have then repeatedly struckby two simultaneous truths the
first is that violence isdevastating, leaving those who
survive it with trauma and griefthat can last for years and
even generations, but the secondis that, even in the most bleak
and impossible of situations,there is often a great beauty, a
way that those who suffer fromviolence find love, joy and
(01:07):
resilience that can creativelyforge new paths forward, paths
that offer us profound hope andpossibility for building a more
just and free world.
Music playing.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to aspecial bonus episode of Season
1 of what the World Will Become,and you're in for a real treat.
(01:28):
This episode features LeymahBowie, the 2011 Nobel Peace
Prize laureate from Liberia.
In our conversation, leymahshares her story of growing up
the horrors from when theLiberian Civil War broke out and
how she eventually mobilizedthousands of women to stop the
war.
In large part because ofLeymah's effort, after the war
(01:51):
ended, liberia elected the firstwoman head of state in Africa,
ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
In the years since, leymah hasbeen an active participant in
movements for peace across theglobe.
She was featured in the filmPray the Devil Back to Hell and
wrote a beautiful memoir that Irecommend to anyone who wants to
(02:12):
make a change in the world.
It's called Mighty Be OurPowers.
Our conversation was recordedin September 2023 in front of a
live audience at the JosephKorbel School of International
Studies at the University ofDenver as part of an event that
we hosted with our friends atWorld Denver.
I hope you enjoy.
So I want to just begin tonightby asking you, leymah, to share
(02:39):
with us a little bit about yourearly life, your childhood and
what it was like growing up inLiberia.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Thank you.
Good evening everyone.
It's truly an honor to be herethis evening and to see a full
house on a Thursday night.
Thank you all for coming.
So I am the fourth of fivegirls.
My mother never had a son, soyou can imagine that for many
(03:09):
years she was the ridicule ofmany people, because having a
son is very important in manyfamilies.
Our grandmother, who died in2021 at the age of 115.
So I'm here for a long time Wasour primary caregiver and I
(03:35):
tell people that she was ourfirst feminist teacher.
Ma, as we called her, was theone who taught all of us the
alphabet.
She had a fifth grade educationand that's where she stopped
and then she was married off,but that fifth grade education
(03:57):
was what she used to start allof her grandchildren off in
kindergarten.
I tell people that my story andjust this afternoon I was
telling Eboniza Noma when he wasdriving me here, that I'm not
the stereotypical African story,that story of oh, they never
(04:17):
allow us to go to school, andthey know I grew up empowered.
I grew up hearing that you cando anything you want to do.
I grew up hearing thateducation is important for your
future and all of those things.
I think literally my siblingsand I, we had such
(04:40):
self-confidence that we werejust troublemakers, like we were
sent to jail many times forfighting in the neighborhood,
and it would probably be boysthat were fighting.
So I'm just laying this premiseto say that even as girls and
we had my grandmother was amember of every secret society
(05:01):
in Liberia.
So she was very powerful.
So she was part of the malesociety, part of the female
society.
So if you're from West Africaor from Africa, you know when
they have those societies it'sprimarily for men, for women,
but she could go into anysociety.
She was really very powerful.
When it was time for us to goand do FGM, they came.
(05:25):
I remembered were very young andthere was a lot of whispers in
the living room and my dad cameoutside and said my daughters
are not going and he stood up toit.
We did not.
If anyone tried to take mydaughters to do the female
genital mutilation, I'll killthem.
So on one end we have thesewomen who were telling us you
(05:51):
can do anything, and on theother end we have this man who
was telling us I will protectyou from tradition and culture.
So that was the life that wegrew up with.
We grew up our grandmother usedto say when you get married, if
your husband brings rice, youshould be able to bring the
charcoal to cook the rice.
(06:12):
And the way I now understand itbecause I've been able to take
that statement unpack, do my ownanalysis.
And literally what she wassaying to us was you must
dominate your space.
Don't ever allow anyone todominate your space for you.
You have to um the space thatGod has given you on this earth.
(06:37):
You must be the author of yourstory.
You must be the champion ofyour game.
You must be the soldier in yourbattle.
So that was the mindset I wentinto life with, and so, high
school, I went into politics.
In high school, I was senatorfor my school.
2019, we celebrated our 30thhigh school reunion, and I will
(07:01):
end with that.
And there was this one girl whosaid to me you know, I hated
you so badly in high school.
And I said why?
She said because you came inthat high school at 10th grade
and I had been there all my life, but the first week of you
(07:22):
being in that school, the entireschool knew you.
And then I said I'm so sorrythat you hated me, but
unfortunately I never saw you.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
So, if I do the math right, the 2019 30th high school
reunion marked exactly 30 yearssince 1989.
And in 1989 in Liberia, whichis, I think most are familiar
with, a very small country aboutfive million people in West
Africa, in 1989, a person namedCharles Taylor invaded the
(07:59):
country and basically started awar, and that war lasted until
1997, when Charles Taylor waseventually then elected
president shortly thereafter andwe'll get into the details of
this, but I wanna know whatchanged that moment.
It was right around the timeyou graduated from high school
(08:21):
that the war began.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Exactly one day, my graduation was December 23rd
1989.
In December 24th 1989, the warstarted, and I tell people that
we took it for joke.
From December to March to Aprilto May to June, I started
(08:42):
college, science college.
My dream was to become apediatrician.
See how far I am from that.
My dream was to become apediatrician.
And then one morning all hellbroke loose, and the way I like
to describe it is that I woke up, a 17 year old girl, and by 6
(09:02):
pm I was an adult at the twinkof an eye, because my mother had
gone to work, my father hadgone to work, my other siblings
had all left to go to work or touniversity.
I had a late class and then thatmorning, like really loud
shooting and my younger siblingswere home I'm the older of my
(09:25):
siblings at home, nieces andnephews.
By 5 pm, over 25 internallydisplaced people from our church
had come, and then my aunt islooking at me and saying to me I
can't take any decisions.
This is your father's house.
You are the only one of hischildren here.
You have to decide.
(09:46):
In that moment I'm deciding whosleeps where she's whispering
to me.
There are documents, there arejewellery.
There should be this you needto.
So, yeah, am I carefree,basketball loving nightclub,
going teenager and all of asudden I have to think about
documents and solidifying thefuture of our home, thinking
(10:07):
about how 25 people will eat.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
And that was the beginning of me taking care of
people, and I haven't stoppedhere today, a huge rupture right
Between the way that life wasbefore and the way that life
then proceeded, and it sounds,having read so much about you
over the years, that itfundamentally changed the course
(10:30):
of your career, your studiesand your life.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Totally, totally.
I mean, one of the definingmoments for me was a young man.
A young man, we were allinternally displaced to get at
the church and he left and saidhe was going to the Taylor side.
So the country had been dividedinto different factions and we
were still on the governmentside.
(10:55):
My mom kept saying to him don'tgo, and he kept saying I can't
stay here.
So he went and by 4 pm that day, strangely, we're listening to
focus on Africa BBC and thepresenter was saying that they
had just killed a group of youngmen and that he formed this ID
(11:21):
and he literally called thisyoung man's name and then my
classmate that was very close tohim and all of his siblings had
been killed.
So we're just hearing news ofpeople who had future.
One minute, this person and Itold myself what is the use of
going to college, then to medschool, I mean when one tiny
(11:42):
object can undo everything thatyou sacrifice for?
So I'm not going back to school.
I got angry at God.
No one should call God namewhere I'm seated.
I'm not going to pray, I'm notgoing to do anything, I'm not
like literally.
I was just in beast mode, angry, looking for food, wake up in
the morning, my mom lost hermind.
(12:05):
So one day she's sitting, she'sthe people.
Because my dad was in thegovernment, we still had food
and she had such confidence inthe government that my sister
had come home one day and saidshe was working medical records
at the government hospital andpeople had come to look for the
medical records of 100 children.
And she said no one brought 100children.
(12:28):
Yeah, so to check emergencyeverything no children.
Eventually we heard that thegovernment soldiers had taken
those 100 children and thrownall of them in a well.
My mom refused to believe that,so that was a point of
contention between her and mysister.
So this day all along, she'sstill saying the government
(12:51):
soldiers are the good guys.
This day I'm going to look forgreens and other things.
We still have rights, but wehave money, so I have to go and
look for other food.
I come back and my mom is justsitting there like she's lost
her mind and she's crying andsaying I killed a man, I killed
a man, I killed a man.
I'm wondering how did you killsomeone?
(13:13):
And then she said this guy wasdigging in the garbage and she
got up and there was a wirefence.
So she went and stood at thefence and said to him what are
you looking for?
He said I'm looking for palmkernels.
She said to do what he said totake home for my children and I
(13:34):
will crack it and eat it.
She said you don't have food.
He said no.
So she went inside and broughtfive cups, five or 10 cups of
rice and handed it to him.
In that moment the soldiers came.
She went back and sat down andthey asked him who gave you the
rice?
He's afraid to say her, becauseshe would be in trouble.
(13:55):
He's just standing there and inthose days they used to call
rice gold dust.
It's either you were a rebel ifyou had rice or you work with
government.
In any case, anyone who hadrice was in danger of being
killed.
And this man stood therelooking, looking, looking.
He couldn't say she gave it tome.
They took the rice from him andpoint blank executed him right
(14:18):
there.
So when I came, she had noability to make decisions on
let's eat this, let's go here.
So not only did I lose mychildhood and everything, I then
became a caregiver for someonewho was mentally unstable.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Yeah, that is such a tremendous weight to carry, the
caregiving also to see yourmother in that, in that
condition, and to have so muchof your family to also be
thinking about.
And I know that there was somuch displacement during the war
and I'm wondering if you cantell us or share us a little bit
(15:01):
about what you witnessed andexperienced in terms of how the
war didn't only come to people'shomes but caused mass of
numbers of people to fleeeverything that they knew, every
bit of safety that they had.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
We were before the war, 3 million people 1 million
were internally displaced, justto give you an idea 500,000
became refugees, and these areall estimated figures.
We had to move more than 10times.
Like you come to this place,you sleep this night and then
there's a missile attack.
Then you have to move toanother place and you move again
(15:39):
.
So we're persistently moving.
One neighborhood we went to thebedroom was the size of the
stage.
We were 50 people, 5-0.
So at night, if you manage tofind a spot, you sleep for like
(16:02):
three hours and then someonewill come and tap you.
You have to go and sit outsideor someone else to come and
sleep.
That's how we slept forprobably a week, because at that
time we were separate from ourfather, so we didn't know where
he was.
He didn't know where we were.
People went and told him theyhad killed all of us.
We heard that he had beenkilled.
(16:24):
So those were the kinds ofthings that we're dealing with
Families just moving endlessly,aimlessly, people sleeping
outside Anyone can offer you aplace to sleep.
When I think back and a lot ofthe memories from the war have
suppressed for good reasons butwhen I think back, this is
something that I don't wish onmy worst enemy.
(16:47):
Recently, last year, we went toPoland and entered Ukraine, and
so while we were in Poland,they said let's go to the
refugee center.
We got there and just seeingthe sheets like that dividing
the room, I lost it.
I cried the entire time on liveTV.
(17:11):
There was nothing that couldget out of me.
All of the prepared statementwent out the window because just
that divided sheet.
It brought back memories that Ithought had gone away, and so
that's how you live when you'vebeen through what we've been
through in Liberia.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
It's gutting thinking about the scale of displacement
today.
I think the number now is thatthere's 110 million forcibly
displaced people in the worldtoday, inside and outside of
their countries of origin, andthat's just that scale.
You think about all the rooms,like the room you were in and it
(17:56):
just it catches your breath.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
The one thing you need to also understand is that
the war lasts so long that atone point I was carrying my
nieces and nephews as refugees.
Then at another point I wascarrying my own children.
That's the progression.
So at one stage is familymembers like nieces and nephews.
(18:20):
At another stage is me with twovery young children pregnant on
a ship that is about to sink,trying to find our way out of
Liberia.
Togana so many different partsof the story that you don't want
to wish on.
Your worst enemy went to thelargest refugee camp in Jordan a
(18:43):
few years ago.
It was a long convoy, veryimportant people, presidents and
all of that, and we were thesmall people on the delegation
and at some point they said theconvoy needs to leave.
And who's holding the convoy up?
Leima?
Because I'm seated on thesidewalk and I see me in a young
(19:07):
girl with hopes and dreams ofbecoming a translator at the UN
and she's talking sopassionately.
She has perfected her English,so everyone is calling her to
talk.
I'm glued, I'm stuck there andthey're like come, come, come.
We need to leave, we need toleave, but I'm not seeing this
(19:28):
girl anymore.
I'm seeing myself.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
That's.
It's such a powerful I mean Ican't even imagine.
I, I, the, we get to the late1990s and the first Liberian war
comes to an end and there's anelection of Charles Taylor to
the presidency of the country.
Two years later there's aninvasion, there's kind of
(19:56):
another sort of emergence,outbreak of conflict as a group
of rebels decides to challengeTaylor's regime.
What, what was this?
what was it like for you whenthere was this breather in some
ways, a couple of years wherethings were more peaceful at
(20:19):
some level or they weren't.
Tell us then.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
It was never peaceful .
It's.
I mean people assume that whenthe guns are silent then there's
peace, and my definition ofpeace is not the absence of war
but the presence of conditionsthat dignify all.
If in those days there werecheckpoints, you could get
beaten terribly or even killedif your car light was too bright
(20:46):
at a checkpoint.
The soldiers were ruthless.
They could come in yourcommunity and take anything.
Those were the conditions.
People, the way people some guyput it this way, say 65% of the
population over where Milletvoted for Charles Taylor and
asked him to lead us.
(21:08):
And he decided to be a rulerand so things were very well.
And then he was still meddlingin Sierra Leone, he was still
doing everything evil in anyother place that he could do
whatever he needed to do.
And so these people came, thewar started again and before we
(21:32):
knew it we were running.
But I was very, very angry andwhen we decided that we needed
to do something to end the war,it was that moment in the lives
of all of the women who.
Your child is seven years oldand that child is going to
school.
Imagine a seven-year-old childand if someone takes him or her,
(21:56):
puts them in a pickup truckthat night, gives them an AK-47,
teaches them how to shoot andthe next morning send them to
the war front.
So people children going toschool were being taken.
People, daughters were beingtaken, mothers were saying what
do we do?
(22:16):
And so I said we were pushed sofar back to the war that we
either go through the war or wefight back.
And our way, the protesting,was to fight back.
In those days you read CNN, youwatch CNN, you read New York
Times.
All you will hear about is theblood diamonds, charles Taylor,
(22:38):
and no one was talking about thewomen which is still the same
today who were suffering as aresult of the war.
And so when we stepped out, wedecided we wanted the narrative
to change.
So we had no clue, please.
None of us went to anyinstitution to learn active
non-violence, to learn anything.
(22:59):
We were just going by our head.
We started with $10 fromsomeone's handbag and the rest
of it is history.
If someone said let's go pickit there, we went there.
If someone said go block thisplace, we went there.
There was this one time the UNsent a delegation to Liberia and
they were the InternationalCrisis Contact Group on Liberia
(23:22):
for peace and we get to wherethey were with our statement.
So we had this statement, wehad laminated it and we kept it
in our clothes, like you tieyour lappa and you put it in
there.
And so we get there and thesoldiers were driving us and
this Swedish guy comes andstands at the gate of the UN
(23:45):
compound.
Next thing he goes in, severalwhite folks come, goes in
several, and one of the youngwomen, very brave said to me
boss, I'm crossing the street.
I said well, those boys haveAK-47,.
She said these white people arethere and they won't allow him
to shoot me.
So she crossed the street andthey were trying to push her
back and this guy from Swedensaid no, let her through.
(24:08):
And she handed them thestatement.
I said do you have more likethat?
We handed the statement, butthose were the things the US
Embassy would decide.
So they know what would work.
We'll just go and lie there andblock the place.
So our protest action wasthere's a need for us to change
the trend of how the world isdiscussing this war.
(24:30):
Everyone was too focused on thewarlords and not the women and
the children that were beingkilled, that were being adopted,
and we decided it's time for usto shift that.
So when we got out, it was ourpain, our shame, everything that
we had gone through that we putout there and protested.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
So when I read a bit about the first days of this
movement, there really were justa handful of women.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
We started with seven , $10, a press statement that we
put out in the newspaper, but Ithink the reason why it gained
traction was because we signedour names.
Don't like the morning dayactivists behind their computers
who say we the people, no, itwas not we the people.
(25:18):
All of us signed.
And so the next day the mediawanted to know who were these
crazy women.
Immediate, unconditionally fire.
Charles Taylor had said he willfight until the last soldier
died.
Peaceful dialogue he said hewas a Legitimate government.
He could not negotiate with therebels the deployment of an
(25:41):
intervention force.
Liberia was a sovereign nationand who not allow foreign troops
on the soil.
So everything he said he wouldnot do was everything we had in
that document.
And at that moment, when wesigned, people were asking is
this your death wish, becausethis is one of the most
notorious Authorized governmentin the world?
(26:03):
How do you sign your names tothis?
From seven to 60 to 65 to 200,250, a thousand?
The day we came out to protest,over 10,000 women.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Tell me what happened next.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Well, we, we had some crazy moments just recently.
We celebrated 18 years of thesigning of the peace agreement
in Liberia, august 18.
I mean, we celebrated 20 years18.
August 18 was 20 years of thesigning and we sat down to
reminisce, group of the sistersand I, after we protested the
first day, taylor did not stopbecause we protested outside,
(26:50):
close, on an open field.
Second day, we didn't see him.
Third, they would decide it'stime to take the message to him.
We did seven letters.
His wife, his brother, hisoffice himself, parliament, just
about anyone we knew knew him.
We send this letter to him sohe couldn't say.
And then after several weeks hedecided he will meet us.
(27:13):
But the instruction that he gavehis soldiers was that if we
were less than 25, they shouldnot allow us in.
Because there was such apolitics of fear.
And that's where the world istoday, from the US to everywhere
.
If you want people not to takeaction, just instill fear in
(27:35):
them.
So that politics of fear of himsaying if anyone got on the
streets to protest, even if hismother was amongst they, should
beat the hell out of them.
So that was the politics thathe was playing.
So they did expect that that 25women would be brave to show up.
So when I got to the executivemansion that day, I asked the
guy I say you said 25 if we'reless than 25.
(27:57):
And I said what if we're morethan 25?
And he looked at me and smirkLet me see.
So I said okay, I whipped outmy phone and told the women Form
your line and calm down.
2,500 women show up that dayand as the women were coming,
(28:20):
down was like sea of white.
He was like, oh my god, thesewomen are serious.
Then we get a message from himthat oh no, he can't see 25
women.
I mean, he can't see all of us.
10 of us should come into hisoffice.
I said no.
So back and forth, back andforth, and they said, oh, the
(28:40):
president want to see.
I told the women sit down, I'mgoing up and tell him.
Gave him a piece of my mindbecause I was just in beast mode
and so, as I was going, theysaid no, no, no, no, no.
He changes mine.
And the security kept saying tome why do you want to go to
jail?
Why do you want to be killed?
And so he said no.
He said he's coming.
So he came downstairs and he'ssitting like this and they put
(29:03):
the podium.
But the way they set the podiumman back would have been to him
and that statement is supposedto be read to him.
So I said turn the podium.
The guy was like, just read thething.
I said no, so by myself Iturned the podium around so that
he could see me readingwhatever I had to read and then
(29:23):
the offer us seats.
So he's sitting there with allof his people and they offer us
seats.
And when they offer us the seat, we got there, push the seat
and sat on the floor.
That was our way.
So once we left after thatmeeting with him, he agreed to
go to the peace talks and thenit was another journey we went
(29:45):
for.
We thought it was going to befor seven days.
We had five thousand dollars.
We went and mobilized otherwomen from Ghana, seven of us,
when the number seven is verysignificant to all of the things
that we did.
We went to Ghana mobilized withme.
The one week, ten days of peacetalks, turned to three months.
We ran out of money.
(30:06):
We were sleeping.
We didn't have hotels anymore.
We're sleeping on the floor.
I had a tiny house there we'resleeping on the floor in the
house, but every morning we werecommitted to going.
The talks were going nowhere andso one day I was losing
interest because I was gettingangry.
And when you're doingnon-violence work, anger is the
(30:28):
last thing you want to have inyou, because it you can't think,
you can't focus.
That morning I went to read thenews every morning, that was my
routine and this young girl hadjust given birth and she went
out to hang her baby diapers andtwo little boys, who were the
ages of my two sons at the time,were brushing their teeth In a
(30:52):
misaligned that in kill or threeof them.
I watched that video over andover and I'm crying.
Then I called my mentor sugarscooper and said sugars, get
more women.
We're coming to do somethingtoday.
We get to the peace hall, I sitdown.
We sent for more women.
I told them women lack arms,lack arms in front of the door.
(31:14):
So the delegates are in, likethis room, and so we sit to all
of the entry point and we lackarms.
And then I write a hostage noteand send it in to say that the
piece was tapped on this andthis Nigerian general came and
took it in and all we could hearon the overhead speaker was
(31:38):
distinguished ladies andgentlemen, the piece hall has
been seized by General Leima andher people.
So they said they're coming toarrest me because I was
obstructing justice.
So I decided I was strip nakedand by the time I started the
(31:58):
police left me and they startedtelling us oh, some of the men
are jumping out the window.
So we fortified the place.
The mediator then came andnegotiated with us.
But I tell anyone that Liberiahas seen 20 years of peace is
because, first, god led us to dothat action, because afterwards
, less than two weeks later,august 18th, they signed the
(32:23):
Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
Did we end there?
No, we went to Liberia, tookthe peace agreement apart.
And the reason why I'm takingmy time to tell this is because
most times when you're doingpeace work, people tend to think
that, oh, after they signed thepeace agreement, peace arrived.
No, we were determined, becausethat was like the 16 or 15th
(32:44):
peace agreement that we'vesigned.
So we were determined to ensurethat we implemented it to the
letter.
We took it apart, went toLiberia, sat down 80 women
leaders.
We set benchmarks from thistime to this time, this time to
this time, and we weredetermined to ensure that
everything was implemented.
At the end of the day, inOctober we got Africa's first
(33:08):
female president because of thehard work and the way Christiana
Amanpou sometimes would say tome layman, without you and the
work the women did, presidentSarlif would not have been
President of the Republic ofLiberia, and I believe it.
I tell people her elections wasthe icing on the cake that we
already baked with the peacework that we did.
(33:28):
So that's how we've come now to20 years of uninterrupted
shooting.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
I don't wanna call it peace, thank you, Thank you,
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you,Thank you, Thank you.
You know if we can go back, Iwould be remiss if I didn't ask
about something that I think youget asked about a lot, which
you mentioned, and I think whenyou mentioned I stripped naked,
right.
(33:56):
There's this.
This is quite a famous storynow about you, and there's some
video of it too, of you reallyholding your ground and, in a
powerful way, shaming these menin that room for daring to be so
stubborn as to not continuenegotiating and hammering out
(34:17):
the hard work of peace.
Can you tell us a little bitmore about the types of
strategies that you've seenyourself and others in the
movement use in these ways thatwere really I think you know
both specific to the contextthat you were in?
I think it's important to notethat this is a way of shaming
(34:39):
kind of men the sing the nakedbody of a mother, kind of
shaming men in this context.
That's one of many tools thatyou used in this movement and
I'm curious if you can justshare anything that might
inspire.
You know others that arelooking around the globe at
their own work and their ownactivism.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Well, someone asked this question why do you think a
group of men who allegedlyordered the rape of maybe an
approximate or alleges 65% ofthe population, why do you think
they would care when they'vehad for a few handful of women
(35:19):
stripped naked?
Someone, one of the warlordssaid the moment he stood at that
door and saw us trying todisrobe.
The only question he askedhimself what have we done to
bring our mothers to the placewhere they would give up their
dignity?
(35:39):
And for me, that action in thatmoment.
Culturally, it was bad luck forthem to see our naked bodies,
but for me everything that Italk about.
At the beginning of mygrandmother socializing me.
The socialization was that thestrong would protect the weak
and all of the different things.
(36:00):
I saw it crumble in that momentand so my disrobing was to tell
them that the last shred of mydignity I'm giving it to you all
in protest.
The other strategy we used wasthat Liberia was so polarized
(36:22):
and long ethnic religious, soour movement was made of
Christian and Muslim women andone of the slogans we used was
can the bullet tell a Christianfrom a Muslim?
Our movement also made use ofwomen at the community levels,
but we never went into thosecommunities to tell them how to
(36:44):
carry out their activities,because we were very much aware
that, in as much as we're allLiberians, we're all living
through war.
Every context had differentstory.
Every community was a differentwar context, so we dealt with
every group at a different level.
(37:05):
So all of these differentthings.
So there when I look atdifferent movements 2008 I was
in Israel.
We screened the documentaryPray the Devil Back to Hell.
When we came out of the room,some of the Israeli women came
to me to say I'm sorry, this isnot our reality.
2008, we went to Palestine, wewent to the West Bank and we
(37:26):
screened the documentary there.
Some of the young women fromPalestine were so upset and say
why are the older women notdoing what you all did?
We should take up and do thiskind of thing.
In 2013,.
Israel had those 14 days of warand a woman said to me her two
(37:52):
sons had been.
They joined the army, so theirwives were at home with them
with their very young children,and her husband is a retired
army personnel.
They're sitting in the basementof the house, these two young
women and these children.
She said, and they dawn on herthat if these boys die on the
(38:13):
front, this is us right here.
She got up, went upstairs, puton a white T-shirt, wore a jeans
trousers, took a poster andwrote we want peace.
And as she was leaving thehouse, she saw someone, a guy.
He said where are you going?
She said I'm going to stay inthe street corner to protest,
(38:36):
even if it is just me.
He said no, it's not just you.
There are a group of womenstanding there at Netanyahu's
house.
They are apparently protesting.
That was the birth of the womenwage peace.
Eventually, women wage peacegot in touch with Palestinian
women, and 2014, they asked mecan you come Pray the devil back
(38:59):
to hell?
Had become an inspiration forthem.
I went in 2016 and they hadthat march from community to
community, tens of thousands ofIsraeli and Palestinian women
banding together to say we wantpeace in this nation.
So the point that I'm making isthat at some point, when people
(39:21):
start to talk yes, you can onlyuse Liberia's experience as an
inspiration.
You can't copy and paste, andthat's the problem I have with
the UN when it comes to peace,peace building, peace processes,
because they think every peaceprocess is copy and paste.
There must be contextualanalysis.
People must know that this,this and this.
So we use many differentstrategies, including sex strike
(39:45):
.
In our rural areas.
The sex strike was effectivebecause the women told the men
that they needed to fast andpray for peace.
So if, as they were fasting,they couldn't have sex.
So they spent all their nightsand days in the churches and in
(40:05):
the mocks, and their husbandsagree.
In Monrovia they had adifferent strategy.
We started seeing spiked indomestic violence.
So we told the women you canend your strike, but the rural
community in one community.
On the day that they endedtheir protests I saw all these
old men who would be going on afarm coming with roses, and I
(40:28):
was asking one of the women.
I said why are they giving youall flowers?
They said, oh, tonight we're inthe sex strike, so they have to
be nice to us.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Lama, I've been very privileged in so many ways to do
work in many places around theworld that have been impacted by
war, including in Israel andPalestine, in Rwanda, in Bosnia,
in Colombia, in Sri Lanka, inNepal, in a lot of places, and I
cannot tell you how many timeswomen I'm interviewing say have
(41:05):
you seen pray the devil back tohell?
I've heard this in rural partsof Colombia, I've heard this in
Ramallah, I've heard this inRwanda, I've heard this in rural
Bosnia, and it's somethingabout the model of standing
strong and fiercely demandingpeace in unison with other women
that I think really haslaunched generations of
(41:29):
activists around the world.
It's I'm grateful for that film, I think, because it really
catalyzed the story, and, ofcourse, then, a few years later,
the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011.
Can you tell us a little bitmore about your work, sense,
(41:51):
those things and what you'vewitnessed and what you've seen
around the world?
And maybe, to start, what sortsof movements or work that women
have been doing have you seenand thought that's really
important, that's reallyimpressive.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
Oh, I think.
Everywhere I've been, I'malways blown away by the
strength, the tenacity of women.
I'll take you back to Congo,DRC.
I went there and those were thedays the headlines were saying
Congo was the rape capital ofthe world.
And sitting with the women,they said the sort of accent
(42:29):
what's the biggest problem youall have here?
And the answer was women'sleadership.
And I said what about rape?
Rape is as a result of leadersfeeling to implement all of the
policies and laws that we havehere.
But if we had a lot of women inthose seats?
So then, prioritize theproblems.
Women's leadership came first.
(42:51):
Women's economic empowermentcame second, Because one of the
things they said is, if we hadour own money, even for
ourselves, our daughters wouldnot be forced into early
marriages and if you are abused,you can leave and go somewhere.
So all of those different things, but one of the things that I
saw in Congo that just blew meaway they had this circle of
(43:12):
women who had been sexuallyabused.
They were survivors of sexualviolence and they were about 100
in a group.
Every time they heard that somenew person had been violated
and was taken to Ponzi, thesewomen would go there, and those
who had clothes will offerclothes, those who have food
(43:34):
will offer food, and once thatperson was discharged, someone
was giving the tax of stayingwith that person to bring them
back to life.
So when we were having thismeeting, there was this very
cute baby and I held him, playedwith him Because if you want to
get me bring a baby around,Even after nine children, I'm
(43:54):
still looking for more and soplaying with him.
And then the mother started totell her story that she was in a
mine and she was rapedrepeatedly.
When they phoned her, she wasalmost dead and then she was
pregnant, but there was no waythey could terminate the
pregnancy.
She would have lost her life.
So when she came through, thesewomen brought her this one
(44:18):
woman she was assigned to.
She now calls her mother, nurseher back to life yes, the baby.
And so at that moment she wasstrong enough now to start a
business.
So they needed for someone togive her a seed grant for her to
do her business.
So I was the person who did theseed grant.
But she said the biggestsadness that she carries is
(44:40):
tomorrow.
If her son asks her who is myfather, what answer will she
give to her child, but thosewomen, just that circle of
support that they have aroundeach other.
Then I go to Libya where, afterGaddafi leaves, no one could
talk about rape publicly.
So I'm in meetings, these womenare talking hush, hush, hush,
(45:03):
hush, hush.
Something terrible happenedhere.
So even in public gathering,when government officials stood
up to talk, this is somethingterrible.
Dr Abu Lash, who is aPalestinian doctor, and I were
on that trip, so I was like that.
He said I'm just angry, he wasangry, I was angry, I was ready
to go to jail.
So there's one day I'm todeliver the keynote.
(45:23):
I get on stage in front of thehighest council of everything,
from president to prime minister, to chief justice, to justice
minister Very few women andinternational partners there and
I stood up.
When I said rape, you couldhear the gaps in the room and I
ended my speech to say ifnothing was done, then those in
(45:46):
charge was no different fromGaddafi, and I walk off the
stage.
I was like, girl, you're goingto jail.
Did you just compare thesepeople to Gaddafi?
You're going to jail.
So anyway, we left.
And then we were in Congo in themiddle of a press conference.
(46:06):
When I get a call on my cellphone.
It was the justice minister ofLibya and he said to me I'm
about to leave this job, butsomething you said in this place
has haunted me.
I've done a law for survivorsof rape and I need you to help
me for this law to be passed.
(46:27):
Everyone taught the Muslimcouncil who have been the most
difficult.
They passed it at a heartbeat.
Parliament was our problem.
We took that law to the UN, tothis place, to that place, to
the other place.
Eventually it got passed.
For me, one of the greatest joyof that law was that women who
(46:47):
conceived as a result of sexualviolence could go and apply for
passport, Because in mostAfrican countries, if your
father's name is not on yourbirth certificate, you can't get
passports.
But that law states that womenwho had children as a result of
sexual violence could apply forpassport and no one would stand
(47:09):
in their way.
And they set up some fund tocontribute to the well-being of
people.
So that, again, is just onefact.
But the one thing that I wantto say, and the reason why I'm
giving all of these examples, isnot top level that has made
these things to happen forpeople, and whether it's Congo,
whether it's Rwanda, whetherit's Burundi, wherever there has
(47:31):
been crisis, Nigeria, where yousee Boko Haram and all of these
things is at the communitylevel.
Women at the community levelare determined to survive, to
live.
So, whether or without donors'money, whether or without the
UN's permission, whether orwithout all of the things that
we're doing here, these womenare determined every morning
(47:52):
that we get up, we work forpeace, because this is our
insurance policy for ourchildren.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you
, thank you, thank you.
That's amazing.
I want to pick up on somethingin your last answer, just
briefly, because you mentionedPonzi in Congo, which is Dennis
Macquegay's organization thathas been really working towards
addressing sexual violence, andyou've also mentioned going to
(48:23):
Israel and Palestine for womenwage peace, and I've seen
pictures of you crossing thedemilitarized zone in between
the Koreas in 2015 with folkslike Gloria Steinem, on these
really important examples ofcross context solidarity and
collaboration, and I'm wondering, maybe, just what you can tell
(48:44):
us about the importance of thatkind of global approach, about
trying to build coalitionsacross boundaries of place and
of nation.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
I mean, one of the things I've learned is that when
people have lived in warcontexts, there are different
myths and misconceptions thatpeople have about the place,
about the people, aboutdifferent things.
You know, when people say, oh,I'm from Liberia prior to the
Nobel, or even now, people askme where did you learn English?
(49:16):
Liberia, you know, butdifferent things.
So people have formed differentimpression about different
places.
I tell you one of my proudestmoments coming back from North
Korea.
I was coming back into the US,and so I was so stressed that,
okay, north Korea, us, I'll getto the immigrations.
(49:39):
I don't have a green card.
I still come into this countryon visa because I love being
Liberian, regardless of.
So I'm thinking maybe they willcall me into that room and ask
me questions what did you go todo to North Korea?
And then I get to the securitypoint and the guy opened my
passport and say, oh, you justcame from North Korea, I am so
(50:05):
proud of you.
That you see is crowning dead,horrible people that you see,
suffering people that you see.
And I was just standing therelike gosh and he just went on
and, oh, you are so brave to be,congratulations, you are strong
.
And I'm like, oh, but again, inas much as we have our own
(50:33):
mindset about how people live inthese different spaces, it's
important for us to engage.
Prior to going to Korea, thenumber of death threats are got
emails.
People were so angry that wehad been bought by the regime in
North Korea.
Like I'm, like, my visa is $10.
(50:55):
These people, as a Liberian,paid $10 to go.
They have no interest in me andI have no interest in them.
We were going on a citizen tocitizen mission.
To answer your question is veryimportant for us.
And if you go on the internet,I gave a speech at Dartmouth one
year and I call it the openmind challenge, and I think this
(51:16):
is what we need in the worldtoday Open mind to engage and
embrace.
Because it's only by crossingover to the other Me coming and
asking people living here inDenver, how do you do it?
And you asking me that we cantruly come to understand that we
are more united than we imagine.
(51:39):
We share one thing and that'sour collective humanity, and I
think if each and every one ofus was focused on the collective
humanity, it would be so easyfor us to engage and embrace.
I'll give you a short storyagain.
I went to India last year toKalash Satyati, my Nobel brother
the favorite brother of theNobel's, don't tell the others,
(52:01):
yeah, that's right.
And I was at the Balashramwhere he rescues children who
had been taken into slavery, andthis night the children were
playing.
Every night at Balashram is aparty, so I'm sitting there and
they were dancing, dancing, andthis child came and stood next
to me.
He's probably eight, nine andhe's just looking at me, looking
(52:25):
at me.
I don't speak Hindi, I don'tspeak any of the languages, but
I saw a longing for a mother'stouch, so I shifted in my seat
and said to him come and sitnext to me.
And he came and sat.
Next thing he showed me is ascar like a low soul on his foot
(52:48):
and the motion that he wasplaying foot ball.
He fell and then I touched itand said sorry, and he kept
looking at me and somethingwithin me said just give him a
hug.
So then I told him to, becauseI didn't know what was
appropriate, because as anAfrican I would have put him in
my lap, give him a hug, but Iwas scared before they say you
(53:11):
know, they cancel me Becausethis is the cancel culture.
So I hugged him and we sat down.
In my native tongue they say,when they say mothers, a desire
for mother, they say Neewaali.
So I named him Neewaali for therest of the time that I was
(53:32):
there that he has a desire formommy, and so every but that
night after I gave him that hugwhen he was going to bed, you
could see he came back and Igave him that hug again.
Every day while I was atBalashram he would come for his
hug.
That is what the world needs.
(53:52):
You don't need to speak thelanguage, you don't need to look
the same An understanding ofour collective humanity.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
Thank you, Thank you, Thanks for listening to this
special bonus episode of whatthe World Will Become.
We are really grateful to thoseof you who have followed along
with us this season.
If you enjoyed the podcast, dous a favor and subscribe or rate
(54:29):
us wherever you downloaded it.
It helps other people find itand it helps us know me know
whether we should make anotherseason.
I'm Marie Barry and, if nothingelse, I hope that the activists
we featured on the podcast thisseason give all of you
listening the courage and theinspiration to stand up for
peace, justice and human rightsevery single day.
(54:50):
The world needs it now morethan ever.
Music playing.
Welcome to what the World WillBecome, a podcast about the
humans who dedicate their livesto building a more free and just
world.
My name is Marie Berry.
(00:24):
I'm a feminist researcher andwriter, and I've spent the
better part of the past 20 yearsresearching and thinking about
how women experience war and itsaftermath.
I've done research in placeslike Rwanda, bosnia, kenya,
nepal and Colombia, and I'veinterviewed hundreds of women
whose lives have been shaped byviolence Along the way.
(00:44):
I have then repeatedly struckby two simultaneous truths the
first is that violence isdevastating, leaving those who
survive it with trauma and griefthat can last for years and
even generations, but the secondis that, even in the most bleak
and impossible of situations,there is often a great beauty, a
way that those who suffer fromviolence find love, joy and
(01:07):
resilience that can creativelyforge new paths forward, paths
that offer us profound hope andpossibility for building a more
just and free world.
Music playing.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to aspecial bonus episode of Season
1 of what the World Will Become,and you're in for a real treat.
(01:28):
This episode features LeymahBowie, the 2011 Nobel Peace
Prize laureate from Liberia.
In our conversation, leymahshares her story of growing up
the horrors from when theLiberian Civil War broke out and
how she eventually mobilizedthousands of women to stop the
war.
In large part because ofLeymah's effort, after the war
(01:51):
ended, liberia elected the firstwoman head of state in Africa,
ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
In the years since, leymah hasbeen an active participant in
movements for peace across theglobe.
She was featured in the filmPray the Devil Back to Hell and
wrote a beautiful memoir that Irecommend to anyone who wants to
(02:12):
make a change in the world.
It's called Mighty Be OurPowers.
Our conversation was recordedin September 2023 in front of a
live audience at the JosephKorbel School of International
Studies at the University ofDenver as part of an event that
we hosted with our friends atWorld Denver.
I hope you enjoy.
So I want to just begin tonightby asking you, leymah, to share
(02:39):
with us a little bit about yourearly life, your childhood and
what it was like growing up inLiberia.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Thank you.
Good evening everyone.
It's truly an honor to be herethis evening and to see a full
house on a Thursday night.
Thank you all for coming.
So I am the fourth of fivegirls.
My mother never had a son, soyou can imagine that for many
(03:09):
years she was the ridicule ofmany people, because having a
son is very important in manyfamilies.
Our grandmother, who died in2021 at the age of 115.
So I'm here for a long time Wasour primary caregiver and I
(03:35):
tell people that she was ourfirst feminist teacher.
Ma, as we called her, was theone who taught all of us the
alphabet.
She had a fifth grade educationand that's where she stopped
and then she was married off,but that fifth grade education
(03:57):
was what she used to start allof her grandchildren off in
kindergarten.
I tell people that my story andjust this afternoon I was
telling Eboniza Noma when he wasdriving me here, that I'm not
the stereotypical African story,that story of oh, they never
(04:17):
allow us to go to school, andthey know I grew up empowered.
I grew up hearing that you cando anything you want to do.
I grew up hearing thateducation is important for your
future and all of those things.
I think literally my siblingsand I, we had such
(04:40):
self-confidence that we werejust troublemakers, like we were
sent to jail many times forfighting in the neighborhood,
and it would probably be boysthat were fighting.
So I'm just laying this premiseto say that even as girls and
we had my grandmother was amember of every secret society
(05:01):
in Liberia.
So she was very powerful.
So she was part of the malesociety, part of the female
society.
So if you're from West Africaor from Africa, you know when
they have those societies it'sprimarily for men, for women,
but she could go into anysociety.
She was really very powerful.
When it was time for us to goand do FGM, they came.
(05:25):
I remembered were very young andthere was a lot of whispers in
the living room and my dad cameoutside and said my daughters
are not going and he stood up toit.
We did not.
If anyone tried to take mydaughters to do the female
genital mutilation, I'll killthem.
So on one end we have thesewomen who were telling us you
(05:51):
can do anything, and on theother end we have this man who
was telling us I will protectyou from tradition and culture.
So that was the life that wegrew up with.
We grew up our grandmother usedto say when you get married, if
your husband brings rice, youshould be able to bring the
charcoal to cook the rice.
(06:12):
And the way I now understand itbecause I've been able to take
that statement unpack, do my ownanalysis.
And literally what she wassaying to us was you must
dominate your space.
Don't ever allow anyone todominate your space for you.
You have to um the space thatGod has given you on this earth.
(06:37):
You must be the author of yourstory.
You must be the champion ofyour game.
You must be the soldier in yourbattle.
So that was the mindset I wentinto life with, and so, high
school, I went into politics.
In high school, I was senatorfor my school.
2019, we celebrated our 30thhigh school reunion, and I will
(07:01):
end with that.
And there was this one girl whosaid to me you know, I hated
you so badly in high school.
And I said why?
She said because you came inthat high school at 10th grade
and I had been there all my life, but the first week of you
(07:22):
being in that school, the entireschool knew you.
And then I said I'm so sorrythat you hated me, but
unfortunately I never saw you.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
So, if I do the math right, the 2019 30th high school
reunion marked exactly 30 yearssince 1989.
And in 1989 in Liberia, whichis, I think most are familiar
with, a very small country aboutfive million people in West
Africa, in 1989, a person namedCharles Taylor invaded the
(07:59):
country and basically started awar, and that war lasted until
1997, when Charles Taylor waseventually then elected
president shortly thereafter andwe'll get into the details of
this, but I wanna know whatchanged that moment.
It was right around the timeyou graduated from high school
(08:21):
that the war began.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Exactly one day, my graduation was December 23rd
1989.
In December 24th 1989, the warstarted, and I tell people that
we took it for joke.
From December to March to Aprilto May to June, I started
(08:42):
college, science college.
My dream was to become apediatrician.
See how far I am from that.
My dream was to become apediatrician.
And then one morning all hellbroke loose, and the way I like
to describe it is that I woke up, a 17 year old girl, and by 6
(09:02):
pm I was an adult at the twinkof an eye, because my mother had
gone to work, my father hadgone to work, my other siblings
had all left to go to work or touniversity.
I had a late class and then thatmorning, like really loud
shooting and my younger siblingswere home I'm the older of my
(09:25):
siblings at home, nieces andnephews.
By 5 pm, over 25 internallydisplaced people from our church
had come, and then my aunt islooking at me and saying to me I
can't take any decisions.
This is your father's house.
You are the only one of hischildren here.
You have to decide.
(09:46):
In that moment I'm deciding whosleeps where she's whispering
to me.
There are documents, there arejewellery.
There should be this you needto.
So, yeah, am I carefree,basketball loving nightclub,
going teenager and all of asudden I have to think about
documents and solidifying thefuture of our home, thinking
(10:07):
about how 25 people will eat.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
And that was the beginning of me taking care of
people, and I haven't stoppedhere today, a huge rupture right
Between the way that life wasbefore and the way that life
then proceeded, and it sounds,having read so much about you
over the years, that itfundamentally changed the course
(10:30):
of your career, your studiesand your life.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Totally, totally.
I mean, one of the definingmoments for me was a young man.
A young man, we were allinternally displaced to get at
the church and he left and saidhe was going to the Taylor side.
So the country had been dividedinto different factions and we
were still on the governmentside.
(10:55):
My mom kept saying to him don'tgo, and he kept saying I can't
stay here.
So he went and by 4 pm that day, strangely, we're listening to
focus on Africa BBC and thepresenter was saying that they
had just killed a group of youngmen and that he formed this ID
(11:21):
and he literally called thisyoung man's name and then my
classmate that was very close tohim and all of his siblings had
been killed.
So we're just hearing news ofpeople who had future.
One minute, this person and Itold myself what is the use of
going to college, then to medschool, I mean when one tiny
(11:42):
object can undo everything thatyou sacrifice for?
So I'm not going back to school.
I got angry at God.
No one should call God namewhere I'm seated.
I'm not going to pray, I'm notgoing to do anything, I'm not
like literally.
I was just in beast mode, angry, looking for food, wake up in
the morning, my mom lost hermind.
(12:05):
So one day she's sitting, she'sthe people.
Because my dad was in thegovernment, we still had food
and she had such confidence inthe government that my sister
had come home one day and saidshe was working medical records
at the government hospital andpeople had come to look for the
medical records of 100 children.
And she said no one brought 100children.
(12:28):
Yeah, so to check emergencyeverything no children.
Eventually we heard that thegovernment soldiers had taken
those 100 children and thrownall of them in a well.
My mom refused to believe that,so that was a point of
contention between her and mysister.
So this day all along, she'sstill saying the government
(12:51):
soldiers are the good guys.
This day I'm going to look forgreens and other things.
We still have rights, but wehave money, so I have to go and
look for other food.
I come back and my mom is justsitting there like she's lost
her mind and she's crying andsaying I killed a man, I killed
a man, I killed a man.
I'm wondering how did you killsomeone?
(13:13):
And then she said this guy wasdigging in the garbage and she
got up and there was a wirefence.
So she went and stood at thefence and said to him what are
you looking for?
He said I'm looking for palmkernels.
She said to do what he said totake home for my children and I
(13:34):
will crack it and eat it.
She said you don't have food.
He said no.
So she went inside and broughtfive cups, five or 10 cups of
rice and handed it to him.
In that moment the soldiers came.
She went back and sat down andthey asked him who gave you the
rice?
He's afraid to say her, becauseshe would be in trouble.
(13:55):
He's just standing there and inthose days they used to call
rice gold dust.
It's either you were a rebel ifyou had rice or you work with
government.
In any case, anyone who hadrice was in danger of being
killed.
And this man stood therelooking, looking, looking.
He couldn't say she gave it tome.
They took the rice from him andpoint blank executed him right
(14:18):
there.
So when I came, she had noability to make decisions on
let's eat this, let's go here.
So not only did I lose mychildhood and everything, I then
became a caregiver for someonewho was mentally unstable.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Yeah, that is such a tremendous weight to carry, the
caregiving also to see yourmother in that, in that
condition, and to have so muchof your family to also be
thinking about.
And I know that there was somuch displacement during the war
and I'm wondering if you cantell us or share us a little bit
(15:01):
about what you witnessed andexperienced in terms of how the
war didn't only come to people'shomes but caused mass of
numbers of people to fleeeverything that they knew, every
bit of safety that they had.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
We were before the war, 3 million people 1 million
were internally displaced, justto give you an idea 500,000
became refugees, and these areall estimated figures.
We had to move more than 10times.
Like you come to this place,you sleep this night and then
there's a missile attack.
Then you have to move toanother place and you move again
(15:39):
.
So we're persistently moving.
One neighborhood we went to thebedroom was the size of the
stage.
We were 50 people, 5-0.
So at night, if you manage tofind a spot, you sleep for like
(16:02):
three hours and then someonewill come and tap you.
You have to go and sit outsideor someone else to come and
sleep.
That's how we slept forprobably a week, because at that
time we were separate from ourfather, so we didn't know where
he was.
He didn't know where we were.
People went and told him theyhad killed all of us.
We heard that he had beenkilled.
(16:24):
So those were the kinds ofthings that we're dealing with
Families just moving endlessly,aimlessly, people sleeping
outside Anyone can offer you aplace to sleep.
When I think back and a lot ofthe memories from the war have
suppressed for good reasons butwhen I think back, this is
something that I don't wish onmy worst enemy.
(16:47):
Recently, last year, we went toPoland and entered Ukraine, and
so while we were in Poland,they said let's go to the
refugee center.
We got there and just seeingthe sheets like that dividing
the room, I lost it.
I cried the entire time on liveTV.
(17:11):
There was nothing that couldget out of me.
All of the prepared statementwent out the window because just
that divided sheet.
It brought back memories that Ithought had gone away, and so
that's how you live when you'vebeen through what we've been
through in Liberia.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
It's gutting thinking about the scale of displacement
today.
I think the number now is thatthere's 110 million forcibly
displaced people in the worldtoday, inside and outside of
their countries of origin, andthat's just that scale.
You think about all the rooms,like the room you were in and it
(17:56):
just it catches your breath.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
The one thing you need to also understand is that
the war lasts so long that atone point I was carrying my
nieces and nephews as refugees.
Then at another point I wascarrying my own children.
That's the progression.
So at one stage is familymembers like nieces and nephews.
(18:20):
At another stage is me with twovery young children pregnant on
a ship that is about to sink,trying to find our way out of
Liberia.
Togana so many different partsof the story that you don't want
to wish on.
Your worst enemy went to thelargest refugee camp in Jordan a
(18:43):
few years ago.
It was a long convoy, veryimportant people, presidents and
all of that, and we were thesmall people on the delegation
and at some point they said theconvoy needs to leave.
And who's holding the convoy up?
Leima?
Because I'm seated on thesidewalk and I see me in a young
(19:07):
girl with hopes and dreams ofbecoming a translator at the UN
and she's talking sopassionately.
She has perfected her English,so everyone is calling her to
talk.
I'm glued, I'm stuck there andthey're like come, come, come.
We need to leave, we need toleave, but I'm not seeing this
(19:28):
girl anymore.
I'm seeing myself.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
That's.
It's such a powerful I mean Ican't even imagine.
I, I, the, we get to the late1990s and the first Liberian war
comes to an end and there's anelection of Charles Taylor to
the presidency of the country.
Two years later there's aninvasion, there's kind of
(19:56):
another sort of emergence,outbreak of conflict as a group
of rebels decides to challengeTaylor's regime.
What, what was this?
what was it like for you whenthere was this breather in some
ways, a couple of years wherethings were more peaceful at
(20:19):
some level or they weren't.
Tell us then.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
It was never peaceful .
It's.
I mean people assume that whenthe guns are silent then there's
peace, and my definition ofpeace is not the absence of war
but the presence of conditionsthat dignify all.
If in those days there werecheckpoints, you could get
beaten terribly or even killedif your car light was too bright
(20:46):
at a checkpoint.
The soldiers were ruthless.
They could come in yourcommunity and take anything.
Those were the conditions.
People, the way people some guyput it this way, say 65% of the
population over where Milletvoted for Charles Taylor and
asked him to lead us.
(21:08):
And he decided to be a rulerand so things were very well.
And then he was still meddlingin Sierra Leone, he was still
doing everything evil in anyother place that he could do
whatever he needed to do.
And so these people came, thewar started again and before we
(21:32):
knew it we were running.
But I was very, very angry andwhen we decided that we needed
to do something to end the war,it was that moment in the lives
of all of the women who.
Your child is seven years oldand that child is going to
school.
Imagine a seven-year-old childand if someone takes him or her,
(21:56):
puts them in a pickup truckthat night, gives them an AK-47,
teaches them how to shoot andthe next morning send them to
the war front.
So people children going toschool were being taken.
People, daughters were beingtaken, mothers were saying what
do we do?
(22:16):
And so I said we were pushed sofar back to the war that we
either go through the war or wefight back.
And our way, the protesting,was to fight back.
In those days you read CNN, youwatch CNN, you read New York
Times.
All you will hear about is theblood diamonds, charles Taylor,
(22:38):
and no one was talking about thewomen which is still the same
today who were suffering as aresult of the war.
And so when we stepped out, wedecided we wanted the narrative
to change.
So we had no clue, please.
None of us went to anyinstitution to learn active
non-violence, to learn anything.
(22:59):
We were just going by our head.
We started with $10 fromsomeone's handbag and the rest
of it is history.
If someone said let's go pickit there, we went there.
If someone said go block thisplace, we went there.
There was this one time the UNsent a delegation to Liberia and
they were the InternationalCrisis Contact Group on Liberia
(23:22):
for peace and we get to wherethey were with our statement.
So we had this statement, wehad laminated it and we kept it
in our clothes, like you tieyour lappa and you put it in
there.
And so we get there and thesoldiers were driving us and
this Swedish guy comes andstands at the gate of the UN
(23:45):
compound.
Next thing he goes in, severalwhite folks come, goes in
several, and one of the youngwomen, very brave said to me
boss, I'm crossing the street.
I said well, those boys haveAK-47,.
She said these white people arethere and they won't allow him
to shoot me.
So she crossed the street andthey were trying to push her
back and this guy from Swedensaid no, let her through.
(24:08):
And she handed them thestatement.
I said do you have more likethat?
We handed the statement, butthose were the things the US
Embassy would decide.
So they know what would work.
We'll just go and lie there andblock the place.
So our protest action wasthere's a need for us to change
the trend of how the world isdiscussing this war.
(24:30):
Everyone was too focused on thewarlords and not the women and
the children that were beingkilled, that were being adopted,
and we decided it's time for usto shift that.
So when we got out, it was ourpain, our shame, everything that
we had gone through that we putout there and protested.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
So when I read a bit about the first days of this
movement, there really were justa handful of women.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
We started with seven , $10, a press statement that we
put out in the newspaper, but Ithink the reason why it gained
traction was because we signedour names.
Don't like the morning dayactivists behind their computers
who say we the people, no, itwas not we the people.
(25:18):
All of us signed.
And so the next day the mediawanted to know who were these
crazy women.
Immediate, unconditionally fire.
Charles Taylor had said he willfight until the last soldier
died.
Peaceful dialogue he said hewas a Legitimate government.
He could not negotiate with therebels the deployment of an
(25:41):
intervention force.
Liberia was a sovereign nationand who not allow foreign troops
on the soil.
So everything he said he wouldnot do was everything we had in
that document.
And at that moment, when wesigned, people were asking is
this your death wish, becausethis is one of the most
notorious Authorized governmentin the world?
(26:03):
How do you sign your names tothis?
From seven to 60 to 65 to 200,250, a thousand?
The day we came out to protest,over 10,000 women.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Tell me what happened next.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Well, we, we had some crazy moments just recently.
We celebrated 18 years of thesigning of the peace agreement
in Liberia, august 18.
I mean, we celebrated 20 years18.
August 18 was 20 years of thesigning and we sat down to
reminisce, group of the sistersand I, after we protested the
first day, taylor did not stopbecause we protested outside,
(26:50):
close, on an open field.
Second day, we didn't see him.
Third, they would decide it'stime to take the message to him.
We did seven letters.
His wife, his brother, hisoffice himself, parliament, just
about anyone we knew knew him.
We send this letter to him sohe couldn't say.
And then after several weeks hedecided he will meet us.
(27:13):
But the instruction that he gavehis soldiers was that if we
were less than 25, they shouldnot allow us in.
Because there was such apolitics of fear.
And that's where the world istoday, from the US to everywhere
.
If you want people not to takeaction, just instill fear in
(27:35):
them.
So that politics of fear of himsaying if anyone got on the
streets to protest, even if hismother was amongst they, should
beat the hell out of them.
So that was the politics thathe was playing.
So they did expect that that 25women would be brave to show up.
So when I got to the executivemansion that day, I asked the
guy I say you said 25 if we'reless than 25.
(27:57):
And I said what if we're morethan 25?
And he looked at me and smirkLet me see.
So I said okay, I whipped outmy phone and told the women Form
your line and calm down.
2,500 women show up that dayand as the women were coming,
(28:20):
down was like sea of white.
He was like, oh my god, thesewomen are serious.
Then we get a message from himthat oh no, he can't see 25
women.
I mean, he can't see all of us.
10 of us should come into hisoffice.
I said no.
So back and forth, back andforth, and they said, oh, the
(28:40):
president want to see.
I told the women sit down, I'mgoing up and tell him.
Gave him a piece of my mindbecause I was just in beast mode
and so, as I was going, theysaid no, no, no, no, no.
He changes mine.
And the security kept saying tome why do you want to go to
jail?
Why do you want to be killed?
And so he said no.
He said he's coming.
So he came downstairs and he'ssitting like this and they put
(29:03):
the podium.
But the way they set the podiumman back would have been to him
and that statement is supposedto be read to him.
So I said turn the podium.
The guy was like, just read thething.
I said no, so by myself Iturned the podium around so that
he could see me readingwhatever I had to read and then
(29:23):
the offer us seats.
So he's sitting there with allof his people and they offer us
seats.
And when they offer us the seat, we got there, push the seat
and sat on the floor.
That was our way.
So once we left after thatmeeting with him, he agreed to
go to the peace talks and thenit was another journey we went
(29:45):
for.
We thought it was going to befor seven days.
We had five thousand dollars.
We went and mobilized otherwomen from Ghana, seven of us,
when the number seven is verysignificant to all of the things
that we did.
We went to Ghana mobilized withme.
The one week, ten days of peacetalks, turned to three months.
We ran out of money.
(30:06):
We were sleeping.
We didn't have hotels anymore.
We're sleeping on the floor.
I had a tiny house there we'resleeping on the floor in the
house, but every morning we werecommitted to going.
The talks were going nowhere andso one day I was losing
interest because I was gettingangry.
And when you're doingnon-violence work, anger is the
(30:28):
last thing you want to have inyou, because it you can't think,
you can't focus.
That morning I went to read thenews every morning, that was my
routine and this young girl hadjust given birth and she went
out to hang her baby diapers andtwo little boys, who were the
ages of my two sons at the time,were brushing their teeth In a
(30:52):
misaligned that in kill or threeof them.
I watched that video over andover and I'm crying.
Then I called my mentor sugarscooper and said sugars, get
more women.
We're coming to do somethingtoday.
We get to the peace hall, I sitdown.
We sent for more women.
I told them women lack arms,lack arms in front of the door.
(31:14):
So the delegates are in, likethis room, and so we sit to all
of the entry point and we lackarms.
And then I write a hostage noteand send it in to say that the
piece was tapped on this andthis Nigerian general came and
took it in and all we could hearon the overhead speaker was
(31:38):
distinguished ladies andgentlemen, the piece hall has
been seized by General Leima andher people.
So they said they're coming toarrest me because I was
obstructing justice.
So I decided I was strip nakedand by the time I started the
(31:58):
police left me and they startedtelling us oh, some of the men
are jumping out the window.
So we fortified the place.
The mediator then came andnegotiated with us.
But I tell anyone that Liberiahas seen 20 years of peace is
because, first, god led us to dothat action, because afterwards
, less than two weeks later,august 18th, they signed the
(32:23):
Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
Did we end there?
No, we went to Liberia, tookthe peace agreement apart.
And the reason why I'm takingmy time to tell this is because
most times when you're doingpeace work, people tend to think
that, oh, after they signed thepeace agreement, peace arrived.
No, we were determined, becausethat was like the 16 or 15th
(32:44):
peace agreement that we'vesigned.
So we were determined to ensurethat we implemented it to the
letter.
We took it apart, went toLiberia, sat down 80 women
leaders.
We set benchmarks from thistime to this time, this time to
this time, and we weredetermined to ensure that
everything was implemented.
At the end of the day, inOctober we got Africa's first
(33:08):
female president because of thehard work and the way Christiana
Amanpou sometimes would say tome layman, without you and the
work the women did, presidentSarlif would not have been
President of the Republic ofLiberia, and I believe it.
I tell people her elections wasthe icing on the cake that we
already baked with the peacework that we did.
(33:28):
So that's how we've come now to20 years of uninterrupted
shooting.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
I don't wanna call it peace, thank you, Thank you,
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you,Thank you, Thank you.
You know if we can go back, Iwould be remiss if I didn't ask
about something that I think youget asked about a lot, which
you mentioned, and I think whenyou mentioned I stripped naked,
right.
(33:56):
There's this.
This is quite a famous storynow about you, and there's some
video of it too, of you reallyholding your ground and, in a
powerful way, shaming these menin that room for daring to be so
stubborn as to not continuenegotiating and hammering out
(34:17):
the hard work of peace.
Can you tell us a little bitmore about the types of
strategies that you've seenyourself and others in the
movement use in these ways thatwere really I think you know
both specific to the contextthat you were in?
I think it's important to notethat this is a way of shaming
(34:39):
kind of men the sing the nakedbody of a mother, kind of
shaming men in this context.
That's one of many tools thatyou used in this movement and
I'm curious if you can justshare anything that might
inspire.
You know others that arelooking around the globe at
their own work and their ownactivism.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Well, someone asked this question why do you think a
group of men who allegedlyordered the rape of maybe an
approximate or alleges 65% ofthe population, why do you think
they would care when they'vehad for a few handful of women
(35:19):
stripped naked?
Someone, one of the warlordssaid the moment he stood at that
door and saw us trying todisrobe.
The only question he askedhimself what have we done to
bring our mothers to the placewhere they would give up their
dignity?
(35:39):
And for me, that action in thatmoment.
Culturally, it was bad luck forthem to see our naked bodies,
but for me everything that Italk about.
At the beginning of mygrandmother socializing me.
The socialization was that thestrong would protect the weak
and all of the different things.
(36:00):
I saw it crumble in that momentand so my disrobing was to tell
them that the last shred of mydignity I'm giving it to you all
in protest.
The other strategy we used wasthat Liberia was so polarized
(36:22):
and long ethnic religious, soour movement was made of
Christian and Muslim women andone of the slogans we used was
can the bullet tell a Christianfrom a Muslim?
Our movement also made use ofwomen at the community levels,
but we never went into thosecommunities to tell them how to
(36:44):
carry out their activities,because we were very much aware
that, in as much as we're allLiberians, we're all living
through war.
Every context had differentstory.
Every community was a differentwar context, so we dealt with
every group at a different level.
(37:05):
So all of these differentthings.
So there when I look atdifferent movements 2008 I was
in Israel.
We screened the documentaryPray the Devil Back to Hell.
When we came out of the room,some of the Israeli women came
to me to say I'm sorry, this isnot our reality.
2008, we went to Palestine, wewent to the West Bank and we
(37:26):
screened the documentary there.
Some of the young women fromPalestine were so upset and say
why are the older women notdoing what you all did?
We should take up and do thiskind of thing.
In 2013,.
Israel had those 14 days of warand a woman said to me her two
(37:52):
sons had been.
They joined the army, so theirwives were at home with them
with their very young children,and her husband is a retired
army personnel.
They're sitting in the basementof the house, these two young
women and these children.
She said, and they dawn on herthat if these boys die on the
(38:13):
front, this is us right here.
She got up, went upstairs, puton a white T-shirt, wore a jeans
trousers, took a poster andwrote we want peace.
And as she was leaving thehouse, she saw someone, a guy.
He said where are you going?
She said I'm going to stay inthe street corner to protest,
(38:36):
even if it is just me.
He said no, it's not just you.
There are a group of womenstanding there at Netanyahu's
house.
They are apparently protesting.
That was the birth of the womenwage peace.
Eventually, women wage peacegot in touch with Palestinian
women, and 2014, they asked mecan you come Pray the devil back
(38:59):
to hell?
Had become an inspiration forthem.
I went in 2016 and they hadthat march from community to
community, tens of thousands ofIsraeli and Palestinian women
banding together to say we wantpeace in this nation.
So the point that I'm making isthat at some point, when people
(39:21):
start to talk yes, you can onlyuse Liberia's experience as an
inspiration.
You can't copy and paste, andthat's the problem I have with
the UN when it comes to peace,peace building, peace processes,
because they think every peaceprocess is copy and paste.
There must be contextualanalysis.
People must know that this,this and this.
So we use many differentstrategies, including sex strike
(39:45):
.
In our rural areas.
The sex strike was effectivebecause the women told the men
that they needed to fast andpray for peace.
So if, as they were fasting,they couldn't have sex.
So they spent all their nightsand days in the churches and in
(40:05):
the mocks, and their husbandsagree.
In Monrovia they had adifferent strategy.
We started seeing spiked indomestic violence.
So we told the women you canend your strike, but the rural
community in one community.
On the day that they endedtheir protests I saw all these
old men who would be going on afarm coming with roses, and I
(40:28):
was asking one of the women.
I said why are they giving youall flowers?
They said, oh, tonight we're inthe sex strike, so they have to
be nice to us.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Lama, I've been very privileged in so many ways to do
work in many places around theworld that have been impacted by
war, including in Israel andPalestine, in Rwanda, in Bosnia,
in Colombia, in Sri Lanka, inNepal, in a lot of places, and I
cannot tell you how many timeswomen I'm interviewing say have
(41:05):
you seen pray the devil back tohell?
I've heard this in rural partsof Colombia, I've heard this in
Ramallah, I've heard this inRwanda, I've heard this in rural
Bosnia, and it's somethingabout the model of standing
strong and fiercely demandingpeace in unison with other women
that I think really haslaunched generations of
(41:29):
activists around the world.
It's I'm grateful for that film, I think, because it really
catalyzed the story, and, ofcourse, then, a few years later,
the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011.
Can you tell us a little bitmore about your work, sense,
(41:51):
those things and what you'vewitnessed and what you've seen
around the world?
And maybe, to start, what sortsof movements or work that women
have been doing have you seenand thought that's really
important, that's reallyimpressive.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
Oh, I think.
Everywhere I've been, I'malways blown away by the
strength, the tenacity of women.
I'll take you back to Congo,DRC.
I went there and those were thedays the headlines were saying
Congo was the rape capital ofthe world.
And sitting with the women,they said the sort of accent
(42:29):
what's the biggest problem youall have here?
And the answer was women'sleadership.
And I said what about rape?
Rape is as a result of leadersfeeling to implement all of the
policies and laws that we havehere.
But if we had a lot of women inthose seats?
So then, prioritize theproblems.
Women's leadership came first.
(42:51):
Women's economic empowermentcame second, Because one of the
things they said is, if we hadour own money, even for
ourselves, our daughters wouldnot be forced into early
marriages and if you are abused,you can leave and go somewhere.
So all of those different things, but one of the things that I
saw in Congo that just blew meaway they had this circle of
(43:12):
women who had been sexuallyabused.
They were survivors of sexualviolence and they were about 100
in a group.
Every time they heard that somenew person had been violated
and was taken to Ponzi, thesewomen would go there, and those
who had clothes will offerclothes, those who have food
(43:34):
will offer food, and once thatperson was discharged, someone
was giving the tax of stayingwith that person to bring them
back to life.
So when we were having thismeeting, there was this very
cute baby and I held him, playedwith him Because if you want to
get me bring a baby around,Even after nine children, I'm
(43:54):
still looking for more and soplaying with him.
And then the mother started totell her story that she was in a
mine and she was rapedrepeatedly.
When they phoned her, she wasalmost dead and then she was
pregnant, but there was no waythey could terminate the
pregnancy.
She would have lost her life.
So when she came through, thesewomen brought her this one
(44:18):
woman she was assigned to.
She now calls her mother, nurseher back to life yes, the baby.
And so at that moment she wasstrong enough now to start a
business.
So they needed for someone togive her a seed grant for her to
do her business.
So I was the person who did theseed grant.
But she said the biggestsadness that she carries is
(44:40):
tomorrow.
If her son asks her who is myfather, what answer will she
give to her child, but thosewomen, just that circle of
support that they have aroundeach other.
Then I go to Libya where, afterGaddafi leaves, no one could
talk about rape publicly.
So I'm in meetings, these womenare talking hush, hush, hush,
(45:03):
hush, hush.
Something terrible happenedhere.
So even in public gathering,when government officials stood
up to talk, this is somethingterrible.
Dr Abu Lash, who is aPalestinian doctor, and I were
on that trip, so I was like that.
He said I'm just angry, he wasangry, I was angry, I was ready
to go to jail.
So there's one day I'm todeliver the keynote.
(45:23):
I get on stage in front of thehighest council of everything,
from president to prime minister, to chief justice, to justice
minister Very few women andinternational partners there and
I stood up.
When I said rape, you couldhear the gaps in the room and I
ended my speech to say ifnothing was done, then those in
(45:46):
charge was no different fromGaddafi, and I walk off the
stage.
I was like, girl, you're goingto jail.
Did you just compare thesepeople to Gaddafi?
You're going to jail.
So anyway, we left.
And then we were in Congo in themiddle of a press conference.
(46:06):
When I get a call on my cellphone.
It was the justice minister ofLibya and he said to me I'm
about to leave this job, butsomething you said in this place
has haunted me.
I've done a law for survivorsof rape and I need you to help
me for this law to be passed.
(46:27):
Everyone taught the Muslimcouncil who have been the most
difficult.
They passed it at a heartbeat.
Parliament was our problem.
We took that law to the UN, tothis place, to that place, to
the other place.
Eventually it got passed.
For me, one of the greatest joyof that law was that women who
(46:47):
conceived as a result of sexualviolence could go and apply for
passport, Because in mostAfrican countries, if your
father's name is not on yourbirth certificate, you can't get
passports.
But that law states that womenwho had children as a result of
sexual violence could apply forpassport and no one would stand
(47:09):
in their way.
And they set up some fund tocontribute to the well-being of
people.
So that, again, is just onefact.
But the one thing that I wantto say, and the reason why I'm
giving all of these examples, isnot top level that has made
these things to happen forpeople, and whether it's Congo,
whether it's Rwanda, whetherit's Burundi, wherever there has
(47:31):
been crisis, Nigeria, where yousee Boko Haram and all of these
things is at the communitylevel.
Women at the community levelare determined to survive, to
live.
So, whether or without donors'money, whether or without the
UN's permission, whether orwithout all of the things that
we're doing here, these womenare determined every morning
(47:52):
that we get up, we work forpeace, because this is our
insurance policy for ourchildren.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you
, thank you, thank you.
That's amazing.
I want to pick up on somethingin your last answer, just
briefly, because you mentionedPonzi in Congo, which is Dennis
Macquegay's organization thathas been really working towards
addressing sexual violence, andyou've also mentioned going to
(48:23):
Israel and Palestine for womenwage peace, and I've seen
pictures of you crossing thedemilitarized zone in between
the Koreas in 2015 with folkslike Gloria Steinem, on these
really important examples ofcross context solidarity and
collaboration, and I'm wondering, maybe, just what you can tell
(48:44):
us about the importance of thatkind of global approach, about
trying to build coalitionsacross boundaries of place and
of nation.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
I mean, one of the things I've learned is that when
people have lived in warcontexts, there are different
myths and misconceptions thatpeople have about the place,
about the people, aboutdifferent things.
You know, when people say, oh,I'm from Liberia prior to the
Nobel, or even now, people askme where did you learn English?
(49:16):
Liberia, you know, butdifferent things.
So people have formed differentimpression about different
places.
I tell you one of my proudestmoments coming back from North
Korea.
I was coming back into the US,and so I was so stressed that,
okay, north Korea, us, I'll getto the immigrations.
(49:39):
I don't have a green card.
I still come into this countryon visa because I love being
Liberian, regardless of.
So I'm thinking maybe they willcall me into that room and ask
me questions what did you go todo to North Korea?
And then I get to the securitypoint and the guy opened my
passport and say, oh, you justcame from North Korea, I am so
(50:05):
proud of you.
That you see is crowning dead,horrible people that you see,
suffering people that you see.
And I was just standing therelike gosh and he just went on
and, oh, you are so brave to be,congratulations, you are strong
.
And I'm like, oh, but again, inas much as we have our own
(50:33):
mindset about how people live inthese different spaces, it's
important for us to engage.
Prior to going to Korea, thenumber of death threats are got
emails.
People were so angry that wehad been bought by the regime in
North Korea.
Like I'm, like, my visa is $10.
(50:55):
These people, as a Liberian,paid $10 to go.
They have no interest in me andI have no interest in them.
We were going on a citizen tocitizen mission.
To answer your question is veryimportant for us.
And if you go on the internet,I gave a speech at Dartmouth one
year and I call it the openmind challenge, and I think this
(51:16):
is what we need in the worldtoday Open mind to engage and
embrace.
Because it's only by crossingover to the other Me coming and
asking people living here inDenver, how do you do it?
And you asking me that we cantruly come to understand that we
are more united than we imagine.
(51:39):
We share one thing and that'sour collective humanity, and I
think if each and every one ofus was focused on the collective
humanity, it would be so easyfor us to engage and embrace.
I'll give you a short storyagain.
I went to India last year toKalash Satyati, my Nobel brother
the favorite brother of theNobel's, don't tell the others,
(52:01):
yeah, that's right.
And I was at the Balashramwhere he rescues children who
had been taken into slavery, andthis night the children were
playing.
Every night at Balashram is aparty, so I'm sitting there and
they were dancing, dancing, andthis child came and stood next
to me.
He's probably eight, nine andhe's just looking at me, looking
(52:25):
at me.
I don't speak Hindi, I don'tspeak any of the languages, but
I saw a longing for a mother'stouch, so I shifted in my seat
and said to him come and sitnext to me.
And he came and sat.
Next thing he showed me is ascar like a low soul on his foot
(52:48):
and the motion that he wasplaying foot ball.
He fell and then I touched itand said sorry, and he kept
looking at me and somethingwithin me said just give him a
hug.
So then I told him to, becauseI didn't know what was
appropriate, because as anAfrican I would have put him in
my lap, give him a hug, but Iwas scared before they say you
(53:11):
know, they cancel me Becausethis is the cancel culture.
So I hugged him and we sat down.
In my native tongue they say,when they say mothers, a desire
for mother, they say Neewaali.
So I named him Neewaali for therest of the time that I was
(53:32):
there that he has a desire formommy, and so every but that
night after I gave him that hugwhen he was going to bed, you
could see he came back and Igave him that hug again.
Every day while I was atBalashram he would come for his
hug.
That is what the world needs.
(53:52):
You don't need to speak thelanguage, you don't need to look
the same An understanding ofour collective humanity.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
Thank you, Thank you, Thanks for listening to this
special bonus episode of whatthe World Will Become.
We are really grateful to thoseof you who have followed along
with us this season.
If you enjoyed the podcast, dous a favor and subscribe or rate
(54:29):
us wherever you downloaded it.
It helps other people find itand it helps us know me know
whether we should make anotherseason.
I'm Marie Barry and, if nothingelse, I hope that the activists
we featured on the podcast thisseason give all of you
listening the courage and theinspiration to stand up for
peace, justice and human rightsevery single day.
(54:50):
The world needs it now morethan ever.
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