When the Sun refuses to Shine, Page 2

rebels were very far off and the war would end before it reached Freetown.

  When I heard the continuous shots of different kinds of weapons especially Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPG) and AK 47, I thought the war Papa said would not reach the city had eventually reached us. In the midst of the commotion in my mind, I thought of what was going to be my future if I lost my family like the Liberian orphans that passed through our yard to sell fruits on trays; little girls and boys as young as six years old. I also thought a lot about my family. I’ve heard of children losing their families in the Liberian conflict. Some children were left as orphans while others lived with foster parents. I didn’t want such to be my fate.

  My heart beat heavily for Papa. The shots were coming from State House and I know Papa was in the building. What was I going to do to get him out? I thought of going there to look for him. All of us children in the classroom were crying; ‘Me mama o’; ‘Me papa o’. Whenever somebody ran towards the school ground, the adults would ask what was going on. Most times we were not lucky. All they would say was that they saw men dressed in military fatigues with heavy weapons and shooting in the air. As the sound of gun shots lessened some people started leaving the classroom. Parents came to pick their children from school. I did not see Papa or any family member I knew. My heart was pounding fast. It is said a timid person is frightened before danger arrives; I was even more frightened because of my ignorance of the dangers that lay ahead because I had no idea of what was going on.

  By mid day, the classroom was becoming emptied and as if the unknown shooters were having their lunch break, the sound of the shots lessened and the teachers around encouraged children who knew their way home to go home as fast as they could. I started crying seriously. I headed towards State Avenue but a group of young men who sat beside one of our school buildings asked where I was going. I told them that I wanted to go and see my father who worked at State House and I was encouraged to go home instead.

  Kingtom was miles away from my school but I did remember very well our route home when one of my sisters usually picked me up from school. I took my route westward, On my way home, I saw soldiers on trucks and other vehicles such as Nissan Pajeros and Land Rovers, driving very fast as if they were being chased by a wounded lion. Their faces wore danger and they looked fierce with red eyes. Maybe it’s because of the too much cannabis they live on like our soldiers and State Security Division (SSD) neighbours at the flat next to ours.

  Our next door neighbours had cannabis for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They had red eyes and never wanted to look one in the eyes. They always greet Papa with head bowed down as if they were looking for a missing coin. But they were very mean; once they reported their girlfriends whom had spent weeks at their flat to the Sergeant Major of the barracks. They reported that the girls were prostitutes squatting illegally at the flat. The Sergeant Major got some police officers who evicted the girls from the flat. They love reggae music by Lucky Dube and Joseph Hills. Sometimes the sound of the music is so loud that Papa would go over to their flat and ask them to turn the volume down.

  The streets were emptied except for the group of people who gathered at every round about, clinging to their radios, holding on to white pieces of cloth and every time the soldiers drove through a street in high speed, the group of people would raise their thumbs or sometimes their hands and wave in support of the soldiers. These people looked happy but scared. Happy maybe because of the momentum these young soldiers kept; they chanted words like ‘We are here to help you’; ‘We are your children’; ‘We will not harm you’; One Love’. Scared maybe because they were not sure of the truthfulness of the soldiers or because they held weapons. Some women on Siaka Stevens Street gave the young soldiers ice water in plastic bags. These soldiers had helmets with a feather-like military cloth on it. Their eyes were red.

  That was a time when military coups were a fashion in Africa. Revolutions were gaining momentum in every nook and cranny of the continent, and in fact it was becoming a popular demand by the populace. Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress of South Africa had just celebrated two years of his release. The war in Liberia was becoming devastating. There were lots of refugees in Sierra Leone. The armies in Africa were becoming unnecessarily powerful. Multiparty democracy in the eyes and ears of Africans was still a novelty, only popular in the west.

  I was finding my way home; maybe by the time I got there I would have known what was actually going on or why were soldiers all over the city and why were they shooting. Maybe our neighbour Mr. Alimamy who was not educated but would listen to the 15:05 BBC focus on Africa programme would explain to Mama what was going on. Sometimes I wondered how uneducated people in my neighbourhood understood Robin White, the white man at the BBC’s office in London who sounded like Pinocchio the talking cricket. Sometimes Mr White sounded like Mama’s red radio but when the radio’s battery was dying.

  Along Kroo Town road, I could still hear gun shots but anytime I heard the shots people would bend down the way footballers drop down after heading a ball in slow motion. There were rumours of stray bullets killing people in the war. Thus everyone was in a state of fear. Just around the market area, a green land Rover was hurtling its way out of one of the streets at high speed and rushed into a set of people who stood by discussing. This group was instantly dispersed.

  A dog ran after the vehicle barking furiously. One of the soldiers who sat at the back of the vehicle lowered his gun, pointed it at the dog and shot it. The dog jumped twice like a leaf and finally fell down, motionless. When I saw that, I held the tape of my uniform firm under my chin as if scolding myself for witnessing the horrific scene. What did the dog do?, I asked myself. I wanted to see if the owner of the dog would come and cry for the loss but with the thousands of street dogs without owners roaming the streets of Freetown, the dead dog could just have been one of them. Even if the dog is owned, who would dare to face those appalling soldiers? Some boys came and took the dead dog away.

  I finally got home to the joy of my mother. In the evening Papa came home and explained how he witnessed one family friend killed at State House on that fateful day. Mr Musa was an SSD officer who worked as a security guard at State House. He was in his 30s and always sought advice from Papa. In the afternoon he had suggested to Papa that they leave the State House building where they had been stuck since the morning. The shooting had ceased and he thought it was the right time for them to escape from the unknown shooters. He told Papa that they should leave the building. Papa warned him to wait for a while. Indeed they waited for a while and later Mr Musa suggested again that they leave. He was brave to have asked Papa to stay behind while he took the lead as he was much younger and stronger. What he should not have done was to have gone out in uniform and with his gun. Immediately he went out he was shot by a sniper. He died immediately. Papa left the building four hours later.

  A new day was born and a new military government, the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC), had taken over the country.