A Night to Remember
Sahr Kondokwi
Professor Nancy Brewer
English 1100-141
21 October, 2013
A Night to Remember Our past experiences are what make us the person we are today. We are all from different backgrounds, cultures, religions, traditions and therefore we all have different personalities, thoughts, and opinions on certain issues. It’s what leads us to how we react in certain situations and what we want to do in our futures: what we are passionate about. All these things stem from where we came from. Being from a different culture and coming from a different country in my own case has been a huge part of who I am today. Having had the opportunity to come to the USA I’ve been able to experience so many things that I would have never gotten the chance to do if I would have stayed in Sierra Leone. This makes me wonder, how different my life would have been. Think about how your life was when you were ten years old. For the majority of kids, the most important thing they had to worry about was if they did all their homework that night or if they would start in a basketball or soccer game. For me, in Sierra Leone in the late 90’s, it was whether I could survive another hour of the atrocities that were taking place right in front of my own eyes. Each day I wondered if my family and I could escape the clench of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which at that time was under the control of former army corporal Foday Sankoh. The war was fueled by blood diamonds that the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) mined using slave labor. The civil war in Sierra Leone was a long and extremely bloody fight that took countless lives and even took down the structure of the country. I was about ten years old at the time but I can remember everything that happened in specific details like it took place this morning. My favorite uncle had just moved from Nigeria, where he was studying to become a pastor. I haven’t seen him since I was in primary school and I was getting ready to enter
Professor Nancy Brewer
English 1100-141
21 October, 2013
A Night to Remember Our past experiences are what make us the person we are today. We are all from different backgrounds, cultures, religions, traditions and therefore we all have different personalities, thoughts, and opinions on certain issues. It’s what leads us to how we react in certain situations and what we want to do in our futures: what we are passionate about. All these things stem from where we came from. Being from a different culture and coming from a different country in my own case has been a huge part of who I am today. Having had the opportunity to come to the USA I’ve been able to experience so many things that I would have never gotten the chance to do if I would have stayed in Sierra Leone. This makes me wonder, how different my life would have been. Think about how your life was when you were ten years old. For the majority of kids, the most important thing they had to worry about was if they did all their homework that night or if they would start in a basketball or soccer game. For me, in Sierra Leone in the late 90’s, it was whether I could survive another hour of the atrocities that were taking place right in front of my own eyes. Each day I wondered if my family and I could escape the clench of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which at that time was under the control of former army corporal Foday Sankoh. The war was fueled by blood diamonds that the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) mined using slave labor. The civil war in Sierra Leone was a long and extremely bloody fight that took countless lives and even took down the structure of the country. I was about ten years old at the time but I can remember everything that happened in specific details like it took place this morning. My favorite uncle had just moved from Nigeria, where he was studying to become a pastor. I haven’t seen him since I was in primary school and I was getting ready to enter