To mark the occasion of World Refugee Day, June 20th, here is a first person account of life as a refugee:

I left Liberia because of the continuous fighting of aimless civil war, which claimed many human lives. I only thank God that I am still alive today to tell people the story of what I went through as a survivor of violence during the 14-year war in Liberia.

The war started in 1989.

Former Liberian President, Charles Taylor

The Charles Taylor group came beating, torturing, and making you explain what you didn’t know; and if you didn’t know what to say, you would be killed, which claimed many people’s lives.

The first time I went to the Ivory Coast to run away from war was in 1994; I stayed there until 1998 when I went back to school after the elections. They forced us to go back home, but the war did not finish, and another war came. Many of us were attacked, so we ran back to Ivory Coast. But we were caught beaten by the Charles Taylor group.

In 1994, I was just 13 years old. During this time, I would go in the bush, get sticks, sell them, and get gari to eat for the day. What the group gave us was not enough for the day, so we faced a lot of things that human beings should not have to go through. When I first got to the Ivory Coast, there were no shelters–just a large tree. So, when the sun shone, it shone on us; when it rained, it rained on us, so we hadnowhere to go. We prayed to God that we could endure until the end.

In 2002, war broke out on the Ivory Coast, and they said Charles Taylor was behind it. He and his group were beating and killing Liberians, so we were forced to go back to Liberia again. One day, I was coming home from class when the group caught us; they were catching young boys to carry the war on by force. Even if you were not a soldier, you were still caught.

They carried us to a base before going to the war front. One man escaped with us; while he was escaping, others fell, got wounded, or died. We managed to escape again back to Ivory Coast at night, and stayed there. Later on, we went back to Liberia to find our people. But the group caught the three of us on the road. They said we were soldiers, but we were not soldiers–we were refugees. We told them that we were going back home. But they started to beat us. They also said we should carry their heavy loads, but we were not able to do so, and they beat us even more.

We tried to resist them, and they said we were trying to fight them, so they killed one person from our group of three. They put a bullet in his head, and we all became frightened. They said we should get down on the ground, so we laid down flat on the ground. They said we should look straight at the sun without closing our eyes, and we looked right at the sun. Throughout this entire ordeal, they were torturing and beating us. We were begging and crying. One member of the group took out a cutlass and cut me in the stomach.

Monrovia. Photographed by: Carolyn Cole, LA Times. Date: 2004

I was about to be killed when we heard a heavy firing sound that drew their attention, and I managed to crawl into the bush bleeding. I stayed in the bush for a long time with neither proper medication nor food.

After surviving in the bush, I was able to escape to Ivory Coast, and then Ghana, where I stay now. Even now, I still feel a pain in my stomach. My wound never healed completely. For these reasons, I cannot go back to my home country.

Another reason I cannot return to Liberia is that my uncle was a wicked militant. The friends, families, and tribe of my uncle’s victims are there. As a result, my uncle and all his relatives, near and far, are in danger. Due to this tribal problem and my negative past experiences, I do not want to return to Liberia–be it during times of war or peace.

I worry a lot when I think about my people. I have no information concerning their whereabouts. Sometimes I go hungry all day long without eating. I do not have the option to return to Liberia because I have no family, friends, or home to return to. I have survived many hardships, which have left marks all over my body.

I need a place to call home where I can have quality education, and be able to do something for my future. The more I suffer in Ghana, the more I reflect on my past experiences, and the more I want to get out of Africa.

We want to be resettled out of Africa. We don’t want to go back to Liberia. Our houses are burned and destroyed. We do not know where our families are. We have no jobs or quality education. Our lives here are like wasted years. An idle mind is the devil’s workshop. We need to be someplace better, so we can have a quality education and build a future for ourselves.

Our rights have been been trampled upon. We are totally neglected despite being human beings. We are a part of society, so we should have equal rights. Did God forget us? The more I think about my past experiences, the more saddened I get. Once, I was living with a loving family, and went to school; now, I am running here and there just trying to survive.