And Still Peace Did Not Come

In 1990, when bullets hit Agnes Fallah Kamara-Umunna's home in Monrovia, Liberia, she and her father hastily piled whatever they could carry into their car and drove toward the border, along with thousands of others. An army of children was approaching, under the leadership of Charles Taylor. It seemed like the end of the world.

Slowly, they made their way to the safety of Sierra Leone. They were the lucky ones.

After years of exile, with the fighting seemingly over, Agnes returned to Liberia—a country now devastated by years of civil war. Families had been torn apart, villages destroyed, and it seemed as though no one had been spared. Reeling, and unsure of what to do in this place so different from the home of her memories, Agnes accepted a job at the local UN-run radio station. Their mission is peace and their method is reconciliation through understanding. Soon, she came up with a daring plan: Find the former child soldiers, and record their stories. And so Agnes, then a 43-year-old single mother of four, headed out to the ghettos of Monrovia and befriended these lost boys and girls, drinking Club Beer and smoking Dunhill cigarettes with them. One by one, they spoke on her program, Straight from the Heart, and slowly, it seemed like reconciliation and forgiveness might be possible.

From Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa's first female president, to Butt Naked, a warlord whose horrific story is as unforgettable as his nickname—everyone has a story to tell. Victims and perpetrators, boys and girls, mothers and fathers, Agnes comforts rape survivors, elicits testimonials from warlords, and is targeted with death threats—all live on the air.

And Still Peace Did Not Come is set in a place where monkeys, not raccoons, are the scourge of homeowners; the trees have roots like elephant legs; and peace building is happening from the ground up. Harrowing, hopeful, humorous, and deeply moving—this is not only Agnes's memoir: It is also her testimony to a nation's descent into the horrors of civil war, and its subsequent rise out of the ashes.

Agnes Fallah Kamara-Umunna was born in Liberia, where she hosted the radio program Straight from the Heart and was a statement taker for the Liberia Truth & Reconciliation Commission. She lives in New York City, where she takes oral statements from Liberians now living in this country.
Emily Holland, a former CNN producer, spent four years documenting a leading humanitarian organization's work across Africa. She has contributed to Glamour, Jane, The Huffington Post, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, The Princeton Alumni Weekly, and Women's Adventure Magazine. Currently, she is pursuing her J.D. at Berkeley Law School.