A Man from Another Land: How Finding My Roots Changed My Life (20 page)

“You don’t like money?” he said in his deep raspy voice.

“I like money,” I replied, “but this is not what I came here for. I came here to help you. I came here to see how I can help
you farm your land, not have you displaced for diamond mining. Isn’t that what you told me your villagers needed? Shovels
for food and not shovels for diamonds?”

“Hmmm. You are a man of your word, I see,” he said.

“Yes, I am,” I said.

“Be careful,” he warned, “men have died here trying to keep their word.”

“If I die here, keeping my word, that can only mean I will be in better company than I am now,” I answered back.

Thani smiled at me, stood up, and walked away.

I sat there for a moment, then pulled my Karambit knife out of my pocket and slowly carved the skin off of my mango.

If there is a hell on earth, it was here in Kono. There was no electricity, and the darkness was filled with the pain of the
past. The Kono district is where the most intense fighting for control of the diamond mines took place. Everything looked
exactly as it did during the conflict. It was as if time had stopped. Everywhere I looked there were war-torn buildings that
bore the pockmarks of heavy artillery and large bullets. Under other circumstances, I would have thought I was on a war movie
set.

Among the most damning things I saw was a huge, sand-colored artillery cannon. It sat right in the middle of the street. It
had a sign hanging from its muzzle that read War Don Don (meaning war is over), We Love Peace.

The next day we were escorted by the Kono police. They took us to an artisanal mining ground. When the workers caught sight
of us, they dropped their shovels and began to run away. The policeman yelled, “Hey! Stop running! We are not going to arrest
you today! This man from America wants to talk to you!”

Wearing no protective covering or rubber boots, the workers dug all day in the hot sun, through mud filled with piss, vomit,
and feces, hoping to find a diamond. In return they received two cups of rice as pay.

We drove over to the Tongo Fields clinic, thinking we might find someone who could use our extra medicine. The nurse we met
there had lost her baby that night. She was nine months pregnant.

This place was full of evil. I felt as if I were surrounded by despair and deceit at every turn. I started to have a meltdown.
Alone in my room that night, I prayed, “God make it stop. Make it stop. I want to go home now. All I’m doing is handing out
fucking soccer balls.” I silently screamed. “I just told these people that I will be back. I will be back? I sound like, like
fucking Arnold Schwarzenegger. I feel like a fraud!” I felt so helpless.
“I wish I could have done more.”
That’s what Bill Clinton told me on the phone the day we talked. Now I understood what he meant.

The VP fell asleep. Jackie and I brought him gifts—a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue scotch and a beautiful cigar box—and he
literally fell asleep. There was speculation that the good vice president of Sierra Leone suffered from the effects of the
bite from the dreaded tsetse fly. So for falling asleep I excused him. However, I was still unclear as to exactly what his
position was on the issues of the day. I wondered how he could deal with so much extreme poverty in Sierra Leone and not do
anything about it. But I guess his falling asleep was my answer; it really spoke for itself. The negligence by the government
was evidenced by the neglect of the impoverished people of Sierra Leone that I witnessed wherever I went.

Halfway through our conversation, he said, “Isaiah, just do it, I will not interfere. Just do whatever it is you want for
this good country. The Chinese, they don’t talk, they do. You are welcome here.”

I asked him point-blank about the rampant graft and corruption. “Sierra Leone is not the only country that suffers from corruption,”
he said. “You have lots of corruption in the United States and Britain. We have policies in place to fight corruption just
like anywhere else in the world.” He looked at me with his sleepy eyes and smiled.

“That’s a good point, sir,” I responded, “but the United States and Britain are not the poorest countries in the world.” My
team, all sitting around the table with us, dropped their heads. It was as if they were saying, “Oh shit, why did he say that?
We are dead.” I continued, “Thank you, Mr. Vice President, for your time. It’s truly appreciated. I don’t know what my next
steps are and I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I will return to Sierra Leone and I will make sure the world knows
the good that is here.”

After a three-hour drive, we finally arrived back in Freetown. It was May 31, 2006, and we were about to conduct our final
interview of the trip with U.S. ambassador Thomas Hull. During our discussion, something he said really stood out for me.
“Isaiah,” he began, “I think that most African Americans in North America today will find that they have ancestry here in
Sierra Leone. I feel that Bunce Island is the Auschwitz for African Americans
.
I hope that there are more of you who will come and see this beautiful country. It is my hope that you will all help restore
Sierra Leone to its former greatness.”

With that, I stood up and shook his hand. We left the U.S. embassy and drove toward Hotel Barmoi. As we drove past a small
beach, I asked my driver to pull over. I got out, walked over, and collapsed down on the sand. I just sat there, in a lotus
position, watching the sun disappear beyond the horizon.

As I hate good-byes, I work to avoid them at all costs. When Raymond dropped us off at the airport, I gave him a quick hug
and said, “I will see you again soon.” I had come to Sierra Leone as Isaiah Washington, but I left as Chief Gondobay Manga
II. And if I had any doubts about what that meant, I was about to learn. While we waited for our flight, a man stole some
money
from Sonya. She pointed him out to the police, and they caught him and brought him over and presented him to me. He gave Sonya
the money back, but the airport police saw my
Tikpoi
(staff) and requested that I follow them into the men’s room. When I stepped inside, the thief was lying on the floor; they
had roughed him up pretty good.

One of the policemen asked menacingly, “What would you like us to do with him, Chief?”

“Nothing,” I said. Sonya had her money back, I didn’t understand the question. But danger quickly cut through my naïveté.
The policemen looked at each other, confused, and then back at me with complete disdain on their faces. Clearly “nothing”
was not the right answer.

I realized what they wanted and started yelling. “Don’t you ever steal from me again, motherfucker. Do you understand me!”

The policemen stepped back a little, now excited by my angry words and reaction. The frightened man reached for my
Tikpoi
and tried to kiss it. I stepped in closer and stomped my foot near his head to make my point. The thief started kissing my
feet and begging for forgiveness. I continued, “Look at me. Look at me! You steal from me, you steal from yourself!”

That seemed to satisfy the policemen. One of them violently kicked the thief in the head, stunning him for a few seconds.
Then the policemen lifted him up by his arms and dragged the miscreant outside. They violently and loudly chastised him more,
and then ceremoniously tossed him hard onto the street outside the airport. I stood there in the men’s room for a second,
trying to digest what just happened. I slowly walked out of the door and rejoined my team, as Chief Gondobay Manga II, a changed
man. My team and I were escorted to the VIP room to wait. Sonya informed me that our Astraeus Airlines flight would
have a long delay. We all settled down to wait. Jackie leaned over and whispered something to me about a woman quietly sitting
across from us. “That’s Mrs. Zainab Bangura,” she said quietly. “She is someone you need to know.”

“Really? Why?” I asked.

Jackie continued, “She is arguably Sierra Leone’s best-known female politician and civil society activist. She made headlines
in the 1990s as a vocal woman denouncing corruption. In 1996, when the first civilian government was elected after years and
years of one-party rule and military coups, she founded the Campaign for Good Governance. The CGG is a civil society organization
that advocates democracy, human rights, women’s empowerment, and good governance. In six years, the CGG has become a strong
civil society organization and known as a reliable source for donors to measure good governance.”

I gave a quick glance toward Zainab Bangura and whispered to Jackie, “Damn. She’s a bad lady.”

Jackie said, “Iron Lady.”

“What?” I asked.

“Her nickname is Iron Lady,” she explained. “In 2002, Zainab formed her own political party, the Movement for Change, and
ran for president on a platform of fighting graft, guaranteeing women equal rights, and ending poverty. She became the first
woman to run for the presidency here.”

“Well, she clearly lost,” I said. “It must have been intense for her, right?”

“Her opponents attacked her mercilessly and claimed that she wanted to ban female genital mutilation, which is a valued element
of the cultural heritage here. Overnight she became a traitor to tradition. The women of the Bundy societies turned against
her.”

“What is she doing now?” I asked.

“In 2005, she joined the United Nations Mission in Liberia as chief of civil affairs. There, she was again in contact with
the person she most admires in the world, Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson, Liberia’s president and Africa’s first female head of state,”
whom she knew from her activist days,” said Jackie.

“Got it,” I said. I stood up, walked over to Zainab Bangura, and introduced myself. “Excuse me,” I said, “I don’t mean to
bother you but—”

Before I could finish my sentence she cut me off, but with a smile. “I know who you are, please have a seat.” I was not at
all offended. What you may interpret as rude is not always interpreted that way in African countries. She was not being rude,
she was being strong.

“I’ve been here to learn as much about Sierra Leone as I can,” I told her. “I took a DNA test that says I’m Mende and Temne,
read everything I could about this country, and this is my team. Jackie Coker, over there is Sonya Gay Bourn, Breton Washington,
Michael Caulfield, and Dr. Andre Panossian.”

Zainab graciously nodded as she addressed everyone with a soft smile. I sensed that her soul was weary, but in no way did
she appear tired. “It is my pleasure to meet all of you, I hope your trip was a successful one,” she said.

“Yes, it was,” I continued. “We covered a lot of ground. Do you know Joe Opala?”

Her face lit up. “You know Joe Opala? Oh yes, Joe Opala and I have known each other for many years.” Zainab shared a story
about her heartache during the war, how she became a refugee, having to flee to Guinea for her safety. I listened intently
as she spoke. I was transfixed and hanging on her every word. When Zainab finished her story, Sonya asked, “Ms. Bangura, is
there a way we can reach you? We would love to be able to keep in touch.”

“Oh, of course,” she said as she gave us her number and asked that we call her. “I’m in the U.S. all the time,” she explained.
I thanked Zainab for her time and left her alone to relax. I knew I would see this lady again soon. I could feel it. I also
knew that I myself would soon become a voice for the people of Sierra Leone… people who had no voice.

I
was driving down the 405, lost in thought, when Kanye West’s Grammy Award–winning rap song “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” started
playing on the radio. I had never really listened to the lyrics so attentively. Bobbing my head to the beat, I looked down
at the dashboard and realized I was going nearly one hundred miles per hour! The song ended. I backed off the gas pedal and
switched the dial to KPFK 90.7 FM, the NPR station.

There was more bad news from Iraq, there were more soldiers dying, there were more bombings and more bloodshed. I reached
down and pressed the mute button. Up ahead of me was a line of cars for as far as the eyes could see. I began negotiating
the traffic like a star running back evading his defenders on the field. I slipped effortlessly between other cars, in and
out, switching from lane to lane, as my mind drifted further away from Los Angeles and back to Sierra Leone. This happened
often since I had returned. I had spent only two weeks there, but I felt
as if I had a lifetime of experiences. A scene from Kono replayed in my mind….

I remembered Thani’s deep voice as we sat at the table in the early-morning hours in the restaurant in Kono as I declined
his offer to smuggle raw diamonds to the United States. “You don’t like money?” he had said, smirking, as he mocked my sincere
desire to help the Sierra Leonean people.

Then another thought started to pulse through my mind. My lips began to move, forming the words from Chinua Achebe’s
Anthills of the Savannah:

The worst threat from men of hell

May not be their actions cruel

Far worse that we may learn.

And behave more fierce than they.

I continued to reflect on my time in Sierra Leone, still unable to understand what had happened to the people there. How could
some small pieces of carbon, with no great intrinsic value on their own, be the cause of such widespread death, deception,
destruction, and misery for over a decade?

In my mind, someone had to be responsible. Three days after I arrived back home, I knew exactly what I had to do next. My
inexorable dream, “the Rerun,” had become self-evident the day of my induction. It was up to me to help the people in the
dream.

I couldn’t get “A Diamond Is Forever,” the De Beers slogan, out of my thoughts. I wanted to know the people who created the
words at the center of so much of the death and pain in my homeland.

So as I always did when I was curious about something, I did some research. Legend says the slogan was created late one night
in 1947 by a Frances Gerety, an N. W. Ayer Advertising Agency
copywriter working against a deadline on a De Beers campaign. Dog-tired, she is said to have put her head down and said, “Please,
God, send me a line.” She wrote down, “A Diamond Is Forever.” The next morning Gerety knew she had “something good.” And indeed
she did.