Yes, where do we bury Foday Sankoh? After all the
despicable destuction and dislocation he caused in
that country in his ten years of ruthless and violent
rebel war, can we bury Foday sankoh at all? Can the
earth, the very soil, he so verily violated by his
bloody war not even revolt if we attempt to bury him
in it? Can we inter him, and with his internment
forget and instantaneously erase the raw pain and
suffering he caused in that country and to its people?
Even after we might have buried him, will he come to
haunt us now and again as we emabrk on the journey of
reconciliation and reconstruction following the
unwanted war he unleashed in that country?.

In many cemetries in Sierra Leone, Sierra Lenoeans
use one epitaph "Gone but not forgotten" on the
gravestones or tombs to commemorate the memories of
their dead ones. We etch these unforgettable words on
the gravestones to equally remind us of the love and
fond memories of the deceased.  But now that he is
dead, can we use these words and print them on the
gravestone (if he will ever have one) of Foday Sankoh?
Do not these words actually fit (and reflect) the
memory of Foday Sankoh in our individual and
collective memories as a people and a nation
that--albeit for totally different reasons and for
equally totally different meaning of the epitaph?

Cannot it be true that now he is dead that all Sierra
Leoneans can say of Foday Sankoh that he is indeed
"gone but not forgotten"? Will Sierra Leoneans ever
forget Foday Sankoh?  Will they ever forget the
indescribable violence and unspeakbale horror he
visited on that country and its people? In other
words, for all of us Sierra Leoneans Foday Sankoh may
be gone, but in our memory, in our life-time, and in
the lifetime of that country, we will never forget
Foday Sabanah Sankoh. Foday Sankoh will be the figure
all Sierra Leoneans will hate to remember, but they
will have to remember him anyway because of the way he
transformed that country into a theater of an unwanted
war never ever before seen in that land. So how will
they forget him?
  We will never forget Foday Sankoh for the way he
simply tore into the human fabric of that country.
 We will never forget Foday Sankoh for all the
horrible images of amputated hands and limbs of
innocent Sierra Leonenans paraded on the screens of
televisions all over the world.  We will never forget
Foday Sankoh for the abuse and rape of our mothers,
sisters, aunts, cousins, friends, and all other
helpless women in his decade-long violent war.  We
will never forget Foday Sankoh for the unwanted deaths
and very untimely deaths of our fathers and mothers,
grandfathers and grandmothers, sisters and brothers,
nieces and nephews, cousins and friends, extended and
nuclear relatives.  We will never forget Foday Sankoh
because of Sierra Leoneans who were violently killed
and left to rot in unmarked spots in the forests and
streets all over Sierra Leone.  We will never forget
Foday Sankoh for all those children who were ripped
from their tissues of warmth and sustenace and
untimely brought into this world by the violence of
his rebels who tore at the wombs of pregnant Sierra
Lenoean women.  We will never Forget Foday Sankoh
because of the children and other adult Sierra
Leoneans who today go around without arms, hands,
limbs and legs.  We will never forget Foday Sankoh
because of the many, many children in that country who
have been orphaned by the ten years of terrible
violence of Foday Sankoh's war that took the lives of
their parents, parents whose love and tenderness they
will never know.

How will we ever forget Foday Sankoh, when we will
forever have to remember the way he disrupted the
education of the future leaders of Sierra Leone!  How
will we forget Foday Sankoh, when we will have to
remember the way he cut in the prime of those youthful
and patriotic Sierra Leoneans whose potential that
country will never know!  How will we ever forget
Foday Sankoh when, when we will have to remember how
he violated the very earth, the land, the very soil of
that country with the blood of the innocent victims
who lost their lives in his disastrous war!  How will
we forget Foday Sankoh when when we wil have to
remember the tears of the dead ones, the tears of the
dilocated and displaced Sierra Leoneans, tears that
have been transformed into misty rivers and seas of
suffering and pain that will not be calmed in the
years and generations ahead of us!  How will we forget
Foday Sankoh, when will have to remember what the the
trees, the rivers, the hills, the mountains will have
to tell us: trees, hills, rivers, mountains in that
that country that represent the silent witnesses to
the agonizing cries and painful screams and
humiliating deaths of Sierra Leoneans who died in that
war and were left unburied and without graves!  How
will we forget Foday Sankoh, when we will have to
remember the bitter cries  and unheeded sighs for
forgiveness and sympathy and silent requests
understanding and redemption of dead Sierra Lenoenans
still float in the air, whispering and reminding us
grimly and sadly of their death! How will we ever
forget Foday Sankoh when we will have to remember all
those half completed phrases, never completed
sentences, never uttered words, never accomplsihed
task of those killed in that war and who never had the
chance and the loving opportunity to say good-bye to
their loved ones.   How will we forget Foday Sankoh,
when we have restless souls and spirits who were
violently and brutally killed for no just cause in a
war whose rational they never understood!

How will we forget Foday Sankoh when we will have to
forever see the bullet holes left by his guns on
houses, on school buildings, on college structures, on
hospital walls, on Mosques doors, on Church steps, on
bridges, on roads and streets reflect the painful and
agonizing holes he punctured in our own very hearts!
How will we forget Foday Sankoh when we will have to
forever hear the loud and cacophonic sounds of his
guns, RPGs, AK47s, grenades, landmines echo in our
ears and the beat of our hearts! How will we forget
Foday Sankoh, when we have to continue to see people
in that country who have been permanently traumatized
by his war! Sierra Leoneans who will still dream all
those horrible dreams that reflect the very reality of
their brutal and brutish experience in the hands of
Foday Sankoh and his thugs! How will we forget Foday
Sankoh when there are Sierra Leoneans with the gory
nightmares they will have to live with for the
rest of their lives! How will we forget Foday Sankoh
when there are Sierra Leoneans with the very visible
scars (of rape, of amputated limbs, of bulltet
lacerations, etc.) on their bodies that will never be
wiped away!  How will we ever forget Foday Sankoh when
there are Sierra Leoneans with invisble scars caused
by the war: emotional scars, psychological scars, that
will never go away even with the death of Foday
Sankoh! How will we forget Foday Sankoh when there are
many, many, many Sierra Leoneans still painfully
crying in their hearts trying to make sense of the
terrible violence of his senseless war!  How will we
ever forget Foday Sankoh when all Sierra Leoneans know
how he took us from a kind and loving and gun-fearing
people and reduced us to a heartless and violent and
gun-toting people! How will we ever forget Foday
Sankoh when he not only mortgaged, but negatively
transformed, our humanity to one of humilitating and
disrespectful brutality!

Yes, Foday Sankoh is dead!! But where do we bury him?
We can choose to bury him anywhere--at least
physically.  But will that burial ever seal Foday
Sankoh's unforgetting and unforgettable memories he
left in the hearts, minds, psyche, and emotions of
Sierra Leoneans? Or is there a grave actually that can
hold the remains of Foday Sankoh? Will that grave be
not too small, too small enough for all Sierra
Leoneans? In his death, all Sierra Leoneans will come
to this painful realization: that we all have a grave
somewhere in our hearts created by the ten years of
civil war Foday Sankoh unleashed on that country.
Futhermore, Sierra Leoneans will confront the other
painful realization of what they will decide to do
with that grave created in our hearts by Foday Sankoh.
And here, all of us will have to make the individual
decision whether we will want to bury Foday Sankoh in
this grave he created in our very bereaving hearts and
with that burial forget the undeserving pain and
unwanted suffering he caused us.  But one thing that
will be forever certain in that grave Foday Sankoh
created in our hearts: whether we like it or not, we
will have to etch on his grave stone the words "gone
but not forgotten."


On the national scale, Foday Sankoh failed to make
that country a mass grave, a national grave where he
wanted to bury all Sierra Lenoeans just to accomplish
his ambition and greed.  He dug many, many graves but
he did not transform that country into a national
grave although he indeed transformed all of us into
national mourners. As we deal with the grave Foday
Sankoh created individually in our hearts, and as we
even start to think that we will have to etch on that
grave the words "gone but not forgotten," let us,
those of us who survived this brutal war continue to
pray for all the innocent souls who died in that war.
Let us continue to pray and provide for all those who
were displaced, and are still diplaced, by that war.
Let us continue to pray for a grave that will be big
enough where we will put all our sorrows created by
Foday Sankoh and his war and seal them forever--if
that were ever possible.

With a heavy,very heavy heart
from the Nomad,

pb
Copyright @ 2003

Courtesy of Patrick Bernard.




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