ABSTRACT
I’m not prepared for what the war has done here. I know academically, of course; I’ve read the UN report ranking Sierra Leone as the most disadvantaged nation in Africa, a country where a forty-six-year-old man is, statistically, cheating death. But before today the closest I’ve really come to understanding is during my conversations with Jacques Montouroy, the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) staff member with whom I am traveling to Lunsar. I’ve known of him since my first days with the agency. Passionate and outspoken, built like a rugby player, Jacques has seen many of the world’s nightmares in his thirty years in the field. He’s been shot at during a coup in Haiti and, on his first night in Angola, was confronted in his house by a knife-wielding burglar. Jacques responded by breaking a radio over the man’s head.
