Somewhere in the Unknown World: A Collective Refugee Memoir

Siah Borzie is at home in Bong Town, Liberia when rebel fighters enter the city. When the gunfire stops, she leaves her home with a friend to buy diapers for her youngest child in case the violence continues and they can’t leave their homes. While walking, the two are stopped and questioned by two young armed rebels; when Siah calls them soldiers rather than freedom fighters, the men threaten to kill them. Another solider, a friend of Siah’s husband Albert, appears and deescalates the situation. The three soldiers bring the women to the Bong Mining Company, the rebels’ headquarters, and put them in a room with the mutilated corpse of a friend. When the women are finally released, they’re followed home by the two soldiers who first threatened them.

As violence increases, the European owners of the Bong Mining Company and the nearby Firestone Natural Rubber Company are evacuated. Siah’s family leaves their village of Harbel to be with Siah in Bong Town, which is itself increasingly violent. Siah reflects that the Liberian Civil War was inevitable, and considers the violence of the war, though reprehensible, to be the labor pains of a new nation.

Siah and her family flee Bong Town, running into the deep Liberian bush.