Listen closely friend, for I’ll tell you a story.  A story that you know as history and I know as memories.  It’d be a lie to say its my life story.  A lie because its not the story of me, it’s the story of us, all of us that fought in those wars and braved the struggles that in sued.   For 50 years we fought and died to bring that continent together and together we turned Africa from a conglomeration of war torn countries, into what it is today, into Eden.  Myself and many others played major roles in the unification of Eden, but it’d be easy to say that none of this would have been possible without a man we knew only as Red.  A man who is gone from us today.
    In another light this story could be seen as about him.  He was an incredible thing.  I hesitate to call him a ‘thing’ because its sounds cruel, but I know of no better label for that creature.  For no human could have done what he did.  No human could fight as many battles as he did without ever having his own blood drawn.  No human could ever have taken this warring continent and turned into a unified nation. He never said his name, but we all called him Red, for it was the color of the mask he always wore.  I had spent 50 years as his most trusted comrade, but I’d never seen his face, nor an inch of skin.  If he were still here I’d still call him my greatest friend and ally.

    My name is Sisumbhajee Keo.  If your not from here, that’s pronounced C-some-batch-she.  I was born in the year 2009, in city of Harper, a small village in the southern part of Liberia. The city was named in honor of the founder Jameson Harper, a freed American slave.  My parents were bakers, and I was the only child. I lived with them until the age of 10, the age your considered to be able to fight. At that age I was conscripted into the LHD(Liberian Homeland Defense).  Under times of peace the Liberian government couldn’t conscript children to soldier.  However during times of conflict, they enact emergency control and are allowed to put a gun in anybodies hands and tell in which direction to fire. With an army of  “freedom fighters” calling themselves The Kanjohi marching from the north and Harper being a valuable port-city, priority of emergency took the place of normal life and as many as two hundred men were conscripted, as well as seventy boys ages 10 to 18.  My formal training consisted of carrying a AK-47 assault rifle  several miles a day, to get used to its weight and target practice with said gun once a day.  A month from there my comrades of the “Youth Battalion” were given oversized uniforms and then marched to the field to wait for the day when we’d become nothing more than a body in a pile, to make the ultimate sacrifice a soldier can perform. People in other parts of the world saw this as cruel, to throw a child to the wolfs.  But with no war crime laws could touch Africa, so we fought and died just as any other. 
    My unit consisted of four boys that were older than me, one boy my age named Jicar,  and our unit leader who’s name I won’t bother with.  Even thought I had never met him, Jicar had come from Harper as well.  We became quick friends, he was very smart for his age and had dreams of going to the capital to further his education, however despite his intelligence he was a poor solider.  The combination of being short, fat and weak tend to do that.  We were friends because …well when your dragged away from your home you try and find things that remind you of that home, and despite all his soldierly flaws, he still was a reminder of home.
    Two months after I had finished what they had passed off as training I was sent into my first conflict.  We were to patrol  the outer plateau  range that provided the city a natural defense from the north, and for those willing to make the climb, a great view of Harper to the south.  There are two paths that go directly through the plateau.  One being the natural canyon formed by years of erosion, was the fastest.  More than often however it was the most dangerous, loose rocks and bandits made it a deathtrap to those whom were brave or stupid enough to make the journey.  The second path, while being far from safe, was considerably safer due to the lack of falling rocks and bandits.  It ran up the side of the plateau, from there one could cross the range in about two hours on foot.  We had been returning from crossing the range when we were ambushed by a armored vehicle from behind.  It sprayed bullets into our group, I can remember our unit leader falling first, a sizeable  piece of his head missing from the large caliber rounds they used.  The kind of caliber that’s used for armored targets like tanks, not humans.  Next was Jicar, via a round to the leg. I had tried to carry him, but we didn’t make it far on the account of myself being the skinny malnourished type and him just being fat.  I still feel a pang of regret for leaving him there, but don’t lie to yourself, if you had been that frightened 10 year old boy, you would have done the same.  Myself and the other members of my unit did the only thing that made sense, we ran.  Not that it did any good, the rebels launched an explosive that detonated a few feet away from us, it blew the arm off of the team members, that’s as much as I remember about them.  I was knocked off my feet, I flew several feet behind a large rock and landed unconscious out of sight of the rebels, which I consider fortunate for two reasons.  First because it saved me from the slaughter of my squad, second because it saved me from witnessing the slaughter of my squad.
    I must have been out for the better part of a day, I judged this on the decomposing smell of my former squad, now thoroughly dismembered and scattered about the area.  I did the only thing a ten year old boy could in that situation and I feel to my knee’s and threw up.  Closing my eyes as tightly as I could, was my only defense, as if I could make the body parts go away if I tried hard enough, thought I won’t trouble you much with the details of what I saw when I reopened them, I can tell you in one sentence what had happened; “they turned six living bodies into 30 pieces”, I had always assumed that they either took the heads as a shock and awe tactic or collected them as a twisted trophy.  Disturbing as it was, I still had a duty to my village to uphold, the bodies could wait, I needed to tell them that the Kanjohi were here.  Never in my life could I remember running that hard, I ran until the stitch in my side felt like it burst open, it felt like I was inhaling smoke and fire, my legs felt like jelly.  I ran until my foot met a rock that seemed to have an exceptional dislike for it, screaming I fell to the ground clutching my left foot that now had that hateful rock sticking out of the top of it.  After catching my breath I pulled the rock free with a sick ssswwwiiippp sound, with the now liberated rock came blood and a small pieces of my bone, as I sat there sobbing I started to notice that the smell of smoke hadn’t gone away yet, actually it was stronger than it was before, it was then I had come to realize that it might be too late, but I had to get there, I had to know. Removing my shirt, I tore it into a makeshift bandage, after wrapping my bleeding foot, i found a nearby tree branch and used it as a crutch as I limped towards the cliff overlooking Harper, from there I watched what became of my village.
    Once a year I’ll scatter ashes at the Atlantic coast for Oshun the African goddess of the sea and as a monument to my long dead parents our home.  I apologize for the short biography, I think its important to know where I came from before I start this story.  That being said I’ll continue on here from here as the storyteller and my past self being the main character. Reason being is I’d hate to have write down every little thought and detail of the last 50 years of my life haha. Okay ready?  Here we go.

2.
As I-sorry.  As Sisumbhajee sat, he watched as the city of Harper was engulfed in flames.  A city burning if often a overly-dramatic thing, usually the entire city doesn’t burn, sections might, but as a whole it’d could more than often be still considered a city after some parts were lost to the flame.  Not Harper.  The Kanjohi have always had a reputation as a very meticulous tribe, and as their reputation lived, the city burned. 
    Several tons of Napalm and gasoline flooded into the main sewer line, detonated by C4 charges set in key points.  The detonations combined with the smoke that filled the city, was what killed the most in the first few minutes, the fire mopped up the rest.  Harper had firemen, a rag-tag bunch of them on a old pump engine, however Sisumbhajee doubted they had the courage to stay and douse the fires.  He thought of them as cowards.  “Better to save the good parts of the dough, then to throw it all away” is what his father often told him after he’d burnt a dough ball in the oven.
    He’d bet his father had never baked dough with napalm and gasoline though.  He sat, because what else could you do when you were watching such a thing.  He sat on northern road leading out of Harper, this road started up a hill, so it gave him a decent view of whole city.  The first smells that came to him were gasoline and a odd mustard smell.  Two smell’s that’d induce a traumatic shock to him for many years to come.
    The smell was nothing more than a passing thought now, for his mind had many more things to digest; the Kanjohi, what had become of his parents, and most important at current time is how much blood can you lose before you pass out.  After a few seconds…he finds out.
    Kanjohi is the name of the military faction that was responsible  for the firebombing of Harper.  A military faction bent on a coup and the re-founding of Liberia as a nation.  Their name come’s from a old Algerian tribe refuted for being great carpenters.  The modern day Kanjohi were hired by the Liberian government to rebuild Harper after the coup in 2006 that nearly destroyed the city.  Funds being short at the time and the carpenters doing a ragtag job of remodeling the city,  were never compensated and  for the last 2 years have tried to destroy everything they’d just built, so they could take it over and hire another to rebuild.  So is the way of this world.
    In truth they weren’t after the money.  The revolutionaries spirit drifted thought West Africa like a plague, if you’d ever been there, then you’d know of this plague and how it destroys everything and everyone it infects. Private military corporations sold their forces to the most promising rebels, in an effort to increase bottom line profits.  Villages were plundered of their material worth and then burnt.  The surviving villagers were offered a place in rebels army, those who resisted had their families butchered and then tired up and left to rot in front of their bodies.  A twisted way to live, but with the rest of the world squabbling over their petty matters, no one looked twice at Africa.  Every group of rebels called themselves; “Freedom Fighters” in some lame attempt to propagate their cause into something that looked righteous.  In truth they were no more righteous than any other human whom wished to wage war against another, they had just found another excuse to succumb to their primordial blood thirst.  As is the way of the world, the way of Africa, the way of life that Sisumbhajee Keo is about to be fed to.

3.
    For the next several days he suffered thought a fever, he couldn’t remember who had found him who where they had gone, only that they had put something on his foot that made if feel like it was frozen solid.  His mysterious savior had put him in a cot, it felt like the softest material he’d ever felt, the savior woke him what seemed like every few minutes, but had to be hours because Sisumbhajee had the extreme urge to relieve himself every time he was woken up, he kept making Sisumbhajee drink water, saying that he had to keep his fever down. 

Finally it went down to the point where the young soldier could sit up and he finally became aware of his surroundings.  He was inside a large square shaped tent, it was filled with several other cots, but none were occupied at the time, which seemed odd to him because from what he could tell it was dark outside.     
    The interior had one candle lamp near the entrance, however it was dim and it barely illuminated the rest of the tent, from a cursory glace he could see that it was a medical tent of some sort, not one meant for surgery, but more for recovery.  His cot was closest to the entrance and he was sure he could feel another presence in the tent, however the dim candle didn’t illuminate to the far corner.  He tired to sit up more, but he felt a sharp pain in the abdomen, followed by the extreme feeling of a full bladder, he needed to relieve himself and he needed to do it now.  Leaving the cot proved to be more difficult than anticipated.  As he tried to roll out, the cot would roll with him and swallow him back up, eventually he built up enough momentum that he caused the cot to roll in a semi-circle and he fell out onto the hard canvas floor. 
     A calm cool voice came from the dark corner of the room, “That was dumb, you could have called for help”
    The voice was so sudden that he almost wet himself, if it had been in another tone he was sure he would have, but there was something about this one, it had a strange flowing sound, like water through a pipe.
    “I have to pee” Sisumbhajee said.  “I didn’t know there was anyone else here!”
    Almost in a yawn the corner voice called “Hummm  you should ask for help, I very much doubt you can walk in your condition.”
    “I don’t need anyone’s help!” he shouted as he tried to crawl to his feet.  His left foot still felt like it was stuck in a block of ice and as he got to his feet he tired to lean on it, but instead he fell face first onto the ground.  He swore into the canvas floor and turned himself over to look down at his foot.  Or rather to look down at where his foot should have been.
    Sisumbhajee screamed as he saw the stump of his left leg, the bottom was wrapped in white and red bandages.  He tired to rip them off, but a strong arm cough his and pull him back, “You can be dumb all you want, I could careless,  but when you try and rip of the bandages that are keeping you from bleeding to death, well then I feel the need to intervene.”
    “Wha…what happened to my foot?  Where did it go?” Sisumbhajee asked sobbing.
    “It was infected, we had to cut it off or else it would have killed you.”
With that  Sisumbhajee relieved himself all over the floor and then he passed out in a pool of stinking urine.
    “Disgusting” came the voice, as he picked up the young amputee and laid him back into the cot. “You can change yourself when you wake up.”  With that he retreated back into the dark corner of the tent and fell silent.