When we forgive too quickly...

I offer my sincerest apologies on behalf of Sierra Leone to all those devastated by the war, truamatised maimed and ignored. The young women who have watched life roll past them while they have to deal with experiences of been raped. Young men whose pride has forever been stolen, because they have stood by, incapacitated and helpless while untold suffering has been meted out to their loved ones. The parents who have had to make a sacrifice greater even than self sacrifice, that of having to choose which one of their children they have to save. To all those young ones who watched their parents been inexplicably gunned down and had to suffer the double indignity of watching people celebrate those deaths. I cannot say sorry enough.

I hope you do not take my apologies as me making light of a very deep truama, but as my country lacks the propensity to say sorry, i stand in the gap for her.

As much as we don't have the bones of all the students gunned down in the conflict on display or a memorial graveside of all the lives lost, you remain our testimony of what we as a nation have been through. and as we accept the fault for what our actions accomplished, we applaud your strength, your heroism that constantly reminds us, no longer will you stand by and let another generation go through what you have endured. The same politicuans may still be recycling the policies that led to the darkest periods in our history, but as your presence reminds us, we are now stronger than we were before. we will no longer be drawn to further their aims at the expense of our lives, our pride and our future.

The present provides us a forum to look back on the tragedies of the past as inseparable points of our legacy. This should provide us with the strength to overcome present tragedies. As we adopt our Christian virtue of forgiveness, let it not be at the expense of forgetting the plights of untold number of victims and may their presence constantly convict us of our actions and prevent us from entering the chasm of human degradation we just emerged out of.