Where My Heart First Set Down

Monrovia, Liberia

Our green-and-white house in Gaye Town—way inside, behind Joe's Bar—was where my mind began collecting my earliest memories. The first place my heart set down. You know, that place where you run barefoot, wander without worry, and live somewhere between innocence and discovery. Back then, this little corner of Gaye Town, set between a Bassa community and a swamp, was home.

I can still see my six-year-old self, barefoot, balancing on top of the whitewashed fence surrounding our house and playing “Blade” in the sand with brothers Benjamin and Saturday. Their world was only a hop over that fence—though hopping the fence was forbidden.

Gaye Town, Monrovia, Liberia, 2010

Thirty-three years later, on a visit to Liberia, I found my way back to Gaye Town, eager to see if the house was still there.

It was. The porch remained green, and the whitewashed fence was still standing. My two older sisters and I stood there, staring at the house.

I was a child again. I hadn't realized how much of that little corner of Gaye Town I still carried with me.

Gaye Town, Monrovia, Liberia, 2024

I asked the woman who lived there if we could go inside. I wanted to stand in the living room and picture our Christmas tree back in its old corner, then gaze down the long hallway that once led to our bedrooms. The tenant was gracious.

I left happy knowing the old house was still being cared for.

Fourteen years later, I returned to Gaye Town, this time with my son, who was eager to see the childhood playground he'd heard so much about.

I sighed when we pulled up beside the house. It looked broken, the green and white paint chipped and faded. What remained of the fence leaned against the house. Clothes hung on a blue line between the house and a section still standing—evidence that squatters had taken up residence.

What was left of the fence & front gate

My son walked beside me along the familiar path outside the gate. I was surprised to see the old well still there, where, as a child, I would lean over its edge and lower the metal bucket on a rope, trying my best to draw water. Most times, after all that work, the bucket came back with only a few inches sloshing around in the bottom.

Of course, I couldn't just stand there. I peered down into the well, just as I had done as a child.

Then I turned to my son and pointed toward the swamp. That had been forbidden, too.

On Saturdays, when Mom and Dad ran errands in town, I followed the brothers into the swamp, sometimes riding on their backs, my feet dangling inches above the mud as we crossed from one dry patch to another.

The boys collected “kissmees”—long snails—in the murky water while I waited on a sandy patch nearby. Later, we cooked them in a rusted vegetable can over a small fire, sucking the meat from the shells with a little kissing sound. Then we would throw back our heads and laugh, shouting, "Kiss me, kiss me!"

Those days seemed as though they would go on forever. Today, they live only in my memory, though I would gladly step back into it, if only for a day.

That longing to return to the way things once were isn't mine alone.

I've heard it in the voices of others who, like me, were raised in a culture other than our parents', only to have life carry us back to the country our parents called home.

I imagine anyone who has ever wished for the world they knew as a child understands it, too.

You can return to the town you left, the city, even the country. You can walk the old paths. You can even stand in front of the house. But we cannot return to the way it felt to live there. The people have changed. We have changed. Only in our minds can we find home exactly as we left it.

Perhaps memory itself is a gift, God's way of keeping those experiences alive in us. I will never go back to the childhood I remember, but how fortunate I was to have lived it.

Those years became part of who I am—the way I see people, the way I understand differences, the ease I feel connecting with people from other cultures. For that, I am grateful.

If you are lucky enough to have grown up somewhere that became part of who you are, you know that pull inside that still reaches for that beginning, where your mind began

collecting your earliest memories. Where your heart first set down.

Maybe, like me, you would love one more moment inside that world.

Where is that place for you—the one you would give almost anything to step inside and find exactly as you remember it?

—Georgie