Oracle Online

Lauren Vikander/Oracle: You said you’re from Liberia; I’m really interested in that. Can you tell me some more about your experience there?

Michael Elliot: Well, I was born in Liberia and lived there until I was 18. I grew up on a farm in the interior of the country with my grandmother. But due to the civil war, we had to leave the country. When we fled we had bullet shells and missiles flying above our heads, while we were roaming around the forests. We never knew where our next meal was going to come from or who was going to kill us. But we got out of the country and traveled from Gambia to Sierra Leone and then to Houston to Baltimore to Philadelphia to St. Cloud to Brooklyn Park to Minneapolis and now to St. Paul. It took about four years to reach the U.S.

O: So did you travel to the States with your grandmother?

ME: Well actually, it was just my younger brother and me. We got on the plane together and came to the U.S. to meet my grandmother. Each of our family members had to come to the U.S. separately.

O: If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?

ME: I would live in Liberia in the interior, on the farm where I grew up on, with absolutely nothing to care about in the world.

O: So I’m assuming the civil war has died down now and it’s a bit safer to live in the part of the country where you grew up?

ME: Yeah, it’s died down and they’re having elections in the country. But this has all happened before. It’s never entirely safe.

O: What is a quality or characteristic that you possess that sets you apart from other people?

ME: I think the thing I cherish most about myself is the ability to know within if something is right or wrong. And to be willing to say it without fear. I think a lot of people will shy away from doing or saying what they know in their heart to be true just because they fear others’ opinions. I think there’s nothing to fear in the world.

O: So how do you think you gained this philosophy? Was it from life experiences or family members?

ME: I think it is the culmination of life experiences and all the people I’ve encountered in my travels, from the beginning in Liberia to this moment in time. It comes when one learns about all the people who have come before. Learn about the courage of Gandhi, of the courage of Martin Luther King Jr. and the tremendous courage of Martin Luther, the founder of the Lutheran faith. I mean, he stood up in a room of all the powers to be in his time. And they asked him, ‘Did you write this?’ Luther said ‘I did. These are my books. I’m sorry I cannot recant or take anything back, for to do so would go against my conscience and that would neither be right nor safe, and here I stand before you, I can do no other. Amen.’ In front of all the powers to be, and you take that and look at the Hamline community or any community and you can get the courage to do what you know is right. This is nothing compared to all that’s happened in the past.

O: Do you like to cook?

ME: I love to cook! Growing up in the village, my grandmother cooked for our entire extended family. Thus, she’d always dish out the food in great big bowls and we’d all have to gather around to eat. I was always a really slow eater, so while everybody was out playing I’d wait ‘till the moment she was done cooking and try to eat before everybody got back. In the process of sitting there, I think I learned how to cook from her.
So I really like it and love to eat just as much.

O: So what kinds of things do you like to make?

ME: I cook a lot of our native food which is usually a rice base with different kinds of soups with meat in them. Oh, and a lot of pepper. We love spicy foods.

O: What do you think about Bush?

ME: George W., he has certain qualities that I like. He seems to be a man of conviction, and he seems to be a strong leader, decisive, and willing to stay on the course. Those are all qualities that I find to be good in a person. But at the same time, when something isn’t right, the ability to listen to other people and the ability to admit that you’re wrong are characteristics that are important. He lacks this.

O: What do you think about his current foreign policy?

ME: It’s very hard to see what’s going to come out of it. Sometimes people make mistakes, but there are always unintended consequences when you make a decision. Maybe his mistake of getting the U.S. involved in Iraq will turn out to be something good for the Middle East. But on the other hand, I lived through civil war. I lived through war. Once, a rebel came to our village asking for my grandma with an AK-47 on his shoulders shooting it into the air calling for her. She approached him and said, ‘Is it I you’re calling?’ He said ‘Yes,’ and at that instant another rebel intervened and said ‘Don’t kill her, that’s my mother.’ I mean, I lived through her carrying me on her back, physically on her back and walking for miles at a time. There was no place to sleep, nothing to eat and not knowing when we were going to die. That’s an aspect of war that I wish on nobody, and on no country. And the hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq that are unaccounted for that amount of loss of life is just wrong. It’s wrong foreign policy when we count every single American loss but we refuse to count the hundreds of thousands of people that Iraq has lost. That’s wrong foreign policy.