(1/12) “It’s one of the most painful things you can imagine. It...

(1/12) “It’s one of the most painful things you can imagine. It would feel like she was being stabbed in the joints with needles. On days when she was too sick to go to school, I’d stay home with her. I’d lie next to her on the floor, and she’d be in so much pain that she’d be asking for a knife to end her own life. I’d feel so helpless. She was just a child. I’d do anything to take away her pain. But I was just a child too, so what could I do? Fatou was the only girl in our family. She was our princess. She’d ride around on our backs like a horse, and we couldn’t stop until she said so. But we never minded. Whatever Fatou wanted, she got. For her entire life she’d been very ill with sickle-cell anemia. There isn’t a cure for the disease, so it put our parents under a great deal of strain. We weren’t a wealthy family. Both my parents had to work to pay her hospital bills. And the situation in our country was not good. In Guinea there has always been a lot of ethnic tension. Growing up there were a lot of riots, and a lot of shooting. The streets could be so dangerous that our parents would make us stay inside for days at a time. When I turned thirteen there was a particularly heated election. Politicians were stirring up anger between the tribes, and violence was spilling into the streets. My father is a very educated man. And he happens to be an amazing writer, so he started writing speeches for some of the more moderate candidates. During this time he sent me to America, to visit with some friends that he’d met while studying there. It was supposed to be a short trip, just a few weeks, until things cooled down. But my father called me a week before I was supposed to leave. He’d heard a rumor that he was going to be arrested. He’d decided to leave the country for a few months. And he thought it would be safest if I didn’t come home. When I hung up the phone, I remember feeling nervous. But I was also excited. I thought: ‘This is the greatest country on the planet. There’s so much opportunity here. I’m going to study, and find a good job. And I’ll finally be able to help my sister.’ I had no idea what was in front of me. I was just a kid.”