Interviews with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Every time there´s a challenge and one is able to overcome the challenge, I think you get stronger. And sometimes the difficulties you face are themselves character building and courage-enhancing. So when I went to prison, I came out stronger.

It´s humbling to know that there are so many others that go to prison you know, that nobody remembers, that nobody pays attention to because you live in a different world and all of a sudden you´re faced with that, and it begins to show you the great imbalances that exist in the world. But also you have a time to know what it is to be just like the common person and to be deprived of certain things like you´re accustomed in your elite world to so many meals a day, accustomed to the comforts of whatnot, and those things aren´t there. But they strengthen you, I think.

So an African prison is nothing to write home about. You know, the conditions are harsh. You get a meal a day and there is not much to that meal and there are not too much sanitation facilities and sleeping facilities. You know, they´re meager, so it´s tough.

You know, I grew up in a Christian home. My mother was a pastor and a teacher, so I think faith was a great thing that one knew that, you know, you had a good – you´d done the right thing. You had not done anything wrong, your conscience was clear, you were standing up for the things you believed in, and there was a God out there who was going to see you through.

That´s one thing, but again, like I said – you also know that it´s more than survival. If I get out, I will begin to continue to do the things that I know need to be done to change our society.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the president of Liberia. She was awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.

Sirleaf served as minister of finance in Liberia until the 1980 coup d’état by Samuel Doe. She left the country and served in senior positions with the World Bank and later Citibank.

Sirleaf returned to Liberia in 1985 and was arrested and imprisoned by the Doe government. After her release, she went into exile in the United States where she remained throughout a brutal Liberian civil war between the Doe government and a rebel group headed by warlord Charles Taylor. Following a peace agreement ending the war, Sirleaf returned home to run unsuccessfully against Taylor for the presidency. Taylor’s election has been attributed in part to a fear by the Liberian public that he would restart the war if he lost.

Following a second Liberian civil war, Taylor was exiled in 2003. Sirleaf again sought the presidency and was elected in 2005, the first woman democratically elected to serve as a head of state in Africa.

In 2008, Sirleaf published her memoir, “This Child Will Be Great.”