Wulwyn Porte – The one where we talk about civil war and toilet paper shortages

Wulwyn talks about the importance of character and how you would not have wanted to meet him before he valued character. One of the key things in his life was basketball. Learning to be competitive taught him to want to win, but win with character. His mother invited a man to their house as a child who was on the national team in Liberia. He spent a couple of hours on a Saturday and taught them the fundamentals and they ran with it for the rest of their lives.

Liberia was run by, at that time, a dictator.

Basketball. Turmoil. And then the war occurred.

There were natives of Liberia who originally were on the land, where there’s a fight between the natives and they call home ever that came from the States to Liberia, American Liberians.

And that thing just brewed a certain discomfort. It brewed distrust of this loyalty within that environment since the inception of Liberia till 1990. And that’s when it blew up. The American librarian ruled the country. And then the natives started to rule.

And in American Liberians saying, this is not the way you rule. So the American Liberian American librarian comes back to rule. And boom, civil war, roughly about 250,000 plus die.

Wulwyn shares his experiences growing up during a time of war. The first thing to go is the electricity and you have to go down to the bare necessities. You are surviving. You will be amazed at what your body can do to survive. It’s bullet flying, with child soldiers on your way to get water in the morning. You’re crawling with a wheel barrel to get water from the well.  Wulwyn lived in fear of being recruited as a child soldier. His mother would often have to come to his defense at checkpoints so he would not be recruited.

Their family fled to the states because the education system in Liberia was shattered by the war. He didn’t know racism in Liberia. He shares his experiences of racism in the United States.

We talk about empathy and how we can relate the emotions without relating to the experiences of our fellow man.

You can reach out to Wulwyn on his website or his foundation.