2007 HONORABLE MENTION

KNOCK KNOCK
Kale Kponee
17 years old, Nebraska

From the moment I was born, news of war and genocide floated around me. Anger, greed, and bigger, more frightening weapons were the main events that flitted in my mind. By the age of 5 I got used to hearing about innocent people being slaughtered for blind causes. Growing up in Nigeria, a country whose leaders were blinded by greed, I grew accustomed to the fact that people close to me would not always be there. When I was 7 I witnessed the death of my father, a journalist who dared to write about the corruption of the Nigerian government. He was tortured and killed as my family and I watched. All because he refused to stop printing the truth about the inside dealings of the Nigerian government.

After my father's death, I spent two years of my life a refugee camp in the country of Benin where I lived in constant fear. There were assassins after my family because we were a threat to the Nigerian government. When I was ten, I was resettled to America, and I looked onto my future with hope, keeping the naïve thought that perhaps there would be no more war, or sorrow in my life. In 2001 I watched a strong power center go down in flames and thousands of people die because there were people in the world that hated America and were cowardly enough to hijack a plane and kill innocent people.

I am 17 years old and after years of watching the pain Mother Earth has been inflicted, I realize that in all this hatred and decimation, we are missing an important factor in life. What about Peace? Where has peace gone and where has the concept that maybe the people that we want to destroy so much are our fellow humans, and that regardless of our skin tone or our accents, we are still the same people and as much as we hate to admit it; we are one.

Peace calls out from the street corners. She calls out to mankind and cries out to us. Pleading with us to reconsider, warning us to change. However, the more peace calls the more she is stomped down. The more she pleads with us, the more she is ignored. How much more war can we take before we destroy ourselves completely? How much hatred can we posses in our hearts before it destroys us completely? What about Peace? What about accepting one another. What about putting down the guns and the nuclear weapons and placing ourselves in our opponents shoes, to try to see the world from their kaleidoscope.

After pondering about this question I realize that Peace is still here in our hearts, And she has not given up on us. Peace is waiting for us, she is waiting for the brave person that will stand up and welcome her back into civilization. Peace knocks at the door, but the question is: will you open the door?