|
Everything is Just Spoiled A firsthand account of SIM missionaries during the Doe/Taylor conflict |
|
Chapter 1
. Everything Is Just Spoiled Chapter 2
. Every Man Heart Lay Down Chapter 3
. Randy and Adena
Wildman Chapter 4
. Tim and Nancy Brannagan Chapter 5
. Barb Hartwig Chapter 6
. Dwight and Dorothy Hazard Chapter 7
. Matt and Brenda Carr Chapter 8
. Ed and Kay Klotz Chapter 9
. Charles Taylor Chapter
10.
. A little rumble up in Nimba Chapter 11
.. Tahn, Grand Cape Mount County Chapter 12
.. Voinjama,
Upper Lofa County Chapter 13
.. Like a mighty army Chapter 14
.. Rambo round the corner Chapter 15
.. A Detour on Jim McLellan's Road Chapter 16
.. No hole in lizard's suit Chapter 17
.. Codename Hibiscus Chapter 18
.. Epilogue |
|
The Russian built Antonov
military transport was for dropping jeeps to soldiers not carrying
missionaries away from them. On lease to the Dutch owned Air Cargo Liberia, it
was flying charters from Monrovia, Liberia to anywhere people wanted to go.
On July 14, 1990 people wanted to go to Freetown, Sierra Leone, and wanted to
go there very badly. The six of us had said our farewells that morning on
the campus of radio station ELWA in the Monrovia suburb of Paynesville. We
had talked, almost dispassionately and in businesslike terms, with the ten
member remnant of SIM's ELWA team. We discussed errands we could run when we
got back to the States, lamented the need for our departure, and looked
forward to our return in a matter of weeks. Hundreds of the 12,000 displaced persons using ELWA as
a sanctuary from combatants in Liberia's civil war lined the laterite road to
the highway. All the American missionaries, whose presence they relied on for
protection, were, according to rumor, leaving. Subdued and grim, they watched
as our six white U.S. embassy vehicles rolled the long quarter mile from the
guest house, past a handful of the smaller missionary residences, past the
vacant studio building, and onto ELWA road. Although we couldn't know it then, the rumor would
soon prove true. In two short weeks SIM International's thirty-six years in
Liberia would end. For how long, only God would know. The day was hot, but no hotter than you'd expect from
July in Liberia. What you wouldn't have expected was a clear, light blue sky
flecked with the kind of fluffy, white clouds that make you think of sheep
grazing. The waterlogged rainy season skies that usually dominate Monrovia's
July's were conspicuously absent, and had been for most of the month. The
weather all year had been unusual enough that country Liberians were sure the
spirits were upset with what was happening in their country. Our journey to the small downtown airport was
uneventful. Soldiers at the checkpoints along our seven mile route, unlikely
models of military decorum, saluted the American flags fluttering on the
front fenders of every car in the convoy. We discovered at the airport that
the government's soldiers were angry at Americans. Their president had called
on the United States for help and the 2,000 U.S. Marines on ships just beyond
the horizon had not given it. In normal times, Tubman Boulevard's four lanes were a
kaleidoscopic interweaving of lane changing taxis and Kamikaze pedestrians.
Foot traffic in Monrovia treated the outside lane as if it were a broad
sidewalk. On this day, except for occasional clusters of two or
three soldiers working their unhurried way from somewhere to somewhere else
and the more purposeful men at the check points, it was absolutely deserted. The terminal building at Spriggs Payne field would
look right at home at hundreds of small county airports in the U.S., but most
international travelers would find it woefully inadequate. For Monrovians of
every nationality, six and a half months into a prolonged and savage civil
war, it was the only air link with the outside world. The terminal building, a small white concrete block
building, offered no amenities, and scant room for the kind of crowd an
approaching war can create. Inside, the open decorative blocks of the customs
shed, looking like something from a misplaced Malibu gazebo, admitted the
ocean breeze into the terminal building in little gusts that made parts of
the waiting room almost comfortable. This waiting room was not designed for comfort. A few
official looking mahogany tables and desks, and thickly painted blue wooden
benches were the only furniture. We shared the benches with an assortment of
European journalists, Indian and Lebanese businessmen, and Liberians, all
eager to pay the outrageous price of $550 for the 45 minute flight to safety
in Freetown. Outside on the tarmac a sporadic stir of activity
ebbed and flowed around the open cargo ramp at the tail of a smallish white
plane. Liberian men in combat gear circulated around the mass of women and
children preparing to board. These were families about to be separated by
war: women and children flying south to what they hoped would be safe haven,
men staying behind to stage a last ditch defense of their capital and their
president. Our flight, scheduled for 9:30 A.M., would have to
wait until 4:00 that afternoon when the plane returned from this government
mandated trip to Grand Gedeh County. Accustomed to the ways of West Africa,
we'd all planned for a delay. We'd given over precious space in our skimpy
collection of carryon luggage for sandwiches and bottles of Coke to carry us
through whatever indeterminate wait intervened between our breakfast at ELWA
and our supper in Freetown. As it turned out, supper was about 9:30 that
evening. The next seven hours passed slowly. Penny McMurtry,
the U.S. consul for Liberia, stayed through the day to babysit. I was
surprised to see a small contingent of U.S. special security operatives
prowling the inside perimeter of the terminal. Unsmiling men with granite
jaws and Clint Eastwood eyes, their presence kept the collection of idle,
belligerent, often drunken, soldiers at bay. Then, around 11:00, I understood why they were there.
The newly appointed U.S. Ambassador to Liberia walked in to greet us, and
their hair trigger alertness went up about two notches. Peter de Vries, a
career diplomat raised in Brazil, has served in every Portuguese speaking
country in the world, except Portugal. New to Liberia, he was not new to
Africa, or to civil wars. He circulated among the Americans that day as
casually as a pastor at a potluck supper. When he left, over an hour later,
the guard left with him. When the plane returned in mid afternoon, the crowd in
the terminal surged for the exits, each elbowing into position to snatch the
first and best seat on the plane. Because our embassy had arranged for our
tickets, because our ambassador had made a great show of talking with each of
us, and because Penny was still there to watch over us, we American
missionaries enjoyed the unaccustomed luxury of VIP treatment. We walked unhurriedly and unmolested to the fenced
waiting area near the plane and would enjoy the only real seats on this
situation comedy airline. Penny ushered us past the flood of people flowing
up the wide ramp to crowd through the open cargo door and into the plane's
dim gray interior. As we passed under the wing, I noticed a square marked on
the side of the plane with the stenciled instruction: In case of emergency,
cut here. Just forward from that encouraging message, we VIP's clambered up a
narrow aluminum ladder and through a narrower door to take six of the eight
grimy airline seats, arranged in two groups of four facing each other across
a narrow cargo bay. Ed Klotz, Dave Decker, and Mark Bruner sat with their
backs to the left bulkhead. Paul Chiles, Larry Dick and I took our places on
the right. While the circumstances surrounding our flight were unusual, we
were a fairly typical collection of missionaries. Ed and Larry were, in terms of missionary experience,
the old timers in the group, both administrators being cycled out because
there was nothing but a burgeoning refugee population left to administer.
Dave Decker was next in time on the field with 18 months as a substitute
father for the missionary kids boarding at ELWA Academy hostel. Mark, an electrical contractor, and his family had
arrived late in March. They had just returned as career missionaries after a
short term assignment in 1987. They had been back just five weeks, long
enough to settle into their house and get back into the rhythm of life at
ELWA before Denise and their two small children had to return to Detroit. Paul is a doctor who works to keep his life relatively
uncluttered, freeing him to act as a sort of on call short term medical
replacement wherever he's needed. He had flown into Liberia after most
expatriates had left to carry part of the patient load at ELWA hospital. I had arrived in Monrovia late in December to assume
the pastorate of the International Church of Monrovia, at about the same time
the invading army made its first foray into the northern reaches of Nimba
County. While we waited for the last of the passengers to be
shoe horned into the plane's tail, we "talked small'' across the waist
high mound of luggage that tumbled over our feet. We were all more tired than
any of us realized. Women and children had started leaving at the end of
April when the Western embassies started urging their nationals to seek more
tranquil locales. Within a month, the expatriate population of Liberia had
dwindled to a fraction of its original number. Our group had all been
automatic members of a group called variously, "Bachelors Anonymous,''
"Bachelors Unwilling,'' and "ELWA Husbands Batching It.'' The
weekly transatlantic phone calls we were able to manage before the phones
went down did little to cushion the pain of separation. As the war increased in intensity, the random violence
increased around us, too. People disappeared into the tropical darkness every
night, most of them, forever. A few mutilated bodies surfaced to bear witness
to the probable fate of the rest. And then there were the refugees. The past two weeks
had seen the campus of radio station ELWA inundated with people who no longer
felt safe anywhere else. With them came round the clock problems, and
constant effort to maintain a minimal level of shelter and sanitation and
provide spiritual ministries. In spite of constant reminders that we remained
because this was God's place for us, all this took its toll. When it came, the notification of our places on this
charter flight left us drained. It wasn't until we knew we were leaving that
we all realized how much we had been running on empty, with only God's grace
to keep us going. When we finally boarded the plane on Saturday afternoon,
we'd spent a day and a half in frantic preparation, and another day in
frustrated waiting. Now we could only sit until Vladimir and Sascha, the
pilots leased with the plane, lifted us out of what Esquire magazine called
"The Civil War in Hell.'' Rearward, all the way to the cargo door in the tail
section, a pair of benches snaked along the bulkheads. As many as a hundred plus
people, packed tighter than a subway car full of commuters, filled them. A cluster of European journalists, looking as out of
place at the rear of the plane as we did at the front, joked and photographed
themselves for posterity. One of Liberia's senators joined the banter with the
news that he was on his way to Sierra Leone "for the weekend'' because,
with the curfew in Monrovia, it was impossible to have a good time at home. A somber group of Indian businessmen, leaving
everything they owned behind them, could not have been thinking of a good
time, and joking must have been the farthest thing from their minds. When the pilots finally throttled up to taxi away from
the terminal, all but the most loudly shouted conversations ceased. The cabin
was neither pressurized nor insulated, and the roar was almost painful.
Through the half dozen windows that blistered the plane's skin we watched our
slow, bumpy progress through a cordon of soldiers, rifles at the ready, to
the end of the runway. Some perverse design feature of the plane had equipped
it with air conditioning that seemed to choke on the thick, moisture laden
outside air. With the plane's first movement it sucked in great gulps of it
and spat it into the cabin as thick clouds of fog, heavy with the smell of
warm earth, salt air, and the lush greenness of West Africa. As we gained
altitude, air temperature outside the plane dropped, and the fog condensed
along the overhead, creating ribbons of water that flowed backward along the
duct work. While this year's rainy season had brought precious
little rain to the rainiest city in the world, we experienced intermittent
indoor showers for the duration of the flight. Ed had chosen a seat under what proved to be the
center of the storm and his showers were more than intermittent. When we
finally landed in Freetown, he was soaked. It was a far cry from the sleek airliners with their
predictably uncomfortable accommodations that had carried us all into
Liberia. But then everything about Liberia was a far cry from what it had
been just a few months earlier. The decrepit yellow taxis that usually carried
Liberia's population to market, to the doctor's office, and to the homes of
friends had been off the roads for weeks. As they say in Liberia, "The
gasoline was finished.'' Most of the drivers, Mandingoes marked for death by
the insane logic of ethnic hatred, had long since retreated to safety in
Guinea. The shelves in Monrovia's western style supermarkets,
where expatriates bought Danish canned salami and exotic Indian spices,
Polish cookies and British Weetabix, were almost bare. Remembering the coup
attempt of 1985 none of the store owners wanted full shelves when the looters
came. The open air markets fared no better. Roads to the
food producing counties of the north were blocked by the war and even the
supplies of raw peanuts and palm oil were almost depleted. Rice, almost all
imported, was sometimes available if one knew where to look, and could afford
prices bordering on extortion. A token shipment of flour had appeared in
Monrovia in April, but that was the end of it. The bread was finished. Ordinarily friendly and gregarious, Liberians were
beginning to cluster in suspicious, frightened groups in whatever church
yards or closed compounds would offer them sanctuary. Tens of thousands of
men, women, and children were on the road in a perpetual dance of survival,
following rumors of safe haven to shelters that all too often proved anything
but safe. An expatriate community of missionaries and business
people numbering in the thousands had been reduced to a handful of people
clinging tentatively to their places in what, only months earlier, had been
called the most stable country in sub-Saharan Africa. Average Liberians were bewildered by the chaos
sweeping their country. Stephen Cheor, a security guard in the suburb of
Congo Town, observed, "I don't know what is wrong. Everything in our
country is just spoiled.'' His assessment was both accurate and eloquent. Liberia
was spoiled indeed. How had Africa's oldest independent republic come to
this? Ask a Liberian how he's doing and he's apt to reply,
"I'm trying,'' or, more likely, "I'm trying small.'' For most of
that country's 147 year history, "trying'' would get you an adequate
supply of country rice, greens that could be cooked in palm oil, flavored
with the occasional fish, chicken, or bit of meat, and ignited by Liberia's
incendiary peppers. It would provide you with shelter in a traditional mud
stick house with a relatively water tight roof. In Monrovia, trying would
probably win a single room in a larger block or zinc walled dwelling and a
similar diet. That would be enough to make most Liberians happy.
They are a people who have learned to find happiness in small things and out
of the way places. As almost any Liberian will tell you, "It isn't
easy.'' That expression can apply to any current situation, or to life in
general. In the best of times, life isn't easy. As is the case
in so many less developed countries, poverty is the norm and life is all too
fragile. A private watchman before the civil war would work six
nights a week for a month and, for his efforts take home $75 to $100
Liberian. He would be happy for the steady income. Out of that he could
expect to pay $35 rent on a single room in a large house with a common
kitchen. Another $35 would buy a hundred pounds of rice to feed his family. With marginal maternal nutrition and practically
nonexistent prenatal care, more than one baby in ten would die at birth.
Those who survived could look forward to only 53 to 56 years of life. For
most, those years would be spent in a kind of poverty only the very poorest
of Westerners could imagine, but probably not approximate. Under those
circumstances, "I'm trying,'' sounds almost heroic. A country about half the size of the United Kingdom,
or almost exactly the size of Honduras, it packs a dizzying ethnic diversity
within its borders. Liberia's official language is English, a dialect of
English it takes outsiders months to understand and much longer to speak
convincingly. Underlying that English is the echo of each speaker's
first language, and there are at least sixteen of those. Each tribe speaks
its own language, and within each language, there are dialects. Krahn, the
language of one of the smallest tribes in the country, can be broken down
into twenty two clans, each with its own dialect. They can be so different
that members of some clans can't speak to members of others. Yet, with all the diversity represented in a population
of 2.5 million, Liberians have always taken pride in their ability to get
along peacefully. The Lawyer's Committee for Human
Rights observed in a 1986 report, that ethnic divisions were "largely
dormant'' before 1980. In previous decades Liberia has been a notable example
of ethnic harmony on the African continent. In spite of this, the recent civil war has been
described accurately as a tribal conflict. The roots of burgeoning ethnic
hostilities and the war itself began to emerge after the April 12, 1980 coup
that brought a 28 year old Master Sergeant, Samuel Kanyon Doe, to power. In the months following the coup, indigenous Liberians
viewed the overthrow of the deposed True Whig Party with elation. True Whigs
had held a monopoly on political power since the country's founding in 1847.
Its leadership came almost entirely from an elite group descended from
slaves, freed in the American South and colonized on West Africa's Pepper
Coast. They called themselves "Black Pioneers.'' The 95% of the population tracing its descent back
through generations of tribal history in Liberia had been largely excluded
from both the political process and the economic benefits that came with it. Periodic clashes between this erstwhile colonial
element and the indigenous population marked the opening decades of the First
Republic. With the passage of time, governmental control spread into the bush
in a way the late president William Tubman (1944-1971), a member of the
settler elite himself, called "colonial.'' To correct some of the more glaring inequities of that
strange, pseudo colonial dependency relationship, Tubman proclaimed a
unification program that, theoretically, would open the political process to
the tribal majority. At the same time, he opened the doors of Liberia wide to
international development. The country began to reap the benefits of his
"Open Door'' policy long before the unification program had any
noticeable effect. During the decade beginning in the middle 60's, Liberia's
economy boomed, growing at a rate that rivaled that of Japan and West
Germany. His successor, William Tolbert, continued the
policies. Improvement in the lot of the mass of Liberians came at glacial
pace. They grew increasingly impatient as they saw the benefits of their
country's economic prosperity settling into the pockets of a small and
already wealthy minority. Most Liberians greeted the assassination of Tolbert as
an act of redemption. April 12th has been celebrated since 1980 as
"Redemption Day.'' The new military government, led by the People's
Redemption Council, spoke grandly of freedom for all Liberians. The plan was,
so they said, to return the government to an elected civilian government that
would bring democracy to Liberia. The international community greeted it with horror. The
president of a supposedly democratic country had been bayoneted in his bed
and then, only ten days later, the PRC had executed thirteen high True Whig
government officials before the eyes and cameras of the international press.
This grotesque spectacle horrified outside observers. Whatever the coup's original intent, the actual result
was to replace one minority rule with another. In spite of high hopes for a
new national order, the new regime set a path in its early days that would
lead eventually to a government hard to distinguish from the one they'd
overthrown. The original group of seventeen enlisted men who
staged the coup, and the original leadership of the People's Redemption
Council (PRC) were both ethnically diverse. As the highest ranking man in the
group, Master Sergeant Doe was chosen chairman of the PRC, and, over the
course of the next three years pruned out possible rivals for that position
by accusation, exile, and execution. As time passed, General Thomas Quiwonkpa, called by
some "the only truly honest man in the PRC,'' emerged as the chief
threat to Doe's power from within the PRC. He was popular with the troops and
with a large portion of the population as well. Doe arrested him in October
of 1983. Only after vigorous protests from the army, as well as leaders from
his native Nimba County, he was released and allowed to leave the country.
With Quiwonkpa's exile, Doe was essentially without rivals in the PRC. All along, he had been promoting members of his own
Krahn tribe to positions of power throughout both government and the
military. With Quiwonkpa's restraining influence removed, soldiers soon
realized the truth of Chairman Mao's adage that all power comes from the
barrel of a gun. They were a law unto themselves, swaggering through public
places brandishing loaded automatic weapons. With only minor modifications,
this became the rule during the years that followed. Liberia's dwindling hopes for a civilian democracy
were struck a death blow with the election of Doe to the presidency in
October of 1985. For over a year prior to the elections he had been working
to assure his election by erecting obstacles that made anything resembling a
fair election impossible. By election
day, Doe had already appointed a handpicked legislature and assumed the
office of "Head of State.'' His "interim'' government restricted
opposition parties in their abilities to meet, to campaign, and to recruit
members. Combined with the power of incumbency, these measures should have
been enough to insure an electoral victory. Even so, when preliminary counts started to appear,
they showed a clear trend away from Doe. He quickly moved to remove the
ballot boxes. He appointed an election commission to count the votes without
any outside observers. When the result of this clandestine count was finally
made public, it showed Samuel Doe the winner by a narrow 50.9% of the vote. The margin of victory, spurious as it may have been,
was greeted as a positive sign by western diplomats. Testifying before the
Africa Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in less than
two months after the election, Assistant Secretary of State, Chester Crocker
said: "In claiming only 51% of the vote, Doe publicly acknowledged that
a large segment of society -- 49% -- supported other points of view and
leadership than his own.'' In this Alice in Wonderland election, S.K. Doe's chief
rival, Jackson Doe (not related) lost his own home county. Like Quiwonkpa,
Jackson Doe was from Nimba. A pattern began to develop in the minds of Doe and
his Krahn inner circle. Their enemies were from Nimba county, and they were
Gio and Mano. The response to what everyone considered a fraudulent
vote count was swift. On November 12th General Quiwonkpa led a coup that, for
a few hours, seemed to have succeeded The elation that swept Monrovia at the
premature announcement of Doe's overthrow was short lived, and proved deadly
for many. Within hours the government had reasserted its authority and a wave
of bloody reprisals swept the country. What came as a surprise was the violence with which
Gio men were treated in Monrovia itself. The Lawyer's
Committee for Human Rights, in its report on rights abuses by the Doe
government documents some of these. More chillingly, they also document the
summary executions and persecution of Gio's and Mano's in Nimba County. In the eyes of the army and Doe's supporters, the
issue was clear. The Gio and Mano tribes, dominant in Nimba county, were the
enemy. The political challenge of Jackson Doe, had come from Nimba, as did the
military challenge just suppressed. When I visited Liberia in October of 1987, officials
from Nimba county were paying a state visit to Monrovia to assure the
President of their loyalties. The day they made their appearance in the city
was tense, although at the time I didn't understand why. The animosity kindled by these events smoldered for
five years, kept close to flashpoint by rumors of a killing room in the
Presidential mansion where celebrants from the misguided street
demonstrations of 1985 were taken, never to be seen again. On the streets of
Monrovia, people were quoting the proverb, "Same taxi, different
driver.'' Many Liberians sensed retribution coming. An unnamed
western diplomat, speculating about the possibility of massive reprisals
against the Krahn tribe said: " . . . if there is another coup, the
Krahn will be totally wiped out.'' A
friend at the International Church of Monrovia, said the same thing in a more
Liberian way as the war expanded in March of 1990. "That guy (Doe), if
he leaves, it will be said there was once a tribe called Krahn in Liberia.'' The pieces were all in place. The bitter animosity
once directed at the Americo-Liberian minority now fell squarely and
deservedly on Does shoulders. Surrounded by an inner circle of men from his
own clan, he had used brutal and arbitrary measures against the tribes he'd
identified as his enemies. Two of Liberias largest tribes had been so
misused by their own government that as early as 1986 catastrophe lurked
inevitably somewhere in the near future. A Krahn man from Grand Gedeh county issued what
amounts to a prophecy. "There will have to be revenge. . . . We've got
the feeling that something is in the making. When that thing explodes, then
God have mercy on us all.'' When
the first abortive raid groped its way across the Cote d'Ivoire border into
the village of Butuo on December 24th, 1989 the explosive forces that would
eventually destroy Liberia as a sovereign nation were already firmly in
place, awaiting the spark that would ignite them. |