|
“Everything is Just Spoiled” A firsthand account of SIM missionaries during the Doe/Taylor conflict |
|
Luminaria, paper bags weighted with sand and lit from within
by candles, were a Christmas tradition Ed and Kay had shared with most of the
families living across the lagoon on the south end of campus. This Christmas
eve they joined their neighbors once again in lighting that end of campus. It
made such a beautiful display, they kept them in place through New Year’s
Eve. The Christmas lull at ELWA was a time many families
chose for vacation. While the beautiful beach at ELWA was a favorite vacation
spot for missionaries from upcountry, ELWA residents found it impossible to
rest so close to work. When Ed and Kay Klotz received an invitation from Phil
and Lucille Nettleton, Wesleyan missionaries, to accompany them for a holiday
in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, they jumped at the chance. They left the day after
Christmas. The road to Abidjan is paved most of the way. On the
Liberia side, travelers follow the pavement East-Northeast through Kakata
where the Booker Washington Institute, a vocational, technical high school
catches the eye with its initially impressive campus. As with most places in
Liberia, including ELWA, a closer look would have shown the almost instant
ravages of a climate supremely hostile to western niceties like paint and
iron hinges. From Kakata, the road leads on to Gbarnga, a
prosperous agricultural hub that boasted a cluster of thriving chicken farms
and the Carey Institute where researchers worked on problems in indigenous
animal husbandry and rice farming. Continuing East-Northeast, the pavement runs as far as
Ganta, about two and a half hours from Monrovia. The leprosy hospital there
is famous for its humanitarian efforts and for the beautiful baskets crafted
by its patients. Very few expatriates leave Liberia without at least one
Ganta basket as a souvenir. Leaving the pavement at Ganta, the road continues to
wind deeper into the heart of country Liberia. With the mosque at
Sanniquellie, the capital of Nimba county, thrusting up from block buildings
around it, open air markets rather than streets of shops dominate commercial
life. The main street widens out to accommodate a central boulevard, lined
with trees. North of Sanniquellie the road branches, north to
Nimba county's country club city, Yekepa, or east and deeper into the bush
through Karnplay to the Ivoirian border. The van carrying Klotzes and Nettletons took the turn
to the east and passed through the village of Karnplay at about 11 A.M. Life
there seemed as normal as it had been for generations and, for all anyone
knew at the time, as it would continue for generations more. A typical African
bush village, zinc-roofed cement block houses interspersed with a few of the
older mud-stick or mud block buildings with thatching, and an open-air market
along the road, this was the sort of town Liberian church planters liked to
refer to as "the real Liberia.'' The U.S. Ambassador, James Bishop, passed through
Karnplay a few hours later, making him one of the last visitors ever to see
Karnplay in that way. People have called Abidjan the Paris of West Africa,
and with the French influence left over from colonial times the description
is apt. Visitors from Monrovia, where recreation consisted mostly of visits
to the ELWA beach and to one another's houses, found Abidjan a wonderland.
Klotzes bowled, swam in hotel pools, and shopped. A westerner could count the
number of good, affordable restaurants in Monrovia without using up the
fingers of both hands, but in Abidjan eating out once a day was recreation in
itself. Kay remembers thinking at the time that it was a long
trip for just a few days, but they all felt the rest would do them good. She
would laugh about that much later. "Little did we know. We came back
more stressed than when we left.'' A day or two after they arrived in Abidjan, another
missionary family called to say there'd been a coup attempt and the border
was closed. Getting back to Liberia could be a problem. There was nothing to
be done about the coup or the border, they reasoned, so went ahead with plans
to enjoy their vacation and deal with problem of the border when it
confronted them. Klotzes left Abidjan as planned, on December 30th,
passing through the multiple checkpoints along the road without incident. The border crossing lies about fifteen miles west of
Danane, an Ivoirian town known more recently as a refugee center. To the
west, across the Cestos River, a tiny Liberian village straddled the
crossing. To the east, a usually busy customs house served the same purpose
on the Ivoirian side. It was around four P.M when the van load of
missionaries pulled up in front of the Ivoirian customs building. Crossing
the approximately 150 feet of bridge linking the two countries is always a
chore, but this time it seemed the officials were exacting retribution for
the trouble free trip so far. Expatriates living in Liberia had to learn to steel
themselves for a ubiquitous request every year this time. It had originated
with the Christmas season in years past. Noticing that westerners were accustomed to giving
gifts at Christmas, the entrepreneurial spirits of Liberian officials sensed
a new device for separating foreigners from their dollars. At checkpoints all
over the country, police officers would ask, "Do you have some Christmas
for me? In the last two or three years, the request widened to include
"Some New Years.'' While this represents a localized manifestation of the
custom, I once had a man approach me on the street to ask, "Do you have
some Saturday for me?'' They were less than a day and a half from the dawning
of 1990, and the officials wanted "some New Year. Knowing night was
approaching fast, they stalled, rejecting papers that had been perfectly
acceptable on the way into the country. The strategy is always that people
will become exasperated with the delay and speed things along with a little
"dash,'' that is, a bribe. SIM missionaries don't pay dash, so the contest of
wills went on for over an hour before they cleared the van for its 150 foot
trip to the customs house on the Liberian side, and another set of officials
in a holiday mood. With the exception of customs officials, they were
almost alone. One young Liberian woman had been cleared and crossed ahead of
them, but the usual crowd of taxis, money buses (small Japanese vans or
pickup trucks carrying as many people as can crowd in and still breath) and
foot traffic was noticeably absent. The two guards in the building passed them on to the
single guard at the gate, a metal pole dropped across the road on the
approach to the bridge. He opened the gate and waved them through. A padlocked chain stretched across the bridge at its
midpoint. With the exception of those put up with foreign aid money by
international construction companies, Liberian bridges tend not to be over
built. This one was no exception. There were concrete pilings sunk into the
mud at the bottom of the river, topped by steel girders, but the roadbed
itself was made of thick mahogany planks, strong enough for the usual
traffic, but not suitable for anything really heavy. By the time Ed and Phil left the van, and their
families, in the middle of the bridge, ducked under the chain, and walked the
rest of the way to the customs building, they'd managed to travel around
seventy five feet in a little over an hour. Now the approaching darkness became a factor. It was
about five in the afternoon and, in December, that meant less than an hour
and a half of daylight remained. Customs closed at six, and nothing was
happening. Everything was very quiet. There were soldiers there,
but they seemed unconcerned about anything, playing cards and walking around
as if nothing had happened. Ed and Kay remember living through a civil war in
Nigeria, and sort of expected people, especially the army, to be a little
more vigilant. But at that crossing, except for the chain across the bridge,
it seemed like nothing else was going on. Things were not going well for Ed and Phil. The
customs people talked and talked. They said, "Oh, the guy has traveled.
He'll be back. Then he can unlock it. The only key to the lock was in the
pocket of a man who was no longer there. "Well, can't you go ahead with our papers?'' The answer was no. The officials continued to delay,
still hoping for their "New Years.'' As six o'clock approached they started suggesting that
the missionaries could not be cleared this night. They would have to wait
here until morning. Finally the man with the key came to unlock the chain.
They drove the next seventy five feet of their journey, and then waited some
more. "The visas aren't in order,'' was their
objection. "You can't cross over without proper papers. You'll have to
spend the night here.'' Finally, with no New Years in their pocket and the sun
setting, the customs agents gave up and cleared the travelers to enter the
country. It was nearly 6:30 and almost dark. Even in ordinary times, no one travels
Liberia's upcountry roads in the dark if they have a choice. Now rebels were
reported in the bush and Kay was thinking, "What are we doing?'' They headed out, with Yekepa as their objective,
passing four checkpoints before they arrived there. At each stop, the
soldiers reacted to the approaching van with skittish militancy. As the van
pulled to a stop, they shouted from the darkness, "Turn off your
headlights, turn off your headlights.'' Waving their rifles for emphasis,
they motioned the van forward and then, "Now, turn on your inside
lights.'' Once they saw pale skin of the missionaries, the women and children
inside, they relaxed, but their fear was real and unnerving. As they traveled it was impossible to know if the next
checkpoint would be rebels or soldiers, but they all knew a van would be
quite a war trophy for a rebel. At Karnplay, already the scene of armed conflict,
although that news had not reached them in Ivory Coast, an army officer
insisted they spend the night. It was not good to be on the road. "But we have reservations at Yekepa. Can't we go
ahead?'' Ed and Phil asked. After more "palaver'' the officer decided to put
a soldier in the car to protect them until the next checkpoint. A soldier just relieved of duty slid into the front seat,
automatic rifle loaded and ready. In their nervousness, soldiers at the next
checkpoint ordered the van emptied, relaxing only when they recognized its
occupants from their trip through a few days earlier. The soldier riding shotgun left them there, but he
wasn't missed. A single soldier would have been helpless to fend off an
attack, and his presence alone was enough to provoke one. Thinking back on that night, Kay describes it like
this. "We were really out in the country--dark--and you
couldn't see anything except what the headlights showed. I was really
nervous. I could feel my heart pounding, not knowing what to think or do. The
younger children were asleep. Mindy (her daughter), Trent Nettleton's older
brother, and I were in the back seat.'' "She was listening to her walkman. I said,
'Mindy, I don't think your mom's doing very well.' She turned to me and said,
'Well, Mom, I think you'd better listen to this.' She had on a Leon Patillo
tape and the song he was singing was called 'Fear Not'. It was just what I
needed to hear!'' Ed, who is largely unflappable, was not afraid during
that night side passage but he says, "I've never been more alert.'' They arrived at Yekepa around ten that night after
almost twenty hours on the road. Exhausted and starved, they ate a very late
supper, and let go the tensions and fears of the past hours. The trip from Yekepa to Monrovia was an anti-climax.
There were still the checkpoints, the nervous soldiers. At one point, Ed was
called on to write a lengthy justification for the Ivory Coast entry stamp on
his passport. Like a student on the first day of school, he produced a sort
of "What I did at summer camp'' statement. The soldiers at that
checkpoint knew where they'd stayed, where they'd eaten, what they'd done,
and why they'd done it when he was finished. But this was in the daytime, and the terrors of
darkness gave way to the familiar scenes and experiences of travel in
Liberia. Klotzes had been through more than one attempted coup in Nigeria and
knew what it was like to be interrogated by soldiers made dangerous by fear
and the dark. They arrived in Monrovia around four in the afternoon,
expecting to see a city braced for war. There they found life progressing as
if nothing had happened. The six-to-six curfew rumored farther north never
materialized. For
most us (our family was in Monrovia by this time) the rumors had already
started to fly, but they were nothing more. For Ed and Kay, Phil and Lucille,
the war started that night, but even they didn't realize how much had already
happened, and how much was yet to come. |