“Everything is Just Spoiled”

A firsthand account of SIM missionaries during the Doe/Taylor conflict

A Detour on Jim McLellan's Road

Through May and into June, fear grew among the Gola people in the vicinity of Tahn. News broadcasts from ELWA and BBC became constant topics of conversation as events in the south and east went from bad to worse. A general air of uneasiness permeated everyday life as ordinary people contemplated the impact the war might have on them. A Gio man told Ben Motis he never slept in his house anymore. At night he retreated to the illusory sanctuary of his farm.

For most Westerners the way he uses "farm'' requires some explanation. Outside English-speaking West Africa, the word conjures up images of acreage, house, barn, and outbuildings. For a Liberian, "making farm'' means nothing more than clearing an American football field's worth of space in the forest and, after burning the underbrush, planting rice among the ashes.

Their "country kitchen,'' where food is prepared during the days of planting and harvesting, is usually a temporary A-frame structure of saplings, about ten feet by twelve at the base, covered with palm thatch. Rice is stored in a floored space at the peak of the small building where smoke from the cooking fire rises through the rice, discouraging rats and insects, and lending "country rice'' the distinctive flavor that makes it the best in the world to Liberians and many missionaries.

The "farm'' is also a place of retreat. In times of trouble, Liberians disappear from town to sleep under cover of their country kitchens. As fighting spread and death squads sought out members of certain ethnic groups, Ben's Gio friend was not the only one to take refuge on his farm.

The recurring theme in many conversations was, "This just can't happen here.'' And yet, Pastor Varney of the Tahn Evangelical Church told Ben that, if the business in Nimba wasn't put to rest, "We're going to have civil war.''

In spite of the war's growing threat, 1990 was progressing as a busy and productive year for the team at Tahn. It had opened with a hurried month of preparation for the annual church conference, a gathering of leadership from eleven SIM-related churches in the Tahn district.

Every year, churches in the Tahn district put aside small money just to rent a taxi to come. A great sacrifice to village people who attended, the effort always proved worth the cost. 1990's conference was the best ever. One of the churches sat on the edge of Manoduguah, a Muslim village that had asked to have the conference there. Too small to host it themselves, members of the church approached their Muslim neighbors for help. These villagers, who listened to the Gola broadcasts over ELWA faithfully, were happy to open their village and give the Christian conferees a cheery reception. They opened their homes warmly to their visitors. One morning during the conference, a delegation from the village brought in a tubful of rice and a gift of money they had collected for their guests.

"Our prayer was that a church would be started in that town,'' Monie said. "A family from the town accepted the Lord and they were starting to meet there. We were just starting to see things happening. Then of course we had to leave.''

Aside from the long hours Ben spent discipling church leaders, spring of 1990 found Ben occupied in a more material enterprise. Supervising the ELWA carpenter shop had been Ben's first assignment in Liberia after their flight from Ethiopia during the early days of its civil war. Now, after almost a decade of church planting, he was using those same woodworking skills to train church leaders to run a portable saw mill. The hard mahogany lumber they would produce could be used for church projects and community development work in their own villages. This was a venture that promised good things for the Gola people, and these Christian leaders were excited about its potential.

Teaching sessions, part of the Theological Education by Extension, (TEE) program, also took him into distant villages. TEE is a vital part of the early stages of church planting in Liberia because, without trained leadership, churches are likely to die out or mutate under the pervasive force of traditional religion.

Ben's ultimate hope was to revive the Gola Training Center to carry church leaders beyond the limits of TEE. The center had operated for six years earlier in the eighties, but died for lack of qualified national leadership. Early in 1990, though, the Gola church began to show signs it was ready to make the center live again. With increasing maturity in the churches, more people were ready for the training. More importantly, there was a growing body of educated Liberian believers who could handle the teaching duties. Ben's dream of teaching and encouraging leaders from the sidelines instead of being the principal player appeared close to fulfillment.

May 22nd was a red letter day for the Motis family. After weeks of uncertainty, Tim and Cathy, Ben and Monie's college age children, arrived at Roberts field for a summer visit. It had not been an easy decision for any of them to bring their adult children into a country at war, but a supporter had felt God leading her to raise the money for their air fare and it was an offer hard to refuse. After much agonizing, field administration had approved the visit reluctantly, and the team at Tahn was unanimous in affirming the decision. There was absolutely no thought that trouble would ever come there. It was expected farther south, though, and Tim and Cathy were whisked away to Tahn the day after their arrival.

Almost immediately, rumors started to circulate that troops were massing on the Sierra Leone border. According to news reports, President Momoh of Sierra Leone confirmed a force of "rebels'' on his border with Liberia, but maintained his inability to control them. That bred rumors that they would infiltrate through Grand Cape Mount County, moving south to trap Monrovia in the jaws of an NPFL trap.

Ben reported the rumor to Jon Shea at area headquarters with the request, "Jon, would you call Ed and Fran Laughridge over on the Mano River and find out if they know anything?''

The answer came back that Laughridge's had noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Ben wasn't satisfied. Too busy to go himself, he turned to Renate Isert, and asked, "Would you like to go up to Mano River and talk to the Laughridges? Find out what's going on so we can at least have a handle on our situation.''

An electrical engineer in her native Germany, Renate, was a mainstay of the Tahn team. She is both an exceptionally competent linguist and, as Ben describes her with a laugh, ". . . one who is always ready to do anything that's half-way adventurous! She loves it.''

Renate undertook the adventure of driving through what could easily have been NPFL held territory. Once at Mano River, Laughridges seemed to confirm the rumor when they informed her they had noticed large numbers of people moving in the forest across the river. They were uneasy about it, but couldn't say who they were. Although no identifiable threat had materialized, they promised to radio any new information on to Tahn.

Returning home, Renate reported what little she'd uncovered to Ben and, with no identifiable danger on the horizon, they resumed ministry as usual for the rest of the week. The usual came to an abrupt halt on Sunday night, May 25. After the evening service at the Tahn Evangelical Church, they returned home to find Jon Shea calling on the radio with a message that was brief, and as painful as it was unwelcome.

"The Laughridges have left their station. I want you to leave, too. Take your people to help the team in Upper Lofa. When things get better, you can come back to Tahn.''

If the rumors had been upsetting, the order to leave was devastating. The Tahn team was made up of veterans whose missionary careers were woven together by time spent working together among the Gola. Only Ulrike Heider was a first termer. The rest had all given at least two terms to Liberia. Motise's were the senior missionaries there, having served with SIM since 1967. In that time, Ben will tell you, he's lost three professional libraries to political instability. They had been forced out of Ethiopia during their long running civil war, and, like the Gola people among whom they worked, never thought it could happen again. Tahn was, after all, far removed from the animosities of this war.

Lee Warsen and Libby Muchmore, public health nurses from Todee, had been sent to Tahn to sit out the war in safety. Now, along with Barb Hartwig, Motise's, Marianne Atzbach, Renate Isert, and Ulrike Heyder, they took to the road on May 28th. Their convoy of four vehicles wound its way through the Gola forest along another of those tiny, unmapped roads that crisscross the Liberian bush. Kolahun is about 150 miles north of Tahn, and they expected to make the trip in two days.

Barb and Marianne had an in-service session planned with the traditional midwives in Zui and needed to detour by there to cancel the meeting.

They arrival in Zui around four in the afternoon triggered an unexpected response that demonstrated the pervasive fear that had taken hold in their district. Uncharacteristically, Pastor Singhbe, of the Zui Evangelical Church, was not there to greet them when they arrived. He appeared out of the bush a few minutes later. Afraid that the approaching vehicles carried enemies, he had hidden there until he saw the words, SIM-ELWA displayed on the cars and recognized the drivers as friends. When the town chief learned of their arrival, he and the church leaders moved quickly to arrange for their accommodations.

The other men of the village were all away in the bush making farm, but when they returned around seven, preparations for the evening meal began. By nine, the guests had gotten settled, taken showers, and were ready for a special Monday night gathering of the church. Over the thunder of rain beating on the zinc roof, Ben delivered the evening's message of encouragement to people facing hard times from the book of Daniel. They shared a fellowship meal with the villagers and then turned in for a short night's sleep.

With a hard drive ahead of them, they hit the road at 6:30 next morning, expecting to arrive in Kolahun by evening. After over three hours on the road, they stopped at Timbah village to celebrate Libby Muchmore's birthday. Abandoning the cars for a nearby palaver hut, they broke out a portable gas stove and made coffee to go with the homemade bread they shared, while Libby opened a few gifts to make the celebration complete.

The palaver hut is a feature of every Liberian village. During rainy season, downpours of several inches a day are not uncommon. During dry season, the sun beats down with such unrelenting intensity that anyplace in the shade feels almost air conditioned. Palaver huts, palm thatch roofs supported by poles, provide a convenient place of escape from each in its season.

On the road again, their journey through the maze of the Gola forest continued. Dense rain forest with huge mahogany trees, sometimes reaching heights of seventy five feet, the Gola forest is a magnet for foreign logging interests. At one time a trackless home to leopards and elephants, with the coming of logging companies the forest became a labyrinth of roads, well kept but totally unmarked.

Each narrow road looked like the last and the four drivers often had differing opinions about which road led where. Monie laughingly admits, "We missionaries are a hard-headed bunch,'' who made a succession of wrong turns, wandering for hours in the scenic Gola forest. Finally, they found an informant who could give directions accurate enough to set them on their correct course, and they were on their way again.

Late in the afternoon, they approached the hill the villagers call "Carmel Hill.'' The hill is all but impossible during rainy season, and as they approached it the road deteriorated rapidly. One by one the cars meticulously threaded their way across a succession of rickety log bridges, lurching repeatedly as tires slipped into the huge gaps between logs.

Suddenly, around five that afternoon the caravan found itself stalled at the foot of Carmel Hill. The road wound up its side for almost half a mile like an almost vertical, serpentine riverbed, strewn with boulders larger than the cars. Half way up, it leveled itself momentarily before beginning its vertical ascent once again. They had driven all day under oozing pewter skies, but at the foot of that near-legendary hill, the clouds opened with a rush, drenching the steep, clay road.

Four wheel drive is a necessity for rainy season travel upcountry, and all four vehicles were equipped with it, yet the most powerful of them would find that hill more than a match. Ben revved his engine and aimed the yellow Toyota truck up the mud-slick roadbed but the hill quickly stymied the small pickup. Ben found himself a fourth of the way up the hill, mired in the ooze. Unable to break free, he abandoned the truck, alternately walking and sliding through the downpour, arriving at the bottom of the hill rain soaked, coated in red clay.

While the women worked to fix a make-shift supper, the two men mounted the hill on foot. A man inclined to set his jaw and attack difficulties, or mountains, persistently until they are overcome, Ben surveyed the road as carefully and the darkness and rain would allow, and with Tim planned their course of action for the next assault. After supper, Ben slipped away unnoticed for a second attempt at the hill.

It proved no more successful than the first. The churning tires mixed rainwater and mud into a greasy sludge no longer adequate to hold the truck against the pull of gravity. Ben tried to stop its slide by jamming down on the brake pedal, but his foot, caked in the same slick mud that frustrated the spinning tires, slipped from the pedal and the truck broke loose, careening backward beyond the foot of the hill and into the bush.

Watching from the bottom of the hill, the others, realizing their predicament, scrambled to clear a place for the plummeting truck to slide to safety. Unwilling to admit defeat, Ben enlisted Tim and Renate to aid in a final attempt. Roaring ahead as far as the tires would take, the two of them hastily jammed large rocks behind the spinning wheels to prevent another potentially disastrous slide. Walking the truck laboriously upward, they regained the ground lost in the last attempt, but eventually the back tires slipped into a rut that would provide a safe stopping place and they gave up for the night.

Tired, wet, and covered with bites from the swarming gnats, they retired to the cars to wait for daylight and relief from the rain. It was a truly forgettable night of failed sleep.

Next morning, Ben and Tim tried to drag the truck upward with a "come-along,'' but after gaining a mere ten feet through two hours toil, Ben called for help. He and Tim drove back to Vahun, the last village they'd passed and hired a man named Alfred who, later in the day, presented himself at the foot of the hill with a pickup load of men and boys to do the heavy work.

They went to work filling holes in the roadbed and scraping down the sides of the ravine through which the road tumbled, buying inches of additional clearance with their labor. The rains had let up during the day and the roadbed began to dry as the crowd of workers attacked the problem in true Liberian fashion. A government soldier had attached himself to the work party and, as other drivers approached the hill he drafted them into the crew.

Renate's car was the most powerful and most likely to make it to the top. A driver named Sah, one of the draftees, took the wheel. As Tim puts it, "Then the hot-rodding began.'' Sah raced the engine as he zigzagged and fish-tailed his way between the first set of boulders to rest on a large, flat rock outcropping part way up the hill. On his heels, Alfred gunned the brown Land Cruiser along the same slippery course and slid to a stop alongside Renate's car. The appreciative audience of villagers cheered their efforts through the afternoon with applause and shouts of encouragement, "That man is an operator,'' or, "That man is qualified.''

By late in the day, all the vehicles had been brought to the base of the last, and most difficult obstacle blocking their crawl to the summit. A huge rock, slightly longer than one of the cars, stood squarely in the middle of the road and could not be bypassed. The downhill edge of the rock rose upward at almost a 45 degree angle. The assault on this last obstacle began with Sah leading the charge accompanied by the cheers of the crowd. Tires spinning and smoking, engine roaring, he coaxed Renate's car up the steep slope to the crest and then dropped a tow rope to Alfred, who attached it to the front of the blue Land Cruiser. Together, Alfred driving, Sah pulling from the top, they brought the second vehicle to the top. The struggle took its toll, as Renate's clutch gave out in clouds of acrid smoke at the moment of victory.

The day ended as inauspiciously as it had begun. Two of the four vehicles sat at the top of the hill, one disabled. At the foot of the boulder, the brown Land Cruiser waited for morning and the yellow pickup waited for a new clutch.

Now long past dark, Ben thanked the drivers for their help, ignoring the damage done to the little fleet, and paid them for their efforts. He and his travelling companions settled down for a second miserable night on the hill. The sound of a radio and men talking loudly farther down the hill broke into their unsuccessful attempt at sleep. Alfred, joined by a friend, had ventured into the night to return Motis' radio, stolen by one of the spectators during the excitement of the day.

When morning broke, the women drove the two operational Land Cruisers into Kolahun while Ben and Tim remained behind to remove the clutches from the disabled vehicles. Matt Carr was in Kolahun and came out to the hillside that morning. With his hefty cruiser and muscular winch, Matt exercised a much appreciated ministry of towing among the often stranded drivers of Upper Lofa County. He was well prepared to lend a hand to haul the crippled pickup over the big rock to the top of the hill.

Once all the vehicles were on the right side of the hill, the next challenge was to get the two without clutches running again. Lying on their backs in mud, swarmed by gnats, it took Ben and Tim until after dark to extract the two useless clutches. By that time the rain had begun beating down again, so they all boarded Matt's vehicle for the ride to Kolahun, where they spent the night.

Miraculously, spare parts were available in Kolahun. That morning, Tim, his sister Cathy, and Marianne accompanied Ben back to the hill. It took the rest of the day, and into the night to replace the first clutch. Cathy and Marianne stood by to fix meals while Ben and Tim worked for two days in the mud under the cars. The final bolt on the yellow pickup went into place around four the next afternoon.

It had taken five days to make a one day trip. When they drove off the hill for Kolahun that afternoon they left two destroyed clutches, a lot of tire tread, and the paint from several car doors behind to mark their ordeal.

Once in Kolahun, Ben went to work establishing radio contact with the Laughridges. It came as a shock for them to discover the trek from Tahn had been the result of their evacuation, because the Laughridges had never evacuated. They had left their house on the Mano River, it was true, but for no reason more compelling than an empty pantry. Their short trip had been made only to restock with groceries. The garbled story that set the Tahn people on the road proved wrong on another count as well. Neither soldiers nor rebels had produced the activity on the Sierra Leone side of the river. Laughridges now knew all that activity had been caused by Liberian refugees on the other side of the river. The five day ordeal on the hill and their ongoing exile to Upper Lofa County had been launched by a false alarm.

Once in Kolahun, the town became a staging area and jumping off point for the ten refugees from the south. They quickly found that there were too many people in one place and spent most of their time underfoot and under-utilized. In short order, Ulrike, Marianne, and Renate, already under emphatic direction from their embassy to leave the country, decided they could deal with the menace of invasion, but the threat of inactivity was more than they were prepared to endure. Together, they left the country to return to Germany early in June.

The original ten reduced to seven by their departure, Pauline Chilver and Libby Muchmore were next to go. For them it was just a short move to Polowu, where they tried to offer the village some preventive medicine, but spent most of their time seeing fifteen to twenty patients a day in need of curative care. Barb Hartwig remained in Kolahun, and, for a few weeks, made the short trek into Foya to work at the hospital. Kathy Johnson, in her second term in Upper Lofa, worked as an adult literacy teacher and taught in the local school. She welcomed the help Cathy and Monie could give in both those areas.

Ben continued to expand his church planter's job description, adding automobile repair and home maintenance to saw mill management. He found enough mechanical devices in need of repair to keep him profitably, if not contentedly, occupied for the time being. Tim, a horticultural student in college, found limitless opportunity to indulge his interest in plant life in the bush. He was getting to know some of the young people in Kolahun, and like the rest of his family, finding it a good time to be with the people.

After three weeks, a mission house in Kortulahun opened up, and the Motise's moved there to relieve the crowding at Kolahun and watch over the empty house. Matt and Brenda Carr invited Barb to stay with them in Voinjama, completing the dispersion of the Tahn team.

The time in Upper Lofa County was well spent, but frustrating. Their own work, work to which they were all deeply committed, had been left behind in Tahn. In Upper Lofa they created new work, but it was work they knew they would be leaving soon. Barb remembers it being hard for another reason: the waiting. As May passed into June, the NPFL advance brought them into Lofa county, moving northward at a glacial five miles a day.

When the Patriotic Front finally arrived in Zorzor on July 10, Barb decided to leave Voinjama for Kolahun. She will be quick to tell you she's never liked guns. Neither she nor Motise's ever intended to leave Liberia for any length of time, but they had no intention of staying put if actual combat overtook them either. For their part, Ben and Monie had seen enough of civil war in Ethiopia to know they didn't need to see more. It seemed, at the time, a simple matter to cross the border for temporary refuge in Sierra Leone when the time came.

With conflict rapidly engulfing their sanctuary in Lofa county, and Tim and Cathy's fall college term approaching fast, it seemed the time had come. They would radio headquarters in Monrovia and secure permission to return to Tahn. With the carnage of war sweeping into Lofa County and moving in the direction of Kolahun, permission to leave was quickly granted.

It was the work of two hours that Monday afternoon to extract the two remaining vehicles from their hiding places in the bush. Barricaded by fallen tree trunks and camouflaged by the luxuriant underbrush, they had been almost as safe there as in a locked garage. By four o'clock, they were on the road.

Their route Monday took them only as far as Foya, a short drive from Kolahun. On Tuesday, they made a long, out-of-the-way loop through Sierra Leone to avoid the hill that had caused them so much trouble six weeks earlier. Swinging back toward Tahn, they crossed back into Liberia and headed for Timbah village, where they would stay overnight, arriving in Tahn by noon Wednesday. The decision to leave for Sierra Leone on Saturday had been made by that evening.

Filled with frenzied activity, Thursday and Friday passed quickly. A steady flow of people careened through their lives as they packed away everything valuable in the houses on the Tahn compound. Church leaders, villagers, friends came to greet them and say goodbye, offering their warm welcome back and their heartfelt encouragement to go. For all the anxiety, inconvenience and danger those two days cost the Motise's and Barb Hartwig, they were days of blessing none of them would have missed. Monie observed, nine months later, "If we never get back there, we've said goodbye. It was a great feeling.''

Saturday came very early that week, as the four Motise's and Barb loaded themselves into two vehicles and pulled out in the gray pre-dawn. Ben drove the yellow Toyota pickup and Barb was at the wheel of the community health car, a Toyota Land Cruiser. She had painted a red cross on the rear window, hoping this international sign would restrain hostile intentions. For added protection, Ben had hired a Liberian soldier to help them through the military checkpoints they were sure would block their way.

Rather than chance the usual route through Bomi Hills to the junction with Jim McLellan's road at Klay, they headed southwest along the back road to Sinje. By Liberian standards, it was a good dirt road, but rainy season torrents had washed out a few of the log bridges, which necessitated time-consuming detours. These unavoidable delays propelled their military escort into a state of high agitation. "It's very bad to stop on the road like this. The rebels are coming, let's move!''

Two Christian friends, William ("Dub'') and Shara Hayes, were staying in Harrisfield, about five miles from Tahn where Dub and his Mandingo partner were mining diamonds. Shara worked as a librarian in Monrovia, but had gotten stranded while visiting Harrisfield with her husband. They were desperate for a way out of the country and had made arrangements to accompany the group from Tahn when they left. It was a short detour to stop along the way to add the Hayes to their entourage.

Except for the washed out bridges, and the nervousness of their escort, the trip to Sinje, and then northwestward to Bo, went without a hitch. The checkpoint at Tiene, about five miles from the border, was the only one in the leisurely five hour trip.

Arriving at the border around eleven, Ben collected all the passports and steered them through the typically slow border procedure while the others waited in the vehicles and talked. If all went well, they might make it to Freetown that evening. The border crossing was, as always, a tedious ordeal, two hours of waiting while the passports were stamped and Ben finished up the paperwork to take the cars across.

Cathy and Barb sat in the cruiser, parked in front of the building, waiting. A soldier in a yellow T-shirt walked past and turned to look at Barb, saying, "You're going back to Monrovia.''

"He was talking to me!'' Barb said to Cathy.

They looked around and realized a cluster of soldiers was staring and pointing at their cars. One soldier Tim describes as, "looking particularly nasty,'' walked over to the cruiser, patting it with a proprietary air as if to say, "This one's going to be mine.'' As Barb puts it, "We started to get the idea that something is going on around here.''

Their escort confronted the man. "I carried these people here. They're all right. Don't do anything to them.'' But the other soldier had his eye on that Land Cruiser and warned him to stay out of the way. Leaving the frustrated escort behind, he burst into the office where Tim overheard him saying something to the chief immigration officer about the presidential mansion in Monrovia. He knew this was going cause them problems.

Inside, Ben was working on paperwork with a policeman he knew. The officer asked Ben, "Do you have any Bibles?'' Ben understood that he meant pamphlets or Christian literature so while the man continued to work, Ben went to get some from the car. At the car he was greeted unceremoniously by a band of soldiers. They were quickly joined by the immigration officer who told Ben, "We need your passports back. We need to see them again.''

Reluctantly, the passports changed hands. It would be the last time the travelers ever saw them.

The immigration officer went on, "We've just received a radio message from the mansion that there's 9 missionaries coming to cross the border today and we're to send them back to Monrovia.''

Ben's response was quick. "Well, wait a minute. We haven't been to Monrovia, and we're only 5 missionaries, so what's going on here?''

The immigration officer was a small man, well dressed in brown slacks and a dress shirt, but not imposing in any way until he commanded, irritably, in a high voice, "Park your vehicles.'' With no choice but to obey, they backed away from the customs building and pulled to a stop in the center of the parking lot, facing the customs building.

Another soldier, irritable and wearing his power like a badge, advanced on the cars to berate their occupants loudly with the information that "a top Marine'' had been caught in Monrovia with weapons for the rebels. "America's aiding the rebels!'' For Barb, that brought their situation into sinister focus. If the soldiers were upset with the United States these two car loads of Americans would probably have to bear the burden of that anger.

It was around two o'clock when the surly immigration man returned with Tim's passport. " Timothy Motis come with me.''

Tim went, alone, into an office at the end of the building where he was interrogated for over an hour. His interrogator was having a bad day, too. Much of the time in the office was spent with him complaining about a blinding headache, the prelude to an attack of malaria.

To Tim's way of thinking, the questioning was pointless. He'd gone to school at Ivory Coast Academy in Bouake, Cote d'Ivoire so his passport was filled with entry and exit stamps from there. They seemed important to the interrogator.

"What were you doing in Ivory Coast?''

"I went to school there,'' Tim would reply.

"Why didn't you leave when the embassy told you to go?''

"I came out to spend the summer with my parents.''

The questions went on and on, going nowhere. "What are you doing here now? Where are you coming from? Where have you been? What were you doing in Lofa County?'' Finally, Tim wrote a statement giving a full account of his activities and intentions and was sent back out to rejoin the group. Monie noted, "Tim is so quiet, it was hard to tell if he was shook up or not.''

Through the long minutes he was inside, his parents and friends prayed continually for his safety. With his return they knew their prayers had been answered, but soon it would be his mother's turn.

A soldier came for Dub Hayes, and when he returned he was frightened. "These people are really serious. They broke off the interrogation. They weren't even listening to me. They said, 'These people got to go back to Monrovia. There's no use questioning them. We'll just send them back to Monrovia.''' Dub saw a fairly pragmatic motive in all this. "They want your vehicles. That's what they want.'' he said.

"Ramona Motis, come with me.''

When Monie finally returned, she was visibly shaken. They had asked her to write her statement and her hand was shaking so badly she couldn't hold the pencil.

The official complained of malaria and asked Barb for her help. She observed that, while he was really sick, she didn't think he had malaria. She was willing to try anything to win him over, though, so she offered some anti- malaria medicine and water to take it with. He refused the water, saying "I got my own kind of water in the office.'' He took the medicine and read off Barb's name. She followed him to the office.

His pen ran dry so Barb offered hers. "And I didn't get it back. No I didn't ask for it,'' she recalls. "By now he had no interest in me whatsoever. He was sick and tired of getting the same answers from all of us.'' By the time Barb's turn came, he was too sick to pay any attention to answers she might give.

There was a radio in the next room. It squawked and the man jumped up, ran out the front door of his office and into the room next door. He was on the radio for ten or fifteen minutes. All that while Barb sat and looked at her passport on his desk, wishing she could just take it and leave. When he finally returned, he said, abruptly, "Go back to your car! I'm going home.''

It was 6:00 on a Saturday night and he said he'd be back tomorrow.

Barb questioned, "Tomorrow's Sunday, you work on Sunday?''

"Yeah,'' he answered, "No Sunday business here. We work every day, every day.''

They didn't see him on the next day, or ever again.

They had planned to be in Freetown by Saturday night. Here they were, held against their wills at a border crossing still in Liberia. As their interrogator left, they asked what they should do.

"There's a motel over there. Go see if you can get a room,'' he said. "You better go quick because there might not be any rooms left.''

Behind a heavy fringe of trees, secluded and hidden from the road, they found a building that looked like a huge Liberian house. Almost a hundred feet long, its walls were perforated with doors, and a large, dirty looking porch covered the front of it. The clearing around the house was filled with people and Tim remembers a strong feeling of vulnerability as they considered spending the night there. A man came from the house to tell them there was no room.

The companions were unsure whether to feel disappointed or relieved. In the meantime the man returned to the motel where he was met by a talkative cluster of people. In a moment he returned to say, "Yes, we do have a room after all.''

The troop of expatriates huddled in the two cars shared a composite of more than two lifetimes in Africa, and there was something in the hurried palaver and the sudden change that unsettled them. The situation felt wrong to them all. "It was just too - - too away from things and shady. We were feeling so unsafe anyway,'' Barb remembers.

So they rerouted their two-car caravan to the parking lot in front of the customs building where they'd spent that Saturday afternoon. A generator was running somewhere, and a floodlight mounted on the front of the customs building flashed on, sending its brilliant beam directly into the center of the lot. They swung the cars into the heart of the light and made their preparations for another night of illusive slumber, buoyed only slightly by the marginal security of the floodlight's glare .

Darkness comes early in the tropics, and after sharing some bread, a canned Danish ham, and chocolate chip cookies, they filled the dreary evening hours with conversation. Before trying to sleep, they gathered for a prayer meeting. Their testimonies later would come back to the importance of prayer during their ordeal, and the value of scriptures they'd memorized.

Not wanting soldiers, encouraged by the sight of an empty seat, to demand a ride, they had travelled from Tahn with the back seat of Barb's Land Cruiser folded down. Cathy made her bed on a sleeping bag in the back, while Barb and Monie settled into the front. Outside, Ben and Seku laid claim to some mahogany benches in front of the customs building, while Tim and the Hayes' shared the other vehicle.

A hard rain drummed steadily on the echoing car roofs. With windows closed, they became tight metal saunas, but when opened the rain splashed through making them steaming shower stalls. Each car's occupants struggled to adjust their windows to make sleep possible without opening themselves to the full force of the storm.

Tim rose during the night to escape the confines of the car and stretch his legs. He was challenged with typical scatter-gun paranoia by a soldier set to guard them. "Where are you going. It's curfew time. Where is the radio? I know there is a radio in here!'' Doing his best to ignore the agitated trooper, Tim eventually crawled back in the car, less prepared for sleep than ever.

Around three in the morning, the semi-sleepless discomfort of the night was broken abruptly by a wave of refugees surging noisily out of the darkness to overwhelm the sleepy border crossing. The night was dark outside the ring of light cast by their floodlight. The road teemed with people jostling one another in their flight, wailing out their fear as they passed. Rain that had streaked the windows of the two cars in the customs building parking lot throughout the night added to the nightmare flight of the masses hurtling toward safety on the far side of the bridge.

Men trudged behind wheelbarrows laden with the residue of their poor treasures. Some wheeled their young or very old, too tired, too feeble, or too sick to walk. Monie talked with one man who had labored between the handles of his wheelbarrow all the way from Monrovia. A sheet of plastic covered a few household items and his sleeping daughter. Women, without benefit of wheelbarrows, staggered ahead under the weight of huge loads balanced on their heads. A prisoner in the small holding cell beside the customs building shook the bars of his prison frantically, pleading for his release.

Breaking off from the noisy throng, a single man ran past the customs building, shouting the warning, "The rebels are coming.''

Seku, knowing a Mandingo man was in desperate danger if the warning were true, turned to Ben. "Please open the car and get me my bag. You expatriates will be all right but I have to get out of here.'' Ben procured the bag from the Land Cruiser and Dub provided money for the inevitable expenses. Together they composed a quick inventory of names for Seku to carry to the US embassy in Freetown.

He ran to join the mass of humanity swirling past and in a moment was gone.

For the missionaries who remained, this was a great shock. To the Southeast, Monrovia remained trapped within a tightening circle, but there had been no word of movement outward into the safe havens to the Northwest. Patriotic Front forces were still far to the north where their arrival had generated cryptic warnings from the missionaries in Upper Lofa. Their alarm made it clear that, when the commandos appeared they would, like the rider of the pale horse in Revelation, carry the power of death in their hands. The passing throng had felt the nearness of that power, and it radiated terror through them.

In a strange kind of loose custody, passports confiscated and freedom of movement gone, a spreading sense of helplessness and vulnerability caught at the travelers. Barb recalls that this began, "The scary time for me.''

It had become apparent that, while most of the soldiers were still friendly, some were thoroughly angered by the official indifference with which the United States had greeted President Doe's pitiable appeals for help. It mattered not at all that this group of Americans contained ELWA missionaries. There were naval vessels anchored off the Liberian shore, with combat Marines at the ready, and to the uninstructed thinking of Liberia's army, if the Marines were not there to help them, they must be there to help their enemy. Their animosity had already proven threatening. In the hate-charged atmosphere of tribal warfare that permeated Liberia, it could prove deadly.

Not a man to wait passively while the actions of others determined his fate, Ben quickly resolved that an attempt to cross over into Sierra Leone in the confusion was well worth the risk. He took the lead, with Barb following at the wheel of her Land Cruiser as they nosed up the steep driveway from the parking lot and into the flood of people. Edging toward the border in the center of the throng they gradually approached the bridge, where they were halted abruptly. As the column of refugees surged past to safety on the other side of the bridge, two factions of soldiers debated their future. From her vantage in the second car Barb could hear the first group arguing, "Let them go.''

Ben, his patience wearing thin by this time, joined the argument. "The rebels are coming. They'll kill us. You've got to let us go. You want us to die here?'' His entreaties fell on deaf ears.

"No! Do you want me to spray your car full of holes? No way. You're not going anywhere. Get back.''

Ben continued to argue and the order escalated to threat as the soldiers trained their rifles on Ben and said, "Get back! We'll shoot!''

Staring into the business ends of waving M-16's, Barb, who has never cared much for guns, began to back her Land Cruiser through the crowd and back toward the parking lot. In the beam of her headlights, she could see Ben's truck following.

Once again, they pulled into the protective circle of light in the parking lot. Not willing to give up, Ben left the cars and walked back to the gate to plead his cause one more time. As he began, a soldier lying on the ground looked up, pointed his rifle and snarled, "Get out of here! Don't come back again.''

The Commanding Officer's office stood open and, with no prospect of leaving in sight, they unloaded their luggage from the cars. In an inner office, Ben found a soldier lying on the floor, half hidden behind the desk. He was sound asleep. He kicked the sole of the man's boot roughly, and barked out, "Wake Up! Wake up! Don't you know the rebels are coming?''

Jolted rudely and only reluctantly into wakefulness, when the meaning of Ben's words filtered through to the man's sleep-muddied brain, he scrambled to his feet, collected his scattered belongings, and was gone in an instant. He would return later to thank Ben for his warning. They watched Pandemonium engulf the government soldiers on guard, men running in every direction trying to salvage some belonging and whisk it to safety.

In the chaos, someone thought to secure the prisoners and posted a guard to ensure that they would not once again try to join the crowds and move, unnoticed, to freedom.

Dub had spent time in Liberia and could recognize the signs of official avarice among their captors. He knew the soldiers wanted to take the vehicles and could sense that a gift in the right place might win their release. He put together a bundle of American dollars and offered it to two Liberian officers. "I will give you this in exchange for our passports and clearance to cross the bridge,'' he said.

The Colonel agreed to Dub's proposition and ordered, "Get your things. You've got to go across right now. Right now! I'll get your passports and bring them to you on the other side.''

The border is just a bridge. The Mano river separates Liberia from Sierra Leone and the distance from Liberia to freedom across the river was a mere hundred and fifty yards. They drove cautiously to the bridge where, after a tense moment, the soldiers opened the gate. Barb tells the story from there.

"We drove - you've got to imagine--there must have been twenty soldiers at that gate. It was spooky, all those guns. But we drove past them out onto the bridge and we got literally half way down the bridge when one lone soldier stepped out from in front of a parked van in front of Ben. He spread his feet and he held his gun out, right on the truck, and he said, "Get back.'' That's all I remember him saying, and it was obvious his finger was right on the trigger and that we were not going anywhere.''

Defeated, they once again began the slow backward crawl to the customs parking lot. There they were met by one of the men who'd agreed to arrange their release. He instructed them to park and unload their belongings a second time.

"Put that back seat up,'' he said.

They complied.

"Now give me the key.''

He climbed in, started the Land Cruiser, and drove off. Barb was furious at the theft of the vehicle supporters had paid for, to bring medical care into remote villages. She was furious at the duplicity of the officer who had made the agreement with Dub and failed to carry it out. Back in the office, she cried for the first time, tears of frustration and helplessness.

Soon, a soldier herded them outside. "We're using this office. You can't stay here. Get out.''

Evicted from this temporary shelter they stood on the concrete pad outside, sheltered by the wide overhang of the roof and surrounded by all their belongings. Around them soldiers scurried to and fro preparing for the expected attack.

Another soldier, mo