The Dung Beetles of Liberia

by Daniel V. Jr. Meier

  The small, jaundiced man soon made it clear that the visa was indeed going to be a problem and might take much more time and money than the embassy had first stated. I handed him the second letter. He read it slowly then rapidly straightened up to his full height.

  “Come back tomorrow. You will have your visa,” he said. Of course, he indicated, it would require him to work overtime and would double the cost, but I could have my documents tomorrow.

  On the return bus, a small red convertible passed and the two very pretty girls in it smiled and waved to me. I waved back. I was soon going to be on my way. It had been a good day after all.

  The next day, the visa was ready, signed, and in order.

  Jenny had just started a job as an administrative assistant at the Smithsonian and had agreed to meet me outside their offices on the Mall. I waited on one of the benches across the street. It had rained the night before and the grass on the Mall had turned to a richer, more translucent shade of green. I watched as office workers hurried past on their way to parking lots or bus stops. A few tourists in casual clothes, followed by weary children, ambled by looking at the buildings. I saw Jenny descending the stairs and walk toward me, her long blond hair flowing around her neck. I felt a sudden tightness in my chest and a near blinding realization of how lucky I was to have her.

  “Would you like to sit?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, “let’s walk—toward the monument.”

  We joined the others walking at a rambling pace, taking in the attractions tourists had come to see. The Washington Monument dominated the horizon.

  “My new office,” she said, “or shall I say desk, looks out on the monument. I was staring at it this morning and couldn’t remember why it is made out of different kinds of stone.”

  “I think it was a combination of a number of things,” I said. “They ran out of money, for one. Then there was the Civil War. The sad truth is that when work was finally resumed after the war, the builders couldn’t find the same quality of stone. Like so much in this city, the monument has a long history of political and financial wrangling.”

  “And how do you feel?” she asked.

  “Oh, I just think it was unfortunate—maybe a lesson to people in charge that when you start something, you should finish it.”

  We walked for a while in silence. She slipped her arm around my waist. “You didn’t come here to talk about the Washington Monument, did you?”

  We walked on a little farther.

  “I’m going to Liberia,” I said.

  She stopped, her face blank. She bit her bottom lip, but her flood of words couldn’t be contained. “Liberia! Do you know how far away that is? Do you know anything about it? Why Liberia?” she said, drawing out each vowel. She was just as angry as I expected she would be.

  I took a breath and said, “It’s about five thousand miles away. It’s like a small version of America, I think. It was settled by former American slaves, now known as Americo-Liberians, in 1820 and was founded as a nation in 1847. They have a federal republic. The Americo-Liberians are in control of the government. Monrovia is the largest city and the capital.” I paused to catch my breath, then continued. “William Tubman is president and has been since 1944. It’s about the size of the state of Virginia and is covered in forest. It has mountains in the north and east, hardly any roads, and is rich in mineral wealth. How about that?” I exhaled grandly.

  “That about says it all! So why did you decide on Liberia?”

  “Because Africa is wide open now. The old European colonial powers are gone or going. And Liberia is rich—really rich. It’s tied to the US by history and the currency is pegged to the US dollar. The country’s being developed at an enormous rate, and, best of all, they speak English.”

  “Tell me about the job.”

  “Thanks to my father, I’ve been hired by an air transport operator called African Air Services. Other than that, I don’t know anything about them.”

  We crossed 14th Street and walked up the curving paths to the base of the monument. Jenny and I looked up at the marble pyramidion that caps the obelisk and paused to watch small, puffy cumulus clouds drift slowly over it.

  “When do you leave?” she asked.

  “In two days.”

  “Two days,” she said, almost in a whisper. “Only two days? Couldn’t you have given us more time?”

  We didn’t speak for a while. Then she looked at me earnestly. “Kenneth, no matter where you go or what you do, I want you to remember where you come from and, most importantly, those who love you.”

  She kissed me and held me tightly for a long time. I still remember the delicious scent of her hair and her warm tears wetting my cheek. I felt like the worst kind of turncoat—like a man who walks out on his family when they need him the most.

  I packed lightly—just a few changes of clothes, an extra pair of shoes, and some toiletries. I started to pack my sketch board with paper but decided that it would take up too much room and it was heavy. If it didn’t fit into my carry-on duffle bag, then I planned to buy it when I needed it.

  Packing is that first real step in travel. The ideas, the planning, the fantasies are over. Packing represents the transition from the dream to reality. I hesitated at first. There had been a flicker of doubt, but I closed my duffle and with one look back at my bedroom, the cradle of my innocence, shut the door and walked out to meet my parents waiting in the car. Jenny had arrived looking radiant as usual. We drove to the airport, Mother trying to talk to Jenny about her college plans, and my father commenting on the changes to the city. I felt like I was in a dream. Jenny held my hand in a tight grip until we were in the airport parking lot and stayed close by my side during the walk into the terminal building.

  I checked in at the gate. The airport terminal was like a bus station. There were no body searches, no metal detectors, no X-rays. In the waiting area, Jenny sat next to me, still gripping my hand. My parents sat on the other side. No one spoke. Finally, the boarding call came over the public address system and I stood up to go. My dad shook my hand. He had a nervous smile and had difficulty looking at me. Mother wiped away her tears, and Jenny hugged me. I said as cheerful a goodbye to them as I could, hoping my voice would hold up, slung my carry-on bag over my shoulder, and joined the boarding line.

  Just before going through the door that led to the airplane, I glanced back and felt a gut-wrenching panic. Jenny and my mother were wiping tears from their cheeks. My dad was absently wringing his hands and his face had gone tense. Had Ishmael felt like this? Yet I knew that my decision was necessary—that it was what I must do or not survive.

  CHAPTER 2

  AFRICA

  My first sight of Africa was as we passed over a small island near the coast of Dakar. I gazed down out of the cabin window of Pan Am Flight 50, a state-of-the-art Boeing 707. Narrow dirt roads connected small, rough dwellings with an occasional thin column of smoke rising from them. We began our descent in a light rain. The landscape was a monochromatic grayish green. The first human I saw, as we were on final approach, was an old man, bent over as though he were in fear of being hit by the airplane.

  We deplaned down a rusty metal stairway and hurried on foot through the drizzle to the terminal building. In spite of the rain and the high cloud cover, it was hot. Hot enough to make steam rise from the pavement in small, vanishing filaments. Eventually, we were shown to the transit lounge where we were to wait for our connecting flight. There was moderate chaos all around with people shouting and gesticulating. The odor of curry dominated the close atmosphere. Acrid cigarette smoke filled the lounge, turning the outside grayness, filtering through the window shutters, into grim bars of semi-light. Indefinable noises came from every direction. The overhead fans in the transit area did little but stir the heated, smoky air. I bought a draft beer at the bar and went back to my seat. Staring into the diminishing foam at the top of my warm beer, I wondered where this seemingly rash decision would take me.

 
; When I looked up from my second beer, a woman with huge forearms and dressed in an official-looking uniform announced that Air Afrique Flight 156 to Monrovia was boarding. I emptied my glass just in time to join the crowd squeezing through the glass doors to the ramp where a dented, scarred, and faded DC-4 waited.

  In the cockpit were two French pilots who looked as though they could do with a night’s uninterrupted sleep and a square meal. The passenger cabin smelled faintly of urine, stale cigarette smoke, and aviation gas. The passenger seats were torn or worn through. In the rear of the cabin stood a disheveled flight attendant who spent most of her time glaring at us.

  After a two-and-a-half-hour flight, we touched down at Roberts International Airport (known locally as Robertsfield) about thirty-five miles outside of Monrovia, in the late afternoon. Again, it was raining. The wet season had begun in tropical Africa and it would go on for several more months. I made it through throngs of people to the reception area of the terminal. The building was an open-sided concrete shed with bars on the windows, no glass anywhere, and plywood fastened over some of the openings. Customs and Immigrations were inside. People were yelling and shouting. Three or four men tried to yank my bag out of my hands, all loudly offering to carry it.

  “I carry it for you, boss! I carry it for you.”

  But I hung onto it until I got into the customs line. I politely refused the offers. (I was told, before I left home, that I should always be polite. That would get me out of most scrapes). Then, about fifteen officials appeared and started marking passengers’ bags with an X in chalk and began opening them. Mine was not marked and was not opened.

  A large European who I had not noticed took me by the arm and said, “Are you Mr. Kenneth Verrier?”

  I said yes. He had an African with him who picked up my bag. We went through the terminal past customs, walked around to the back of the building, and got into a Cessna 185 that was as ragged an airplane as I had ever seen. I was shocked and, for a moment, thought of not getting inside. It simply didn’t look like it would fly.

  Much to my disbelief the engine started and we took off and flew, surprisingly without incident, to Spriggs-Payne Airport, a smaller airstrip on the edge of Monrovia where a tall, dark-haired man with a soiled shirt and a cigar wedged in one corner of his mouth met me.

  He extended his hand and said, “Mike McCoy. I manage the operation. I also own part of it. The pilots call me Mike or Boss. Everybody else here calls me Boss.”

  “Ken Verrier,” I said. “You’re American!”

  “Yes, from Texas.”

  “Who is Mr. Haddad?” I asked.

  “Oh, he runs a hiring agency in West Africa—got a lot of connections. Everyone hires their pilots though him.”

  Mike quickly showed me around what turned out to be a pretty small operation and introduced me to various people who worked for him. They hardly looked up from their tasks and did not seem interested in meeting me. The desks in the office were piled high with smudged and wrinkled papers. The maintenance area was dirty with machinery and tools carelessly scattered about. It did not look promising.

  Mike then took me to my new accommodations. It was called a guest house and it was run by a woman named Lilly Gella who was part Dutch and part Indonesian. A number of African Air Service pilots lived there. Lilly would prove to be a good landlady, always attentive to detail. She reminded me of a good fraternity mom keeping a bunch of rowdy boys in check.

  Toward evening we drove into Monrovia. The traffic was mainly a heavy concentration of people moving on foot along the sides of the road. The women carried something—a child, a soiled bundle on their heads—while the men trudged along ahead of them. Most of the vehicles were, as Mike told me, known as “money buses.” Money buses looked like Volkswagen hippy vans, only twice as long with open sides and wooden bench seats. There were, of course, the more expensive taxis and independent buses, but most people crowded onto a money bus, paid their few cents, and took their chances.

  We stopped at Heinz and Maria’s, a restaurant and bar in Monrovia that catered to Europeans, but especially to Germans. It was an odd combination of West Africa and a German Rathskeller. On the bare concrete wall there was an empty picture frame with the words “Der Fuehrer” on a brass plate attached to the bottom. A large flag of the German republic hung over the bar. We ordered dinner—knockwurst and sauerkraut and several bottles of Krombacher.

  “Finest beer in Germany. I don’t think you can get this stuff in the States,” Mike said, holding up the glass of golden liquid as though it were his most prized possession. After taking a long swallow and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand he explained what I would be doing for the next few days, which would be going through the tedium of getting all my paper work done—my work visa, my residency permit, my work permit, etc.—and obtaining an actual Liberian pilot’s license.

  “Essentially, African Air Services,” he went on to say, “is an air transport company. We fly anybody and almost anything that will fit into the airplanes anywhere in West Africa. The company is very prosperous. You will be paid a flat salary, to start, of nine hundred dollars a month plus a percentage of the profits. There are five other air transport operators on the field and the competition is stiff. Actually, it could best be described as cutthroat and backstabbing, but,” he chuckled, “that’s to be expected where there is a lot of easy money. After all, TIA.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means ‘This is Africa.’ The Europeans use it to explain or excuse things that seem illogical to them or are out of their control.”

  After dinner Mike offered me a cigar.

  “I don’t smoke,” I said.

  He congratulated me with a wry smile and lit a Cohiba, blew some smoke in the air and studied the smoldering cigar with satisfaction.

  “The Germans prefer this place. Heinz and Maria are escaped Nazis. In fact, most of the people you see here are ex-Nazis. Only I’m not so sure the prefix ‘ex’ is appropriate. I personally like the food. The Americans and Brits like The Gurley Street Bar and Restaurant. The Israelis have their own places. The Spanish eat on the cheap from roadside vendors. I suppose it reminds them of tapas, diarrhea and all.” He snickered.

  He leaned toward me and looked directly into my eyes. “You’re a very young man, so let me give you some friendly advice. Stay away from the local girls. The girls are sent out of their tribes down to the city to find a husband, so the second you invite one in to live with you, they bring the whole family. And you are expected to take care of them. Prostitutes, they’re okay, but don’t take a mistress or in any way get involved with the locals. If you do you’ll be in a world of hurt you never even thought about. The Liberians have a word for it—palaver. It means a huge hassle, bullshit, expanding trouble—a real shit storm. Stay away from it.” He took a long drag from his cigar.

  “Also, just remember most whites are here because they want something. The Peace Corps is here. They want to ‘do good’ and have the Africans like them. If they stay to themselves and don’t cause trouble with the locals, they should do all right. The missionaries want to convert the Africans to their brand of Christianity. Everybody else, including the international corporations—especially the international corporations,” he emphasized, “is a hustler. They’re going to do what you are probably going to do.”

  Before I could say “What’s that?” he said, “Roll as much money out of this country as they can then bug out.” He took another long draw on his Cohiba. “And another thing—you’ll need a gun.”

  “A gun!”

  Just then, Mike looked up and recognized the two men who had walked into the restaurant

  “Deet, Joe, come over. I want you to meet our newest pilot.” Two very handsome men somewhere in their late thirties waved and smiled, showing perfect teeth. They wore wrinkled and faded lightweight leather flight jackets with the imprints of former military insignia on them, and khaki shirts and trousers.

  “
This is Dieter Lothair Hoffman. We call him Deet. And this is Joachim Muller known as Joe. Gentlemen, this is Ken.”

  “Aha yes,” Deet said, still holding his smile. “De American college boy, das is goot. Ve need to lift de standards around here.” Both pilots laughed.

  “Goot to have you aboard,” Joe said, extending his right hand, which was badly scarred across the top.

  “Ve need to talk to Heinz to see if he vill buy de drinks tonight,” Deet said.

  “Before you go,” Mike said, “I want you to take Ken for a route check when his paper work is ready. I’ll let you know.”

  “Ya, vor shore, I vill give him a goot check out,” Deet said, his perfect teeth glistening in the light. Then he and Joe made their way to the bar where they were joined by two of the local bar girls.

  “Ya know,” Mike said with a slight smile, “I can’t figure these guys out. They are Nazis to the core, yet they’re the first ones to get tangled up with the local girls.”

  The next day Mike sent Paterson, a local who was somewhere between twenty and forty, to pick me up at the guest house. Paterson told me that for the next two days he was to take me where I needed to go, but after that I was expected to have my own transportation. I thanked him for the information and told him to take me to the Liberian Civil Aviation Authority. I got the clear impression that Paterson did not appreciate his new role. His father had been a taxi driver in Paterson, New Jersey, and he, Paterson, had been named after the city of his birth. The American connection gave him a slight edge over the native Liberians. I was also to learn that work status was very important among Liberians, and Paterson wore his faded white shirt and stained tie with pride.