Behind the Eclipse
The Unheard from the West African Ebola Crisis . . .
Pramudith D. Rupasinghe
Copyright © 2016 by Pramudith D. Rupasinghe.
ISBN: Softcover 978-1-4828-8755-6
eBook 978-1-4828-8754-9
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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CONTENTS
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
ENDORSEMENTS
‘One of the most spectacular stories ever written…’
— Dr. Oleksiy Telychkin,
Kharkov National University, Ukraine.
‘A complete transformation over sensational pangs between hope and fear which pitches on any contemporary society.’
— M.K Rohana Dilrukshan,
An independent reviewer, Sri Lanka.
‘Simply life changing…’
— Johnathan C. Johnson,
University of Lagos, Nigeria.
‘Maintaining the hope in the jaws of death is all about George. Unbelievably inspirational’
—Naomi Kozuka,
University of Tokyo, Japan.
‘A masterpiece…’
—Lusitha Jayamanna,
Daily Lankadeepa, Sri Lanka.
‘Delicately woven story that touches every cell of human person…’
— Stella Simpson,
An independent reviewer, United States of America.
‘An exceptional piece of literature…’
— John Smith,
an independent Reviewer, United Kingdom.
‘Outstanding…’
— Dhanuka Nadeera Dickwella,
University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.
‘Jewel of a novel…’
— Joseph B. K. Camara,
University of Liberia, Liberia.
‘Deeply philosophical yet simply said…’
— Dara Watson,
University of Toronto, Canada.
‘When I finished reading I said Wow and I want to meet George…’
— Jessica Harris,
South Carolina, United States of America.
‘Rich with every single ingredient of human life…’
— Sampath Jayalath,
University of Cape Town, South Africa.
‘Inspiring…’
—Yuliia I. Yurevych,
National University of Internal Affairs,
Kharkov, Ukraine.
‘A must read for humanitarian workers…’
— Anjana Dayal,
Author of Gudia- A Defiant Doll,
United States of America.
‘A moving account of a deadly outbreak by an incredible craftsman….’
— Shankarlal Senguptha,
Author- Mission Liberia, India.
BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR
FOREWORD
This book is dearly dedicated to my loving wife Yuliia Yurevych-Rupasinghe who supported me throughout the writing staying with me in Liberia during the full length of Ebola crisis.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book could not have been possible without the support of so many people whose names all may not be enumerated, but their contributions are sincerely appreciated and acknowledged. However, I would like to express my most profound appreciation and indebtedness to particularly Mr. M.K Rohana Dilrukshan who supported me immensely in editing this book, Ms. Pandora Hodge for sharing information and Mr. Lusitha Jayamanna who led the media campaign.
Mr. Shankarlal Senguptha, Dr. Oleksiy Telychkin, Ms Anjana Dayal and Mr Surein J.S. Peiris who contributed in reviews are also not forgotten.
01
I still remember the days when Oldman was strong; he used to go to the bush almost every day to set his snare for bushmeat. When he returned home, he used to bring a monkey, cane rat, porcupine, a python or at least a big rodent. Cleaning was my grandmother’s speciality and the other wives of my grandfather used to support her. He had eleven wives; all were old friends of my grandmother. She often said that without their support, her life would not have been the same. The day he did not return from the bush was a full moon and everyone except my grandmother was silent in their huts. All of his wives were pleading to the moon to send him back home from where he had been hiding. My grandmother started boiling palm oil when the moon mounted right on her head. It was midnight, and she started whispering something which I later learnt that those were ‘phrases of power’ from the secret societies. Once the oil started bubbling, she added some herbs which one old woman had brought home when the villagers got to know that Oldman was missing in the bush. She took the pot out of the fire and took it to an open area in the front yard of the cluster of our mud huts. The wives, pleading to the moon at the doorsteps of their huts, started to move towards my grandmother silently with very careful steps still looking at the moon. I was looking at them though I did not have a clue about what was going on. I had a very strange feeling about Oldman. My instinct hinted me that we would not see him again. All the wives made a circle around the pot and sat on knees bending towards the inside of the pot as if they were trying to find something inside the boiling oil. A silence that was mystic swallowed the surroundings when an old lady brought a rooster into the cycle of women. They passed the rooster from hand to hand and finally to my grandmother who cut its neck and poured the blood into the pot of boiling oil. Then they kept on watching as if they were waiting for something to happen inside the pot. After a while, the other wives of Oldman started to move back to their mud huts where there were several dozens of children waiting for them. They walked in a melancholic way: they stepped as if they were lifeless, faces looking down while no one said anything. The pale moonlight added dead rays to their slow movements giving them a ghostly look.
After a while, some men came with firebrands made out of palm and coconut leaves and went into the bush leaving an old lady and my grandmother near the pot. I could not remember anyone except my younger brother sl
eeping that night. Everybody was expecting something they dared not verbalise; something they did not want to hear which they tried to suppress with hope: the hope that Oldman would return alive. The silence reigned between my grandmother, and the other wives of Oldman was a sign of hope and despair: a silence of faith and incertitude. It was like a bridge between life and death.
‘Whoop, whoop,’ an owl was desperately calling for a mate. Its whooping crossed the empty air, hit the dumb Lofa mountains and echoed unheard. It whooped till the bats started returning from the clearing skies with the maiden rays of the rising sun and stopped. My grandmother returned to the hut as though she gave up waiting. When a drop of hot tears from my mother’s eyes fell on my hand, I heard the clapping sound of the wings of the owl that was flying to his hideout after a long hopeless night of waiting for the answer from the beloved. Though the sun brought light at dawn over the Lofa mountains, the villagers returned with no news about Oldman which not only our huts, but also the whole village felt was the beginning of a long dark time.
‘We found nothing,’ one said aloud.
‘We will go in again, Oldman should be somewhere,’ another raised his voice with hope.
‘He knew all wild animals, he should be safe somewhere,’ it was my mother who talked after a long silence.
‘Devils and witches are dominating the night and full moon,’ my grandmother’s voice followed my mother’s as if she was in denial of what she heard from my mother.
Everyone said that my mother and grandmother could not live under one roof. They had disagreements that often ended up in a quarrel which Oldman had to intervene. However, even he couldn’t resolve but he managed to stop the violence whenever it irrupted. But for sure, both of them loved Oldman and respected him. Whenever he said something, they both listened to him. Whenever he was not at home, the huts never used to be at peace. After each fight, my mother came to my father and complained which he never admitted that grandmother was wrong. At that time my father used to beat her; sometimes when I was in her hand. That was the scariest thing I had ever seen in my childhood. One day, he beat her till she fell and kicked her back many times. It was just because of her verbal aggression.
‘Last night dogs were barking plenty,’ it was another man from our village. Fallah who was famous for his talkativeness but he had gained fame for his unbelievable ability in forecasting too. Two days before a Black Mamba bite killed my uncle; he had visited him and told him to avoid the bush for one full moon. My uncle did not want to listen to him, but my grandmother was worried about what he had said and pleaded him not to go to the bush. The day he was brought home still and cold, my grandmother collapsed like a banana tree that could not bear the weight of its cluster. She said only one thing. ‘Fallah you are a witch, you knew this.’ His presence at the scene heightened the level of anxiety among everyone who had gathered there. Though many did not deny the belief that he was a witch, none of them dared to spell it out. Nonetheless, no one commented on what he said; probably because none of them wanted to accept what they had already been feeling.
‘O; He had left this on the log. I knew that it was the reason,’ Kumba came running out of her hut. She was the youngest wife of Oldman. She was not more than fifteen years - I was not pretty sure about her exact age since we did not use the Christian calendar those days. However, she was younger than most of the children and grandchildren of Oldman. He loved staying in her hut most of the nights and the night before he disappeared in the bush, he had been with Kumba.
Oldman always used to wear a charm for protection from evil spirits and witchcrafts since the time I could remember. He told that it was given by his grandfather: a well-renounced voodoo practitioner from Sierra-Leone who once kept a tribal leader transfixed for seven days.
‘Not a single Pied-crow is flying over his head,’ told Oldman one day while relating one story about his childhood. He always talked about his grandfather whom he used to call Buoma with a fear mixed respect. He had an incredibly profound faith in charms that had passed to him from Buoma; everyone else also believed that the charm was the sole protection that kept Oldman safe in the bush.
Seeing what Kumba was holding in her hand, my grandmother started her hysteric cry, and my mother nearly dropped my sister from her hand. The other wives of Oldman started crying aloud, and my grandmother who was on the ground started rolling and eating the soil as if there would only be soil for us to feed on. Amid an unprecedented flood of emotions, the old woman who brought the rooster approached my grandmother. Her tone was firm.
‘Let`s go to the river when the sun hides!’ It sounded more like an order than a request.
I saw my grandmother`s face looking up at the old woman; her tear-filled eyes were shining in the sunlight just like a diamond and she was trying to tell something that her mouth would not want to turn into words.
That evening, under the pale moonlight she moved with the other ladies towards the river and some of the men followed them. My mother was watching till the lights of the firebrands disappeared into the bush and started sobbing.
The silence that dominated the whole place was broken by the sobbing of my mother. Kumba was sitting still next my mother without uttering a single word. Her eyes too were full of tears and the broad smile she used to wear seemed lost with Oldman.
‘Sia... what might have happened to him...? Finally, Kumba raised her voice just like a new born goat trying to bleat. Her words were loaded with fear and uncertainty. Being a very young woman; her emotions were dominant over her wit. Also, I realised that she loved Oldman very much which did not mean that the others had not; they were mature women who had gone through many difficulties in life, unique to the time of our childhood, such as a death of infants, miscarriages and so on. Kumba was a fresh flower owned by a wealthy Oldman who was much older than her father. For some reason, I felt sorry for her.
‘We will wait and see, Oldman`s forefathers are in the bush; I believe in their souls. May they protect Oldman!’ My mother replied without looking at her face. Oldman used to say that Sia was a woman with wisdom and courage which my grandmother never liked to hear.
‘Saa does not need any more wives; you have a woman with ten human souls and ten bulls,’ once Oldman said. My father smiled and did not mention anything. He never said anything against the word of Oldman though he was known as the most stubborn among the sons of Oldman. I had seen Oldman spending more time talking to my father than his other sons. There was a strong bond between two of them. The others always said it was because my father was his first son; I later discovered that my father and Oldman had similar traits and values which kept them closer.
When the first call of Pepper bird was heard, I heard my father calling a couple of other men. My mother rushed behind them with a few pieces of smoked meat.
‘It will not be easy, take this with you,’ she had carefully put them into a hand-woven bag made of cow skin.
It was the first time the whole village stayed awake after the death of the old chief of the village.
‘We just returned from the river after the sacrifices for the demon,’ one of the men who went with the ladies told. Hearing the others coming back from the rituals for the devil, my mother hurried to the hut of Oldman where my grandmother had been. Even though they were like cobra to mongoose, they were always there for each other whenever one of them was going through a difficult time. This time both of them were hit by the same incident, and they both loved Oldman as their life. I learnt that my mother had reached the hut of Oldman when a hysteric cry broke out. It was my grandmother. Then I heard my mother. They cried as if they had never cried before and they would not want to cry again. In a few seconds, the other women led by the other wives of Oldman joined them. After a while, Kumba ran out and fell in the middle of the compound. She was weeping as if her life was over. I could not see Kumba crying. Her beautiful face which was ‘full’ as Oldman always said, had s
hrunk like a piece of dried meat. ‘Kumba..!’ I did not realise I had called her name, but she did not hear me. My feet knew where my heart wanted to go. I found myself among the grieving crowd that multiplied like rats. I also cried because the others were crying.
All of a sudden, I started feeling that I would not see Oldman again but when I thought of the stories about his adventures with the wild animals, demons, and witches, my instinct was still hinting that he could be alive somewhere.
‘Once, when I was going hunting, a leopard hit me,’ he told me one day when I was a small kid which I still remember. Then he showed me his left shoulder which was still carrying a huge scar of the attack of the big cat.
‘I turned against the direction from where the beast jumped on me; otherwise, your father would not have come to your grandmother`s belly,’ he added with a heroical laughter.
Oldman always gave me temptations about the bush. He never did farming as his brothers did. He exchanged bush meat to the harvest on a daily basis; therefore, we never ran out of food. But, neither my father nor any of his siblings had mastered hunting like Oldman even though they joined him on and off. During one rainy season, he went on hunting with one of my uncles and did not return till late night. But, that time, the men who went in search of him had found both of them unconscious in the bush. Both of them came back to life grace to Broh, the traditional healer who selflessly treated them over seven days. I could barely remember them lying on a wooden stretcher for days. Women were busy preparing food for those who were there to assist the healer. Oldman stood before my uncle, and he even helped the healer the following day. He said, ‘I was hit after my boy was hit and I chew some medicinal herbs.’ In its real sense, Oldman was a survivor, but this time I felt split. One part of mine said that Oldman could have been in the bush alive, but the chain of emotions and the reactions of the people in the family and the community had already given me a clue of his non-existence. That’s why I liked Broh who was also a bit more hopeful than the others had been. He was trying to prepare his last miracle. And when he summoned his voice to call for a few men, the waves of cries paused for a while. My mother came out wiping her eyes as if she determined to find Oldman dead or alive; I did not doubt her courage and determination because she had proved it many times to everyone in our village. Broh opened his old sack which was made out of country cloths—a heavy handwoven cotton cloth and pulled out different ingredients that he needed for his ritual. It was like the last soothsaying on Oldman.
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