Behind the Eclipse

by Pramudith D. Rupasinghe

  There was no order of the village chief that was challenged in any tribe in Liberia. In a couple of days’ time, just before the rain started pouring like a curtain that divided us from the rest of the world, a long mud hut roofed with palm and coconut leaves stood under the tamarind tree. The priests started conducting two services a day; one in the morning and one in the evening. And later on, I was able to join as the supporter for the service making my stay in Kpelle village somewhat meaningful.

  I was taught to read and write. By the time white man returned to the village with two other white men, I was able to read the Holy Bible which made the white man cry with happiness. He hugged me and said ‘God bless you and your people!’

  I said ‘Thank-you!’

  I heard the black priest, who taught me English, saying ‘Thank God!’

  The second day after the return of the white man, the chief called a meeting for the community members. All the villagers irrespective of age, gender, and ability to understand English, came in. This time the meeting was held in English. On and off, the black priest, who spoke Kpelle, translated to the audience.

  ‘We will have a brick church,’ I heard during the speech of the white man.

  ‘The God!’ I said aloud and everyone in there except the men who were addressing the meeting, looked at me hinting me that no one else understood what the white man said.

  ‘Brick hut for God!’ I said again which the white man noticed.

  ‘The Kissi boy,’ he paused.

  ‘Kissi Man,’ he said looking at me.

  ‘Well done!’ he smiled at me.

  I smiled at the ground with a humble pride mixed with a slight shyness of having been admired in public.

  After a few weeks’ time, the black men and the priests who first came with the white man, also a priest, started teaching people how to cut red bricks and roast them in open fire. They trained a couple of villagers to make the bricks. We worked day and night for God for his service to build a shelter to spread the Gospels and wash the sins and protect the villagers from evil. Every morning, we prayed. The prayers were the ones first I thought songs or chantings of the white man. We prayed aloud to God; God who accepted us as equal human beings same as the white man; God who taught us to communicate with the other side of the world that remained unknown to us. God who broke our differences down and built shared values around us. We prayed in the mornings when we opened our eyes and in the evenings before we closed our eyes before the winding of the day. After more than three months, we worked hard and finished the first brick building in our village: the first brick building in the area which stood firm till the second Liberian war as the Baptist church in Gbarnga in Bong County.

  The Building was divided into three main parts; A missionary school for the children, church hall and the residence of the priests. I stayed with the priests supporting them in cooking, washing clothes, cleaning the building, and in the meanwhile, I learnt the biblical literature and English.

  The white man who first came to the village was the Reverend Maurice, an American native and his followers, the black men; the Reverend Arthur and the Reverend Jean were Guineans who first worked in an American mission in Conakry. There, they had met the Reverend Maurice in Guinea and accepted the request to work with the American mission in Liberia since he could speak many dialects in Northern Liberia. All of them treated me as a family member, and the Reverend Maurice asked me one day whether I would like to go to Monrovia for pursuing further education to become a reverend.

  I was in love with what they did. I was in love with my life. I was in love with the world I was shown. I saw a world full of opportunities. If I had been able to maintain the hope in the face of fear and uncertainty throughout my journey in the bush, I should not have allowed my foot to remain in one place.

  ‘God might not give me two chances,’ I said in a low voice which even I did not hear well.

  ‘You are right,’ the Reverend Maurice said with his gentle smile and in a kind voice.

  ‘You heard that?’ I asked in amazement.

  ‘God communicates with me, I am a messenger who takes the Gospels around,’ he added touching my shaggy African hair on the head.

  I closed my eyes and imagined me in their robe, with a cross, with a gentle and kind smile on an altar praying for God.

  ‘My God!’

  ‘Yes, you are right; we all are his product and serving him is the greatest job on Earth,’ the Reverend Maurice said.

  12

  On an early morning in January, an old Ford truck reached the village. The Ford truck of the 1950s was full of used furniture for the church. There was a box full of books. Besides the old bibles with brownish pages full of dirt used by the reverends, no one else had ever seen another book before. The first ever library was established in the church and the Reverend Maurice said. ‘Renaissance commenced in the name of Jesus Christ,’ he lifted his hands partially looking at the blue skies as if he was thanking God.

  ‘The Creator is the same God?’ I untied my long resisted question to jump out just like a chained dog that escaped profiting the loose buckle.

  The Reverend Maurice looked at me as if he did not expect me to ask such a question because either he might have thought that I had no doubts about it or he did not want to hear such a challenging question from a young bushman like me.

  ‘Do you feel there is only one superpower for us?’ He asked me rather in a tone of a teacher than of a preacher.

  I had my future that was about to be unfolded before me. I knew for sure that I would go to the capital of Liberia where things would be different. I said ‘Yes,’ but I could not figure out where my response came out from−unconscious opportunistic nature or the fear of losing the hope again.

  ‘The more you discover God and his grace, the closer you will get to him,’ the Reverend Maurice stroked my head that I felt like a gesture of belittling me before him. I smiled at him with an extra effort and left the building to collect water for cooking for the visitors and the resident reverends.

  The water was flowing along the rough stream bed as if the path chosen would never be easier. Millions of bubbles beautified the stream whenever the water hit the hard rocks along its way and disappeared within a moment as though they quickly forgot what just hit them and continued the journey. When I returned, the truck had been fully unloaded, and the Reverend Maurice was waiting with his metal trunk box.

  ‘We go to Monrovia in a while,’ he said hinting me to get ready.

  I nodded and went to the church to bring my only wealth—the piece of county cloth that had been warming me since the day I left Kissi village. Dozens of cold rainy seasons had already passed under the warmth of this old piece of country cloth which preserved every single secret of mine since its first day with me.

  ‘Why this dirty piece of cloth?’ The Reverend Arthur asked in Kpelle with an empathetic look. Probably, being an African, he might have understood how I was feeling.

  ‘My cloth,’ I stopped in front of him holding my piece of old country cloth pressed against the chest.

  ‘Ok,’ he said with a smile as he was trying to suppress a burning emotion within him which reminded me of the face of my mother whenever someone told her that my father was a very faithful and loving husband whereas she had already known that he and Kumba were having a relationship. Even though my mind did not allow me to leave the Reverend Arthur before he uttered at least a single word, the Reverend Maurice was waiting till I came. I felt I was between my heart and brain. I allowed myself to surrender the thought rather than fall in the ditch of an emotion and hurried my feet towards the truck. The God of white man was said to be stronger than our dead ancestors who came only in dreams whenever they wanted; not whenever we wanted. Taking the path of the God would lead me to the world that the white man called ‘Civilized,’ and I would restart my life in an unknown zone where no one from m
y village had come yet.

  ‘He is James, our driver,’ the Reverend Maurice introduced the driver of the truck.

  ‘He is an Americo-Liberian,’ he added.

  I smiled at him with an unconscious respect.

  ‘Congo men are from America,’ one day Oldman said.

  ‘They rule the whole place, they rule over all our native tribes: ruthless people,’ he added with disgust. Oldman had given me enough information to develop a prepuce at first sight. His muscular body and big face reminded me of the beast that hit me in the bush, and his big round eyes were like fireballs. He looked at me from top to bottom and threw a smile which I felt rather sarcastic than welcoming.

  ‘You get in from here,’ he got down the truck and opened the trunk of the truck for me. First time in my life, I got into a motor vehicle and even though I was unable to go inside, I enjoyed the privilege of being the first one in the village to go in a vehicle. Not even the village chief had not experienced how I was feeling. I saw him looking at me from the main door of the church. I looked and smiled with a celebrating pride within me that I did not want to hide. I felt a feeling of inexplicable superiority already starting to lift me and anticipated to discover and experience the wonders of city life in a few new days to come. Nonetheless, a mist of incertitude was also in front of my eyes that blurred my dreams.

  ‘Brr,’ with a terrifying noise the iron devil truck started. The vibration of the engine gave me a strange sensation that I had never felt before; I felt an excitement which was a mixture of happiness of having been able to experience something new and the fear that might always come with the unknown. After a sudden jerking, the truck started to move leaving a blackish storm of smoke behind through which I kept looking at the village and people who sheltered me for hundreds of full moons, and until all of them detached from my sight. The moment the sad faces, Palava huts and high church building disappeared behind the smoke and the bush, I started feeling a solitude that I had not felt even when I was all alone in the bush.

  I was not close to anyone in Kpelle community, and I did not hate anyone either. None of them manifested hatred or resented me, but they did not completely embrace me either. However, they allowed me to establish a sense of security and usefulness which gave me hope to continue seeing the right side of life: world and people. Ambitions started growing within my young mind for the first time in my life when I came to Kpelle community. Hidden from the rest of the world, lost in growing darkness in the bush and mutated in groaning noise of the truck engine, tears had run down my cheeks. The salty taste in my mouth hinted me that I had been crying like a child.

  A couple of times, Congo-man stopped the truck near small communities that we came across along the way, and we did not forget to taste a piece of cassava and dried meat whereas the Reverend Maurice sucked a piece of wood that released smoke as if he had caught fire. Later I discovered it was a rosewood pipe.

  Whenever the truck stopped near a village, everyone came running to see the rolling piece of iron where there was a white man who was emitting a cloud of smoke through his mouth and nose. A Few times mothers pulled their children towards them to prevent them getting closer to the truck and the Reverend Maurice.

  ‘Chicken skinned had come with Congo people to Guinea border. They say they brought another almighty who was more powerful and merciful than ours.’ Thoughts behind my father’s words started circulating in my mind when I saw the facial expressions of those mothers.

  As the truck pulled away, children ran after it for a few seconds just like a herd of wild dogs after a rabbit.

  After a while, we reached the bank of a river where the road just ended. It was puzzling how the truck was going to go. That was the first time I travelled in such a motor vehicle, and I did not have an idea how it could go in the water.

  ‘Probably, it could float or fly over the river,’ I said in a very low voice when the Reverend Maurice got down.

  ‘No,’ he laughed aloud.

  ‘We wait here for the ferry,’ he said showing me something on the other side of the bank.

  After some time, a big wooden pallet came to the shore. Congo-man rushed to the truck and drove it till the truck was fully on the pallet.

  ‘Let`s go!’ The Reverend Maurice held my hand as if I was a captive who was waiting for a chance to escape though my thoughts were always preoccupied with Monrovia, the capital city; the only city in my country that none among all the three tribes I lived with had been. I walked into the pallet of wood that the Reverend Maurice called ‘Ferry.’

  Four men who also looked like Congo-people started rowing and then we started moving towards the other side of the river where the life of my fantasy had been waiting for me.

  ‘You strong men, row faster than I thought,’ the Reverend Maurice complemented the men who were already full of sweat. But my thoughts were a million times faster than the ferry, and they were already in Monrovia-the City which none in my family or the village had seen. I kept my eyes fixed on the other side of the shore where all my dreams were waiting to become realities, my ambitions were fighting to rise into the infinite skies and simultaneously fears remained silent in deep Atlantic; they followed me all the way from the Lofa mountains along the rivers that flowed down along the virgin bush and turned salty.

  13

  The moment I landed on the long-awaited side of the shore, I looked back. The bush where my whole childhood and half of the youth were spent stood behind silently. The river that was separating us was in dead silence as if it never wanted me to cross it again. I kept looking at the other side of the shore where high trees were moving in the mild wind as if they were a group of people waving hands. But I was not sure it was just like the way the Kissis or the Lomas who waved their hands to call people or the way the white man who waved his hands whenever he left Kpelle village. I kept on looking at them for a while confused with mixed feelings. The waving trees went blurred in a bubble of hot tears in my eyes when I heard the Reverend Maurice calling me to continue the journey.

  After a drive of a few minutes through the drastically thinning vegetation cover, we entered a paved road which I had never seen before. I could not imagine what was on the road, but I felt the difference when the truck was moving on it. Instead of the shaking and unnerving vibration I had been feeling in the trunk which gave me nausea a few times, the truck started moving faster without shaking. I felt as if I had come to heaven from hell. But I was uncertain whether the luxuries that I began to feel instantly would be better than the harshness that I was used to in the hell.

  ‘You see,’ the Reverend Maurice broke my pensiveness which might have lasted for a couple of minutes.

  Big buildings surrounded by the white walls and fences, busy roads with old vehicles and people in strange clothes; especially the women who were wearing clothes which I had never seen in my life became common on the way. People in clothes and buildings with big doors and windows gave me a feeling of a different world. I looked at myself and found wearing the same old piece of cloth full of dirt. It had turned brown with dirt, and it smelt sweat and urine.

  When looking at me, who was barely a human being compared to those who were walking on the streets, I felt that those black plastic on their eyes would make me blind; those colourful clothes, they wore would remove my skin, those strange round things they wore on the head, would simply make me lose my nice bushy hair and with that strange stuff they had fixed in their feet, I would never be able to walk. My burning wish to go to Monrovia had turned into a clot fear within myself even before I kept my feet on the concrete ground in the city. Before what was vivid in front of my very eyes, I felt I was just a monkey that had released his hands from the branch. I felt ashamed about my appearance, and I could not imagine myself in anything that people were wearing. A fear of everything started wrapping around me just like a python wrapping around its prey. I felt trapped and helpless.

&nbs
p; As the truck stopped near a black gate with a big cross on it, my curiosity of knowing what was inside the high walls suppressed the rising fears. With a sharp creaking noise, the gate opened unveiling a high building, and its triangular roof with a cross on the top had more an appeal of majesty than peacefulness I saw in the brick church which was in Kpelle village. As the truck stopped entering through the gateway, I jumped out of the truck assuming that it would be the place where I was going to stay.

  ‘Your home where your future lies,’ the Reverend Maurice got down the truck smiling at me.

  I wanted to smile back, but the huge building with the strange shape and the high walls around it did not allow my lips to part. I felt intimidated and controlled for some reason.

  It looked like many young men were living there. Even before I crossed the doorway into the building annexed to the main church building to where The Reverend Maurice was leading me, I saw young men sitting under the mango trees with a thick book which I easily recognised. They were reading the Holy Bible.

  ‘This is George,’ the Reverend Maurice introduced me to another white man who was in a slightly different dress that the Reverend Maurice was not clad in.

  ‘May God bless you!’ He said in a barely audible voice.

  ‘I am Reverend Phillip,’ he smiled at me showing his wrinkled face, which reminded me of a pinked-faced bush monkey.

  ‘This boy is sagacious. He was found in Kpelle village, but he is a Kissi escaping from his village during an epidemic of a killer disease that had killed almost everyone just like a black-death. Apparently, every one of his family was killed by the disease which they call the Bush-curse and he had managed to escape and finally reached Kpelle village after months in the bush,’ the Reverend Maurice said.

  While the Reverend Maurice was describing my story to the Reverend Philip, I felt as I was listening to an adventure story of someone else who survived just by the grace of God.