Behind the Eclipse

by Pramudith D. Rupasinghe

  46

  When we reached the Klay-Junction which was the last border post of Monserrado county from its North, the boundary between Bomi and Monserrado, except for the officers of the bureau of immigration and neutralisation who were hell-bent on chopping money from those who crossed the internal frontiers, there were representatives of the Ministry of Health of Liberia who were monitoring the temperature of those crossing the borders. We were stopped, and the temperature was taken upon the completion of hand-washing which had become a ritual everywhere in the country. In truth, hand washing, gesture management, and temperature monitoring had a significant impact on controlling the spread of the disease in addition to the enormous international support offered to the affected countries. When the spreading rate was drastically descending in Guinea and Liberia, Ebola was conquering every nook and cranny in Sierra Leone where population density was very high. It gave one a kind of feeling of having a time bomb under the bed as no one knew when the killer would rage across the border just like the way it did through Guinean-Liberian border on 30 March 2014.

  On top of everything, the government of Liberia was compelled to re-open its borders as border-closure resulted in an irreversible economic crisis in the country. Also, everyone was hopeful because the numbers of new cases and death toll significantly went down and the frequency of ambulance and burial-truck sirens dropped rapidly. Nonetheless, the epidemic had claimed over 11,000 lives and left more than 17,000 survivors who battled with the social stigma and violence apart from all what they had lost, including their family members, shelters, livelihood and health. And thousands of children were left alive while their parents were being brutally stolen from their lives forever. Many of them did not know if their loving mother, father, sister or brother would ever return from where the ambulance carried them. A sudden thought about my boys came to my wondering mind. They should be waiting for their mother to return and make corn bread; sister to come and play Ludo with them in the evenings and father to bring them sour milk when coming back from work. I knew that I would never be able to replace their mother and sister.

  ‘Papa is coming to see you with a heavy heart,’

  ‘What you say?’ Joseph Bah asked hearing my monologue.

  ‘Nothing,’ I kept quiet, but I could not escape from hundreds of thoughts about my little ones which were encroaching my mind that tried to flee from the invading negativity.

  ‘Boys you have papa, but our part of the world is full of children who will live the rest of their lives waiting for their parents who were already looking at them from the world of ancestors,’ I muttered silently.

  ‘George! This should be the church the man told about,’ Joseph`s rough voice opened my eyes.

  As the Jeep entered into the partially built long building, I noticed the Pastor jean-Paul sitting on a cane chair reading a book which took my mind back to my time in Guinea.

  Seeing our Jeep entering the church compound, he raised from the chair and walked towards us with his calm yet prestigious walk which gave an air of a saint.

  ‘Good evening George! You must be feeling tired.’

  ‘Small small,*’ I replied while getting down the Jeep.

  ‘Joseph! Come in and eat something and go!’ the Pastor Jean-Paul never sent a visitor back without giving a meal. That was a unique quality of him which everyone had noticed.

  Joseph, being a big eater, did not want to lose his free meal. While he was busy eating, the Pastor Jean-Paul took me to the room allocated for me. It was as small as the one I used to live in Yomou. I was more than happy to have a place to stay.

  ‘Thanks!’ I said with heartfelt gratitude.

  ‘I will do anything for you to help me out at this moment,’ I said what I felt.

  ‘The next building,’ He showed me a hostel like small building annexed to the church.

  ‘Orphanage,’

  ‘Boys are there,’ he said. For a moment, I did not breathe. My eyes remained still, fixed at the lamps lighted in almost every room in the building.

  ‘My boys?

  ‘Yes, both are there,’ I could not believe that I heard what the Pastor Jean-Paul said. I could not believe my eyes but believe what I heard.

  ‘You can see them.’ I felt the height of hope enveloped in what I heard as I was at the bottom of the trench called desperateness. It was a height that my imagination could not reach. It was a moment that none of the normal human feelings could associate with, yet a typical reaction to all the things beyond normality which I just heard. I did not want to imagine the emotional moments when I could see them with my own eyes: The very moment the little boys would see their father. The moment they would run and cling on to my clothes. I cried aloud: louder than when I was sad, louder than any moment in my life so far. I cried keeping my head on the shoulders of the Pastor Jean-Paul. On the shoulder of the obedient servant of God who shouldered every single fall in my life; the man who lifted me up not once but many times.

  ‘George, your lives are in the hands of God,’ he crooned. I remembered the first time I heard that in my life from the Reverend Maurice. ‘It was the day Tamba became George. His life was carefully taken from the ancestors and the Creator of his tribe and placed gently on the holy palm of God. It was the moment he started following the path of God, but just like his family name Bokai did not change, one part of him was with his ancestors and the Creator of kissi.’ I thought.

  ‘I have been faithful all throughout,’ I said.

  ‘God knows it; that’s why your life is spared,’

  ‘Spared with a divine responsibility towards the boys,’ he added with a serious voice.

  He took me across the corridor to see the boys.

  47

  ‘Papa, Papa, Papa!’

  ‘Where have you been?’ George II had seen me even before I saw him.

  Just like the ice melts into water under the heat, I melted into tears. ‘George II, My junior,’ I said in a brittle voice laden with a mixed feeling. I held him as tight as possible. Then I noticed the youngest playing with my trousers. I sat on the floor and held them tight against my chest. I felt that they could no longer feel the fleshy comfort but the bones like thrones. But for them, it was their papa whose smell, which their minds registered as a scent of protection. It seemed they had not forgotten it.

  Reunion after a separation was painful and heart-aching. I craved for news about them. I wanted to see them; touch them; hold them tight and to live with them the rest of my life but I was not sure if they were alive.

  ‘When you are hopeless to its extreme, the words would never suffice,’ things that Oldman used to tell would remain for lives across the time. Many times, his wise words carved the path for me to walk through the difficult times.

  ‘They are safe here, and they get the education, nutritious meals, and care,’ the Pastor Jean-Paul said when I looked up at him. I was relieved and happy apart from all what had happened in my life.

  I stroked the little heads of the boys looking at their little faces that were radiant and fluffy with happiness having been able to see their papa.

  I tried to stand up as the Pastor Jean-Paul wanted to talk to me about the next day plan. I hit my elbow against something which was just behind me and fell on the cement floor. I turned back to pick it. The sight of the fallen Ludo board zapped me like a thunder strike. For less than a second, I saw Princess playing Ludo with George II and the following moment; I saw her flowered little frock fallen on the ground. An absolute numbness conquered me while a lifeless feeling entered in me from the feet that were touching the Ludo board fallen still on the cold floor and filled me till the head. A state of unadulterated apathy possessed me till the Pastor Jean-Paul bent down to pick the Ludo board.

  ‘George, I know it ‘s hard to leave them, but you will see them every day,’ he said placing the Ludo board back on the table. I wondered why the messengers of
God couldn’t read what went inside the human mind?

  ‘Go to sleep! I will see you tomorrow,’ I said hiding my hot tears from the boys. George II was silent as if he did not want me to leave him and the younger one did not want to leave my trouser. He kept on playing with it.

  ‘Go, sleep! I will come in the morning.’ I said without looking at them. I was afraid that they would see their hero crying.

  I walked up to the exit of the visitors` room following the Pastor Jean-Paul, and I could not combat with the urge to look back over the shoulders.

  ‘Papa, Papa, bring Mama tomorrow morning, she promised me cornbread and peanuts.’ I felt a sharp piercing pain right inside my wound that they had not seen and that was more hurtful and deeper than anything that bled. I was abruptly thrown out of the door with a shock as if someone on the skies did not want the children to witness my paroxysms of grief.

  ‘They are too young to know those.’ I heard from somewhere.

  We reached the dining room of the church and had a light dinner even though my own thoughts hampered my appetite.

  ‘You do not need to tell them about the sister and the mother.’ The Pastor Jean-Paul said at the dining table.

  ‘Let them grow here with the children who had gone through similar life events, mostly the same. When the right time comes, they will realise. There are certain things in life you should not know before the right time otherwise the focus in life can be lost.’ He made a point.

  ‘Yes,’ I said determined to hide the tragic death of Aminatta and Princess from my boys for an undetermined time. When I was about to start my work in the new place—ETU in Tubmanburg, In my mind, I was compelled to do the same thing that I did before when I first went to work in the ETU in Elwa. This time It was for the good of my little sons left alive. They might hate me for not telling them the truth, but one day, they would realise that their father was left with no other choice. I took a deep breath and sighed into the dumb air expecting to judge me. But a deadly silence reigned the whole table, and I noticed Pastor Jean-Paul wiping his long beard with a napkin.

  48

  On the following day, I gave a call to Dr. Harris and informed him I was going to report for work in the ETU in Tubmanburg.

  ‘George, I have informed Dr. Bernard who is in charge of the ETU. He knows about your condition,’ Dr. Harris said.

  ‘Good luck George! for the new place and new job!’ He hung up.

  Like anywhere else, I was asked to follow the ritualistic hand washing. The security officer did the temperature monitoring, but I was allowed in only after I mentioned the name of Dr. Harris.

  ‘You are visitor?’ The security officer at the office entrance groaned.

  ‘No,’ said I with a bit of irritation.

  ‘What you want?’

  ‘Came to meet Dr. Bernard,’

  ‘Let the man go - Man from Monrovia. Big-bossman friend,’ the security officer who let me in from the gate yelled.

  When I entered the office, a short, fat and bald man called me into his partitioned workstation.

  ‘George?’ His tone was interrogative.

  ‘Yes, Sir!’ I replied.

  ‘I am Dr. Bernard, operation manager of this ETU,’

  ‘Nice meeting you Sir. Dr. Harris asked me to meet you,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, He told me everything about you. Tell me, how are you feeling?’ He asked reminding me of the communication style of Dr. Michael.

  ‘I am trying Sir,’ I said.

  ‘I know it ‘s hard,’ he was empathetic.

  ‘Now I can work, though,’ I wanted to secure my position.

  ‘Yes, we have already decided the nature of work you can perform here,’ it was a hint that Dr. Harris and Dr. Michael had talked about me with Dr. Bernard.

  ‘As you are a nurse, a trained peer supporter and first and last, has a first-hand experience in the disease, we have planned to deploy you in the psychosocial unit in the ETU. You are the best fit for this position.’ Dr. Bernard said in a conclusive tone.

  ‘However, you will be trained by Irina who will visit our ETU tomorrow,’ he added.

  I was trained by Dr. Irina for almost a week in psychosocial support for Ebola and integrated me into her team based in Tubmanburg.

  I worked with delight every day. I used to start early morning from the Church just after a brief prayer to start the day with good faith see my boys and go to work. Most of the time, I was the first among my team members to come to the ETU and the last to leave. Sometimes, I assisted expatriates from the other teams in administrative work such as maintenance of files and other records, or else filing database or drafting letters which allowed me to stay engaged and productive. That prevented me staying alone and plummeting into distortions not only about Aminatta and Princess but also mostly about how long I would be able to hide the lethal truth from my boys who were still small to be immune to the venomousness of what their father had got to say about their mother and sister.

  After I returned to the church in the evening, I assisted the pastors in the evening service which relieved my mind. I prayed for the souls of those two who left my life and begged for the strength and courage to live the rest of my life for the boys as I was the only standing guardian for them. After four months of work, I bought an Indian auto-rickshaw which was a trendy new arrival in Monrovia. It was the first auto-rickshaw in Tubmanburg, and I decided to run the taxi as a part-time job because my physical health had already been recovered almost completely.

  The first sticker of awareness raising poster campaign started in my taxi. ‘Ebola must go!’ I wrote it in big letters on the back of its canopy which later came out as a sticker and distributed among the taxi drivers all over the country. I had a small chlorinated water bottle fixed next to the passenger entrance which whoever came in had to use for hand washing. I never forgot the gun type thermometer which was vital for taking the temperature of clients. I tried my best to make a change at my level.

  ‘George, I might go back to Guinea end of next month,’ the Pastor Jean-Paul said one day when we were having dinner.

  ‘Pastor? So soon?’ I asked as he had told me that he might stay till the construction of the church in Klay was over.

  ‘Those are decisions of the mission leadership, probably from Paris. I might go back to France for good.’ he said with a smile, but I felt that he was trying to hide a hint of sadness underneath his saintly smile.

  ‘My mother is also seriously sick,’ he added.

  ‘Sorry to hear,’ I felt sorry for him.

  ‘Time will come to everyone`s life when one has to compromise what one would love.’ I sighed.

  Every human being has wounds that do not bleed but hurt from within. Some of them grow with time whereas the others heal. But they do not heal completely. They remain in a dormant state and become fresh by the slight trigger, just like Aminatta and Princess who did not come to me when I was working.

  ‘George, can you take care of the church in Klay till my replacement comes?’

  ‘Pastor, no need to tell me, please. It is my pleasure; you have done a lot for me. You were the saviour of my life many times. I have nothing that I can’t do for you,’ I promised him that I would take care of the construction. After the Pastor had left the church, I moved to Klay junction where the new church was being built. I rented a three bedroom house which was right next to the church and got my boys home. Grace to the church and the pastors, boys had been given education even during the time when all public schools were closed. Therefore, I decided to call a teacher home and continue even after they moved out from the orphanage. After the boys had come in, my routine became busier. Early morning I visited the church, conducted the early morning mass, then cooked for the children, wait for the teacher to come and left for the ward. In the evening I managed to get some hires for the auto-rickshaw which allowed me to earn someth
ing for the daily expenses.

  Every weekend I went to Douala Market in Monrovia and bought all necessities to my family as well as for the church. It did not take a long time for my neighbours to call me ‘Pastor everything.’ As I took care of the church, they called me Pastor. As they knew I was working with a medical organisation, they called me ‘doctor’ and used to come to me asking for malaria medication. After I had started going to Douala with my auto-rickshaw, they found it easier to call me ‘everything,’ dropping everything they called me before except ‘Pastor’ because extremely God-feared nature of Liberians had not allowed them to omit it.

  49

  That was a hopeful Friday after a long week; I had low energy, but I wanted to go to work since Dr. Bernard wanted to have an all-staff meeting just before he was going on vacation. By nine in the morning, all of us were in the conference room when an unnerving cry of a girl broke out near the reception making everyone in the meeting rise from the place where they were sitting.

  ‘Mama, mama, ma mama o….’

  ‘Ma mama o,’

  ‘Allah … ma mama o,’

  ‘Ma mama o, Ma mama o,’ a hysteric cry of a little girl perturbed Dr. Bernard who was known as a very phlegmatic person and was quite used to witnessing death during his epidemiological career for the last 25 years.

  ‘Let me have a look and come back,’ He hurried towards the reception.

  ‘Oh my God!’ It was the orotund voice of Dr. Bernard.

  ‘Ludmilla……, Muna … please hurry!’ He sounded husky.

  Not only Ludmilla and Muna, but everyone else rushed towards the reception.

  A little girl was on the ground and howling maniacally next to the parked ambulance with its back doors wide open. She tried to reach the ambulance, but the nurse in the ambulance was not allowing her to get any nearer.