“Then why do you need to resort to law at all?” I persisted.
“I suppose one must move with the times,” was all he said.
Time and again I was discovering that behind all the indications and examples of encroachment from outside, especially from Europe and America, there was a hard nucleus of essentially African thinking which cocked a defiant snoot at change; a moment ago he was talking of “these people”, as if from a great distance of better educational and social opportunity, yet now he was fully identified with them in this presentation of primitive justice.
We walked out of the compound and the main road towards the village. The sun had set, but a pleasant twilight persisted, softening the harsh outlines. Here and there, between the houses, groups of women were gathered around blazing fires on which huge petrol drums emitted thick clouds of steam.
“What are they cooking?” I asked him.
“Palm oil,” he replied. “They boil the kernels until all the oil is extracted from the pulp, then when it cools they drain off the oil. Old-fashioned, perhaps, but effective.”
We passed groups of young men and boys sitting together in friendly conversation by the side of the road. Any woman or girl I saw always seemed to be busy at something or other; only the men had time to chat. He led me down a side street to a bar, a dilapidated one-room structure, so arranged that there was yet ample space for some roughly made tables and chairs near a narrow counter, behind which there was barely room for the large resplendent refrigerator and the even larger barman. A curtained aperture beside the refrigerator led into another room, or storehouse, for the barman dodged into it quite regularly to restock the refrigerator. On the counter was a record-player, which bawled pop music into the room, making conversation difficult, but the half a dozen or so men sitting with their drinks seemed undisturbed by it.
My companion waved greetings to them and introduced me to the barman who, it seemed, was the proprietor and a local chief. He insisted that we have a drink with him, but didn’t seem to notice that we were all shouting at each other over the noise of the music.
Gradually it became quite dark in the bar and a lantern was brought in. Then I realized that the refrigerator must be either gas- or oil-fuelled. The lantern seemed to make little impression on the gloom, instead it attracted a large number of flying insects. Someone suggested that it would be better sitting outside, so we each took a chair and moved out, re-forming ourselves into one group.
I was introduced to everyone, and they went through the now-familiar routine of surprise and interest on discovering that I was not African. They wanted to know what I was doing in Africa, in Liberia, and then came the flood of questions, about everything in the wide world, it seemed to me. They were surprisingly uninformed. Where was British Guiana? What kind of people lived there? Were the West Indies somewhere in India? And questions like that. What was it like living in England and France? They’d heard tales about black people in Britain and the U.S.A., ugly tales of indignity and maltreatment. “Always the nasty things get noised abroad,” I thought.
When I tried asking questions there were few answers, and the little said was guarded. So I let it slide, and we talked about things like the palm-oil crop, and the new Unification Bridge, on which several of them had worked.
Presently the chief clerk said he wanted to return to the compound, as he had some matters to attend to. I wanted to stay a while longer with the group, so he left me. As I had vaguely suspected, he represented authority, and with his departure the men spoke more freely. Life was not easy and their complaints were numerous, but they assured me that things would soon be put right when the Old Man returned.
I learned that the President visited each district periodically, and those were occasions when every man or woman had an opportunity to be heard. Anyone could say his piece without fear, and complaint could be made against the district commissioner himself. To hear them tell it, the President dealt justly with each complaint, and was no respecter of personalities or positions. They told me of instances when he had commanded officials to refund monies which had been unjustly levied and of officials publicly reprimanded. They believed in what the President said and did, and all insisted that the President was a man of his word.
What was so amazing about all this was the feeling of identity each one of them had with the President. I got the feeling that to each one of them William V. S. Tubman was more than the head of State; he was father and friend, and so sure were they of the relationship that the many irritations of local officialdom were bravely to be borne, together with the everyday insufficiencies of food, clothing and shelter, until his next visit.
“I’d like to be a writer, like you,” someone said. “I’ve got plenty of things in my head I’d like to write about—things about Africa. I’ve got a book in my house, with a map, a big map of Africa, with colours—with red for places that belong to the British, and green for places that belong to the French, and other colours for other places in Europe. I don’t think there’s any colour for America. Maybe they haven’t got any place, at least not yet. Liberia is yellow, because we’re a republic, I suppose. Other places want to be like us, become republics. I’ve been hearing about the Congo, they want to be a republic. I’d like to write a book about Africa, telling about what will happen when all the countries become republics like us. Sometimes we listen to the radio from Sierra Leone, and we hear about those other places in Africa. Sierra Leone will be a republic soon, won’t it?”
“Not a republic,” I replied, “but independent.”
“Not the same thing?”
“No, not the same thing.”
“Anyway,” he went on, “when they all become republics we’ll tell those countries in Europe to keep out. I’ll put it all in my book. We’ll tell them that if they touch one African republic they touch them all. We’ll tell them, ‘Look, man, you interfere with one of us, we all get mad at you, because we’re all Africans.’
“It’s funny, though, about some Africans. Two, three years ago me and my good friend travelled way up to Gahnpa, where is French Guinea. We stay there nearly three weeks and one day we meet this man with three women. They were selling stuff, you know, skins and things carved from ivory and black wood, and other things, handbags, sandals. But those three women, tall and straight, and they look at you as if you’re only big as a mouse. Jesus Christ, those women had black stuff on their hands and feet from dyeing cloth and stuff, but you only had to look at them. Man, I wanted a piece off one of them something terrible. So I get near to her. But you know what happen? That woman looked at me like I was small, small, and she says, ‘I’m a Mandingo woman.’ Just like that!”
As he recounted this misadventure, so clear was the imagery he presented that we all laughed heartily.
“So what did you do?” someone asked.
“Nothing. What could I do? But the funny thing is, she was an African, wasn’t she? ‘I’m a Mandingo woman,’ she said, as if she was a queen or something.”
“You want to write that down in a book, Joe?” someone asked.
“No, but I’d like to write something else in my book. I’d like to say that an African is an African, whether he is Mandingo or Kru or Mande or Vai.”
“Keep thinking about it,” I said. He was the first Liberian I had met who spoke of wanting to write. “If you want to do it sincerely enough, you’ll do it, one day.”
“Not me, good friend,” he said, shaking his head negatively. “Never, I never went to school, so I cannot read or write. But it’s all up here, here in my head.”
We talked and drank, while the moon rose overhead, cool and friendly with her retinue of stars. I could hardly believe that it was really me, here, now, sitting with these pleasant men, simple men who were accustomed to measuring distances by the number of days required to travel from A to B; for them any discussion of affairs outside Tchiehn, outside Liberia, was an adv
enture into the unknown, so vast was the picture conjured up by the word “Africa”. Another thing, my black skin made me immediately welcome, my willingness to be friendly and sympathetic made me acceptable. For the time being Paris seemed a million miles away.
The next morning Ken and I made an early start. He seemed in very fine fettle and had a parcel of food someone had prepared for him. As we passed through the village he honked his horn outside a tiny hut and a stout, smiling young woman rushed out to wave excitedly at us. Ken acknowledged it, a wide smile on his face.
A few miles along the road from Tchiehn we met a Land-Rover from the Department of Health Education in Monrovia; the two young men in it were health educators, whose job it was to visit each village and hamlet in the area and confer with the residents on ways and means of improving their local health conditions. Now I understood why the villages through which we had passed all looked so clean and free from garbage. Although the young men were living rough while on trek, sleeping wherever night overtook them and eating where and when they could, they were full of enthusiasm for the job they were doing. For me it was another example of progress without fanfare.
We stopped for a brief visit with Mr. Dunbar, then proceeded towards Gahnpa and Sanokole. Here and there we passed village schools, most of which seemed to be operated by one or another of the American missionary organizations, probably the same kind of mission school to which Mr. Dunbar owed his education and where some of his children were being taught.
There seems to be no limit to the vast fund of good will in the world, irrespective of the labels under which it operates. What is surprising is that so little of it is effectively used. Time and again I saw plenty of evidence of the life and work of American men and women dedicated to service for a religious principle, but, in my view, achieving very little in terms of positive results because they quite unselfishly tried to do everything for the African, believing that he was fundamentally incapable of doing anything for himself, by himself. “Child-like faith” was a term often used in reference to African converts.
I stopped to visit one of these schools—a simple, neat, wooden structure on the edge of a smooth, green playground. It must have required many months of patient back-breaking labour to produce this patch of orderliness where everything grew unchecked. The children, all boys, were romping with a small football. One of them, a skinny youth, did wonderful feats of control with his bare right foot and the ball. They were all dressed in a simple kind of uniform, shirt and shorts of cotton material, and seemed happy and well cared for.
Inside the schoolhouse were the usual paraphernalia—desks, benches and blackboards. I spoke with one teacher, a thin, pale American man of about thirty-eight, earnest, sincere, and probably very good at his work. He was completing his second field tour and would soon be returning to the U.S.A. for a holiday and posting to another field station. His task was to teach his young charges reading and writing and the elements of healthy living. There was religious instruction, but it seemed to be complementary to the other pursuits and not an end in itself.
As I talked with him, it occurred to me that whether or not they realized it, he and others like himself were responsible for setting many young minds on the arduous road to inquiry and discovery. He was providing the key which would unlock the first of an unending recurrence of doors to the varied storehouses of knowledge and information. “Would there ever come a time when those self-same inquiring minds would wish to pursue discovery and experience among people unlike this missionary, whom they probably loved and trusted? Was there any way in which he could now prepare them to meet the new and sometimes disturbing challenges which might lie ahead?
Approaching Sanniquellie we were diverted around a big road building project. An American company had set up its construction and maintenance depot, and the African air was vibrant with the loud sounds of modern man at work. Several types of heavy cranes and bulldozers were snatching huge mouthfuls from the red hillside, while others were levelling and pounding the earth into smooth conformity. We did not stop to inquire about the project, but continued on to Sanniquellie.
This was an eye-opener! The town centre was a crowded, untidy agglomeration of shops and small dwelling-houses, most of them uglier than the huts they must have superseded, because they were designed in the style of huts and only succeeded in looking uncompromisingly solid, like individual prison cells. The central street cut its way callously through these buildings and became wider where the administration section spread itself in a pleasant tree-shaded meadow with soft rough-cut lawns. Here the buildings were smart, freshly painted bungalows and two-storied buildings, and I had the feeling that this was the new pattern of development and that eventually the ugly slum-like conditions in the centre of town would give way to improved structures like these.
We called on the District Commissioner and were courteously received. After a most refreshing wash he showed me around; beginning with the new centralized school in the heart of town; a series of well-designed single-storied buildings set in a pleasing grassy campus. Although only about a year old, it was already achieving an enviable reputation as a progressive co-educational institution.
I was told of the extensive assistance Liberia had received in furthering her educational programmes from the United States International Co-operation Administration, which, as the need indicated, provided everything, including school buildings, equipment and specialists in teacher-training, and advice on administration and plans for reducing illiteracy. UNESCO was also playing an important part in Liberia’s planned educational programmes. I was told, with pride, that the modern, new two-storied building in which the D.C. lived recently served as the meeting place for top-level talks between President Tubman and Guinea’s President Sékou Touré. Its many modern facilities included air-conditioning. From the many things I was shown, it was evident that Sanniquellie was being developed as an important centre, in keeping with the President’s plan to unify all Liberia into a progressive, viable entity.
All the persons I met were officials of one sort or another. All were eager to sing the President’s praises, to give him credit for every positive idea, every success or achievement in the drive towards progress. It was like a Litany, well-rehearsed and familiar, yet so naturally expressed that I was easily persuaded of their sincerity. However, whenever I veered my questioning to matters of Liberia’s relationship to other African States, there was little response, and that little expressed in the vaguest of terms.
After making sincere approving noises about the house where the two Presidents met, I asked about the extent of co-operation between the two countries and was told, “We get along as good neighbours should.”
“Was there much movement between Guinea and Liberia?”
“Yes, the people have always been in touch, to and fro.”
“Any likelihood of ideological interaction resulting from such movement?” I was trying to surprise them into some kind of spontaneous response.
“Not much chance of that. The movement was predominantly among traders of one kind of another who were mainly interested in buying and selling, mostly diamonds. Besides, Liberia would not be fruitful ground for new ideologies.”
Careful and a wee bit smug. “What about other African States—Ghana, Sierra Leone, the Congo?” I asked.
“Liberia is on the friendliest of terms with everyone. As for the Congo, Liberia has taken the lead in most of the resolutions relating to the crisis-ridden country.”
I was then given an example of the President’s stature. Recently, it seemed, Tshombe of Katanga had cabled President Tubman, suggesting his interest in visiting Liberia, but the President had quickly replied, advising Tshombe that such a visit would not meet with public approval, and Tshombe’s personal safety could not, in the circumstances, be guaranteed.
So it went. No one seemed willing to express a personal opinion which was not quite obviously “in line�
�, so I allowed myself to be shown and told about all the nice things. Perhaps they were not very keen to speak freely with a stranger, especially a stranger who wrote things down.
In the late afternoon I left for Gbanka, where I planned to spend the night before shooting north to Zorzor, Voinjama, and Kolahun. I arrived late in the evening, yet, with typical unquestioning hospitality, the District Commissioner quickly made arrangements for my accommodation, and in a way which assured me of a sincere welcome. This was something I encountered throughout Africa, this predisposition to friendliness. Before leaving for my African trip I remember having chatted about it with a European colleague. I got on the subject of aid to Africa, and think I expressed the view that Africans might not wish always to be on the receiving end—they too might like to be givers.
“What in the world could those people from the bush give to advanced Europe?” he asked in amazement.
Now each day I was finding the answer to his question. Africans and other so-called backward people could teach the rest of the world a few lessons in friendliness, now, before they too discarded as useless and old-fashioned these simple and encouraging reminders of man’s kinship with man.
Early the next morning, after breakfast, I wandered on foot around the village. Near the administration compound, in front of a low building, several score of schoolchildren were gathered in a rough semicircle about a flagpole, from which fluttered the single star and stripes of the Liberian flag. When I caught sight of them, their arms were raised in salute, and I could hear a murmur of sound as they repeated something, probably their daily oath of allegiance. “Very much in the American manner,” I thought.
I waited until the ceremony was over, then approached and asked to see the headmaster.
He was a short, slightly built African. I explained that I was visiting the village and had myself been a schoolmaster in England. He welcomed me and showed me around his school, which catered to children of both sexes from about eight to sixteen years of age. I noticed that most of the children carried several textbooks and was told that the children had to buy the books they needed.
A Kind of Homecoming Page 24