All the people who were in the negotiations scurry back to Yamoussoukro. Negotiations begin again. Laboriously, point by point, every aspect of the agreement is thrashed out. They finally, finally, agree on a final communiqué. The talks are more closely fought than ever. This time it’s for real, that’s why they have to agree on everything, even on the tiniest details. Everyone is happy. The talks were difficult, but they nonetheless reached a definitive result.
Faforo! Two months later, when everyone thought everything had been agreed, the ceasefire, the negotiation process, Foday Sankoh reappears with a thundering declaration. He didn’t accept anything, he didn’t sign anything, he doesn’t acknowledge anything, the elections, the president, anything. His freedom fighters go back to fighting. (He doesn’t give a fuck, he controls the useful part of Sierra Leone!)
The negotiators scurry back to the Hotel Ivoire, the palace where Foday Sankoh is staying with all his vices. But there’s no sign of Foday! They search all over the place; in the seediest, sleaziest parts of Treichville. (Treichville is the red-light district of Abidjan, the capital of Côte d’Ivoire.) No sign of Foday. They suspect he’s been kidnapped. The police are under serious pressure. Everyone fears for his life. Dictator Houphouët-Boigny is really embarrassed on account of how he was Foday’s host so it’s his responsibility. He rages against the police. They search and search. Still no Foday!
Three weeks later, as the search is still going on, they get news that Foday Sankoh has been arrested in Lagos, Nigeria, for gunrunning. What the hell was he doing in Nigeria? Walahé! The Nigerian dictator, Sani Abacha, is Foday Sankoh’s sworn enemy. What the fuck was Foday thinking sticking his head in the alligator’s mouth? Into the mouth of the alligator dictator Sani Abacha?
The reason is the petty jealousy of two dictators: dictator Houphouët-Boigny and dictator Sani Abacha. Sani Abacha’s troops were the ones fighting in Sierra Leone, but it was Houphouët-Boigny who got to host the negotiations. It was Sani Abacha’s countrymen who were dying in Sierra Leone, but it was Houphouët-Boigny that everyone was talking about in the international press; it was Houphouët-Boigny that everyone was calling ‘the wise man of Africa’. Like it says in the Black Nigger African Native proverb, Sani Abacha was the one standing out in the rain, but Houphouët-Boigny was the one pulling fish from the river. Or like they say in French, Houphouët-Boigny was the one feathering his nest. To put an end to this situation, the dictator Sani Abacha set up a bona fide trap for Foday Sankoh. He sent a secret agent to Abidjan who secretly offered Foday a deal, a bum deal. He told Foday Sankoh to go to Lagos in secret. He’d be met by Sani Abacha and they could discuss the best way to get ECOMOG troops out of Sierra Leone. Foday Sankoh fell for it. When he arrived in Lagos, he was arrested as a gunrunner. Locked up—click!—double-locked. With Foday Sankoh under lock and key, out of the way, they started to make contact with his supporters on the ground thinking they would be more malleable (submissive). But Foday’s supporters refused to co-operate. They refused to take part in any talks without their leader. And from his cell, Foday made his big drum of a voice heard. His grave, booming voice that says no, nothing but no.
Sani Abacha the dictator, embarrassed, not knowing what to do with the intractable Foday Sankoh (according to the Petit Robert, ‘intractable’ means ‘difficult to manage or govern, troublesome’), hands him over to the Sierra Leonean authorities, to the democratically elected president of Sierra Leone Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. Tejan Kabbah puts Foday Sankoh on the wagon. He locks him up good and tight and denies him women, cigarettes, alcohol and visits. Still Foday Sankoh says no, no, nothing but no. He has no intention of agreeing to anything, conceding anything. He calls on the new wise man of Africa, the new elder statesman of African dictators, the dictator Eyadema. Houphouët-Boigny who had held this role for many years having kicked the bucket in the interim (‘kick the bucket’ means ‘die’), leaving to his heirs and successors one of the most colossal fortunes in black Africa, more than three thousand five hundred billion CFA francs!
Right now it’s 1994, but let’s jump ahead.
The new wise man of Africa, the dictator Eyadema, will summon Foday Sankoh to Lomé, the capital of Togo. He’ll set him up again with all the things he likes, all his vices. He’ll offer him everything: women, cigarettes, mobile phones and lots of negotiations. He’ll be a free man. Talks will start again from square one. Foday Sankoh the warlord will still say no, nothing but no. He won’t want to acknowledge the outcome of the elections. He won’t want a ceasefire. He won’t agree to anything. (He won’t give a fuck, he’ll still control the useful part of Sierra Leone.)
So the dictator Eyadema will come up with a great idea, a brilliant idea. An idea that will be actively supported by the USA, France, Britain and the UN. The idea is to suggest a change to the changes that doesn’t change anything. With the agreement of the international community, Eyadema will offer the warlord Foday Sankoh the post of vice-president of the Republic of Sierra Leone with jurisdiction over all the mines that he already seized by force, with jurisdiction over all the useful parts of Sierra Leone that he already controls. This is a huge change to the changes that amounts to no change at all. No change in his position as a warlord: he won’t be charged with anything. No change in the warlord’s riches. So long as there is to be a general amnesty, Foday Sankoh will say yes, straight off, yes and yes. With no one twisting his arm or boring him to death with talk, he’ll say yes. He’ll acknowledge the government. He’ll agree to the ceasefire. He’ll agree to disarming his freedom fighters. Too bad for the ‘short sleeves’ and the ‘long sleeves’, too bad for the pitiful wretches.
That’s how it goes, that’s the price to pay to have Foday Sankoh march into Freetown wearing both hats, one as vice-president of the unified democratic Republic of Sierra Leone and one as administrator of all the mines in Sierra Leone. This is the political ruse that will finally put an end to the civil war in Sierra Leone. Faforo! Gnamokodé! But we’re not there yet.
All that comes after, long, long after. After we’d ventured through the territories of Foday Sankoh and his freedom fighters. We means Yacouba, the crippled crook, the money multiplier, the Muslim grigriman, and me, Birahima, the fearless, blameless street kid, the small-soldier. We were looking for my aunt Mahan who had left Liberia and was trying to get to my uncle in Sierra Leone. Walahé!
We started venturing our way round Foday Sankoh territory just two weeks after 15 April 1995. April 15 was the day of Foday Sankoh’s lightning strike that delivered the knockout blow to the Sierra Leone authorities and let him get his hands on the useful part of Sierra Leone. We were captured by RUF freedom fighters in a town called Mile-Thirty-Eight, about thirty-eight miles outside Freetown. Freetown is the capital of the cursed fucked-up country of Sierra Leone.
The big boss of the area and of the men who captured us in Mile-Thirty-Eight was called Tieffi. General Tieffi was the spitting image of Foday Sankoh. Same grey beard, same hunter’s Phrygian bonnet, same satisfaction from good living, the same smile and the same hair-raising laugh, a laugh so surprising it’s almost scary.
Straight off, he wanted to pack us off to the abattoir; that’s the place where they cut off the hands and arms of Sierra Leonean citizens to stop them from voting. Luckily, Yacouba had a feeling. He resigned his identity as a Muslim grigriman with the power to stop bullets and instead handed over his fake identity card that made him a citizen of Côte d’Ivoire. Tieffi was happy to find out we were Ivoirians. He liked Houphouët-Boigny, the president of Côte d’Ivoire. On account of Houphouët was rich and wise and had even built a basilica. He told us we were lucky because if we were Guinean or even foreign, they’d have cut off our hands anyway, because Guinea was sticking its nose into the internal affairs of Sierra Leone. Yacouba tightened his grip on our Guinean identity cards that he’d had the instinct not to hand over.
Yacouba was packed off to the grigrimen’s huts where they get to eat well. He got to work. He made an unbeatable gr
igri for General Tieffi.
Me, the fearless, blameless street kid, I was sent straight off to join the child-soldier unit where they gave you a kalash, the whole works.
I wanted to be one of the young lycaeons of the revolution. That’s the child-soldiers who are given the most inhuman jobs. Tough jobs like putting a bee into someone’s eye, like it says in the Black Nigger African Native savage proverb. Tieffi had a huge grin.
‘You know what it is lycaeon?’ he asked.
I told him no.
‘Well now, lycaeons are wild dogs that hunt in packs. They gobble everything; mother, father, all and everything. When they finish sharing a victim, every lycaeon goes off to clean his self. If one comes back with blood on his fur, even one drop of blood, they think he is wounded and he’s gobbled up by the others right there. That’s what it is. Got it? They have no mercy. Your mother alive?’
‘No.’
‘Your father alive?’
I said no again.
Tieffi burst out laughing.
‘You got no luck, little Birahima, you can never be a brave young lycaeon of the revolution. Your mother and your father already dead, dead and buried. To be a brave young lycaeon of the revolution, you must first kill with your bare hands (with your own hands, understand?), kill one of your own parents (father or mother), and only afterwards be initiated.’
‘I could be initiated like all the young lycaeons.’
He burst out laughing again and he said, ‘No and no. You are not Mende, you do not understand Mende, you are Malinké. The ceremonies of initiation are sung and danced in Mende. At the end of the ceremonies, a lump of meat is eaten by the young initiate. The hunk of meat is prepared by sorcerers with many ingredients and perhaps human flesh. Malinkés dislike eating this meat, Mendes do not. In tribal wars, a little human meat is necessary. It makes the heart hard, very hard, and protects against bullets. The best protection against whistling bullets is probably a piece of human meat. For example, I, Tieffi, never go to the front, never go to battle without a calabash (a bowl) of human blood. A calabash of human blood makes you strong, makes you fierce, makes you cruel, and protects you from whistling bullets.’
The initiation of the young lycaeon takes place in the forest. He wears a raffia tunic, he sings, and dances hard and fast, he cuts off the hands and arms of citizens of Sierra Leone. After, he eats a hunk of meat, a hunk of meat that is surely human flesh. For the initiates, this meat serves as the fine and delicious end to the initiation ceremony. Gnamokodé!
I couldn’t join the elite child-soldiers, the young lycaeons. I wasn’t entitled to the double rations of food, loads of drugs, the triple salary of the young lycaeons. I was useless, a nobody.
I was part of the brigade in charge of protecting the mines. The people who worked in the mines were half-slaves. They got paid, but they weren’t free to leave.
Let’s go back to the government, to the politics of this fucked-up country of damned souls and cacabas (madmen).
On 17 March 1996, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah is elected with 60% of the vote. The democratically elected president moves into Lumley Beach Palace on April 15. In the palace he is alone face to face with his destiny, meaning—like all democratically elected presidents—face to face with the army of Sierra Leone. The palace is haunted by the ghosts of all his predecessors who ran away or were gunned down there. He can’t sleep; he sleeps the sleep of the caiman, one eye half-open. He thinks a lot about how to end the hostile standoff with the army of Sierra Leone.
Ever since the tenth century, there has been freemasonry in Sierra Leone, like in every other West African country. A freemasonry of hunters, of great initiates and of the most powerful sorcerers and seers, it’s called the Kamajor. Ahmad Tejan Kabbah thinks about the Kamajor, the association of skilled traditional hunters. He summons them to the palace. Kabbah talks tough with the hunters. The hunters agree to put themselves at the service of the palace. The hunters trade their homemade rifles for AK-47s. From that day on, Kabbah, the elected president, can sleep with both eyes closed, sleep like a milkmaid’s baby. (A milkmaid’s baby sleeps in peace because he knows whatever happens he will have milk.) From that day on there were two camps and five players in the country. In the first camp, the democratically elected power, the Sierra Leonean army commanded by the chief of staff Johnny Koroma, ECOMOG (the peacekeeping force who never keep the peace) and the Kamajor or traditional hunters. The second faction was made up of Foday Sankoh’s RUF. In other words it was everyone against Foday Sankoh. There really were five players and two factions. But all the players kept coming and going in the vastness of Sierra Leone. All the players were busy bleeding the people of Sierra Leone dry.
We were at Mile-Thirty-Eight. (We means the crippled crook and me, the blameless, fearless street kid.) In the stronghold of the RUF, the stronghold of Foday Sankoh.
One night, just after the moon went down, a lot of whispering and hissing started up in the forest all around the camp right up close. No one took any notice. There was the crack of gunfire from the sentries. No one took any notice. Everyone went right on sleeping the sleep of a Senegalese champion wrestler who’s beaten every wrestler of his generation. There was gunfire every night on account of how every night you had thieves sneaking round near the mines. The intermittent gunfire didn’t stop the whispering.
By dawn, there were kalashes firing all over the village and we heard the song of the hunters, taken up by a thousand voices. The camp was being attacked, surrounded by the Kamajors. Their trick was to arrive in the middle of the night and lay siege to a village and then attack at dawn. We were taken by surprise. We knew bullets couldn’t kill the hunters. The child-soldiers panicked and ran around crying, ‘The bullets can’t kill them! The hunters are bullet-proof!’ And then people were absconding in all directions in a mad rush. By noon, the Kamajors had cut off all the roads and taken all the battle stations. All our leaders had skedaddled.
The hunters, the Kamajors, organised a feast like they always do whenever they have a victory. They had AK-47s, but that’s the only modern thing they had. Their uniforms were tunics with thousands of grigris and claws and animal hair pinned to them and they all wore Phrygian bonnets. They were singing and dancing and firing their guns into the air.
After the feast, they took over running the camp, the huts, the mines. They gathered us, all us prisoners, together. I was a prisoner and so was my protector Yacouba. We were prisoners of the Kamajors.
The offensive mounted by the professional traditional hunters had cost the lives of six child-soldiers. I decided it’s my duty to say a funeral oration for one of the six; because he was the one who was my friend. At night, in the huts, he had time to tell me his journey lots of times. (‘Journey’, according to the Petit Robert, means ‘a process or course likened to travelling: the journey of life.’) I’m only saying his funeral oration because I’m not obliged to say a funeral oration for the others. I don’t have to, same as Allah doesn’t have to always be fair about everything.
Among the dead was the body of Johnny Thunderbolt.
No kidding! No kidding! It was a teacher’s gnoussou-gnoussou that did for Johnny Thunderbolt, that led him to be a child-soldier. Yes, it was a teacher’s vagina that led him to the child-soldiers. This is how.
Johnny Thunderbolt’s real name was Jean Bazon. He was called Jean Bazon when he was going to school in Man before joining the child-soldiers. In his third year in primary school, there was a podium in the classroom. The teacher’s desk was on the podium. It was hot, really hot and the headmistress let herself go, let the breeze up between her legs, opened her legs. Too wide. And the kids had fun crawling around under the desks having a good look at what was on display. Any excuse was a good excuse. They’d laugh uproariously, loud and full, about it at break time.
One morning in the middle of lessons, Jean dropped his pencil on the ground. Automatically, not for any bad reason (absolutely not), he bent down to pick up his pencil. But that day was not his
lucky day, it was the moment the teacher had been waiting for. Someone had told her, or she’d just noticed the prank. She was hysterical, furious. (‘Hysteria’ is a state of great agitation bordering on madness.) ‘Pervert! Bastard! Pervert!’ she screamed. And she laid into him with anything she could lay her hands on, the ruler, her hands, her feet. She beat Bazon savagely, like an animal. Jean Bazon ran away. The teacher told a lanky boy named Touré to go after him. A couple of hundred yards on, Jean Bazon stopped, picked up a stone and—wham!—he threw it right in Touré’s face. Touré dropped, dropped like a ripe fruit, dropped dead. Jean kept running like mad until he got to his aunt’s house. ‘I killed someone, I killed one of my friends from school.’ The aunt panicked and hid Jean with a neighbour. The police came looking for the young delinquent. ‘We haven’t seen him since yesterday,’ his aunt said.
In the middle of the night, Jean left Man for a nearby village on the road to Guinea. From there he was able to take a truck incognito (without being recognised) heading for his uncle’s place in N’Zérékoré in Guinea. It was not a quiet trip on account of the truck was stopped by road-blockers with kalashes at the Liberia/Guinea border. The road-blockers took everything they had, they even took parts of the truck. Then a bunch of guerrillas showed up and the road-blockers made a run for it. The passengers were picked up by the guerrillas and taken to their camp. The guerrillas told the passengers that those who wanted could go back to Man on foot, it was a two-day walk. Bazon thought: ‘Me go back to Man? Never, I want to be a child-soldier.’ And that’s how Jean Bazon joined the child-soldiers, where he became Johnny Thunderbolt.
What Jean Bazon did to earn the nickname Johnny Thunderbolt is another story, it’s a long story. I don’t feel like telling it and I’m not obliged to. The body of Johnny Thunderbolt was lying there and it made me sad, really sad. I cried my heart out to see Johnny lying there dead like that. All on account of the bullets not being able to kill the hunters and Johnny not knowing that it was the hunters attacking. Walahé! Walahé! Bismillâh irrahmân ir-rahîm! In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful!
Allah is Not Obliged Page 15