Death in the Jungle(Pt.2)
When I left America, the worst things I could think of happening to me as a child was getting lost in Six Flags amusement park or losing my toy cap gun. Children are especially susceptible to the harshness of life. They need a safe place to run to when bad things happen. My parents, being the naive American born idealists that they were, had no concept of this. Psychology was a “new” field in the 1970s and they pretty much thought everything could be solved with prayer or faith in God. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a Believer too, but God made us with a mind and told us to use it. Guess who ended up paying the price for their ignorance?
Proverbs 4:6 “Do not abandon wisdom and she will protect you; love her and she will keep you safe”
Enter Liberia and the jungle stage left.
THE CAT
When we first moved into the abandoned pilot’s house located at the top of a hill surrounded by a swamp, we had to do some serious cleaning. Grass, small plants and dirt covered the floors and mold was everywhere. It took a week or two but eventually the place was reasonably cleaned up. It had, however, become a lodging place for animals of all kinds and they didn’t get the eviction notice: especially the giant rats that seemed to be everywhere.
The attic of this house was accessible and had a clothes line installed (it rained so much in the jungle that drying clothes outside was considered idiocy) and it had a big tank located right above the shower. The idea was to fill the tank and then you could have a shower instead of washing with a bucket of water and a rag. Someone would have to hand pump water up to the water tower beside the house, turn on the generator, put the heating donut coil into the attic tank and then presto! A hot shower. This rarely happened.
The attic had a steep stairway leading up to a door upon which one entered. This stairway still haunts my dreams as it was the popular choice for the rats in the attic to enter the house. I can still hear the thunk, thunk, thunk of their bodies coming down the stairs in the dead of night. Creepy. Like footsteps. My father bought some enormous rat traps made of metal that had teeth on them. He would put a bunch on the steps at night to catch the occasional rat stupid enough to step on one. The traps made a horrendous noise when they went off. A super loud Snap! and then thumping and banging for a while as the rat slowly died, spraying blood all over the steps. Every night for as long as we lived there, this was the status quo.
It wasn’t so much the rats that got on everyone’s nerves. Rather it was the snakes that came into the house to eat them. Big snakes, small snakes, green snakes, black snake, pink snakes….etc. All poisonous and deadly. I think my mother lost some of her sanity around then. Being chased around the kitchen by a black mamba or puff adder when you come into the kitchen in the morning will do that, I suppose. In an effort to stem the rat tide, we put a small pet cat we had up into the attic one night to “discourage” the rats. It went missing for a few days and then we heard it mewling at the attic door and there it was, scared and starving with a bite on its nose.
The cat seemed sick for a few days then it got better and we thought nothing more of it. About a week later, deep in the dead of night, I was awakened by a simply horrible noise. It sounded like someone screaming outside my window. Terrified, making sure my mosquito net was securely tucked under my mattress, I called out for my dad. He showed up with his machete in hand and looked out the window. It was the cat. It had gone stark raving mad and was drooling and foaming at the mouth, screaming at the top of its lungs.
Dad told us to stay put, went into the kitchen to get a pair of washing gloves, and promptly went outside. He started a huge fire with some gasoline in our garbage burning pit, and then in the light cast by the fire I could see him chopping and killing the little grey kitten. He cut off its head and stuck it in a Tupperware, which he promptly wrapped up and put in the kerosene refrigerator. It took me a long time to get back to sleep that night.
This little cat had developed rabies from the bite on its nose. Evidently it had been bitten by a bat in the attic (yes we had bats too I told you everything took up residence there). I will go into some detail about what happened to us after the rabid cat discovery, but suffice it to say it meant rabies shots for all the kids: in the spleen. The horrifying torture of three little white kids is probably a better title. It was a long time (20 years) until I petted a cat again. Nothing you loved seemed to last long in the jungle: pets, people, possessions, sanity…it all seemed destined to die a horrible death.
THE FUNERAL
Having the only station wagon for many miles, my father often was asked to transport people. A Peugeot 504 rear wheel drive station wagon is no off roads vehicle but our mission group (bunch of bureaucratic idiots) had decreed this was to be our off roads car. So we beat the hell out of that wagon and it kept asking for more. Tough car, I admit, but it was not up to the muddy logging roads of Liberia and we got stuck often. I literally laugh when I see Americans driving off roads Jeeps in town. The ludicrous sight is not lost on me and smacks of opulence, but I diverge.
When someone died suddenly (no not the covid19 vax probably malaria) we were asked to convey his body to his home village and attend the funeral. It was a big honor to have us attend so my parents informed us to get dressed up and get in the car. Piling into the back seat with a couple other Liberians, we headed out to the funeral…….or so I thought. Instead, we drove up to a small house and out came four guys carrying a body. They opened up the back door of the wagon, put the seat down, and proceeded to shove a body wrapped in white cloths into the back (much to my seven year old horror).
Off we went on a several hour drive with a body in the trunk (smelling weird I must say). I sneaked a peek over the seat from time to time, petrified that the body would suddenly get up like in the cartoons. Its nose and mouth were stuffed with cotton giving it a weird appearance. I kept expecting it to gag. A couple of times it rolled around as we navigated the harsh logging truck roads of the jungle, necessitating one of the Liberians to put it back in place. This was possibly the longest road trip of my life (in reality it was only a few hours) and I felt it would never end.
But it did end and when we finally got to the burial grounds somewhere in the jungle (no idea) we were met by a screaming yelling crowd of mourners. The women especially began screaming and tearing off their clothes an rolling around in the dirt. As if riding in the car with a dead body wasn’t horrifying enough, the sight of people acting literally insane really topped off the day. Meanwhile, every kid in the village wanted to get a close glimpse of the blonde headed white kids that suddenly appeared. Pulling my hair, rubbing my skin and asking me for stuff began non stop. Some of them were naked while others were obviously sick and their noses were literally leaking rivers of snot which they proceeded to flick off with their hands. The same hands pawing at me and my siblings.
After a time, the wailing and screaming stopped and the funeral was over. We were offered some incredibly hot stew (I wont even guess what animal was in it) on rice and after much talking late into the evening, we and our burnt pallets got back in the station wagon for our long bumpy ride back…..to our rat/snake house et al.
This little cat had developed rabies from the bite on its nose. Evidently it had been bitten by a bat in the attic (yes we had bats too I told you everything took up residence there). I will go into some detail about what happened to us after the rabid cat discovery, but suffice it to say it meant rabies shots for all the kids: in the spleen. The horrifying torture of three little white kids is probably a better title. It was a long time (20 years) until I petted a cat again. Nothing you loved seemed to last long in the jungle: pets, people, possessions, sanity…it all seemed destined to die a horrible death.
THE END OF CIVILIZATION
Mom got pregnant while living in the jungle (my hat is off to them for what had to be an extremely sweaty endeavor) and she developed gestational diabetes. Jungle living became suddenly very difficult and to alleviate this, my brother and I were slated for boarding school in a different country. Mom had been homeschooling us using Calvert but it was now too hard. It was to be our last few months in the jungle and eventually we moved to Bomi Hills in a totally different part of the country. It had been a German community part of Burger road construction company. It was mostly abandoned but the houses were mostly intact and we managed to get one. Being only a few hours from the capital city of Monrovia instead of the two day travel we had to endure from Pleebo, it was an upgrade.
In 1979, however, a coup d'état took place. For many decades the Americo Liberians (yes you heard right Americo) who had come in the early 1800s from America had been ruling the local tribes. Establishing Liberia by force, they had ruled and been hated by the indigenous peoples. When a young sergeant in the Army had staged a coup, he had support from his fellow original Liberians. The time for their revenge was at hand, and in typical fashion, they carried out a killing spree which engulfed the surrounding countries and led to one of the most disgusting and horrible things ever to happen to West Africa.
Sgt. Samuel K. Doe was his name. I remember it well. When we moved to Bomi Hills, my father actually bought a tv! Small black and white 10 inch, it became a favorite thing of us kids to watch Stingray and Thunderbirds are Go! on Saturdays as it was broadcast from Monrovia. On one particular Saturday, being home from boarding school, we were watching Stingray when it was rudely interrupted by the visage of a man in a military helmet trying to read from a piece of paper. He kept stumbling and mispronouncing words and finally gave the paper to someone else to read. It was Sgt. Doe. He was officially announcing his takeover and proclaimed himself president. He began told everyone that President Tolbert was dead, laughed a little and then the camera panned to a table located outside somewhere in Monrovia.
On this table was jumbled up pieces of a man. Chopped into sections (mostly intact torso) arms and legs all askew and head in one corner, lay the naked body of President Tolbert. I am told they had him on display for some time so everyone could come and take a look. In the background, I saw several soldiers laughing next to the grim spectacle and some grabbing a leg and dropping it back on the table. Shouldering their rifles and making jokes with one another, they looked more like people at a barbeque, than monsters at a medieval torture display. My parents shooed us away from the tv when they saw it and turned it off. But the damage was done. The laughing casual manner in which the Liberian soldiers treated a person (good or bad) had opened a question in my mind I could not stop asking: what if that were me they wanted on that table?
Horrifyingly, it was not to be the last of the nightmare for Liberia. My parents (why to this day I do not know) put my brother and I back on a plane for boarding school not long after the coup. On our way to the airport in Monrovia, I was looking out the window of the car and saw something else I wished I hadn’t seen. A large field looked like it was under construction. Several bulldozers were moving around and pouring dirt into a giant trench that had been dug. There were soldiers everywhere and people scurrying around. As we drew closer, I looked an saw one bulldozer lift it shovel up. In it were the bodies of many men, arms and legs hanging over the sides of the bucket. The dozer moved over to the trench and unceremoniously dumped the pile of bodies into it.
It was a killing field. All the office workers, government employees, and anyone affiliated with Americo-Liberians were rounded up and shot. An extermination effort to cleanse the Colonists had begun and would result in the fracturing of Liberia for many years to come.
I didn’t know about any of this. None of this made any sense to me. I remember thinking: what if they came after me? Would they chop me up and put me in a ditch? Would the Liberian soldiers chop me up like my pet cat and put my head in a Tupperware?
I wanted to stay with my parents, not go to boarding school. I needed a safe place. My eight year old brain was struggling to comprehend the brutal nature of what I learned decades later in theology class was Fallen Humanity at its best.
When we got to the airport, my parents were not allowed to come in with us to the terminal. They gave us hugs and then we marched up to the airport doors, our little suitcases in hand, and managed to find a few other missionary kids going back to the same school. We got our bags and things situated and then were told to wait. I could see out the windows that my parents were still waiting, so I went to an open window and waved out to them calling out. As I did so, a Liberian soldier saw me and started yelling at me. Decked out in combat gear, wearing his helmet and carrying an automatic rifle, he screamed at me something I couldn’t hear. He kept screaming and then my parents started screaming too. He cocked his rifle and pointed it at me at which point I heard my parents telling me to go back into the airport. The soldier told me he was going to shoot me. I ducked back in the window and ran to the other missionary kids, looking over my shoulder to see if the irate soldier was looking for me. Nothing.
As we (a bunch of children) boarded the Swiss Air flight to Ivory Coast, I found a seat, put on my seat belt. The plane took off and as I stared at the rapidly receding ground below me, I put my shirt up over my face so no one could see and began cry silently. Crying because I was scared. Crying because I would be going back to the hellscape of boarding school. Crying because there was no safe place for me. This is a heavy burden for an eight year old.
That is my last memory of Liberia. I would never return or see it again.