Behind the Eclipse

by Pramudith D. Rupasinghe

  I survived because of fear and Poro. Every single moment in the bush, I was with a constant fear which was intense. It was fear that kept me alive. It was fear that kept my eyes open throughout. It was fear that finally pushed me out of the bush and it was again fear that dominated my present. The present was in the hands of an unknown God. The present had nothing but incertitude for future. The present that I embraced leaving behind the past which I knew. The present that I sacrificed for an unknown future. The present in the territory of God where all my hopes were in a constant battle in staying alive. The present that I was trying to survive by the grace of God where my learning in the bush and power of witchcraft did no longer apply.

  ‘He can read and write well. He did the basics in the Bible studies with the Reverend Arthur,’ the Reverend Phillip looked at me as if he wanted my confirmation for what he was telling. I smiled as I enjoyed hearing a long praise about me for the first time in my life. I felt proud and determined to be better. It was vital for me to develop an identity among those people who worshipped God and who were wearing shining clothes, covering their heads and feet, rolling in various vehicles and spoke white man`s language. I felt an urge to be someone like Arthur or Jean. I visualised myself as the Reverend George.

  The Reverend George wore a suit like the Reverend Maurice and talked like the Reverend Arthur. He was respected like the Reverend Philip. I wanted to walk along the paved streets and talk to the people; Talk about the God the Reverend Maurice introduced to me; talk about the God who gave me my new name and gave me a new path to discover. I saw nothing but the road to God towards my tomorrow and had to lock down my inner self where all my ancestors and the Creator of Kissis were living and to surrender to God with no further questions.

  ‘Once you finish the studies here, you will be like us.’ I felt as if I was in heaven that they were always talking about.

  ‘Thank you very much!’ I said to the Reverend Maurice.

  They took me to a small dormitory where all the students were living. There were beds one above the other just like the racks that were brought to the library in the church in Kpelle village. I was given a bed in the third row which almost touched the roof. The white mattress and pillow cover were almost brownish yellow with various stains which hinted how long those many people had been using them. I dared not smell them as I did not want to stir my new life with any more disgust.

  I just left my old country cloth on the mattress which was browner than the linen on the bed, but since it was my own sweat and dust and mud from the place where I was born, a feeling of the sense of place was there.

  Just above me, the old gas lantern covered with dust, barely visible through the cobwebs from which different types of dead insects, were looking at me just like they were constantly watching whether I was breaking the divine rules.

  With the church bell that rang early in the morning, everyone among us ran to the common bathing place, had a wash and joined the early morning service. After breakfast, we used to run to the study hall where we read the Bible, history, and Latin. Just like the sun﹘the centre of the universe, our studies were solely centralised on God, and we were like the Earth, running around the sun. The life was ritualistic and monotonous with the same pattern for almost a decade which looked like eternity.

  Besides what we learnt in the books and what was relevant to God, we were taught about etiquettes in many aspects of life such as dressing, dining, public speech in service and much more.

  ‘Are you trying to kill the fish again?’ Peter; one of my fellow students who was from Monrovia made jokes out of the way I was handling the folk and knife at the dining table. It was one of the moments I felt that I had made a wrong move to come to Monrovia. But when the immediate emotions thinned down, especially after the evening service, I always felt that I had been given a life-changing opportunity to see the world beyond the bush and grow with the new world. Many times, I felt that God of the white man lived in human beings and directed them in taking right decisions at right times while persuading people to do right things to right people.

  I worked hard every day just as hard as the journey I made from Kissi village to the Kpelle community, and I enjoyed every single moment in the church. With every single passing day, when the church bell rang, and the sun peeped through the colourful arched windows, my fears started to thin and hope piled on one upon the other, as high as the altar before which I knelt down three times every single day.

  14

  It was just after the service on Christmas evening when the Reverend Maurice came rushing towards the rest area of the reverends. I was sitting on a low bench with the Reverend Phillip who had become disabled and was suffering from severe dementia after a stroke he had had a year ago.

  ‘We’ve got to rush,’ the Reverend Maurice said in a taut voice. He looked shocked and scared.

  ‘They have penetrated the borders of Liberia through Guinean border. I know how it always happened,’ he said.

  The Reverend Philip had already lost his hearing almost completely, but the gestures and the facial expressions of the Reverend Maurice triggered a sudden agitation in the Reverend Philip’s mind. He tried to push me and move his right leg which was slightly functional and as a result, he fell on the floor.

  ‘We do not have time,’ the Reverend Maurice screamed again which was not his type of behaviour known to me.

  ‘They always start in the bush and come to cities like the water that flows along the rivers. Soon, there will be killing in Monrovia,’ he said pulling out his metal trunk box from underneath the bed.

  ‘Killing, killing,’ I repeated as it was the only clue that I got from all what he was talking about.

  ‘Yeah, they massacred Khrah people and now moving towards Monrovia,’ packing all his clothes inside the trunk box, he said.

  ‘This time, no one will be safe here, it’s going to be endless killing.’ His agitated mood increased with every single word he uttered.

  ‘What the fuck you are waiting for?’ He yelled at me like never before. I felt a current of shock streaming through my backbone and hit the brain. I could not understand his fury, but I felt that he was trying to make a point that none of us could understand.

  One middle-aged Afro-American reverend called the Reverend James came rushing in. He bowed, but the Reverend Maurice seemed already forgotten his usual ‘God Bless,’ and instead he asked in a restless tone, ‘Truck is ready?’

  ‘Yes Reverend,’ the Reverend James replied loyally.

  Unlike the day I left Kpelle village, I had two cotton tops, one short trouser, which was almost till the length of my knees or probably, a bit longer and a long trouser that one of the reverends who left the church gifted me before leaving Liberia. Also, an old pair of shoes I was gifted by one of the wealthy Congo men who had been an active member of the church. I took all of them and put them in a brown paper bag which the Reverend Phillip had given me to reuse whenever he sent me to buy Fanti-bread from the town.

  ‘George,’ hearing the unusual enraged voice of the Reverend Maurice startled me.

  ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘Yes Reverend,’ I said without thinking.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he showed me his trunk box. I took the heavy trunk box with both hands and followed the Reverend Maurice. The Congo-man was waiting near the truck till we arrived sweating and perplexed. I was able to read his gestures better than what the Reverend Maurice was trying to tell me in his angry tone. I was again convinced that there was something woeful happening in Liberia.

  ‘We’ve got to hurry,’ he said in his deep and orotund voice.

  ‘Oh my clothes,’ I had left the brown paper bag with my clothes on the table.

  I ran back and grabbed the bag as it was my sole property which had made me a little bit richer than how I used to be before leaving the bush. When I was about to exit the room, I noticed the pillow on which my he
ad was comfortable all this time in the church. I pulled the pillow, my last treasure left in the church, and rushed to the truck.

  When I reached the truck, it was just about to move. I jumped into the trunk, in the same way as I grimped the tree tops when I was a young boy. The truck was heading towards the same bush where I came from years ago. I was leaving with hesitation to the place where I was hesitating to leave years ago. And I was leaving the territory of God into the territory of ancestors and the Creator of the tribes. I was going to cross the river that separated me from the bush where I was born and grew up. A feeling of tearing myself into two pieces kept on discomforting me. I was like an earthworm that was cut into two pieces by a merciless farmer. Without my knowledge, an indignation had developed in me towards myself, but I could not figure out whether it was because of my decision to come to Monrovia years ago or that of returning to the bush.

  ‘When you leave your life in the hands of God, he will take you where he wishes you to be,’ I could not get rid of thinking of what the Reverend Maurice said when I first met him. I looked at the Reverend Maurice who was in the truck with two other reverends and Congo-man who was driving. The Reverend Maurice was talking to Congo-man while stroking his white and shiny bold head that appeared after I came to Monrovia. When I first saw him, he had ‘old man`s hair’—the blonde hair’ and his ‘Sabu—the bold head’ was not here. Whenever his old friends visited him, they used to ask what happened to his head. ‘Liberia’ was his short answer which he gave with an ironic laughter. While I was observing what was going on inside the truck, I noticed infinite waters which took my memory immediately back to the day I crossed the river. I struggled to cross the waters while I was leaving the bush where I belonged to, leaving my childhood behind the greens and animals under the protection of the Creator and the ancestors.

  A bridge had replaced the ferry that took us across the waters, but my thoughts did not connect back to the bush as fast as the truck that ran on the concrete bridge towards the bush. I felt that all my dreams were dimming: some in the bush and some in Monrovia. I was simply a loser who did not belong to either side. The tears that soaked my eyes when I was on the ferry while I was leaving the bush years ago had dried up and vented in the polluted dry air in Monrovia, just like the dryness of feelings of the people in the city. I felt a vanity within me when I saw white colour buildings being added to the horizon and disappear on the other side of the shore.

  I would no longer need the shiny shoes, suits, and white man’s language. But, many of Kpelle and Loma words had already gone lost in the fog of white man’s language. However, Kissi language being my native heritage, my core just like my spine, could resist the changes that the time and ambitions had brought. I was like the river that had not changed even though the bridge had replaced the ferry.

  Just after the bridge, we entered the same gravel road which I was passing many years ago with bunches of fresh dreams. Ironically, today I saw the shattered pieces of my dreams, just like the dust rising to the skies from the moving truck. My future was just like fading scenes of Monrovia, barely visible through the dust clouds forming behind the fast moving truck.

  ‘Life never remains constant,’ whenever people returned from the bush without a hunt; Oldman used to say.

  ‘Tomorrow is in the hands of the Creator and will be a different day,’ he did not forget to add.

  The peak of the dry season was a blessing for us since all the gravel roads that turned to pools of water and creamy red mud during the rainy season making it impassable in any vehicle, remained tough, yet dusty that allowed the Congo man to drive fast. Through the canopy of trees, the truck moved faster than the time I came to Monrovia. Ours was the only motor vehicle on the road when I was coming. But the time had brought many of them into the bush. We met many other trucks with people with their personal belongings escaping the war. For the first time in my life, I was witnessing a mass migration to Guinea. The fury of the Reverend Maurice should be on reasonable grounds. There should be something appalling going to happen.

  Samuel Doe being the first Liberian president with an indigenous descent, many people from the rural Liberia liked him first, but with the passage of time, it was well shown that Captain Doe was an incompetent and ruthless leader who could not unite tribes in Liberia. Instead, he widened the existed tribal divisions by favouring his own tribe called Krahn. On top of that, his brutality and corrupt rule resulted in many of his close people organising against him. As a result, one coup was attempted, but those who got involved were caught, killed and eaten. This time, one Charles Taylor who escaped from the Doe regime organised his militia in Ivory Coast and penetrated the territory of Liberia through Nimba county where many people had felt marginalised and humiliated by the Doe regime. Many people from Nimba joined Taylor, and they were rapidly carving their path towards country`s capital recruiting new members to their militia and destroying whoever confronted them. It looked like a new episode was about to be written in the history of my country or probably all the old chapters would be erased, and a new way of looking at my country would come into being.

  15

  Great mountains and cooler climate even in the peak of dry season hinted me that I was in the native paradise. Suddenly, Kumba, Oldman, my mother, my father and my uncle who disappeared in the bush encroached my wandering mind. I knew Old man was gone, but the others, I assumed, were no longer among the living. The fact that I was unable to say goodbye to them properly bothered me a lot. Many times, my father and mother appeared in my dreams and talked to me in a language that I could not understand. They behaved as if they were from a different tribe. They were in different clothes, not in Kissi traditional clothes or white man`s costumes and had some strange marks like scratches or cuts on their faces, but they smiled happily. Whenever I saw those dreams, I thought it should be the language, traditions, and clothing in heaven that the Reverend Maurice taught me about. I felt delighted because they had gone to heaven which looked like a better place even though they were not able to join our ancestors. As we moved further, I noticed clusters of Kissi-huts fragmented in open areas which proved me that my assumptions could be wrong. An irresistible urge to go back and join them struck me. I banged the back glass of the truck as hard as I could, but it looked like no one heard because the roaring sound of the engine and the road noise had made all the other things inaudible. I wanted to jump out of the truck, but when I looked at how the red soil was passing before my very eyes as fast as Lofa was moving away from me, I was fear-struck. It was a rapid journey across my past that triggered my memories in a panorama of incidents, associated with different sorts of human feelings which ranged from simple happiness to profound sadness, from heights of hopefulness to precipices of despair.

  ‘Past is a blend of memories that enriches the story, and present is the very product of the past with choices left in one`s hand to light up the future.’

  That was the most admired and inspiring quote among what Oldman used to say. I loved it until this point probably because of its complicatedness and the ambiguity, but the moment I started seeing my past unfolding before my very eyes, I realised what he had meant.

  The eyes that remained dried throughout the time in Monrovia seemed to have felt the healing power of nature. I cried silently hiding behind the roaring noise of the moving truck that was completely insensitive to pains and happiness which this piece of earth had given to my life. I was being taken to another unknown place about where I did not have a clue whether there would be light or darkness in the store of future. But it looked like we were left with no other choice to make.

  When the kissi-huts disappeared into the wild, I wiped my tears. This time, it made me realise no separation was permanent. I determined to come back to Kissi village one day again.

  When we reached the border, it was almost six in the evening, and the darkness had already started to dominate the bush, and there were thousands of silhouette
s moving across the frontier.

  Guinea was never a new place to me. My grandmother often used to go with Oldman to visit her relatives in Guinea. I had crossed the border with my father a few times to participate in funerals of our distant relatives who lived in Guinea. But we had never crossed the border as refugees. We used to carry several bags made out of African palm leaves full of bush meat and cassava when we visited the relatives across the border, and we were always welcomed as wealthy Liberian parents. Today, I was crossing the border on a trunk of a truck carrying my clothes gifted by strangers; with my hopes shattered, ambitions vanished and with a partially acquired and partly imposed culture where my true identity was threatened like the other refugees who had just lost everything they had overnight caused by the war.

  I could not forget how the mornings in Kissi-village in Lofa started fresh with the symphonies of Pepper bird and the rising sun over the mountains. Life was simple every day but stable as we knew our routine better than ourselves. Each person had a role to play designated by his family; in a larger context, by the community which was recognised and appreciated when it was well executed. Our ambitions did not raise higher than the Lofa mountains which were the territory of Lomas. The depth of our dreams did end at the bottom of Lofa river, and our perception of a paradise was limited to the bush from where we got everything for life. I constantly felt the urge to return to the village: to meet my people, to talk to them, to dine with them and, probably, I might get news about what happened to Kumba. But behind the dust cloud that blinded everyone who got contacts with Guinea-Liberia border had disappeared by several miles.

  The journey that made me leave Kissi-village to find medicine for my father who was dying with the Bush-curse had already taken me to several destinations exposing me to diverse cultures and transforming me into a different person who was still struggling to find where he belonged to. Contrarily, I had travelled through diverse cultures and acquired various skills and knowledge; discovering new vistas and horizons, adhered to new disciplines of life of ‘God.’ Consequently, I had some underlaying confidence about my future that was ‘in the hands of God,’ as the Reverend Maurice said. I decided to stick with the only choice which was to follow the Reverend Maurice.