AFRICAN PANORAMA
By Mulbah K. Morlu, Jr.
Kemah, an innocent primary school girl from the once flourishing city of Sanniquellie, did not find it easy growing up as a child, constantly recounting the painful memories of that fateful hour at the Lutheran Church. It is a day in 1990, one of such days that leave unfading horrors in one’s life. She still remembers how it all happened. The terror-loaded nightfall reluctantly gave-in to what would be a daybreak of horrors, as broken window glasses came falling everywhere from the collision of munitions discharged from heavily loaded machine guns. Confusion erupted the church as fleeing attempts were made. Many were still enjoying their sleep on church pews before the outburst. Some never woke up, too hard-hit by flying bullets to be alive. Others, instantly jumping from sleep unaware of the entrapment, ran into shooting soldiers and went down easily as part of a 250,000 casualties of war.
In the upheaval, Kemah’s father had hurriedly taken her into his arms and desperately tried to seek refuge behind the church pulpit. Church-surrounded armed men were emptying their barrels in violent gun shelling at a defenseless people. Displaced civilians. Most were from the rural mountainsides of Nimba and had been coerced into bundle-totting runaways headed to the Capitol. This seemed the best alternative as nihilistic rebels roamed the countryside unleashing widespread terror that placed human and chicken lives on equal value. Now in the city, many sought and thought they found a peace-of-some-kind under roofs of loved ones, relatives and friends. That peace was short -live.
The city, too, became hotter than Hell as rebels fast encroached, and so did evil. Families and friends’ homes quickly transformed into slaughter chambers as the ears of ruthless government soldiers itched for news of the vicinity of certain tribes and their affiliates. These despised tribes were easily located and after the slaughter, the slaughterers would climax the spree with lootings. In rare scenarios, the survivors and escapees would relocate to a new home.
Hospitals and the United Nations Head office became homes to them. Lucky ones, by virtue of the mystique workings of fate, succeeded in the survival game. At least, they were given the opportunity to see a few more hard days as landing rockets were to leave debris washed in blood and flesh scattered everywhere. Others had to embrace a new method of brutal murder. It was the cruelest kind that made mothers disown their own, choosing to live rather than die with a loved child whose tribal links unveiled.
With many selected homes now left to bear the burden of stinking and badly mutilated corpses of sons, daughters and their parents, the lucky-to-live could think of no safer places than the House of the Lord. After all, not even Liberia’s craziest killer and anarchist, General Prince Tony-water, would kill a fly in “The House of the Lord”. In fact, his admirers, and even the devil has admirers, saw him as god-sent. After a day of bizarre brutality, he would pickup his guitar, with machine gun swinging across his chest, and march through Bushrod Island singing Christian songs.
But the mere vocalization of Christian choruses spiced up by street parades proves less sufficient to silence the crying blood of slain husbands whose wives were needed for Prince’s pleasure. These were the unlucky ones who forgot to say their morning prayers and had ventured into the streets seeking bread and unfortunately met the prince of doom, General Tony-water. And the ‘Prince of doom’s bullet certainly hewed down these poor souls. Most went down with the painful memory that their mulatto wives had just entered a new marriage of compulsion with a self-style rapist.
The Prince’s archive further overflows with the brutal records of slain victims whose only crime was to belong to specific groupings that constituted the despised tribes. And the few survivors of a mosque bloodbath in Nimba during the early mornings of the 90s continue living their miseries, tending to indelible scars that keep opening as their punishers flourish in fat jobs that money can buy. Whether justified or not, the Prince’s growing abhorrence against Mohammed’s adherents was about to lead to one of the most demoralized and vicious aggressions against a people whose rights are equally guaranteed under our laws, like everyone else. The scene was a full-size township hidden in the central heart of Nimba County. In this town, the fore night had been spent celebrating a traditional festival after sacrifices were made to appease the gods for protection against the enclosing fracas. The day broke slowly lending natural light to the dwellers for 12 hours.
The dawn was good and promising and the fowls peacefully flew overhead, creating the impression that the weather was conducive for the hurrying farm season. It was Friday, meaning everyone stayed home as the aged-old custom demands in many villages and towns. This was the day of rest, the Sabbath of the villagers, and it brought much relief to the despisers of hard work; the weak, the lazy and wayward kids would bundled around the blacksmith hut, listening to the folktales of elders who themselves were enjoying their share of soured palm wine being poured by an apprentice ironsmith. A sling throw from the blacksmith’s hut stood the only mosque in town. It was a reliquary that warned incoming strangers that the values of Islam were well alive and entrenched here.
It was now sunset, a set time for the fulfillment of one of Islam’s call for a five day prayer routine. Though rumors of war reigned nearby, devote Muslims viewed the critical era as a scarring dispensation to draw nearer to their God. Like previous Fridays, the gathering of these worshippers had begun at midday leaving the revered place jammed under thirty minutes. Young women nursing their young were in the midst and the elderly slowly lowered themselves on spread mats, hoping the God they serve would lengthen their days to see their grand children grow up and chase young girls. The irritating sounds of trench mortal guns echoed in the distance but never shaking the determination of the Moresque devotees to offer their prayers.
Moments after, unexpected rebels wearing red T-shirts emerged from no where in such a professional maneuver that had the mosque placed in a semicircle with little room for escape. A fiercely dressed man carrying a scorpion on his shoulders and bearing the resemblance of a remorseless General led the bandits. He spoke in raw English as though it were a second language, then in Mandingo. But the gesticulation and aggressive verbosity that was characteristic of his raw speech unveiled an extreme kind of mordacity that reflected his disapproval of these Moslems. He spoke a few more words that made it seem like he was giving his orders.
In an instant, guns were lowered from windows and doors, leaving screams, cries and extreme anxiety amongst the worshippers. Some were crying for mercy as the man who would later be identified as Senator Tony-water stood smiling, seemingly amused by the weeping and shouts of his would-be victims. The noise heightened, more shouts, groans and voices in native languages were echoing. Then, the mosque felt into a dead silence and buzzing flies swarmed amongst bodies littered with bullet holes that were as deep as the envy that propelled such brutality. The anomalous smear of blood easily conquered the fragrance blowing from the petals of blossoming trees. And the rest of the village’s occupants had their reasons to now be miles away from this terrible scene. As fearsome quietude engulfed a once lively town, the foot sounds of the executioners quickly fading into the evergreen forest that shielded them for their next operation, the devil’s brother had just completed a mission that was to continue in other places.
Mutatis mutandis (in reverse), similar fate awaited hunted tribes of Nimbaians who had nowhere to hide except hospitals and the United Nations shelters. Being chased out of homes and displaced dwellings, they went to the last place that was considered a refuge from evil. The church. For the first time in months, Kemah and many other occupants in this church slept and dreamed dreams that painted a future they wanted. A glimmer of hope you wish for in a crisis situation of the kind. Finally, the fear of being rounded-up and shot before neighbors was now of the past. “This is the House of the Lord, “a strong tower…the righteous run into and are safe…””, she dreamed. It was now well after 2: A.M and the cool breeze that was gestured by the Atlantic easily sent many to sleep in the worship hall of the Lutheran Church. A few mothers were sitting up changing diapers of their babies as flickering candlelights came under the constant threat of the blowing wind that had now changed its gentleness, blowing with unfriendliness as though angry over an evil not yet revealed.
Without warning, a heavy automatic gunfire erupted from all sides of the church’s edifice and showed no sign of abating for at least ten to fifteen minutes. Amidst the volleying bullets flying everywhere, shouts were heard and dead bodies littered “Mount Zion.” Many human trees in the church were hewed down leaving their children without shield for the future. Kemah’s mother now lied in a pool of blood, totally unrecognizable. She had tried to jump out the window and a broken glass cut clean her stomach leaving her intestines laid waste in a heap near her dead corpse.
The father, in utmost perplexity, took Kemah in his arms and ran for cover behind the holy place, the pulpit. As he took to his heels, he could see a portrait of the Lord Jesus with outstretched arms seemingly urging him on.
Come unto me…I will give you rest…I am the way… he reflected the Lord’s voice through the scriptures.
His confidence surged and he grew assured that he would make it. Only a few steps kept him away from the safety of Jesus, he thought, taking the Savior’s portrait more serious than the artistic skill work it represented. Just then, a man wearing a makeshift choir gown emerged from the main doorway carrying something that Kemah’s father thought was a cross. It was, in fact, an AK-48 automatic machine gun. The gun-totting child soldier, without wasting time, rushed forward, taking a dead aim. He lowered the gun and walked some more, stepping over corpses badly pierced by the aggressors’ bullets. Many bodies were in sight. One was a body of a child with huge opening in the skull as though it were a coconut with top roughly blown off. Another corpse lay close. The bullet had made its way into the neck, twisting upward into the face, and leaving the head without a face. The approaching child-soldier was now on the pulpit with his gun lowered at the back of Kemah’s father who was knelt before the huge Jesus portrait, praying with his daughter stocked to his chest.
The Lord is my shepherd… the man prayed, consoling himself in the verses.
The gunman cocked the trigger at point blank range, and Kemah’s father unabated his silent prayers, now sobbing in hasting tears.
“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death….I will fear no evil…for thou art with me…
Before he could say the next line, there was a loud thud and Kemah thought she felt something hot splashing down her face. She opened her eyes, praying not see the reality of what she imagined. At first, she thought what she saw was a properly boiled cream of wheat scattered everywhere on her clothes. In a flash, she felt herself growing cold by the splash she felt, now knowing what it was. The warmth her father’s tender arms brought her was no longer there. He had fallen backwards; his head off his shoulders as he fought to exhale in vain, blood rushing out instead from the stem of his neck. Kemah looked in disbelief as her adrenaline pumped blood faster than ever. She fought to wipe the whitish cream-like substance from her ragged dress.
When she realized it was her father’s scattered brains, she screamed, and as she fell into a coma, her eyes twinkled to a photograph that had fallen from her dead father’s pocket. It was a portrait of the “Iron lady” who was so much admired by Kemah’s dad as the revolutionary that armed the red-haired Army Major to free “His pepper bush.” Though Kemah now lied in coma and her survival reliant on slim chances, 18 years later, she may still have an opportunity to learn the facts or fictions about her own tragedy; but would she also cherish that photograph when she grew up and read the facts, not from Madam Iron’s “book”, but from the many historical sources that would tell a better story?
Perhaps, she would learn from the ‘book’ waiting to be published by winners of the Liberian catastrophe, and history is always written by winners, not losers. This is our dilemma, indeed, our challenge. the Liberian conflict travesty, unlike others before or after it, is even more interesting; “Truth” forums are for the weak and victims, and the accounts of supreme actors, most of who are now in the elitist’s cadre of power, will be read in books! Whether this hook, line and sinker of elitists’ dishonesty will be painfully swallowed by an economically crumbling Liberia is a decision left to a socially-caged people that should choose to die standing, than live free on their knees.
Hence, Realizing that the status quo fits a perfect description that set the stage for the Sirleaf-Taylor notorious partnership, and though many years have now passed since the ill-starred blood buster scenes were acted by disingenuous elements depicted in the above bi-scenarios, the screams and tears of victims the likes of little Kemah, still echo across the land. Whilst known military and pseudo-political actors cannot escape their apportionment in the Liberian anarchy, white-collar aficionados of power must similarly be visualized and placed on the pedestal for a bias-free scrutiny. This, in addition, is the challenge we are faced with, and it is a part of the dilemma. And, as we fight to shake off the cobwebs of entrenched anarchy, corruption, abuse of incumbency and waste in the national system, the eerie eccentricities of our leaders, which continually project a demonic aura, again, adds to the overall national challenge and complicates our dilemma.
True, our challenges are not few. With a too-embarrassing economic ill-performance in the hands of the much appraised skills of Mrs. “Harvard-trained Economist” so-called, the current composition of our ‘repackaged government’ unveils long-harbored suspicions about the subtle agenda of a power bloc that strives to revive the carcass of the century-old oligarchs. To add to the suspicion, familiar names associated with the recruit and training of Charles Taylor and his mercenaries, are not hard to find occupying influential positions in this government where they are a power unto themselves. LPRC’s Harry Greaves, Dr. Amos Sawyer, Hon. Dew Mason, Dr. H. Boima Fahnbulleh, and many others, are key actors dominating (in shameless pretense) our political platform just as they did during the modification of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia. Far more badly, forasmuch as our state’s policy crafters continue to walk in the fetor shoes of their predecessors, the same shoes which offending odors gave rise to the insurgencies of the past, they bid our destiny to inevitable whirlwinds.
Moreover, natural and divine laws forbid the success and stability of the echelons of a regime that bears the Teflon of toppling its predecessors for the last 28 years; to stretch it further, if it is true that our foundation was erected upon the principles of Christianity--in fact, our declaration of independence was signed in the providence Baptist Church—then, we can concur that Liberia bears a certain mark of divinity and cannot be separated from the move and semblances of God.
Undoubtedly so, as David’s fingers were too stained to build Jerusalem, yea the Lord’s Temple, so is the current Liberian leadership; without prejudice, a country which foundation is firmly rooted on Christian principles cannot be redeemed by blood-stained democratic mafias. And worse of all, the unrestraint denials and blatant practice of falsehood after the demise of a republic by the current power sharks, puts the matter beyond salvation by given divine requirements. And yet, nothing gets better except the flowery speeches and more contradictions, and more sufferings, and more hunger, and some more corruption, and then the end of another failed regime; indeed, signs of the end sprawl on every public wall. Do we pray for failure? God forbid! We intercede for change, but even unrepentant sinners have their destinies…
Concurrently, Contrasting to her boasted policy of intended departure from the grisly practices of the past, the soles of President Sirleaf’s professed democratic shoes has already scrawled disgusting footprints in our socio-political sands. These disheartening backpedals blur our sight when we attempt to draw a distinction between Sirleaf’s and previous regimes she so successfully dethroned. More troubling to our national political psyche is the dandyism and inane hypocrisy that characterizes the performances of known government officials whose stance for an upright political order in prewar Liberia knew no bound.
Certainly, we are in times when every Liberian must psyche himself to face a new challenge, and that challenge is not to bring about a Bropleh-type ‘Renaissance’ that seeks to evict school kids for the building of a hotel to celebrate Madam’s birthday; ours must be a true renaissance that creates affordable health care for all Liberians, create programs and policies that enable the ordinary person to provide for his family, put our roads in better shapes unlike the poorly refurbished Jallah’s Town back road, and upgrade the capacity and efficiency of the public and private sectors to accommodate our unemployed and not to paradoxically downside unwanted folks.
To increase the tempo of the debate, except our socio-political priests of yesteryears intend to add more sins by ignoring vital facts, they will embrace the hard truths that they have made void the declared purposes of their fight for change. That is, if the ongoing Liberian scenario lends any definition to change, as this government would have us believe, then the deaths of Presidents Tolbert, Doe and, the undemocratic regime change of the NPP-led government were unnecessary. Of course, these previous regimes cannot stand up to any conversation of moral political uprightness, knowing that they, as well, were as morally decadent as the power that now propels the state since 2006. And, for these mafia-styled power players to orchestrate the downfall of past governments just to ascend an equally monstrous regime, makes our crisis a jigsaw puzzle waiting to be assembled in darkness.
Notwithstanding, the current power hypocrisy and how the President is rapidly growing new egoistical horns amidst infectious enthusiasm should be expected to enlarge. In fact, the quote is till true that ‘men go far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire.’ This is why ‘Team Ellen’ is ready to do more than the 25 years it took to grasp power in order that the existing generation of aging elites will spend a quiet retirement outside prison confinements.
Severely haunted by a twenty-five year terrible wrongs against the state plus a common knowledge of systematized corruption in the ongoing hierarchy, ‘Regime change’ is the greatest sum of all the Sirleaf’s fears. With the continent swinging its worrisome pendulum of anticorruption judiciary, which often comes into effect at every power switch, key actors must find a way to maintain the status quo so as to avoid the curse now pursuing former regime chiefs. A clue for the yet veiled campaign to reelect President Sirleaf or a choice confidant of the ranks unfolds in the preceding lines. This hatching strategy is a deck of cards being played close to the chest whilst brilliance political dribbling disorganizes the frontlines of unsuspecting oppositions.
Those with the sophistication to understand the strategy of the tuft hunters will appreciate why the anticorruption barometer has turned out to be the proverbial lion pacing up and down a cage, roaring toothlessly. This explains why the President’s office has gone out of the way to provide shield for LPRC’s Greaves who, by the most minimal standards, is corrupt beyond allegation. Who would have thought that the anticorruption heavyweight would tolerate the creative diplomacies (briberies) of many of her administrators, like Greaves who had to employ the tactics to divert attention from an ill-acquired oil contract?
But the infectious tolerance of the President in these instances is designed to strengthen the financial munificence of her campaign as we drag nearer to the neo-predictable presidential elections in a few years. Since time is of the essence, the financial contributions of well-placed cronies in power have become an unquestionable requirement. This consensus demand justifies the capital flight from certain high-profile revenue generating agencies and ministries, which must do so to service the interests of the elite collectivity.
Is this not why the evidence of corruption at the LPRC, NASSCORP, to name a few, have become exceptions to the anticorruption yardstick, and is about to frustrate a hardworking Auditor General? Howbeit, the corruption Teflon of these conscienceless antidemocrats may roll on for a while as I return with GOD’S MAFIA II, THE REALITY OF ROGUES DEMOCRATS. By then, I hope the moguls will brace up for a muster-call for all Liberians to mobilize against the oppressions of the people; for change, which comes not by passiveness, but by the unrelenting decisiveness of a mobilized, informed, and guided society, must come; even now.
Activist Mulbah K. Morlu, Jr., can be reached at godsprince2001@yahoo.com. Cell: 002316626209. He resides in Sinkor, Monrovia-Liberia and Teshie Nungua Estates, Accra-Ghana
GOD'S MAFIA
