A Kind of Homecoming

  The sweep of the needle across the dial told him whether his speed was fast or slow; the numbers were meaningless.

  The wheels sang their special song of hurried flirtation with the wide, smooth road as we raced through Monrovia and out along the highway to points east, north and south. As we approached the Capitol Building someone stood in the roadway and waved us to a stop. It was a policeman requiring a lift to the new Police Academy, seven or eight miles along the route, and I agreed that he should ride with us.

  As we drove along he told me about the Academy and its aims to develop a cadre of efficient police officers as part of the Government’s new plan for improvement of its law-enforcement departments. He said that one of the greatest problems besetting the Academy was the low standard of education among those recruited for officer training.

  “It is not that they are illiterate,” he said. “They can read and write quite well, most of them, but they find it difficult to comprehend things, to readily assess any given situation, to use any initiative or imagination. Perhaps this is in itself a reflection of our general educational system, which does everything except teach the young people to think. Our big problem is that we cannot yet afford to be merely an educational institution—we have to produce police officers.”

  “Whom do you mean by ‘we’? The Government or the Academy faculty?” I asked.

  “Both. The Government pays the bills and makes facilities available to us. At the Academy we have a training and administration staff of American officers and instructors, pretty much the same as with the Army, together with a handful of Liberian old-timers like myself who assist with basic training. The place is directly on your route, so if you’d like to drop in for a moment, it would be my pleasure to show you around.”

  The Academy was a collection of single- and two-storied buildings widely dispersed over a stretch of land which had been cleared and levelled to a pleasing conformity; the installations were all brand new and painted in attractive pastel shades of grey, yellow, red and white; there were residential quarters, administration buildings, stores, etc., and plenty of room for drilling and other outdoor activities. He took me into the Main Administration Building, and, walking down a corridor, we passed an open door to a room, in which I glimpsed a young police cadet standing stiffly to attention before a desk, behind which sat two officers. The odd thing about this tableau was that both officers were leaning backward in their chairs, with their feet on the table before them.

  My friend escorted me through the building, which was furnished and equipped with as much concern for taste as for efficiency. Evidently a great deal of careful thought and practical planning had gone into producing this establishment. It was not long before, as I expected, my friend gave the President full credit for the idea and its execution.

  Because my time was limited, I could see only a little of the whole, but it was enough for me to realize that part of the challenge which these Africans had to face was the need to hurdle decades in their rush to catch up with the times. Much of what I saw bore the unmistakable stamp of the present, but the young men with whom I spoke, though evidently of no high educational attainment, were putting their best feet forward and doing quite well at it, I was told.

  My driver proved to be a very entertaining fellow and an excellent chauffeur. His small hands rested lightly on the wheel, seeming to caress it into the curves in perfect harmony with the action of feet on clutch and brake. He wore dark glasses against the glare of the bright sun, but his mobile features were accustomed to laughter and generally remained relaxed in a kind of half-smile, the sort of thing one sees on the face of sleeping infants. He maintained a lively chatter as we drove along which at first I found very difficult to understand; there seemed to be no end to his words—or so it sounded to me. “Friend” was “fren”, “man” was “ma”, “time” was “ti”, and so on, but by listening attentively to him, I soon got the hang of it and from then on I realized how very knowledgeable he was about all sorts of things.

  We rushed through roadside villages of snug little bungalows of wood or cement blocks, with here and there a tiny hut of primitive thatchwork, the old and the new tightly sandwiched together beside the wide modern highway. We were driving through open country, green and rich-looking, rolling softly in a way reminiscent of the Seine valley around Normandy. At Kakata we suddenly encountered the strange sight of two ultra-modern buildings, one on each side of the roadway. The larger one, The Cuckoo’s Nest, was a gaily painted two-storied week-end rendezvous, with bar and restaurant on the ground floor and facilities for week-end accommodations and dancing on the upper floor. Kenneth, my driver, told me that only the “Big Shots” used the place; they alone could afford it. The other building, equally ultra-modern in design and colour, was tucked neatly under some large trees; it was the home of the resident manager of The Cuckoo’s Nest.

  “Who owns this layout?” I asked Kenneth.

  “I think it belongs to the Old Man’s daughter,” he replied. “Perhaps it belongs to the Old Man and his daughter runs it, something like that. I’m not sure.”

  About a hundred yards beyond The Nest was the wide, imposing gateway leading to the President’s Montserrado country residence and farm. Immediately inside the gateway was a gatehouse, a large bungalow-type structure with a wide patio, on which lounged several men and women, possibly off-duty guards; beside the gate were two guards in dark blue uniforms, pistols on their hips. Ken told me that the uniformed men were part of the President’s personal bodyguard.

  “The Old Man’s farm is really something to see,” Ken said. “I drove one of the Old Man’s guests in there some time ago. Wonderful, you know, smooth macadam roads, everything nice, and his house . . . ” He smacked his lips loudly to express the ultimate in perfection.

  In talking with Ken, as with other Liberians I had met so far, their love for the President was unmistakable. They spoke of his possessions with pride, as if somehow they shared in everything he owned. They also spoke of him with the same deep affection one had for a very familiar relative, who was approachable at all times, helpful at all times. Even the younger men, I realized upon reflection, though critical of governmental policies and the attitude of certain ministers, exhibited the same deep regard for the President.

  At Kakata the macadam-surfaced road ended, and now we trailed a thick cloud of red dust behind us from the laterite road, which, however, led wide and smooth ahead of us. Here and there we passed powerful grading machines at work to keep the roads a level, all-weather network throughout the country. At one place Italian engineers were building a wide by-pass through a low hillside, using an interesting collection of heaving tractors, graders, rollers and other equipment. The engineers in charge were European, but the hands operating all this equipment were African. The fairy tale of the seven-league boots had a lot of meaning here, for I felt sure that some of these drivers were handling equipment which was the most up-to-date in the world—in the evenings they would return to their small, unlighted huts to rest.

  Ken kept the speedometer hovering around seventy miles an hour—“Not too fast,” he claimed. Just that much faster than “Not fast”.

  We passed Salala, Repula, rode through the bustling townships of Totota and Gbanka, and on through the thicker forest growth from Kpein to Gahnpa. Here and there we made a short stop along the open country to relieve ourselves, or at a village for water. These villages were the tidiest I had so far encountered in Africa. Whether wooden or thatch huts, the grounds were always neatly swept and free from the ugly collection of garbage which had been a familiar sight in other places.

  Women were for ever sweeping; the children seemed clean and healthy; but I noticed that the water supply, the creeks and river-shallows still supplied the needs for both drinking and washing. However, the general cleanliness was a start in the right direction and must surely have required a tremendous amount of health education to achieve this
degree of popular co-operation.

  At Gahnpa we turned south towards Tapeta. Now the road was somewhat narrower as it cut through thicker forest regions filled with tall trees, some of them already dead and waiting for the high wind which would blow them over to rot among their fellows or to straddle the roadway until removed by the villagers. Our progress was twice halted by these obstructions, which, Ken told me, could be even more frequent during the rainy season.

  Some time in the early afternoon we stopped by a roadside fruit stall, where oranges, bananas, mangoes and papayas were displayed, although no attendant was in sight. Ken sounded his horn, and from a pretty creeper-covered bungalow emerged a smiling, thickset fellow followed by a brood of young children, capering and squealing around him. We bought some fruit and quite naturally fell into conversation. He worked as a customs official on the border between Liberia and Guinea, and told a few interesting stories about his experiences on the job. In his own time he operated a small farm—a few acres of rubber trees—together with land on which he produced all the green vegetables, fruit and chickens he needed, with lots to spare.

  “I live off the land,” he told me, “and it provides more than enough for me and my dependents.” This with a nod towards the children.

  “How many children have you?” I asked him.

  “Eighteen, net,” was his amazing reply.

  He invited me into his bungalow for a drink, and I assumed that the invitation included my driver, but Mr. Dunbar, for that was his name, indicated otherwise, and, indoors, told me that it was “not done” for drivers to sit with officials and their guests. Later he showed me around his “yard”, the tree-crowded area around his house, where oil-palms, mango trees, orange trees and others, wrestled with each other for head-room in the sun. There were two women, both well advanced in pregnancy, working quietly together at some needlework (it seemed to be repairs to the children’s clothes). They shyly extended hands in acknowledgement of the introductions, then half-hid their blushing faces behind their work when he said, “I forgot to mention two more in the oven.”

  He told me that his father, a famous African chief, had had over forty wives and fathered nearly one hundred children; he had no ambitions to equal his father’s record, but he intended to get the most out of life.

  “I’m thinking of getting married around December,” he said.

  Immediately I looked at the two women, and he must have read the unspoken question, for he observed, “Not one of those—a new one.” He explained that there would be no problem of friction between the women; there was plenty of room for all of them and their children, and enough food and clothing to meet their needs. Anyone who wished to leave was free to do so, but so far no one wanted to leave. The children were from various women, who, if they chose, brought the children and left them in his care. He loved all of them, but his special delight was a pert, chubby-cheeked little girl of about four, who seemed to know that she occupied the favourite position in her father’s heart. Some of his older children were away at boarding schools run by missionary organizations. He was a Baptist.

  Again I looked at him and the children, so he explained that he was a Baptist by religious persuasion, but an African and a Dunbar by birth and natural inclination; in his heart there was no conflict between the two. He attended church and fulfilled his obligations, but his private life was his own business, especially as he claimed that none of the women ever complained. It was refreshing being with him; everything about him suggested an intense love of life, yet with a strong sense of responsibility.

  We talked about Monrovia, government, national development, education, other African States, and many other things. I found him quite well informed.

  “Here in this backwater I do not think of those things to any great extent,” he confessed. “I am primarily concerned with providing for my children and these women. I’ve a good job, thanks to the Old Man, and I can live quite well. I try to educate myself by reading anything I can, and listening to the radio, and I’ll see to it that my children get more education than I did—especially the boys. The girls, well, they’ll learn to read and write, I suppose, but fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, perhaps, some young rubber-cutter comes along and the next thing you know they’ve gone to live with him. After all, it’s life.”

  Before I left he showed me a whisky bottle, into which was crammed a weird collection of cuttings from the roots and bark of trees, rendering the alcohol somewhat cloudy in appearance.

  “This is the stuff to keep you young,” he said, wagging his finger suggestively. “With a drink of this each day I’ll still be laying them when I’m a hundred.”

  I tasted the bitter, throat-searing brew, and was prepared to accept that it was capable of all the qualities he enumerated. It also required a cast-iron stomach. I left him after promising to share a meal with him on the way back, as there was no alternative route to the north of the country.

  While I had been chatting with Mr. Dunbar, Ken had had a sound sleep in the car, which he had run under some shady trees, so now he was quite refreshed with sleep and fruit. He did not seem to mind the least bit about being left outside, so I said nothing about it. We were now running into the high forest region, the road a red gully between the thick leafy growth which often met overhead to shut out the sun and close us in a gloomy corridor, pierced occasionally by shafts of bright sunlight. Apart from an occasional magpie and heavy-headed bill bird, there was no sign of wild animal life. No monkeys or squirrels, nothing. I asked Ken about this.

  “We used to have monkeys around here, once upon a time,” he said, “but the people ate so many of them the others disappeared into the bush—gone to the Ivory Coast and Guinea, I suppose. Only things left are snakes.”

  We raced through Tapeta, turning south-east to Tchiehn, the farthest point of the highway. We would spend the night there and retrace our steps next day. The road from Tapeta to Tchiehn widened considerably. At the Cestos River we crossed a new, excellent modern bridge, designed in graceful lines of ferro-concrete and steel. Ken explained that it was one of the unification bridges, part of the President’s scheme to link the people of the coastal regions with those of the hinterland, that there might be easier and more frequent communication between them. He called it the President’s “Unification Policy”.

  I was deeply impressed by the bridge, because it seemed to be built with an idea to future development in vehicular traffic. Here in the hinterland more and more I got the feeling of growth and thrusting movement. The towns through which we passed were bustling with activity, and, oddly enough, there were very few thatch huts to be seen. In what one might call “the bush” I saw villages of neat wooden or concrete cottages, with roofs of unpainted, corrugated, galvanized iron which glittered in the bright sunshine.

  I had letters of introduction from the Minister of the Interior to his resident Commissioners requesting that they give me such assistance as I might require when in their territories; so I sought the District Commissioner at Tchiehn to introduce myself. He was away, but his chief clerk readily made me welcome and arranged accommodation for me. Ken assured me that he had relatives in Tchiehn and would prefer to stay with them.

  In the future I shall be very hesitant about using the term “bush” with reference to the African hinterland, because I so frequently encountered the same kind of modern living conditions one might only expect of cities and major towns. In the Rest House, where a room was placed at my disposal, there were bath, shower and toilet facilities, electric lighting and refrigeration, a very comfortable bed and easy chairs.

  After a meal, the chief clerk showed me something of the D.C.’s compound, the administration building, residential quarters, and the central courtroom, or barrier, where the D.C. held court and dealt summarily with simple cases. As we walked around he told me something of the many and varied problems inherent in the commission.

  “The D.C. has to be fath
er, brother and boss at the same time. He must be sympathetic, approachable, fair and friendly, but when he gives an order there must be no doubt that he intends it to be obeyed. It’s the only way to deal with these people.”

  He made it sound as if both he and the D.C. were somehow different people from those of whom he was speaking. “Is your D.C. a sort of justice of the peace, or has he some special training in dispensing the law?” I asked.

  “Well, I suppose you can say his commission covers all that. In dealing with most cases it is usually a simple and straightforward matter of deciding who’s right or wrong, who’s guilty or innocent, or what piece of property belongs to whom. Sometimes it’s not so simple as that, and then it might be necessary to use what you might call ‘trial by ordeal’.”

  Into my mind flashed visions of the frightening ordeals I had read about in histories dealing with the Middle Ages of European development. Somehow that sort of thing seemed very remote from this quiet compound, with its modern bungalows and the regular whirr of the electric power generator.

  “What kind of ordeal?” I asked.

  “The usual kind,” he replied. “Hot coals, broken glass, sharp knives, things like that. Doesn’t take long to sort out the guilty party.”

  He made it sound supremely matter-of-fact, as if I ought to know and understand. I should have let the matter lie there, but my amazement forced me into indiscretion.

  “But can you really accept that sort of thing as decisive?” I asked. “Surely the very thought of stepping on hot coals would be enough to frighten anyone into confessing to an act of which he might well be innocent. . . . ”

  He looked at me with what seemed to be a mixture of doubt and pity, as if he was not quite sure whether I was merely putting on an act. Then he said, “No innocent person ever needs to confess. If he’s innocent, he’s safe.”