‘For a long time there was a big refugee camp just outside Gbamou,’ he said. ‘I am from the Kpelle tribe and there were many other Kpelle in the camp, as well as other Liberians from other tribes. But I liked it here in Guinea because the hunting is good and I took my second and third wife here. I can go back whenever I want as the border is easy to cross but I can earn money here from the animals I hunt so this is now my home and I know all the forest trails around here.’
There was a sparkle in his eye, one that Johnson took against immediately when he came to the chief ’s hut in the twilight to discuss leading us through the forest to Diecke the following morning. We were all seated on bamboo chairs outside the hut in earnest discussion as a rat walked into view, raised its nose to sniff and then disappeared nonchalantly round the corner.
‘I don’t think he can be trusted,’ Johnson whispered after Musa had agreed to collect us for a 6 a.m. start.
Mr Omaru rarely passed judgement on people but out of the darkness came his verdict: ‘That man speaks too much.’
Musa was an hour late the following morning. I had been packed and ready to go at 6 a.m., keen to start the third day of trekking through Guinea, and was growing increasingly angry. But not knowing where his hut was there was nothing we could do other than wait. When he finally showed up he did not register our irritation as he clapped his hands and led David and me away from the road and into the forest, leaving Mr Omaru and Johnson to head to Diecke by bike.
There then began a frustrating five hours as Musa charged in circles down forest trails, got lost, cut back on himself and generally wasted a lot of our time and effort. I was not scared, as I had been back in Liberia when Johnson had been forced to leave us, I was plain annoyed. Mouthing silent prayers against guinea worm, we were forced to wade rivers and cut through areas of undergrowth where there was clearly no trail. It became apparent Musa was a rogue and not a very likeable one.
At one village he stopped to find some friends. ‘Five minutes,’ he said, returning after half an hour with two other men. It took just a moment to work out what their role was. They were Musa’s old drinking pals and they had agreed to lead him to a palm wine tree known to be ready for tapping.
Hidden in the undergrowth near the tree was a ‘ladder’, a length of stout bamboo with footholds cut every twenty inches or so along its length. One of the men leaned it against the tree and then climbed up to where the palm fronds spread from its top. He tied a length of vine between two fronds and braced his back against it for support as he wheedled his machete blade into the soft heart of the tree to reach the white sap. Filling a large plastic bottle he stuffed a leaf in its top, lowered it to the ground on a string and then repeated the process. I remembered how our taxi driver back in Sierra Leone had said a good tree could produce a gallon of palm wine in one go.
Down at ground level Musa sat on the trunk of a fallen tree and drank deep. He offered David and me a mouthful but I had tasted enough palm wine and was feeling too annoyed with our slow progress to want to humour Musa any further. Eventually we left the two men filling more bottles and followed a clearly giddy Musa for the last pull into Diecke.
Of course, the walk took longer than expected and meant we were still walking when the midday heat reached a critical level. By the time we reached Diecke and parted company with Musa, David and I were desperate for shade. The town was bigger than any we had seen in Guinea and after finding a large roadside stall we both stretched out on wooden benches and fell asleep. I woke to find Johnson leaning over me, mumbling something about cow meat and the police. I sat up and came round surrounded by posters of American rappers and softporn stars decorating the stall, while customers drank from oversized bottles of beer and shouted into mobile phones struggling on a weak local network.
‘Here is some cow meat for you to eat,’ said Johnson. ‘Be quick because the local police chief wants to speak to you.’
Unlike in Liberia, keeping cows is relatively common in Guinea and outside the bar a girl cooked skewers of beef over charcoal in an upturned oil drum. The smell alone revived me and I was soon wolfing them down by the handful. The cubes of meat were gristly and hot enough to burn the roof of my mouth, but after so many bland meals they tasted great. Feeling stronger, we walked through town to the gendarmerie where we had our first encounter with Guinean officialdom. Diecke is a sufficiently large town to warrant a police and security headquarters, and it was there that our passports were checked and found to be in order. The officials were polite and formal, although the police chief, Inspector Moussa Suma, guffawed loudly when he heard we were on foot.
‘But we have good roads in Guinea. Why do you not use a car?’ he asked, smiling.
David started to proffer the map from Graham Greene’s book but the inspector was not interested, simply waving his hand dismissively. Between sniggers I am pretty sure he said bon voyage.
The Guinean police on the border were not quite as friendly when we got there around sunset after four hours of tramping south along another road, this time through stifling rubber plantations. In the tumbled muddle of the West African forest these areas stood out with their symmetry and straight lines. The rubber trees were evenly separated in long rows and, planted at the same time, they had all reached roughly the same size, with trunks about the thickness of my thigh. A few feet off the ground the mottled bark of each tree had been scoured in upward swirls by tappers to release the valuable latex, a white milky secretion that can be collected each day. I had read about the rubber industry and knew that the earlier the tappers came each morning the better their harvest, as latex flows fastest when cool and coagulates in the heat. A bit like our walking, I thought to myself, as I explored a particularly sweltering stand of trees.
In spite of developments in the production of manmade rubber, the natural form still commands higher prices on international markets. The world’s best surgeons still prefer using latex gloves for their most delicate work and the world’s buyers of condoms choose latex versions over synthetic alternatives. It means natural rubber remains so valuable that when tappers leave the plantations each day they tie beakers to the tree-trunks to catch any last drops that might ooze out later.
I bent down to look at where a tree-trunk had been delicately cut. It takes skill and months of training to be able to remove just enough bark to release the latex but not so much that the tree dies. The margin for error is tiny. At the bottom of the swirl was a small, yellowing gobbet. It came off the tree easily enough and I rolled it between my fingers, feeling the spring in its texture, and I then stretched it as far as it would go. It was like a Dennis the Menace bogey, reaching as far as my arm could stretch before snapping back sharply to its original shape.
Guinean border formalities were spread out over a mile or so of track approaching the border and it soon became apparent why. Four separate agencies – police, immigration, customs and army – all ran their own checkpoints, which they deliberately wanted to be out of sight from each other. This allowed all four to demand ‘fees’ for crossing. The bribes were not expensive for foreigners like us but they would have eaten into the pockets of Johnson and Mr Omaru had I not been covering their costs. I was struck by the lack of shame in the faces of officials fleecing everyone entering or leaving the country. It is such a fact of life in Africa, both for the bribers and the bribed, that nobody bothers to react. Just as before in Sierra Leone, I had the feeling that a corrupt individual or checkpoint would not do too much harm in Guinea but, taken collectively and over time, these seemingly insignificant instances ground to a halt the workings of the state.
The Guinean border south of Diecke is formed by the St John River but, instead of crossing by canoe, an elderly box-girder bridge led us out of Francophone Africa and back into Liberia. After walking 65 miles through Guinea in three days, I felt a sense of recognition, homecoming even, as we crossed the bridge and entered Nimba County. As we trudged the mile or so into the town of Ganta, the post-apocalyptic array
of war-damaged buildings looked reassuringly familiar, as did the potholed roads, hawkers selling sachets of alcohol and the roadside health notice in English urging people to ‘bury all poopoo’.
Graham Greene in Liberia – ‘rather thin and anemic but “game”’
CHAPTER 10
The Cry of the Bull-Roarer
Johnson Boie
What I remember most clearly about Emma Konnah is that her feet were widely splayed and calloused. I had the opportunity to study them closely because when we arrived for an evening appointment at her house in Ganta, she did not stir from her position lounging in an armchair, legs stretched in front of her on a stool, bare soles outwards. From this angle, her feet were ugly but her manner was uglier still.
‘Who are you to come to my house without any notice?’ she said sharply, without looking up.
Her sitting-room, already hot, suddenly felt a lot more sticky and uncomfortable. A transistor radio blared, its weak signal hissing, but she did not care to turn it down. Above the din I tried to say something about telephoning in advance but she ignored me.
‘Why should I not be suspicious of you coming here to Liberia without telling the authorities? Where are your documents authorised by my government? Who are you working for? What are you up to?’
Again I tried to interrupt politely, saying something about my visa and proffering a letter of introduction I had had signed that day at the office of the superintendent of Nimba County. Mrs Konnah was a district commissioner, outranked several times by the superintendent, and the letter surely must persuade her, I thought. Still not looking towards me she glanced at a lackey who had appeared out of nowhere behind me and flicked her head in my direction. He immediately snatched from my hand the piece of paper bearing the letterhead of ‘Ministry of Internal Affairs, Republic of Liberia’ and read it out above the blaring radio that was now really beginning to irritate me.
When he got to the paragraph urging all government representatives to give us ‘official courtesy, maximum protection and assistance’ I felt certain Mrs Konnah would fold. Not a bit of it. A big woman, she lumbered to her feet and grabbed the letter, read it for herself and then snorted in derision.
‘This is nothing. If a foreigner comes to my area they must write to me in advance and only with my agreement can they enter. You must go now and I will investigate why you are really here.’
Mumbling more threats, she sank back into the armchair with a sneer that indicated our meeting had reached its end. On the wall I saw a picture of a dancing devil, masked, in costume and standing on stilts. It could have been mocking me as I stepped back into the pitch black of Ganta, an annoying end to a day that had begun with much hope and excitement.
Ganta is the second largest city in Liberia but one that still has no power or mains water, and where meaningful post-war reconstruction remains largely an illusion. Mr Omaru, Johnson, David and I had been given lodging at the headquarters of Equip Liberia, a small but active aid group that does a lot of work in Nimba County, providing support to schools and public health clinics, and after a day’s rest we had returned to the Greenes’ trail, leaving at dawn to walk 8 miles east to the small village of Zuluyi.
It was meant to be one of the most picturesque days of the journey as it was near Zuluyi that the Greenes discovered a memorably beautiful waterfall. Over the days of trekking in Guinea I had begun to share with the Greenes a certain frustration with the jungle, in part because it felt so restrictive, so lifeless. The breeze barely penetrated the cover of the tree canopy so the undergrowth below rarely stirred and one’s outlook was forever dominated by an uninspiring colour of green, washed pale by the dry-season heat. The rain we had encountered as we entered Guinea had lasted only a few hours, replaced by temperatures so formidable they crushed the life out of the forest. Graham Greene would reminisce warmly about his trek as the occasion when he lost his heart to West Africa, but the one thing he did complain about was the jungle’s lack of contrast.
By the time they left Ganta the Greenes were both feeling bored. They had been told of a waterfall near Zuluyi but neither of them expected it to be anything but a disappointment, a rather dismal attitude expressed forcefully by Barbara Greene:
… as we climbed I was preparing myself for another anticlimax … what would it lead to? Probably some little pool and a small splash of water that only the most romantically minded traveller could get really thrilled with.
They were both astounded by what they found, a roaring 60-foot cascade of water that crashed into a rocky dell, whipping up a permanent presence of cooling spray. It was a scene of movement, noise and, finally, contrast, utterly different to anything they had seen on their trek so far. Even the colour had come alive, with the moisture in the air creating a glade of luxuriant green. Their enthusiasm was infectious and I was excited about seeing the waterfall for myself. We made good time on the trail to Zuluyi, first passing an old leper colony on the edge of Ganta and then enjoying the protection of the morning mist. We were walking towards the rising sun and the first we saw of it that day was as a watery disc decorating the leafless limbs of a cotton tree on the horizon. But when we got to the village our journey began to stall. By this stage we had been walking for two weeks but for the first time we were in real danger of losing the trail of the Greenes.
To begin with there seemed nothing untoward about our arrival in Zuluyi. The sun was now high so David, Johnson and I looked for some shade to sit under while we asked for local advice on how to get to the waterfall. Graham Greene noted it was located near a village called Zugbei and when we mentioned the name there was, as ever, much scratching of heads and discussion among the locals. Then an elderly hunter stepped forward saying he knew the waterfall well and could lead us there. His name was Wesley Wuo and, at seventy years of age, he had an admirable gravitas about him.
‘It is a place where fish cannot go down and fish cannot go up,’ he declaimed formally. ‘And it is a place that is cold, colder than anywhere I know in the jungle.’
His description chimed perfectly with that of the Greenes, adding to my sense of anticipation, as Johnson led him to one side to negotiate a price for his guiding services. After a few minutes all arrangements seemed to have been made but as I stood up to get going, a young man hurried over to us and said the local chief wanted to know what we were up to. This all felt perfectly natural and in keeping with our experience of Liberia so far, so Johnson set off to talk to the local chief while David got out the book to show Mr Wuo and a small group of villagers the map of the Greenes’ trip and their reference to the waterfall.
Johnson was gone a suspiciously long time, and when he returned I could tell from his downbeat expression we had problems.
‘The chief said he does not have the authority to let us go to the waterfall without the permission of the paramount chief,’ he said. ‘And the paramount chief is not here at the moment.’
I took Johnson to one side.
‘Is it a matter of money? Should we offer to pay the chief something to let us go?’
‘I don’t think so. There is something strange about the way they are talking. I will go back and ask once more,’ he replied.
This time Johnson was gone for an hour, enough time for Mr Wuo to tell me a little about his life. He said he was one of ninety-seven children sired by the same father and he explained how he had learned to hunt after spending a full year out in the bush being initiated into the Poro society. He remembered meeting Dr George Harley, an American medic turned anthropologist who arrived in Ganta in 1926 as a Methodist missionary and lived there for thirty-four years, studying as closely as any outsider the workings of the bush societies. These secret groups function across much of central and northern Liberia and nowhere are they more powerful than among the Mano tribe living around Ganta. Dr Harley had put the Greenes up for three nights and when he heard about the waterfall he accompanied them on their walk, curious about its possible role as a ceremonial site used by the bush soci
eties.
Mr Wuo talked on but there was still no sign of Johnson. A young man offered me a pineapple so, after whittling away at its husk with my penknife, I devoured the gorgeous syrupy chunks, my fingers running with juice. Still no sign of Johnson. I walked around the village, a typical collection of huts, bamboo benches and rice stores, although it had a proper road running through it which brought the occasional truck roaring past. Still no sign of Johnson. A rather unpleasant smell caught my attention and I went to investigate. A woman was preparing a meal of fermenting cassava, a foodstuff that smelled to me like rotting fish but is eaten in Liberia enthusiastically as a ‘soup’ – a term that covers any sauce, often containing chicken, fish or bushmeat, that is served as a garnish to rice. In the absence of refrigeration it made good sense to come up with a way of eating cassava that had been allowed basically to rot, but I was never able to quite get over my squeamishness at its aroma. Nearby, another woman was involved in an early stage of cassava preparation, squeezing water from the pulp of freshly soaked roots. She was using a hinged press made from branches of wood lashed together with plant fibre, a design which made me think of the mangle used by my grandmother to wring out laundry. Still no sign of Johnson.
Finally, he came back and I could tell by his expression that we had made no progress.
‘We eventually got in contact by phone with the paramount chief but he would not give us permission without the agreement of the district commissioner, a woman called Emma Konnah, but she will not be available until this evening,’ he said. Irritatingly, Mrs Konnah lived in Ganta so we would have to backtrack and return to where we started the day.