Peace Corps Volunteer

Chapter 26: The Lightning Man

/ Curt Mekemson / 6 Comments

Happy New Year!

Welcome to “The Dead Chicken Dance and Other Peace Corps Tales.” I am presently on a two month tour of the Mediterranean and other areas so I thought I would fill my blog space with one of the greatest adventures I have ever undertaken: a two-year tour as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Liberia, West Africa. Every two days I will post a new story.

When I have finished, I will publish the stories in digital and print book formats.

 

Mamadee Wattee stands in front of his home in Gbarnga Liberia in 1967. Later Mamadee would become an elementary school principal in New Jersey.

Mamadee Wattee stands in front of his home in Gbarnga Liberia in 1967. Later Mamadee would become an elementary school principal in New Jersey.

Late one evening in the middle of a tropical downpour, one of my high school students appeared on our doorstep very wet and very frightened. Mamadee Wattee was running for student body president and his opponent had purchased ‘medicine’ from a Juju man (witch doctor) to make him sick.

It was serious business; people were known to die in similar circumstances. Had the opposition slandered Mamadee or stuffed the ballot box I could have helped, but countering magic potions wasn’t taught at Berkeley. I took the issue to Mr. Bonal and he dealt with it. Mamadee stayed well and won the election.

The use of Juju medicine represents the darker side of tribal culture. Human body parts derived from ritual human sacrifice are reputed to be particularly effective in creating potions. On the lighter side, my students once obtained a less potent “medicine” and buried it under the goal post on the football (soccer) field with the belief that it would cause the other team to miss goals. Apparently it lacked power; the other team won.

Mamadee was also the reason behind our introduction to the Lightning Man. When Jo and I went on vacation to East Africa, we left Mamadee with $50 to buy us a drum of kerosene. When we returned there was neither kerosene nor $50 but Mamadee was waiting.

Someone had stolen the money and Mamadee was extremely upset. Fifty dollars represented several months’ income for a Kpelle farmer. Mamadee’s father, a chief of the tribe, was even more upset and wanted to assure us that his son had nothing to do with the missing fortune. It was a matter of honor. He offered to have Mamadee submit to the Lightning Man to prove his innocence.

The Lightning Man had a unique power; he could make lighting strike whoever was guilty of a crime. If someone stole your cow or your spouse, zap! Since we were in the tropics, there was lots of lightning. Whenever anyone was struck, people would shake their heads knowingly. Another bad guy had been cooked; justice had been served.

We didn’t believe Mamadee had taken the money and even if he had we certainly didn’t want him fried, or even singed. We passed on the offer. The Chief insisted on giving us $50 to replace the stolen money.

Another Liberian Peace Corps Volunteer in a similar situation chose a different path. Here’s how the story was told to us. The Volunteer had just purchased a brand new $70 radio so he could listen to the BBC and keep track of what was happening in the world. The money represented half of the Volunteer’s monthly income. He had his bright, shiny, new toy for two days when it disappeared.

“I am going to get my radio back,” he announced to anyone who would listen and walked into the village where he quickly gathered some of his students to take him to the Lightning Man. Off he and half the town went, winding through the rainforest to the Lighting Man’s hut. The Volunteer took out five dollars and gave it to the Lighting Man. (Lighting Men have to eat too.)

“I want you to make lighting strike whoever stole my radio,” he said.

The Volunteer and his substantial entourage then returned home. By this time, everyone in the village knew about the trip, including undoubtedly, the person who had stolen the radio.

That night, there was a tremendous thunder and lightning storm. Ignoring for the moment that it was in the middle of the rainy season and there were always tremendous thunder and lightning storms, place yourself in the shoes of the thief who believed in the Lightning Man’s power. Each clap of thunder would have been shouting his name.

In the morning the Volunteer got up, had breakfast and went out on his porch. There was his radio.

In my next blog I will report on a Sassywood trial of The Woman Who Wore No Underpants where poisonous leaves and a red-hot machete tip the scales of justice.

Chapter 25: The Bush Devil Ate Sam

/ Curt Mekemson / 4 Comments

Welcome to “The Dead Chicken Dance and Other Peace Corps Tales.” I am presently on a two month tour of the Mediterranean and other areas so I thought I would fill my blog space with one of the greatest adventures I have ever undertaken: a two-year tour as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Liberia, West Africa. Every two days I will post a new story.

When I have finished, I will publish the stories in digital and print book formats.

The Bush Devil is a powerful figure within traditional Liberian Culture. This is a Bush Devil of the Grebo Tribe that visited a Peace Corps Haight-Ashbury Party Liberia circa 1967.

The Bush Devil is a powerful figure within traditional Liberian Culture. This is a Bush Devil of the Grebo Tribe that visited a Peace Corps Haight-Ashbury Party Liberia circa 1967.

Sam spent hours listening to our record player getting Charlie off the MTA and Tom Dooley hung. He lived between two cultures. Scars marched down his chest in two neat rows.

“How did you get those,” Jo asked with 10 percent concern and 90 percent curiosity.

“I can’t tell you,” Sam replied with obvious nervousness as Jo’s eyebrows rose. “But I can tell Mr. Mekemson.”

“Aha,” I thought, “Sam and I belong to the same organization, the Men’s Club!” Actually Sam belonged to a very exclusive men’s organization, the Poro Society, which I wasn’t allowed to belong to either. Its functions were to pass on tribal traditions, teach useful skills, and keep errant tribe members in line. Everything about the organization was hush-hush. Tribal members who revealed secrets could be banned and even executed.

Political power on the local level was closely tied to membership in the Poro Society. On the national level, President Tubman assumed leadership of all Poro Societies in Liberia.

Tribal women had a similar secret organization to the Poro Society called the Sande Society, which prepared young women for adulthood and marriage. A rather controversial aspect of the Sande initiation ceremony was female genital mutilation, i.e. cutting off the clitoris.

Sam got off easy.

He had been to Bush School the previous summer and learned how to be a good Kpelle man. Graduation to adulthood consisted of an all-consuming encounter with the Poro Society’s Bush Devil.  It ate him. Sam went in as a child and was spit out as a man. The scarification marks had been left by the devil’s ‘teeth.’

It seemed like a tough way to achieve adulthood but at least it was fast and definitive. Maybe we should introduce the process to our kids and skip the teenage years. Think of all of the angst it would avoid.

Bush Devil was the missionary’s designation for a very important tribal figure who was part religious leader, part cultural cop and part political hack. Non-Kpelle types weren’t allowed to see him. When the Devil came to visit outlying villages he was preceded by a front man who ran circles around the local PCV’s house while blowing a whistle. The Volunteer was expected to go inside, shut the door, close the shutters and stay there. No peeking.

We did get to see a Grebo Devil once. The Grebo Tribe was a little less secretive or at least more mercenary. Some Volunteers had hired the local Devil for an African style Haight-Ashbury Party. It was, after all, 1967, the “summer of love” in San Francisco and the “Dawning of the Age of Aquarius.”

Local Peace Corps Volunteers hired a money-bus to take us to the Haight-Ashbury party. The bus sits in front of our house in this photo.

Local Peace Corps Volunteers used a money-bus to take us to the Liberia Haight-Ashbury party in 1967. Here, the bus picks Jo Ann and I up at our house in Gbarnga. The rain forest lurks in the background.

The Devil was all decked out in his regalia. Description-wise, I would say his persona was somewhere between a Voodoo nightmare and walking haystack. Grebo men scurried in front of him with brooms, clearing his path and grunting a lot.

We stayed out of the way and took pictures.

Another area where Sam showed his tribal side was in his fear of the newly dead. As I mentioned earlier, a person’s spirit was considered particularly powerful and dangerous right after he or she died. Later it would move away into the bush and fade. But first the spirit had to be tamed with appropriate mourning, an all night bash.

One didn’t take chances. When Sam worked late for us after someone had died, he would borrow a knife and a flashlight in case he had to fight off the malevolent ghost on his way home. I grew up next to a graveyard and was sympathetic with his concern.

In my next blog I will introduce the Lightning Man, a figure so powerful he could make lightning strike people.

Chapter 24: Eat More Bugs… Cultural Challenges

/ Curt Mekemson / 6 Comments

Welcome to “The Dead Chicken Dance and Other Peace Corps Tales.” I am presently on a two month tour of the Mediterranean and other areas so I thought I would fill my blog space with one of the greatest adventures I have ever undertaken: a two-year tour as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Liberia, West Africa. Every two days I will post a new story.

When I have finished, I will publish the stories in digital and print book formats.

 

Local tribal people believed this tree hosted a spirit. Often I would find offerings left at its base.

Local tribal people believed this tree outside Gbarnga, Liberia hosted a spirit. Often I would find offerings left at its base.

Joining the Peace Corps should come with a label like they put on cigarette packs. It would read “Warning: This experience may change your concept of reality.”

Our vision of the world is perceived through culturally tinted glasses. Not surprisingly, the reality of our parents and our society becomes our reality. It’s very hard to imagine life from any other perspective. Close encounters with other cultures can shake this vision but not easily. We wear our culture like bulletproof vests, rarely allowing a stray thought to penetrate. Or we focus so hard on extolling our own culture that we fail to learn valuable lessons another culture may teach us.

A key element of our Peace Corps training had been to instill cultural sensitivity. Eugene Burdick and William Lederer’s book, “The Ugly American,” came out in 1958 and was turned into a movie starring Marlon Brando in 1963. Both made a significant impression on me. US citizens were known for being pushy and acting superior in dealing with foreign cultures. It created enemies. Peace Corps’ job was to make friends and provide aid, not alienate people.

There was another important reason for the training. Risks are involved when you run headlong into another culture. Depression is one. The environment may be so totally different that it becomes disorienting. The common name for this is culture shock. Learning about Liberia and its tribes was a form of inoculation.

My transition from California to Liberia was relatively smooth. At first, Gbarnga didn’t seem all that different from my old hometown of Diamond Springs. A small rural town is a small rural town. I suffered more shock going from Sierra College to UC Berkeley than I did going from Berkeley to Liberia. My disorientation (and depression) would wait until I returned to the US.

A less common phenomenon is going native or bush as it was called in Liberia. In this instance, you become so enthralled with the new culture that you adopt it as your own. There was a joke that circulated among Peace Corps Volunteers on how to determine when you were teetering on the edge.

Phase One: You arrive in country and a fly lands in your coffee. You throw the coffee away, wash your cup and pour yourself a new cup.

Phase Two: You’ve been there a few months and a fly lands in your coffee. You carefully pick the fly out with your spoon and then drink the coffee.

Phase Three: It’s been over a year and you have become a grizzled veteran. A fly lands in your coffee. You yank it out with your fingers, squeeze any coffee it may have consumed back into the cup, add the fly to your fly collection, and then drink the coffee.

Phase Four: You’ve been there too long. A fly lands in your coffee cup. You yank the fly out of the cup, pop it into your mouth and throw the coffee away. It’s time to go home.

I never met a Liberian who ate flies but bug-a-bugs, aka termites, were considered a real delicacy.

If Peace Corps Volunteers had a tough time with culture shock and going bush, the tribal Liberians had a tougher one. Traditional cultures have normally found their confrontations with the western world a losing proposition. It isn’t that our culture is so great; it’s just that our technology is so glitzy. How do you keep Flumo down on the farm when he hears the taxi horn blowing? And there were lots of taxis and money busses in Gbarnga offering one-way trips to Monrovia.

Gbarnga was on the frontier of cultural change. On the surface, life could appear quite westernized. An occasional John Wayne movie even made it to town. My students would walk stiff-legged down Gbarnga’s main street and do a great imitation of the Duke. They dreamed some day of traveling to America where they would swagger down dusty streets and knock off bad guys with their trusty six shooters.

In town, loud speakers blared out music at decibel levels the Grateful Dead would have killed for while Lebanese shops pushed everything from Argentinean canned beef to London Dry Gin. The epitome of Americana, a Coca Cola sign, dominated the road as you left town on your way to Ganta.

William Tubman had been the first Americo-Liberian President to actively encourage tribal Liberians to shed their traditional cultures and become more Westernized, or at least more Liberian. His first push had been to encourage an increase in the number of missionaries working upcountry. They were welcome to proselytize whatever brand of Christianity they wished as long as they remembered, “to render unto Caesar that which was Caesar’s.”

We had enough US-based churches in Gbarnga to satisfy Pat Robertson. Missionaries were everywhere. Baptists and Catholics and Episcopalians and Presbyterians and God only knew how many other Christian groups worked the streets in unending competition to recruit African souls.

I was out on a bush walk several miles from town once when I spotted this man coming toward me dressed up in a coat and tie, wearing shiny black shoes, and carrying a brief case. My first reaction was to get off the trail. I was too slow.

“Wait, I have something to give you,” he called.

You can bet that reassured me. But I waited. Standing there in the middle of a muddy trail in the middle of the African jungle, the man very carefully opened his brief case and pulled out a magazine. The headline screamed, ‘The World Is Coming to an End’ and apparently I was too. The magazine was “Awake” and a Jehovah Witness had me in his clutches.

Sometimes, if I closed my eyes and pretended, I could almost believe I was home. Almost. Then Africa would whip around and bite me. Sure, the local villagers would dutifully file in to church on Sunday morning and pray for blessings like their western counterparts did. But Sunday afternoon might find them out sacrificing a chicken to make sure God got the message. And yes, there was a Coca Cola sign on the way to Ganta but next to it was a tall tree where you could usually find offerings to the spirit that lived in the tree.

During my stay in Liberia I was to encounter a number of situations where African reality differed substantially from American reality. In my next blog I will introduce one of the most powerful figures in Liberia’s tribal culture, The Bush Devil.

Chapter 23: Rasputin and the Cockle Doodle Rooster

/ Curt Mekemson / 1 Comment

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

Welcome to “The Dead Chicken Dance and Other Peace Corps Tales.” I am presently on a two month tour of the Mediterranean and other areas so I thought I would fill my blog space with one of the greatest adventures I have ever undertaken: a two-year tour as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Liberia, West Africa. Every two days I will post a new story.

When I have finished, I will publish the stories in digital and print book formats.

rasputin B&W copy

My only picture of Rasputin has suffered with age but here he is communing with Rhinoceros Beetles. I will discuss the beetles in a later chapter.

Rasputin had grown into one fine tomcat, sweet meat as my kids said. He did not grieve over Boy’s untimely demise, quite the opposite. Now he could resume his rightful role as Dominant Animal.

His primary responsibility under this job title was dog stalker. You knew when he was at work because the neighborhood dogs carefully avoided the tall clumps of grass where he liked to hide. He was particularly obnoxious when it was windy. He could hide down wind and make it more difficult for the dogs to sniff him out. I felt for the poor dog that came too close.

A streak of yellow and a yip of surprise proclaimed his attack. What made his behavior particularly strange was that he came at the dogs on his two hind legs, walking upright. This allowed both front legs to be used as slashing weapons. It was the wise dog that steered clear.

This wasn’t Rasputin’s only trick. He could also do flips. I had taught him how and was quite proud of my accomplishment. Each night Rasputin and I would head for the bedroom where I would flip him several times in a row on the bed. He was usually good for about ten before he would attack me, thus signaling that the game was over.

Jo thought it was cruel but I told her it was quality bonding time. It also turned out to be a valuable skill. One evening when the ricebirds were returning to their nests we saw a yellow flash out the window. Rasputin leapt into the air, did a flip and came down with bird a la carte. After that I figured Rasputin had graduated so we didn’t practice anymore.

Another game we played was leap snake. It was quite similar to leap-frog except the objective was to see how high Rasputin could jump in the air. On a good night he would clear five feet.

The rules of the game were that I would detach the spring from our screen door and roll it across the floor. Rasputin, who had a Liberian’s instincts, assumed that anything long and twisty was a snake and that all snakes were deadly poisonous. His response was to shoot straight into the air and land several feet away. It was one of those situations where you leap first and ask questions afterward. In this case, Rasputin was guilty of jumping to the wrong conclusions.

One way he returned the favor of my hassling him was to wake me up at 5:30 in the morning, demanding to be let in. He did this by practicing his operatic meows under our bedroom window.

Since no amount of suggesting that he should learn from Boy’s experience discouraged him, I jumped out of bed one morning and chased him across the yard. This got Jo Ann excited. Our cat was going to run away and never come back. Jo may have also been concerned about the neighbor’s reaction to me charging out of the house naked. That type of thing bothered her. I promised to repent and assured her that the cat would be back in time for dinner. He was.

I think Rasputin subcontracted with the rooster next door to wake us when he was out tomcatting. I didn’t make this correlation until the rooster crowed directly under our window one morning at 5:30. Even then I thought it was just a coincidence until the rooster repeated himself the next morning.

It wasn’t just the crowing that irritated me; it was the nature of the crow. American and European roosters go cock-a-doodle-do. Even urban children know this because that’s how it is spelled out in books. Liberian roosters go cock-a-doodle… and stop. You are constantly waiting for the other ‘do’ to drop.

“This crowing under our window,” I thought to myself, “has to be nipped in the bud.”

That evening I filled a bucket with water and put it next to my bed. Sure enough at 5:30 the next morning there he was: “COCK-A-DOODLE!”  I jumped up, grabbed my bucket, and threw the water out the window on the unsuspecting fowl. “Squawk!” I heard as one very wet and irritated rooster headed home as fast as his little rooster legs could carry him.

“Chicken,” I yelled out after his departing body. “And that,” I said to Jo Ann, “should be the end of that particular problem.”

I was inspired though. Cats don’t think much of getting wet either. What if I kept a bucket of water next to the bed and dumped it on Rasputin the next time he woke us up. Jo couldn’t even blame me for running outside naked. With warm thoughts of having solved two problems with one bucket, I went to bed that night loaded for cat, so to speak.

“COCK-A-DOODLE” roared the rooster outside our window precisely at 5:30.

“Damn,” I thought, “that boy is one slow learner.”

I fell out of bed, grabbed the bucket and dashed for the window. There was no rooster there. I looked up and spotted him about half the way to Bonal’s house. He was running at full tilt across the yard away from our window. He had slipped up on us, crowed and taken off! My opinion of the rooster took a paradigm leap. Here was one worthy opponent. The question was how to respond.

It took me a couple of days of devious thinking to arrive at a solution. What would happen if I recorded the rooster on a tape recorder and then played it back? I had a small hand tape recorder that I used for exchanging letters with my dad so I set myself the task of capturing the rooster’s fowl language. Since he had an extensive harem he liked to crow about, it wasn’t long before I had a dozen or so cock-a-doodles on tape. I rewound it, cranked up the volume and set the recorder up next to our front screen door.

The results were hilarious. Within seconds the rooster was on our porch, jumping up and down and screaming ‘cock-a-doodle.’ There was a rooster inside of our house that had invaded his territory and he was going to tear him apart, feather-by-feather. Laughing I picked up the recorder, rewound it, carried to the back screen door, and hit the play button.

“Cock-a-doodle, cock-a-doodle, cock-a-doodle,” I could hear the rooster as he roared around to the back of house to get at his implacable foe. Back and forth I went, front to back, back to front. And around and around the house the rooster went, flinging out his challenges.

Finally, having laughed myself to exhaustion, I took pity on my feathered friend and shut the recorder off.  This just about concludes the rooster story, but not quite.

One Friday evening, Jo and I had been celebrating the end of another week with gin and tonics until the wee hours when we decided to see how the rooster would respond to his nemesis at one o’clock in the morning. Considering our 5:30 am wakeup calls, we felt there was a certain amount of justice in the experiment. I set it up the recorder and played a “Cock-a-doodle.”

“COCK-A-DOODLE?!” was the immediate response. No challenge was to go unanswered. “Cock-a-doodle” we heard as roosters from the Superintendent’s compound checked in. “Cock-a-doodle, cock-a-doodle” we heard in the distance as town roosters rose to the challenge. Soon every rooster in Gbarnga was awake, and probably every resident.

Jo and I decided to keep our early morning rooster-arousing episode to ourselves.

Chapter 22: Boy, the Bad Dog

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

Welcome to “The Dead Chicken Dance and Other Peace Corps Tales.” I am presently on a two month tour of the Mediterranean and other areas so I thought I would fill my blog space with one of the greatest adventures I have ever undertaken: a two-year tour as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Liberia, West Africa. Every two days I will post a new story.

When I have finished, I will publish the stories in digital and print book formats.

Boy was a large, brindle dog with questionable parentage and a serious problem. He didn’t like black people. He lived with a Peace Corps Volunteer named Holly, who also had a dog named Lolita. Boy came into our life when Lolita had puppies and drove him off. She believed he would eat her children.

Boy went out looking for other white people to live with and found Jo Ann and me.

Normally, I wouldn’t have cared. One more dog wasn’t going to make much difference given our menagerie of three dogs and Rasputin the Cat. It was Boy’s attitude that bothered me. It wasn’t very Peace Corp-like to have your dog attack Liberians when they came to visit.

Boy also had an issue with Rasputin; he regarded him as prey. I initiated several civil discussions with the dog about his bad habits and suggested he might end up in Liberian soup, but all he did was growl. Once, when he had Rasputin cornered, I slapped him on the butt. He almost took my hand off. Consequently, I wasn’t sympathetic when the soldiers arrived.

They were standing outside our house, waving their guns around, when Jo and I came home from teaching.

“What’s up?” I asked in my most official Peace Corps voice. You learned early on not to mess with Liberian soldiers. Even the government refused to issue them bullets.

“Your dog ate one of the Superintendent’s Guinea Fowl,” their sergeant mumbled ominously. The Superintendent of Bong County was the equivalent to a governor except that he had more power. He lived a quarter-mile away and his Guinea Fowl strutted around freely in the government compound.

“Which one?” I asked innocently.

“What does it matter which Guinea Fowl the dog ate?”  Sarge sneered.

“No, no,” I responded, “I meant which dog.”

He glared at me for a moment and then pointed at Boy. I relaxed. It didn’t seem like Do Your Part, Brownie Girl or Puppy Doodle would have done in the Supe’s Guinea Fowl. They were three of the best-fed dogs in Gbarnga.

“Why don’t you arrest him?” I offered hopefully.

“Not him,” he shouted. “You. You come with us!” Apparently the interview wasn’t going the way the soldier wanted. A Liberian might have been beaten by then. I decided it was time to end the conversation.

“Look,” I said, “that dog does not belong to me. He belongs across town. I am not going anywhere with you.” With that I walked into our house and closed the door. It was risky but not as risky as going off with the soldiers. They grumbled around outside for a while and finally left.

Jo and I relaxed “small,” as the Liberians would say, but really didn’t feel safe until that evening. It was a six-beer night. Finally, around ten, we went to bed believing we had beaten the rap.

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

“What in the hell was that?” I yelled as I jumped out of bed. It was pitch black and four o’clock in the morning.

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

“Someone is pounding on our back door,” Jo Ann whispered, sounding as frightened as I felt.

I grabbed our baseball bat, headed for the door, and yanked it open. Soldiers were everywhere. The same friendly sergeant from the night before was standing there with the butt of his rifle poised to strike our door again.

“Your dog ate another one of the Superintendents guinea fowls,” he proclaimed to the world. I could tell he was ecstatic about the situation. He had probably tossed the bird over the fence to Boy.

“This time you are going with us!” he growled.

In addition to being frightened, I was growing tired of the routine. “I am sorry you are having such a hard time guarding guinea fowls,” I said, trying to sound reasonable, “but I explained to you yesterday that the dog does not belong to me and I am not going anywhere with you. Ask Mr. Bonal and he will tell you the dog is not ours.”

Usually the ballsy approach gets you in more trouble. This time it worked.

I closed the door and held my breath. Sarge was not happy. He and his soldiers buzzed around outside like angry hornets. Still, yanking a Peace Corps Volunteer out of his house and dragging him off in the middle of the night over a guinea fowl could have serious consequences, much more serious than merely reporting back that I was uncooperative. I could see the headlines:

Soldiers Beats Peace Corps Volunteer Because Dog Eats Guinea Fowl                                                                         Liberian Ambassador Called to White House to Explain

That would have been right up there with “Peace Corps Volunteer Beaten because Dog Invades Mosque!” How did I get myself into these things? I hoped the sergeant shared my perspective. At a minimum, I figured he would check with Bonal. John might not appreciate being awakened in the middle of the night but it would serve him right for laughing when I had told him the guinea fowl story the night before. Anyway, I suspected he was up and watching the action.

We had a very nervous thirty minutes before the soldiers finally marched off. In the US, this is the point where you would be calling your attorney, your mother, and the local TV station. Here, my only backups were the Peace Corps Representative and Doctor: one to represent me, the other to patch me back together.

Happily, our part of the ordeal was over. It turned out that Peter, a young Liberian who worked for Holly, actually owned Boy. The soldiers finally had someone they could bully.

Peter was pulled into court and fined for Boy’s heinous crimes. Boy, in turn, was sold to some villagers to cover the cost of the fine. As for Boy’s fate, he was guest of honor at a village feast. Being a Bad Dog in Liberia had rather serious consequences.

Chapter 21: Do Your Part, the Good Dog

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

Welcome to “The Dead Chicken Dance and Other Peace Corps Tales.” I am presently on a two month tour of the Mediterranean and other areas so I thought I would fill my blog space with one of the greatest adventures I have ever undertaken: a two-year tour as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Liberia, West Africa. Every two days I will post a new story.

When I have finished, I will publish the stories in digital and print book formats.

 

The usual assortment of dogs follows me up a jungle trail. Do Your Part, as always, is right on my heals.

The usual assortment of dogs follows me up a jungle trail. Do Your Part, as always, is right on my heals.

The conclusion of our other vacation project, the painting of our green, purple and orange house, was much more satisfying than my second grade reader. I started by buying a case of Club Beer. I didn’t know much about painting but I knew house painters found inspiration in hops.

While I was sipping a brew and pondering what paint best covered purple, Mr. Bonal came over and assured me there wasn’t anything that a bucket of white wash couldn’t cure. Jo and I dutifully trotted down to the Lebanese store and were soon applying white wash with our broom. We were quite pleased with the finished project and ourselves.

As our summer vacation drew to a close, we started preparing for our career as high school teachers where I would continue my efforts to get booted out of the country.

First, however, I am going to share stories about our everyday life in Liberia. I’ll talk about the animals that amused us, look into tribal culture, discuss the creepy, crawly things that exist in a tropical jungle, and escape to East Africa for a safari vacation in a VW Beetle.

As for the animals, you are about to meet Do Your Part the good dog, Boy the bad dog, Rasputin the terrorist cat, and Rooster, the foulest of fowls. Consider this the Alf Wight, aka James Harriot, section of my book.

John Bonal lived in a cement-block house that was the twin of ours. His brother’s family lived behind the house in an attached shed. Being successful in Liberia meant that your relatives came over and lived with you. It was the ultimate share-the-wealth-social-welfare program.

Part of John’s extended family included three dogs creatively named Puppy Doodle, Brownie Girl and Do Your Part. They came over to watch the white washing action and decided to stay. They became our extended family. We fed them. If I have my genealogy correct, Brownie Girl was Do your Part’s mom who in turn was Puppy Doodle’s mother.

This three-generation family dug foxholes around the outside of our house and quickly established that they were our pets. Other dogs need not apply. Mr. Bonal’s brother was more than happy to have us take over feeding responsibilities and Rasputin was pleased to have someone to terrorize. So everyone was happy.

Do Your Part took things a step further and became ‘my’ dog. She was a charming little Basenji with impeccable manners. Everywhere I went, she went, including school.  Normally this amused my students. I would walk into the class with DYP a respectful three feet behind. She would immediately arrange herself under my desk and quietly remain there until I left the classroom.

This worked fine until she had puppies. They started following her as soon as they could walk the 100 yards to the school. Then I would arrive in my class followed by DYP who in turn was followed by four puppies. It was quite the parade. Unfortunately, the puppies lacked Do Your Part’s decorum and considered the classroom a playpen. The students decided it was not an appropriate learning environment and I had to agree.

DYP and company had to go. It was not a happy parting.

“Take your puppies and go,” I ordered firmly. Do Your Part looked at me in disbelief.

“Out!” I said.

Sad eyes stared back accusingly. But I held firm. She didn’t let it get her down, however. As soon as the puppies had departed she was back in class. One time her insistence on following me had more drastic consequences.

Gbarnga had a sizeable population of Mandingoes, most of whom were Muslims. They had been gradually sifting into Liberia from across the Guinea border. Originally the Americo-Liberians had blocked their entrance to the country, fearing they might pose a threat to their power. American Missionary influence may also have played a role.

Tubman’s open door policy changed that and by the time we had arrived their numbers had reached the point where they decided to build a mosque in town. I’d wander over on occasion to check their progress. The mosque was an impressive building by Gbarnga standards, easily five times larger than any other structure on the main road.

The new mosque was much larger than other buildings on Gbarnga's main street. (1966)

The new mosque was much larger than other buildings on Gbarnga’s main street. (1966)

At last the day came for its grand opening. Having watched the mosque being built, I decided it would be interesting to attend the festivities. I put on my tie, grabbed our two cameras and headed out the door. Do Your Part was waiting and ready to go along.

This was not a Do Your Part type of celebration, however. Muslims aren’t particularly fond of dogs and consider them unclean. I figured this meant they didn’t want any dogs, even polite dogs, attending their holy ceremony. I suggested to Do Your Part she stay home. Fat chance. I walked 100 yards and glanced back over my shoulder. There was DYP, slinking along behind. I knew there was no way I would make it to the ceremony without a little brown dog lurking in the background.

Do Your Part would have to be left in our house. The action was drastic; the only time we let her in was to eat dead insects in the evening. She would come in just before we went to bed and wander around crunching down sausage bugs. It eliminated sweeping. She had never been locked inside.

Since Jo was reading to her blind friend and Sam was off for the day, I couldn’t even leave her with company. I reluctantly shoved her inside and marched off to the sounds of doggy protest.

It seemed to work. I reached the mosque just as the outside ceremonies were concluding and people were preparing to move inside. Dignitaries were everywhere. It was my intention to hang out on the periphery and remain inconspicuous. This is hard when you are the only white person in the crowd and you have two cameras hanging around your neck.

It took about thirty seconds for a tall, official looking man in a white robe to approach me and express in broken English how pleased he was that the international press from Monrovia had decided to cover the event. While I struggled to inform him that I was only a local Peace Corps Volunteer, he ushered me into the mosque to a seat of honor. I looked around nervously. The podium was about 10 feet away and I was in the front row.

A hush descended on the crowd as an obviously important dignitary approached the podium. Liberia’s top Muslim Cleric had come to town to officiate at the opening ceremony. He gave me his best media smile and I dutifully took his picture.

Unexpectedly, there was a disturbance at the back of the mosque. Several men were trying to capture a little brown dog that was deftly eluding them and was making a beeline for me. Do Your Part had managed to escape from the house. Now she was escaping from half of Islam. In seconds that seemed like hours she was in front of me, wagging her tail and prancing around like she hadn’t seen me in six months. Hot on her tail were three huge Mandingo men.

“Is this your dog?” their leader managed to stammer out in barely repressed fury as he gave DYP a tentative boot in the butt. Fortunately she figured out that the situation was hazardous and decided there were other parts of town she wanted to see. I was amazed at her ability to avoid lunging people. I dearly wished I could have escaped with her. It wasn’t to be. It was my job to stay behind and be glared at. I was so embarrassed I don’t remember a single part of the ceremony.

Later when I arrived home, Do Your Part was outside the house, all wiggles and waggles, obviously no worse for her adventure. Jo Ann greeted me.

“It was the strangest thing when I got home,” she said. “Do Your Part was inside and frantic to get out. When I let her loose she took off like our house was on fire. I wonder if Sam let her in by mistake.” The best laid plans of mice and men…

Chapter 20: I Do Away with Spot…

/ Curt Mekemson / 4 Comments

Welcome to “The Dead Chicken Dance and Other Peace Corps Tales.” I am presently on a two month tour of the Mediterranean and other areas so I thought I would fill my blog space with one of the greatest adventures I have ever undertaken: a two-year tour as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Liberia, West Africa. Every two days I will post a new story.

When I have finished, I will publish the stories in digital and print book formats.

 Henrietta George

With Rasputin chosen as our cat, it was time to choose our Peace Corps summer projects.

Jo Ann decided to read to a blind student. Henrietta George lived on the Methodist compound.  Reading a variety of books and magazines to her was a simple but worthwhile project that would brighten and broaden the young woman’s world.

My decision was slightly more complicated. I decided to do away with Spot. Why shouldn’t Liberian children have books that reflected their own culture as opposed to books that were based on Dick, Jane and their bouncy, four-legged companion? So I chose to write an elementary school Liberian reader. Peace Corps staff in Monrovia quickly approved the idea.

Immediately afterwards I woke up at 3 AM wondering what the heck I had gotten myself into. My lack of knowledge about Liberian culture was only exceeded by my limited expertise in developmental reading skills. But second thoughts rarely stop me from plunging forward and this time was no exception. There were teaching guides to review, people to interview, folk tales to gather, and stories to write, rewrite and finish in simple English.

It turned into a massive project that occupied my full summer and beyond. Sam gathered several of his friends together to tell me African Folktales they had learned around village cooking fires as young children. Most of the stories involved animals and included lessons on behavior.

Several were about the trickster Spider. Here’s one I included in my reader.

How Spider Got His Small Waist

Spider was very greedy. He didn’t share food and he didn’t share money. He didn’t share anything. He kept it all for himself. One day a group of villagers came to visit Spider.

“We are having a feast. Would you like to come?” they asked.

“Oh yes,” Spider answered with joy as he rubbed his eight legs together. “I will be glad to eat your food.”

Shortly after, people from another village knocked on his door. They, too, were having a feast on the same day and Spider was invited. Of course he would come. He never missed a free meal. But how could he make sure he stuffed himself with food at both feasts? He thought and he thought.

Suddenly he jumped up and did a dance. “I know what I can do!” he sang.

Spider found two very long ropes. He tied one to his door and then walked to the first village and gave the people the other end. “When the feast is ready, tug on the rope,” he told them. Spider then did the same thing with the second village.

When Spider got back to his hut he tied both ropes around his waist. “Now I am ready,” he thought.  “When the first feast starts I will run to the village and eat as much of their food as I can gulp down.” (Spider could gulp very fast.) “When the second village tugs on my rope, I will run there and eat all of their bananas.”

Spider was quite pleased with his plan but all of his work had made him very tired. He fell into his bed and snored loudly. He was dreaming about a large dish of palm butter and rice when a tug on his waist woke him up. “Dinner!” he shouted.

He was just outside of his hut when the second village tugged on its rope. Oh no, both feasts were happening at once! But that wasn’t the bad part. With both villages tugging on him, Spider could not move. He was going to miss both feasts.

“Where’s Spider?” the villagers at the first feast worried. Everyone in the village grabbed the rope and tugged has hard as they could.

“Spider is going in the wrong direction!” the people in the second village yelled. Everyone grabbed the rope begin pulling. Even the children helped. It was a tug of war between the two villages and Spider was caught in the middle! The ropes pulled tighter and tighter around him.

And that, my friends, is how Spider got his small waist.

I liked the story. Students could relate and have fun with it. If the teacher had a rope, she could even divide her class and play tug of war.

In addition to folktales, I wrote several stories about the everyday life of the children. One series had them finding a large snake, another playing football (soccer). I even sent them off to Monrovia to visit a favorite uncle.

Finally I wrapped up the book. I did a final rewrite on the stories and shipped them off to Peace Corps headquarters in Monrovia. And then I waited. I was nervous. I felt like a new author who had sent his work off to a publisher or an agent for the first time. I had devoted hundreds of hours to a project that might come to nothing.

Two weeks later I heard back from Monrovia. Peace Corps staff liked the book… apparently a lot. A Peace Corps Volunteer with editing experience would be partnered with a curriculum expert to prepare the book for publishing. A Volunteer who was an artist would add illustrations.

The book was to become a Department of Education project. None of our names would be included. I was fine with that. Or let me put it another way. My ego wasn’t too bruised. The satisfaction was in knowing that the book was being used in classrooms. Dick, Jane and Spot could retire to California.

Then WAWA (a term coined by experienced African hands that stood for West Africa Wins Again) struck. The book wouldn’t be published at all.

I had made the mistake of assuming the government would support a reader that featured Liberian children instead of Dick, Jane and Spot. I understood I might be criticized for inaccurately portraying Liberians or missing the target on developmental reading skills. But these were things that could be fixed.

What I had failed to understand was just how paranoid the Americo-Liberians were about maintaining power. The reader was apparently a dangerous revolutionary tract that would help tribal Liberian children develop a sense of identity and pride. They might grow up and challenge the government. I was told not to fight for the project and to pretend it had never happened. To do otherwise was my one-way ticket home.

Naturally I was angry. I went back and reread what I had written. Yes it featured tribal children and tribal folktales but there was nothing revolutionary about the book. Not one word criticized President Tubman, the True Whig Party or the Liberian government.

On the other hand the book didn’t praise President Tubman, the True Whig Party or the Liberian Government. To be published the reader apparently needed to be a propaganda piece… and that I was unwilling to write.

Chapter 19: How Brunhilda Became Rasputin the Cat… Peace Corps Tales

/ Curt Mekemson / 4 Comments

Welcome to “The Dead Chicken Dance and Other Peace Corps Tales.” I am presently on a two month tour of the Mediterranean and other areas so I thought I would fill my blog space with one of the greatest adventures I have ever undertaken: a two-year tour as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Liberia, West Africa. Every two days I will post a new story.

When I have finished, I will publish the stories in digital and print book formats.

With my career as a high school teacher looming, I found it hard to concentrate on the second grade. I did manage to wrap up my final few weeks without whipping anyone else.

A new house came with the new teaching position. It was located on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) compound two hundred yards away from the high school and about the same distance from where the Peace Corps’ staff lived. Mr. Bonal was our neighbor.

Our new home was quite luxurious; it had electricity, running water and a real toilet. The days of cockroaches playing tag on our butts were past. I flushed the toilet over and over again just to watch the water go down.

The one thing the house needed desperately was a paint job; the previous occupants had felt that purple, green and yellow were quite attractive. Fortunately, we had time to paint. January was the Liberian School system’s summer vacation. This didn’t mean we were free to play like real teachers; Peace Corps expected first year Volunteers to take on a summer project.

Second year Volunteers, on the other hand, were allowed to treat their vacation as a vacation. Most of them flew off to East Africa and the big game parks. One couple, Dick and Sandy Robb, left their four little female kittens to live with us. We became substitute parents. Our pay was to have the pick of the litter. Whoopee.

I built our temporarily adopted cat family a three-story mansion out of cardboard. It was a maze of rooms, hanging toys, hallways and ramps. The kittens would disappear inside and play for long periods. We could hear them banging around as they stalked each other and attacked the hanging toys.

In a creative moment inspired by the evening cocktail hour, we decided to use the house as an intelligence test to determine which kitten we would keep. First we waited until the kittens were appropriately hungry and then brewed up their favorite meal, fish head stew. Here’s the recipe. Take several ripe fish heads and throw them in a pan of boiling water. When their eyes pop out, they’re done.

Next, we encouraged the kittens to sniff their gourmet dinner and showed them that the meal would be located just outside the ground floor door of their mansion. Now we were ready for the test. Each kitten would be placed inside the third story door and given a nudge. We would then close the door and time how long it took the kitten to reach the banquet.

Our theory was that the kitten with the quickest time through the maze of hallways and ramps would be the brightest.

Grey Kitten # 1 was a pudgy little character that never missed a meal. My money was riding on her. She breezed through the maze in three minutes sharp and set the time to beat. There was a chance that the sound of her munching away on fish heads might inspire the other kittens on to even greater glory, however.

Grey Kitten #2 was one of those ‘whatever it is you want me to do I am going to do the opposite’ type cats. Not surprisingly, she strolled out of the door seven minutes later and ignored the food altogether. (Afterwards, we were to speculate that she was the most intelligent cat and blew the race because she had no intention of living with someone who made her go through a maze for dinner.)

Grey Kitten #3 was the lean and mean version. Scrawny might be a better description. She obviously needed dinner the most and proved her mettle by blazing through the house in two minutes. The contest was all but over.

Kitten # 4 was what pollsters normally classify as ‘other.’ To start with, she was yellow instead of grey. She was also loud. In honor of her operatic qualities, Jo had nicknamed her Brunhilda. By the time her turn came up, she was impatiently scratching the hand that was about to feed her and growling in a demonic way. I gladly shoved the little monster in the third story door and closed it. We heard a scrabbling on the other side as tiny claws dug into the cardboard floor. Her race down the first hall was punctuated by a crash on the other end. Brake problems.

Then she was up and running again, but it sounded like toward us. Had her crash disoriented her? Suddenly the third story door burst open and one highly focused yellow kitty went flying through the air. She made a perfect four point landing and dashed to the dinner dish. Her time? Ten seconds.

And that is how Brunhilda came to be our cat. Our decision to keep her led us to turn her over and check out her brunhildahood a little more closely. Turns out she had a couple of furry little protuberances where there shouldn’t have been any. Like Dr. Gibbs’ cat, she was a he. In honor of Brunhilda’s demonic growl and generally obnoxious behavior, we renamed the kitten Rasputin after the nefarious Russian monk.

Chapter 18: Reading and Writing and Arithmetic Taught to the Tune of an Ebony Stick… Peace Corps Tales

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

Welcome to “The Dead Chicken Dance and Other Peace Corps Tales.” I am presently on a two month tour of the Mediterranean and other areas so I thought I would fill my blog space with one of the greatest adventures I have ever undertaken: a two-year tour as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Liberia, West Africa. Every two days I will post a new story.

When I have finished, I will publish the stories in digital and print book formats.

I went out in the jungle searching for a big stick. Note the work that went into building this bridge.

The first 15 minutes in class answered the question about how the students were going to react to my long absence. The class of moderately behaved students had morphed into a 30-headed monster. I was to be punished for being gone..

Considering the 15-year age difference between the youngest and oldest student, the kids were capable of several levels of mischief. After five days I had worked my way through every classroom management skill Peace Corps taught and several I made up. Nothing worked.

“They need to be whipped,” my fellow Liberian teachers suggested. “That’s what we do.”

I patiently explained that Peace Corps teachers didn’t whip their students. It was chiseled in stone. Eternal damnation would result.

“Then pretend you are going to whip them. Just don’t do it,” was the next helpful suggestion.

Being desperate and up for a little corruption, I thought about it. Where in the Peace Corps bible did it say that threats were out of line? After all, hadn’t Teddy Roosevelt said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick?” So I went out in the jungle and cut one. Next I introduced it to my students.

“Oh, Mr. Mekemson, what a big stick you have,” they said. I could see the respect shining in their eyes. I explained its purpose. They could behave and earn positive points or they could misbehave and earn negative points. If they earned enough negative points, the stick would be waiting. I didn’t tell them it would take a combination of Al Capone and Count Dracula to reach the point total for punishment.

The system worked. Whenever the class bordered on chaos, I would head for the blackboard, chalk in hand. Instant silence resulted. It was “Reading and writing and arithmetic taught to the tune of an ebony stick.” We started making up for lost time.

Of course there was an exception. Isn’t there always? It came in the form of Mary, an 11-year old going on 13. Her uncle was principal of the high school and a Big Man in town so this meant she was important. No Liberian teacher would dare touch a stick to her ornery hide, so certainly a Peace Corps teacher wouldn’t. She called my bluff and pushed her points right up to the rim. I urgently sought reasons to give her positive points but the opportunities were few and far between. She went over the top and smugly whispered to her girlfriends to watch what would happen.

Now I had a real problem. Obviously I couldn’t beat her. I am really not the beating kind. But neither could I ignore her. The end of the day came and I dismissed the class but asked her to stay. The students walked out the door and stopped on the other side. They weren’t leaving. Nobody at the school was… including the teachers. They were all waiting to see what Mr. Mekemson would do.

Mr. Mekemson was worrying. That’s what he was doing. I got out my big stick. Mary was no longer so nonchalant.

“Don’t beat me Teacha, I beg you, don’t beat me,” she screamed and screamed and screamed. I gently touched her with my stick. You would have thought I was pulling all of her fingernails and half of her toenails out, slowly. I knew everyone in the school was listening in on this little drama and I imagined that half of Gbarnga was as well. Oh boy, I thought, you have royally screwed up this time, Curtis.

I mumbled something about the importance of changing her ways and sent her off. And then I waited. How long would it be before the Peace Corps jeep came by to carry Jo Ann and me away? The next day at school was quiet.  Mary stayed home and I had a class of angels. Even other classes were quiet.

At noon, one of the Liberian teachers stopped by. She had a student she wanted me to beat. My response was not polite.

Two days later I received the message: John Bonal, Principal of Gboveh High School and Mary’s Uncle, wanted to see me. This was it. I prepared my case carefully. I didn’t want to leave. A lovely war was waiting for me at home and I had developed a considerable fondness for Liberia and its people.

I went to see Mr. Bonal with all of the enthusiasm of a hippopotamus crossing the Sahara. He was smiling when I greeted him. I even managed to get a decent snap out of the handshake.

“I’ve heard about your reputation,” he started and paused. Words like child beater, monster, and hater of kids roared through my mind. “And I would like you and your wife to come and teach at the high school. We think you would make a great addition to our faculty. We would like you to teach history and geography and Jo Ann to teach French and science.”

Talk about surprise. Here I was prepared to be booted out of the country, ready to beg as the Liberians liked to say, ready to humble myself and crawl across the floor if need be, and I was being offered the opportunity to teach two of my favorite subjects.

“Sir, your niece…” I managed to stumble out.

Mr. Bonal’s smile widened, “Ah yes,” he said, “that was a good job. Now she will be a much better student.”

Suddenly I had this suspicion that Mr. Bonal wanted me for a reason other than my ‘great’ teaching ability. I pictured myself practicing with a bullwhip out behind the high school as students lined up for their daily punishment. “Mr. Mekemson will see you now. Do you have any final words?”

But the offer was legitimate. After appearing to give it consideration for two seconds, I said yes. Jo Ann would have to speak for herself but I couldn’t imagine her saying no. Actually, she took about five seconds to think through all of the ramifications. Her only complaint was that the history classes were assigned to me. She was the history major.

Chapter 17: Abijoudi Supermarket: Almost Heaven… Peace Corps Tales

/ Curt Mekemson / 7 Comments

Welcome to “The Dead Chicken Dance and Other Peace Corps Tales.” I am presently on a two month tour of the Mediterranean and other areas so I thought I would fill my blog space with one of the greatest adventures I have ever undertaken: a two-year tour as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Liberia, West Africa. Every two days I will post a new story.

When I have finished, I will publish the stories in digital and print book formats.

Our decision to visit Monrovia led us past the huge Firestone Rubber Tree Plantation. I am standing next to a rubber tree that has been slashed to release the white sappy substance that will be turned into tires.

Dinner popped into my mind on the taxi trip home from Ganta. After two months of eating Argentina’s finest canned beef, I found myself lusting after the neighbor’s chickens. My last instructions to Sam before leaving to visit Morris had been to buy us one for the stew pot. I had visions of arriving back home with the hen waiting for us in the refrigerator.

It was a pleasant, if short-lived, dream.

The chicken was roosting on our stove and appeared to like her new home. Generous piles of chicken poop decorated the kitchen. Sam and I had discussed my preferences before we left. Apparently the instructions had not been clear. I corrected the error.

“Here’s another dollar. Take this chicken out and have her killed, gutted and plucked.”

My chicken whacking days were over. Sam returned a couple of hours later with dinner and Jo Ann did her culinary thing. The final product met all of my mouth-watering expectations. When the bones had been picked clean I worked my way through the pile again. Chicken had never tasted better… before or since. But there was a close match.

The lyrics to a popular West African tune proclaimed, “Chicken and rice with palm butter is nice.” I agreed; it was my favorite chop. Palm butter has a unique sweet flavor and rich texture. Unfortunately, pounding palm nuts was clearly defined as women’s work, which Sam avoided at all costs. A stone wall divided male and female roles within the Kpelle culture. I threatened to trade Sam in on a house girl and he miraculously found a way to obtain the illusive product.

It was possible to eat well in Gbarnga, even on our $160 per month salaries. But there were times we longed for a convenient grocery store packed with rib eye steaks, fresh milk and ice cream. Or, even better, a restaurant where we could order such food.

The visit with Morris provided a break in our routine but Morris lived the same way we did. His chop was quite tasty, but it was still chop. Jo and I decided it was time for our first trip back to Monrovia. Once again we packed our bags and headed over to Gbarnga’s taxi stand.

This time the price was $15 for the two of us. The taxi was packed and I rode shotgun. My job was to put my thumb on the windshield whenever we met another vehicle. The theory was that this would keep the windshield from imploding if struck by a rock. Shatterproof glass hadn’t made it to Liberia.

Rainforest, villages and small towns whizzed by slowly. I felt like we were caught in a time warp. An occasional burned out hulk of a money bus or taxi decorated the roadside and reminded us of our mortality. We passed Phebe Hospital built and operated by Lutheran missionaries and then Cuttington College built and operated by Episcopal missionaries.

In the town of Suakoko, we dropped one passenger and picked up another. He was chewing on a dark, smoky leg of either dog or monkey meat. My stomach growled in appreciation. I was adjusting to Africa.

Tribal Liberians waited with Zen-like patience beside the road for their unscheduled money bus rides. Usually a faint trail led off into the bush to their villages. I wondered what they thought about while waiting. Did they ponder their reception in Monrovia as they descended on relatives who lived in tin shacks already overflowing with people?

At some point, the jungle gave way to rubber trees with bark slashed to drain the white sticky substance. We had entered the world’s largest rubber tree plantation. Owned by Firestone, it was known for the low wages it paid Liberian workers and the generous payoffs it made to government officials.

With Kakata came relief, a paved road. Several Americo-Liberians had large farms in the area. Their names were a who’s who of Liberia’s elite.

Morris had reveled in telling us a story about a scandalous murder that had happened in the town. The guy’s body had been dismembered. His head ended up in a toilet. The local Peace Corps Volunteer told anyone who would listen, “If you want to get a-head in life, come to Kakata.”

Eventually we made it to Monrovia and our taxi let us off at the Peace Corps hostel. I’d be bunking with the guys and Jo Ann would be bunking with the girls. I didn’t think much of sleeping with a group of snoring men but the price was right. Plus Abijoudi’s was waiting.

Abijoudi’s was a genuine supermarket; it was close to heaven. I am not sure what was more impressive: the air conditioning or the aisles crammed with goods.  We wandered awestruck up and down the rows staring at the canned and frozen foods from around the world. And then we splurged. Jo Ann bought a frozen duck from Holland. Morris was coming to Gbarnga for a return visit. It would be the first meal she ever cooked for a guest.

Abijoudi’s was only one of Monrovia’s many temptations. Going to a movie was next on our list. The first James Bond thriller, “Dr. No,” had finally made it to Liberia. Our friends were raving about the film. An effort had been made in the fifties to turn Fleming’s novels into a TV series. The producers recruited an American actor for the Bond role and named him Jimmie. Can you imagine the line, “My name’s Bond, Jimmy Bond?” The series flopped.

We also discovered Oscar’s, an excellent French restaurant that perched on the edge of the Atlantic in a beautiful setting. Oscar stood by our table and personally cooked flaming steak Diane with cognac. Later, a volunteer would catch amoebic dysentery at the restaurant and Oscar’s was put on Peace Corps’ ban list. Jo and I never ate the salad, never got dysentery and never obeyed the ban.  Oscar’s became a must do on our Monrovia trips.

Oscar’s was perched on the edge of the Atlantic. Beaches in Monrovia can be quite beautiful.

After dinner we found a cozy bar tended by a big-busted German woman and Jo ordered a grasshopper: a frothy drink made with Crème de Menthe, Crème de Cacao and cream.

“A grasshopper,” the woman shouted across the crowded room. “What’s a hopper?” Everyone turned and stared at us as Jo Ann and I struggled to remember the ingredients. After that, Jo ordered more simple drinks.

Satiated and exhausted, we returned to the PC hostel. The next morning we caught a taxi back to Gbarnga and the quiet life.