Fear and disbelief iced through his blood, and he shuddered and gasped at the sight of the village: a litter of corpses, bloated and rotting and covered with flies, bullet casings everywhere, a horrible stench in the air. Damn, he thought, this place looks worse than a slaughterhouse.
I have always suspected the Catholic priest, Father Brown, a fat, balding man of fifty, of being a fornicator. I have heard him denounce the sin more than a thousand times from his pulpit but I still have very strong doubts about his character.
In a society where the narrow path to national peace and stability suddenly splits into a seemingly dichotomized quest for two equally elusive desirables – reconciliation and healing on the one hand and justice on the other – Redemption Road becomes the story of Liberia and her diehard attempt to see the end of both roads.
For nearly five years, I had worked as a typist in a government office, earning thirty American dollars a month. And God only knows what I could do with it. Father had died, mother was blind, and my siblings a brother and three sisters were barely in their teens.
“Don't worry,” said Bendu. “I know nearly every footpath in this forest. I'll take you to the villages and towns as soon as you're ready. But come and keep my company. I'm a very lonely woman.”
Once there was a man named Korto. He was so jealous and suspicious he harbored the thought every man in the village was in love with his wife. And it was said that you could scarcely smile at her in his presence; if you did he would become enraged.
The Jealous Man and His Tricky Wife
Published: 19 September, 2008
Mr. Sackie and his dear wife, Madam Kaymah, had cohabited as husband and wife for a very long time. But there was never a single day on which they did not quarrel.
The War Dairy of a Young Liberian Man
Published: 12 September, 2008
The street was jam-packed. The traffic crawled at a snail's pace. The cars were bumper to bumper and crammed tight together like sardines. Somewhere in the traffic stood a few policemen, hopelessly trying to impose order on the chaos, directing the traffic as best they could, as irate drivers shouted at the top of their voices and honked their horns loudly. On the sidewalks pedestrians walked like mad. They were crammed together as the cars, terrified, drenched with sweat, toting mattresses or bundles of their personal effects. Among the crowd were my uncle, his wife and me. We had fled from our house in Gardnersville and would take refuge in Banjor.
The War Diary of a Young Liberian Man
Published: 05 September, 2008
Every day someone was taken into a rubber farm opposite the road and shot. And then they were left to rot. You could smell the dead bodies within miles from the rebel checkpoint.
SHORT STORY: Who Raped My Daughter? Part III
Published: 29 August, 2008
I began to feel my usual sharp pain again. The pain was unbearable this time. My husband rushed me to J.F.K. I was immediately put in an intensive care. I opened my eyes once in my confusion to search for my husband but the excruciating pain drove my breath out of me.
Who Raped My Daughter? Part 2
Published: 22 August, 2008
Why did I always say my daughter instead of our daughter, but he always said our child anytime he spoke about it. I wondered. I began to love him more day by day. He had turned from one sour plum to German plum. I got to know another aspect of him and that is his humility. He was not just soft spoken, but very humble and took time to answer or respond to questions. Once we had a waiter to bring us food into our room. I refused to pay more than a dollar tip. I think I was not in the right mood that day. The waiter refused to go until he came out from the bathroom. Without asking he gave the waiter a twenty-dollar bill.
The Man Who Bargained with a Ghost
Published: 08 August, 2008
Once there was a young man who did not have a wife in his town. Whether this misfortune was due to his ugliness, or his lack of manner of approach to women was best known to him.
Daniel and the Devil's Wallet Part I
Published: 04 July, 2008
There was a man who lived together with his wife and five children. The man's name was Daniel, and he was a poor wood seller. Although he was poor, Daniel managed to feed his family and keep clothes on his children's backs. And he thought that was enough for them, for he was a humble man. But his wife said he was lazy, that he made a poor father and husband and that he was nothing other than a failure.
The Strange Case of the Woman with Seven Children
Published: 13 June, 2008
Chief Jenteh was the Clan Chief of Kpatolee Clan, Lower Bong County. He was a wealthy and influential man of his time. He was also a black handsome man. Because of his standing, almost every parent within his Clan was willing to give him their young daughters as wives. And because of that, the Chief soon came to have several young women as wives.
SHORT STORY: Blind Ambition
Published: 16 May, 2008
When the old man reached the rebel checkpoint at Po River, he met only one rebel soldier. He was about twenty, a Beretta slung over his shoulder, his toes peeping out of his boots, his clothes torn on his back. As he approached the rebel, glaring at him defiantly, the old man was thinking, look at this vermin who kills people for nothing.
In a rickety zinc shack crawling with mice and cockroaches, Theresa lived together with her younger sister, her daughter and me. Besides her daughter, Theresa had some elder children, a couple of prominent men and women, who lived in Monrovia. The men worked as CEOs and chief accountants at the Central Bank of Liberia (CBL), while the women operated huge businesses, one of them owning an extravagant restaurant that catered exclusively for American and European clientele.
I had always thought of robbing James Bolton, a Canadian-born millionaire, but the odds were so huge I was unlikely to succeed. My initial plan was to grab Bolton in the street at gunpoint as he emerged from a bank, snatch his briefcase, jump into a getaway car, and speed off. But after doing a little thinking, I discarded that idea. There were army checkpoints on every main route in the city, and traffic was usually jammed, crawling at a snail's pace. Bloton's bodyguards would have easily phoned a checkpoint, got the traffic to a halt, and then grab me as I tried to escape in panic.
I can't. That's what that foolish old man wants, and I'm not going to give him that satisfaction. After all, it's not his house, and we are all displaced people.”
After the ceasefire in 1990, Dorothy and her son found a nine-bedroom vacant house. The yard was choked with grass, littered with discarded clothes, papers and cooking utensils, and a mutilating corpse that a couple of dogs were eating.
In Memory of Mother, Grandmother,
Published: 29 February, 2008
The Glover Family of Kakata, Margibi County, has published a highly informative book on the Liberian Constitution, in memory of their mother and grandmother, Mrs. Hanna G. Glover.
Uncle Charlie in Dry Meat Fiasco
Published: 11 January, 2008
Uncle Charlie was not about to travel along with those whom he considered the highest 'hypocrites' from Clay Ashland. He was going to take the trip all the way back to Monrovia by way of a commercial vehicle.
I wish you 12 months of great joy, 52 weeks of excellent success, 366 days of lasting peace. 8,784 hours of good health, 527,040 minutes of God's blessings, 31,622,400 seconds of a beautiful home. I wish all my contributors and readers happy new year. Send your poems to blessingtime2005a@yahoo.com
A Man and His Two Sons
Published: 28 December, 2007
There was a man who had two sons: the older son did not obey his father and sometimes even criticized him. This made the father very sad. The younger son obeyed his dad. In fact, he would often go an extra mile. Any time his father asked him to do something, he would politely say, “Yes, Father”. Then he would promptly do what his father asked of him.
SHORT STORY, (Continued from last week)
Published: 14 December, 2007
It was well past midnight when the meeting was called to order. Fire Hearth was the chair. In fact, it was he who had summoned the utensils. He cleared his throat and declared: “Comrades, one and all, the meeting is called to order.”
The Big Hit-back How A.B.C. Took His Stand
Published: 23 November, 2007
It all started with the death of A.B.C. or Kwaku Bomfe. He was a Ghanaian migrant in Liberia in the late 1960's. A fellow in his prime of life, he was broad-shouldered owing to his paddling career in a Fanti fishing company.
The child was asleep when the rebels stormed the village with loud gunfire. The freedom fighters among us quickly hid their weapons and melted among the civilians (You see, there were several rebel groups, but the dominant one referred to itself as Freedom Fighters and since they always had their spies among us, we always made sure to refer to their rivals as rebels)
Jonathan Brown was seated at the police station incensed with himself over his insistence that Tennie got married to Charlie Wright's son. He couldn't imagine that he had taken all the insults.
Making a Mark that Last
Published: 26 October, 2007
Grand mother was blind. She had been partially blind for 15 years before my birth. It was rumored her blindness derived from her last conception. If this is true, then the child she had from that conception was my mother, Miatta. Maybe that's why Grandma was so fond of me.
