Just Telling a Gist

I was born in a village of two huts. The village is called Gbakuken, meaning conquest of the jungles. My father used this place when he wanted to spare himself the juggles of the life in the major town called Doodwicken.

When I was strong enough to make an hour foot trek to school, I was enrolled at the Doodwicken Orphanage Mission School. I was not an orphan if one applies the literal meaning of the word, orphan. in fact the Greboes' word for an orphan is known as quoayju, meaning child of woe and sorrow or a destitute. I had both parents plus an additional mother who could have taken over in my mother's absence. She was my step mother. Now I have told you that my father had two soul mates. In fact he would have had three if the head wife had not consented to leave her compatriots. She rescinded her earthly toils to rest in perfect peace with the greatest of our fathers who resides in the Heavenly realms. Wait a minute, when I was growing up I learned that my father was contemplating adding a replacement for the departed one. So he began to cajole a beauty in our neighborhood. She was dark and exquisitely charming. Her son who was our childhood friend called her Hyee, meaning mom as the English speakers would say. We too relished the name and called her Hyee. My father was a charming man too, very thoughtful and soft spoken. I thought he was a natural philosopher, a psychologist by coincidence, and a pragmatist by choice. But he was no Casanova though he successfully managed a pair of soul mates and was at the verge of adding another when he embraced the Christian Faith.

So I was not an orphan by this measure. But as my thoughts began to extend even into the realms of what Piaget, the French child psychologist, described as formal operational stage, I began to relish the notion that yes I was an orphan, a total quoayju. I mean what the Greboes are talking about when they say, quoayju, a total destitute. My brothers and sisters were orphans. The people next to us in the villages of Chetugbah, Tenneboh, Chellatehken, and Poomehken were all orphans, real quoayjlu(plural). Even the highly revered David Parlor, who could tell the time by looking at his feet or tap huge gourds of palm wine with ease was an orphan. The people of Doodwicken and and the entire clan of Jedeapoh were all orphans. Let me briefly tell you why I think this way. How should one refer to a people without a country? How will you refer to a people despised by a government that supposed to protect them and provide avenues for the schooling of their children, health, and source of income? What sort of people are they when the only time they lay eyes on a government personnel is when a tax collector escorted by two armed soldiers goes there to beat them up and extort taxes from them?

I was a child but I can still recollect an instance in which a man in Doodwicken was beaten until his skin fell off his bones. He was my cousin. They said he has refused to pay the balance two coppers owed in taxes on one of his huts built out of red earth, forest trees, and thatches. even as a child I knew he did not refuse to pay the balance. That was all the money he had that he had given. He could no longer afford the balance two coppers ( two cents in contemporary Liberia).

So every morning two of my brothers, a sister, and two cousins will enjoin a band of children from beyond our village to make the trek to Doodwicken for schooling. There were two institutions of learning at that time in Doodwicken. One was the missionary ran one and the public institution which was headed by Mr. M. Doryen Carter. May peace be upon his soul! Mr. Carter was gruesomely murdered by rebels of the ironic Liberia Peace Council in 1995.

I continued my foot trek with my brothers to attend school in Doodwicken, until I graduated from junior high school. Prior to my graduation, the missionaries have left Doodwicken and went to the Sinoe Bible Institute (SBI) to continue their work. So the two institutions became one-Doodwicken Elementary and Junior School. After I completed my Junior high school I went to Monrovia where two of my sisters stayed. They generously offered to foot my school bills. And they truly delivered despite the hardship that perpetually docked in Monrovia. One of my sisters worked at the University of Liberia's Business and Finance office while the other worked for the National Investment Commission (NIC). They chose for me a private high school in the name of Monrovia College and Industrial Training School. I made it through Monrovia and in 1986; I was awarded a diploma confirming that I have acquired the academic knowledge of a high school scholar. I was ecstatic. My two brothers who had trekked with me from Gbakuken to Doodwicken also went through the same walls of Monrovia College and were granted permission to leave with their diplomas as well.

First I wanted to study political science at the University of Liberia. My sister advised against it. Then I wanted to go into journalism owing to my innate ability and undiminished desire to write and read news. I was member of the Monrovia College news paper club. I was part of the team that published the MC Gazette. The present Minister of Information, Mr. Lawrence Bropleh was our boss. He monopolized everything though. He attended every function we were invited to. He spoke every word. He read every news item on the radio, ELBC. He was the back and the front of the paper but we were loyal to him. But my "journalism" at Monrovia College got me into trouble. I was severely punished during the final examination week. I was made to scrub the Hatcher Hall for three days in succession for writing an article in the Gazette about one of the school's classrooms. Though the article was removed from the final publication, I was drastically punished by Dr. York. I harbored no resentment but I rethought my desire to study journalism at the University of Liberia. I thought my journalism sojourn emerged on a false start. Those were the days also when life was a daily pitch battle between journalists in Liberia and the government of Mr. Samuel Kanyon Doe. So I chose biology to prepare me to become a medical doctor. By 1990 I have completed close to 80 credit hours. My desire to become a medical doctor was squashed when Charles Taylor, Thomas Woiweyu, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and others felt that we were living in servitude under Samuel Doe; therefore we needed to be liberated. So they gathered bunches of deadbeats and lowlifes, gave them drugs and guns and urged them to shoot them to power, wealth, and revenge. I abandoned my studies for the first time ever and fled to the Republic of Guinea. My two brothers of the trek to Doodwicken also trekked with me to Bossou, Lola District in Guinea.

Guinea, a nation impoverished by greed and ineptitude, did all it could to grant us solitude. Unfortunate it did not have the respite we sought. Guinea was not delivering what we wanted so we moved to the Ivory Coast, then Ghana, later Nigeria, as far as Sokoto, far in the harsh Muslim desert of Northern Nigeria. How we got to Sokoto will require a volume which I am not prepare to commit to in this piece. Sokoto did not offer the respite we sought as well so we moved back to the refugee camp at Oru near Jebo Ode. Six months have passed after we arrived at Oru Camp. We decided to retreat. We boarded a bus and to the Buduburam Refugee Camp we rested our tired limbs.

While on this camp one of my brothers and I wrote the Notebook of a Warrior which was published in 2005. We also wrote the Convert, Tribute to Nehemiah, The Love that Never was, a collection of proverbs, and parables. We also pioneered the establishment of the Precious Jewel Foundation School on the Camp in Ghana. After we left, we learned that the school became one of the best high schools before it descended into oblivion due to reckless stewardship.

My life is inundated with rises and falls, trials and triumphs. I did not succeed to become a medical doctor. I will not be the one to heal the body but I have taken another trend, to heal emotions, modify behaviors, help others analyze their thoughts and see how such thoughts interfere with their functioning. I think more than many things, the human psychology deserves enormous investigation. This was why I chose to study psychology far enough. These are just tit-bits of my story, a long hectic one. These are just few steps of my journey, a journey through valleys and plateaus.