Journey Without Maps, Page 26

  Politics

  We arrived in Monrovia when the political campaign was getting under way; those politicians embracing each other on the jetty were only a foretaste of the excitement. For the curious thing about a Liberian election campaign, which goes on for more than two months if there’s enough money in hand, is that, although the result is always a foregone conclusion, everyone behaves as if the votes and the speeches and the pamphlets matter. The Government prints the ballot papers, the Government owns both the newspapers, the Government polices the polling booths, but no one assumes beforehand that the Government will win, or if it is the turn of the Opposition, the Opposition. A curious fiction is kept up even among the foreign representatives. There are excited conversations at dinner parties; bets are always on the point of being laid. But the fiction, of course, stops short of losing money. Perhaps to an American, who is used to his state elections, the conditions seem less odd.

  At this election, though, there may have been a very slight uncertainty just because the President was taking it so seriously and instead of surrendering his office was ensuring, by his plebiscite, that he would hold it for more than the length of three terms. There were rumours that the Cabinet was split, that Mr Gabriel Dennis, the Secretary of the Treasury, who had distinguished himself by the sharp eye he kept on the funds of the Republic, was going to be jettisoned by his colleagues, and there was the unusual factor, too, that the President in power had as his opponent a former President who had shown his astuteness in manipulating the political machine. For years the Presidential opponent had been Mr Faulkner, the head of the People’s Party and of the Monrovian ice factory, who had no experience in the finer shades of political manipulation. Indeed, ex-President King won the first round. When Mr Faulkner finally retired from the contest and his supporters joined the Unit True Whig Party, otherwise known as the Dissident Whigs, half a dozen members of the People’s Party kept together long enough to hold a convention to nominate Mr King. As Mr King was also nominated by the Unit True Whig Party, by Liberian law he would be able to have a representative of each party at every polling booth, while the Government would only have one, a very important point.

  It will be seen that Liberian politics are complicated. Corruption does not make for simplicity as might be supposed. It may be all a question of cash and printing presses and armed police, but things have to be done with an air. Crudity as far as possible is avoided. For example, Mr King could not be the only candidate at the convention of the Unit True Whig Party; at some expense supporters for Mr Cooper had to be brought to the convention, even though it was known beforehand that Mr King would be nominated. I received on the morning of the convention a programme issued by the organizers, signed by Mr Doughba Carmo Caranda, the General Secretary, and attested by Mr Abayomi Karnga, the national chairman (the names indicated the policy of the party, Liberia for the Liberians, everyone had been busy finding themselves native names to contrast with the Dunbars, Barclays, Simpsons, Dennises of the Government). The proceedings, I read, were to end with a procession to the house of the nominated candidate, but rather ingenuously the route of the procession was given, by the Masonic Hall, up Broad Street, on to Front Street, ‘to the residence of the candidate’. It was Mr King who had a house in Front Street, not Mr Cooper, so that the programme took some of the edge off the excitement. Rather damping, too, was the non-arrival of most of the delegates, for the second launch was not so successful as the one in which we travelled and stuck on a sandbank outside Monrovia. The convention was to open with prayer at two-thirty, but when we arrived at three-thirty they were still waiting for the marooned delegates. Afterwards things got rather rushed, for when we arrived back at five the convention was over. The brass band was trying to get out of the ground and head the procession, but the mob was too great, and our Legation car helped to block the road. Several delegates hissed feebly at the little flag on the hood and a fat perspiring black pushed his head in at the window and asked furiously whether we did not know that this was a national occasion. There was a reek of cane juice and a few people looked nearly drunk enough to throw stones.

  Meanwhile the President had staged another demonstration in front of his house: native dancers from the water-side slum of Kru Town rushed up and down before the Executive Mansion waving knives. They looked like Red Indians in their feathered head-dresses, and their spirited performance robbed the convention of a great many spectators. Later, when the blare of brass warned Monrovia that the procession was on its way, a rival procession was formed hastily outside the offices of state with large banners inscribed ‘Barclay the Hero of Liberia’ and a rather enigmatic statement: ‘We want no King. We want no car. We want no money for our vote. Barclay is the Man.’ For some time I thought it was inevitable that the processions would meet in tiny Monrovia, but I had under-estimated the ingenuity of their leaders. Drunk as everyone was by this time, they were not drunk enough to risk a fight. The Kru dancers and their friends swarmed into the Executive Mansion and were given free drinks, to the disgust of the President’s True Whig supporters, who had received nothing but the dictator’s thanks from a balcony at his formal nomination.

  The Opposition procession meanwhile trampled into the front garden of Mr King’s house, his wooden house in Front Street, not the large uncompleted stone palace in Broad Street. It was quite dark by that time, but a few paraffin lamps indoors cast a pale light on the eyeballs of the crowd. Mr King, who had been ill, spoke a few words from a balcony, but there was too much cheering and drinking going on all over the town for one to hear more than a few phrases: ‘national independence’, ‘hand of friendship’, ‘foremost part among the nations’. The voice was tired and mechanical: it occurred to me that the fiction might be a sad one to the principal, who must go through all the right posturings without any hope at all. No one knew better than Mr King that a President is never defeated by votes.

  I visited Mr King a few days later at his farmhouse outside Monrovia. With an old blue bargee’s cap on the back of his head and a cigar in his mouth, he put up an excellent imitation of the old simple statesman in retirement. There was no doubt that he was a sick man. We both drank a good deal of gin while he went over and over the events of his downfall. From his obscure corner of West Africa he had managed to attract quite a lot of notice with the shipping of forced labour to Fernando Po and the pawning of children. He had feathered his nest nicely: he had his own little plantation of rubber trees he was waiting for Firestone to buy; he had his two and a half houses. But he hadn’t really any hope of a return; he was quite ready, he said, if he was elected to accept the League of Nations plan of assistance, tie his finances to European advisers, put white Commissioners in charge of the interior, give away Liberian sovereignty altogether, but he knew quite well he wasn’t going to be elected. All the rumours of Firestone money, all the speeches meant nothing at all. He was complying with a custom; one could see that he would be glad to go back to bed. He had had a finer fling than most Liberian Presidents : banquets in Sierra Leone, royal salutes from the gunboat in the harbour, a reception at Buckingham Palace, a turn at the tables at Monte Carlo. He stood with his arm round his pretty wife’s shoulders on his stoep while I photographed him, a black Cincinnatus back on his farm.

  A Cabinet Minister

  The Secretary of the Treasury belonged to a newer, more scrupulous Liberia just coming into existence. He, too, had travelled to Geneva and the United States. Plump, well-dressed, with soft sad spectacled eyes, he had a dignity unknown to the Creole of an English colony. There were no prefects to laugh at him, he laughed at himself, softly, without emphasis, for being honest, for caring for other things than politics, for letting slip so many of the crap-game chances. Mr King had built himself houses and bought himself a rubber plantation; all the Secretary had bought was a little speed-boat in which to play about in the Monrovian delta among the mangrove swamps.

  He lived in a little brick villa on grassy Broad Street; he was a bachelor; and whe
n he gave us tea it was served by young clerks from the Treasury Department. He had dressed himself for the occasion (there was to be a little music) in an open-necked shirt and a large artistic tie. He was like a black Mr Pickwick with a touch of Shelley. After tea we went into the music room, a little cramped mid-Victorian parlour with family groups on the walls, the Venus of Milo, hideous coloured plaster casts of Tyrolean boys in sentimental attitudes, and paraffin lamps on high occasional tables. He played some songs the President had composed; the piano, of course, in that climate was out of tune. They were rather noisy, breathless songs, of which the President had written the words as well as the music; romantic love and piety: ‘Ave Maria’ and ‘I sent my love a red, red rose, and she returned me a white.’ Then he played the President’s setting of ‘I arise from dreams of thee’. His friend the President, he said sadly, twirling on his stool, had once written much music and poetry: now – the Secretary of the Treasury sighed at the way in which politics encroached. He said, ‘Perhaps you know this song,’ and while the clerks from the Treasury went round lighting the paraffin lamps and turning the shades so that the glow fell in a friendly way on the Tyrolean children caressing their dogs or listening to stories at their mothers’ knees, he began to sing: ‘Whate’er befall I still recall that sun-lit mountain side.’ It was aestheticism at the lowest level if you will, but it was genuine aestheticism, the pathos of it was that this was the best material coastal Liberia could offer to a sensitive gentle mind: the music of Mr Edwin Barclay, the plaster casts, The Maid of the Mountains, the paraffin lamps, a sentimental song called Trees, and the President’s patriotic verses which he now beat out upon the piano: The Lone Star Forever.

  When Freedom raised her glowing form on

  Montserrado’s verdant height,

  She set within the dome of Night

  ’Midst lowering skies and thunderstorm

  The star of Liberty!

  And seizing from the waking Morn

  Its burnished shield of golden flame

  She lifted it in her proud name

  And roused a people long forlorn

  To nobler destiny.

  It was no worse than most patriotic songs from older countries. To a stranger, I think, coming from a European colony, Monrovia and coastal Liberia would be genuinely impressive. He would find a simplicity, a pathos about the place which would redeem it from the complete seediness of a colony like Sierra Leone: planted without resources on this unhealthy strip of land they have held out; if they have brought with them the corruption of American politics, they have nurtured at the same time a sentiment, a patriotism, even a starveling culture. It is something, after all, to have a President who writes verses, however bad, and music, however banal. I could not be quite fair to them, coming as I did from an interior where there was a greater simplicity, an older more natural culture, and traditions of honesty and hospitality. After a trek of more than three hundred miles through dense deserted forest, after the little villages and the communal ember, the great silver anklets, the masked devil swaying between the huts, it was less easy to appreciate this civilization of the coast. It seemed to me that they, almost as much as oneself, had lost touch with the true primitive source. It was not their fault. Two hundred years of American servitude separated them from Africa; gave them their politics: their education at Liberia College: their Press: gave them this:

  The Press

  WORDS BUILDING MOTHER

  First Prize

  :

  Four Shillings

  Second Prize

  :

  Two Shillings

  First Entry Sixpence

  :

  Additional Entry 3d

  Closes March 2

  :

  Results March 9

  Use the letters in Mother to spell as many words as you can. The competitor who sends in the largest number of words entitles to the First Prize and the Second Prize goes to the Competitor who sends in the next largest number of words. Address all Communications to the Editor.

  ‘The Unit True Whig Party now comes forward claiming to have the financial backing of Firestone to defeat the Administration. This claim is wild enough, base enough and false enough to form a suitable crown for its four years of strenuous efforts to fool the people and overthrow the Republic. But it has reckoned without its host. This is the time too many when the pitcher goes to the well and is broken. The last straw that breaks the camel’s back. Or more appropriately the closing of the stable door after the horse has escaped.’

  ‘My appeal is directed to the young people of Liberia, and particularly to the young people of the Kru tribe, and it is an appeal for us to prepare ourselves for world leadership.’

  ‘Coming home to ourselves, we ask the question, what has Liberia contributed, and is contributing towards world advancement and improvement? What are we doing individually to make the world better, and Liberia safe for democracy?’

  ‘With such a situation confronting the patriotic citizens of the country, and as loyal True Whigs, the question remains, what shall we do to be saved? It is highly gratifying to tell you boldly from genuine personal and otherwise reports received from Cape Palmas to Cape Mount we have the day for King. Watch out and see us victoriously rise.’

  ‘The Congo Progressive Association met in semi-annual conclave at the residence of Hon. Abayomi Karnga last week, and while there feasted and talked liberally. The feast ended in a clean sweep, and the talk in a muddle. Thus in this first coup nothing was added to the Unit. But if it keeps on springing such surprises upon unsuspecting guests, even that which it seemeth to have will be taken away from it, and itself cast out as being unprofitable.’

  FLOREAT COLLEGIUM LIBERIA

  BY R.T.D.

  When Church was o’er, the line was formed as before,

  In caps, gowns, hoods, black and white, we did implore

  The sympathy of the noblest and all the poor

  Who made us feel like still,

  Floreat Collegium Liberia.

  On Thursday noon, the Commencement was begun,

  Methought I heard the sound of thundering gun,

  Telling us the day is come, the night is gone–

  The day was calm, serene and fine,

  Floreat Collegium Liberia.

  I heard the Band to sound, the Clay-Ashland Band,

  And busy though I was, I could no later stand,

  For the sound was mighty and did peal through the land.

  It made me sing this sweet refrain,

  Floreat Collegium Liberia.

  The College sang a song and prayer was said,

  Then the ‘Sal’ rose, greeted us and nobly pled,

  And he roused the silence of the heroic dead.

  My heart did throb within and say:

  Floreat Collegium Liberia.

  Then followed the ‘Val’, the leader of the Class.

  And with word transparent as a shining glass,

  He gave us true mental food, yet not in brass.

  He made us feel and wish within:

  Floreat Collegium Liberia.

  A song was sung; then rose the Speaker of the Day,

  This humorous man did make us laugh and play;

  His speech was fine; full of humour and delay.

  He made us feel and wish within:

  Floreat Collegium Liberia.

  Unlike the Commencements of the previous days,

  A thing was done that true credit wrought and praise-

  It was worthy prizes offered for the plays,

  By the first Lady of the land:

  Floreat Collegium Liberia.

  Unlike the Commencements preceded this,

  The degrees were conferred in ceremonious ways,

  And all who saw this would truly praise for days

  The efforts of the Acting Sage,

  Floreat Collegium Liberia.

  All hail! all hail!! hail the closing day of mirth,

  That to us this day doth give a joyous b
irth

  And make us prone heavenward and not to earth,

  Lux in Tenebris, from thee is heard.

  Floreat Collegium Liberia.

  Farewell, farewell, to thee thou dying year of toil

  Now is ease as then was labour for our soil,

  In thee our time we nonetheless did spoil;

  But laboured hard and wishing still,

  Floreat Collegium Liberia.

  Welcome, welcome, thou season of rest and ease,

  The year has brought thee from across the seas;

  O bid fair, bid fair to us to make us please,

  To sing this longing strain for aye,

  Flo-re-at Col-le-gi-um Li-be-ria.

  Return

  But though it was this impression that followed me on board the cargo steamer which had been wirelessed to call off Monrovia for passengers, the memory, too, of hundreds of children in the Catholic school bellowing out the National Anthem:

  With heart and hand our country’s cause defending,

  We’ll meet the foe with valour unpretending.

  Long live Liberia, happy land,

  A home of glorious liberty by God’s command

  – one realized, going out by surf boat towards the bar, that thin line of white which divided this world from the other, the world of the smokestack, the siren that called us impatiently on board, the officer on the captain’s bridge who watched us through glasses, how much less separated they really were from the true primitive than we. It was at their back, it wasn’t centuries away. If they had taken the wrong road, they had only to retrace their steps a very little distance in space and not in time. The little jetty moved jerkily backwards, the river came into sight, the silver mangrove branches straddling like the ribs of old umbrellas on either side. Two hundred and fifty miles up that stream still existed the exact spot, the broken tree-trunk, the swarm of red ants where I had waited for my lost companions. The half-built Customs house, the waterside squalor of Kru Town, the asphalt road up to grassy Broad Street, they slipped behind with the sweep of the oars, but they belonged to the same world as the huddled huts at Duogobmai, the devil’s servant fanning away the storm, the old woman who had made lightning trailing back to her prison with the rope round her waist. They were all gathered together behind the white line of the bar no European steamer ever crossed.