/ 10 July 1998

The magician of Malamai

Bram Posthumus: FIRST PERSON

In the full moonlight, a dozen young men were standing around our car, its front wheels jammed solid in the mud. One shouted the now familiar command: “Leggo! Leggo!”, Liberian English for “Heave!”

The men grunted, the engine roared and the car finally sped away, leaving the small group covered in red African soil. It came to a stop at a slightly less treacherous spot. The driver got out and thanked all who had come out of their beds to help.

We had set off from Monrovia at 12 noon. Thirteen checkpoints, 15 hours and 500km on, and we were finally approaching Voinjama, the provincial capital of Lofa county. While the passengers conjured up visions of mats and beds on which they would soon lay their exhausted bodies, the driver announced: “Now comes the most difficult part.”

No sooner had he said it than we saw two immovable cars, axle-deep in the mud. After helping them by carrying two months’ supplies of sugar, rice, and beans up the road that glistened in the glare of the headlights we finally moved on only to meet our match in the shape of a 2m deep trench filled with red slush.

One of the passengers inquired where the driver thought we were. “Malamai,” came the reply. “That’s good. Very good. I know the chief of this town. Let me find out if he is still living here.” He had not been to this part of the country since the war had cut off Lofa seven years ago.

We left the car and the driver behind in the silence of the forest and found the town after a short walk. Cautiously we entered. It would not have been long ago when unknown visitors at night would have spelt death and destruction for the inhabitants.

The moon threw an eerie light on the ruins of what must have been rural houses. We approached one house. “He used to live around here,” our guide said. “Kwa-kwa-kwa” came the usual announcement. A match snapped into light and someone came out.

“Who there?” “It’s me. Don’t you remember?” Moments later the two men stood locked in a bear hug.

The problem was explained and the chief wasted no time in organising the men who would dislodge the car. When we were free to move on, the chief turned to me: “You must come and tell the story of our town.”

Two days later my Liberian companion and I walked from Voinjama to Malamai.

A magician is said to live near Malamai. When danger was near, he would sit on a rock and disappear into the stone. With that, the town would become invisible and in this way it had managed to save itself from its enemies.

Magic did not save Malamai on February 6 1993 when the forces of Ulimo-J entered the town. This was one of those factions that were by then deeply enmeshed in the looting sprees that had sprung out of Charles Taylor’s bid to unseat president Samuel Doe by force.

Walking among the burnt-out ruins Chief David Kpadeh recalls: “They came in the early morning. They took young boys aged between eight and nine and killed them before our eyes. All we could do was bury them.”

One-third of Malamai’s original inhabitants are not here at all – they are dead or fled as far afield as Ghana or Nigeria – but now that the war appears over, some are returning.

The town has no reception facilities for the returnees. So how does it cope?

Kpadeh takes us to a large house, about 4,5m long and 2,4m wide. Its mud walls support a makeshift roof of branches and leaves. Through the centre runs a dark corridor with four doors on either side. Children cry, mothers soothe, fathers talk.

Kpadeh would like to see the town get its old zinc roofs back. They were mostly looted and taken off to Guinea to be sold, just like the tools they used to have. While he explains all this, a wrinkled old man walks up to me and says: “I am a mason. They came into my house and took everything. I had to go to Guinea. Last year I came back. My house was no longer there. Burned. All I want now is new tools. Then I can start again.”

In nearby Voinjama, the forest covered a mass grave, as James Moore found out. He is the director of the Liberia Opportunities Industrialisation Centre, a school for war-affected youths. “We found skulls and bones when we cleared the place. It was a dumping ground.”

The centre has been set up to create some order in the lives of young people who found themselves at either end of the gun. “We do not make a distinction between victims and perpetrators. They all suffered in one way or another,” says Moore.

Youths who were once press-ganged into war are now learning a trade at the centre – how to make a living without a gun.

Genevieve Freeman-Massa is the counsellor-in-residence at the Voinjama centre and has heard all the tales of rape, forced recruitment, atrocities committed. “They suffer halluci-nations, they become paranoid, they don’t sleep. You name it. They break down and cry.”

The tales are all too familiar: “They came and killed my father. They made me lick his blood.” “You can come with us or stay with them, they said, pointing at the pile of corpses.” The reign of terror these factions unleashed frightened boys and girls into doing whatever was required of them. Drugs did the rest.

“Someone who was a general out there is still a general when he comes here,” says Freeman-Massa. “So here at the centre we use that structure to get positive results. And so `Kill’ becomes `Help’ and `Destroy’ becomes `Build’.”

After six months in the centre the youths go back to communities like Malamai. But can you live with your tormentors? I asked Kpadeh. “We have to forgive them,” he says. “They are our children. Some of them are already among us. Their parents’ houses have also been destroyed. They have nowhere to sleep.

“You see, we are all in the same struggle. What will happen when we say: now it is your turn to pay the price? The war will come back. We don’t want that. We want everyone to come home and help in the reconstruction.”

Perhaps the old magician was there, hiding inside his rock and nodding his consent.