Mother and Child Must Die

By Gibson W. Jerue

In the middle of Bloumpei, two gun shots set the town in disarray; elders, young men, women, and children ran helter-skelter in a feet help the body fashion. A man, Zarwee, a talented wrestler, hardworking farmer, and prolific hunter in Grand Gedeh Countys northern belt of the Dhoe Kingdom blew up the head of his two-year-old son and smashed the chest of his wife. At the fall of the nineteenth century, Zarwee, bereft of everythinglove and wifeand despondent and depressed, did the unthinkable, the most abominable and traditionally callous thing when he shot his wife and son to death and blew himself up. While other men protected their families with their lives and preserved their heritage, Zarwee wiped out his, more so in the presence of elders, women, and children in an open village square.
In Mother and Child Must Die, Gibson Jerue pieces together the story of an incident that rocked a village known for its serenity and progress in a new community of people who tasted of war and became warriors themselves, people who became both victims and victors.
When a wife enriched the fame of a man and guaranteed his pedigree, taking away a mans wife was not only to bereave him of manhood, but it was also to relegate him to the fringes of society and to do so by challenging him to fight back, if he canhowever diabolical.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469167152

Gibson W. Jerue

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Copyright © 2012 by Gibson W. Jerue.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012902651

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4691-6714-5

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4691-6713-8

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4691-6715-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The events described in the book are true, and they involved actual people and places. However, the author has replaced all actual names of the characters and places to protect their identity. The author is in no way referring to anyone bearing the same names mentioned in this book.

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Acknowledgement

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

About The Author

DEDICATION

Viola%20Jerue-book.jpg

Viola Wonnah Jerue

Viola… Wonnah… why did you leave us so soon? We loved you and still needed you. This was your time to eat from the fingers of your brothers and sisters. Even though you were the last of us, you were the first to go ahead. Have you seen our Mom? She is there with you. Ever since you left her brokenhearted, she never recovered until she joined you just few months after your untimely homecoming.

Seven years ago in 2004, a flower was plucked out of our garden. That was the most beautiful, most adorable, and most cherished. You were that flower, our beloved sister, Viola Wonnah Jerue.

Our mom, who you predeceased, gave you the name that we all loved—Wonnah, which when translated from the Krahn dialect means hear my own. She gave this name after the death of your elder sister, Tchien-nynoh, who did not reach her second birthday. Your name was our mother’s way of asking God to hear her prayers and give her another child.

When you came, you were the darling and Daddy’s girl. I remember when our father used to tie a lappa (an African waist scarf) across his shoulders and carry you to our farm about five hours of trekking. Everyone wanted the best for you. Besides, your beauty was a wonderful catch; everyone laughed at your smiles. You gave so freely like no amount of money was too much to let go, like no material things were so important to give away.

Oh, Viola, how we loved you so much. But when sickness tied your feet and hands and shut your mouth, blurred your beauty and made you bedridden, none of us were around. We were all far away and could not send you to the hospital until our father hurried from the village to look after you.

Daddy told me you said, I don’t want to go… He thought you did not want to go with him to the village. But you were telling him that you were not going to make it; that you had lost the battle to the sickness—a mysterious illness; that you would not see us again before you went to our forefathers. You were not ready; you were still full of life; you wanted to live just another day but, no, death had chained you.

We will never forget you. The sore is still in our hearts. We cannot imagine that when God has blessed us so richly, you are not around to have a taste of it. We missed you then, we miss you now, and we will forever miss you, poolu (sweetheart), as Mom used to call you; gopee (dearest one), as Dad used to call you.

That is why I dedicated this book to you. When I was writing the last chapter of this book, I remembered when you told me in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Brother, I want you to know book and get doctor degree. As I write this dedicatory homage, the tears are streaming down my cheeks again. I promised to send you to school until you graduated from college, but you did not wait for me. Why? Why… ? How could you break my heart? I wanted to tell you that where you left your book bag in my room in Monrovia; it was still hanging there, waiting for your return. When I received the news that you were gone, my heart was torn apart. We love you, but God loves you best. Rest in perfect peace till we meet again, poolu!

FOREWORD

LOVE—BATTERED, DISTORTED, and misapplied a word it is—is the prime virtue of life. The creator and arbiter of human destiny, the Almighty God—cultural christening aside—puts love over all human virtues. It is the purpose of creation. In most traditional societies, as in West African patrilineal societies, love is the strand that binds the family. It runs through the nuclear family to embrace the extended family and to provide a pillar upon which rests a society of worth. It places upon the shoulders of the father the burden of responsibility first to his wife and children, to the kin, and to society.

In the same way, it places upon the bosom of the wife primary duty to the husband and children and then to society. Love is therefore the pillar of life—it is a pillar, which when bereaved of a man, as with a fish yanked out of waters, becomes empty, hopeless. An African proverb says, love is life, and to live is to be a complete man endowed with love—being a complete man meaning, completing a cycle of love with a wife. To live without a wife is to be incomplete, to be unworthy of society, to be a living dead, to die and be no more, never to be remembered.

Gibson Jerue captures the essence of love and its binding power in the fate of a young Zarwee, an enterprising young man of the Southeastern Krahn ethnic group of Liberia, in this novella—Mother and Child Must Die. The novella begins with a typical day at the Bloumpei village. The village is busy as the sun, which had buried itself behind layers of tropical rain clouds for months on end, rise in special majesty over the sleepy village. Villagers rise early to take advantage of the promising weather to complete their farm work.

Jerue spins a tale that reveals the place of valor, the dignity of labor, the interconnectedness of the spirit of brotherhood, and the virtue of commitment to the family within the Krahn ethnic group. He gives an instructive insight into the twentieth century master-slave relationship that existed between the government in Monrovia and the hinterland citizenry, inadvertently pointing to factors underlining the violent political change of the early 1980s.

In a superb art of storytelling, he maneuvers the storyline to expose the intrigues that led men or women to desperation and destruction. The core of the story—which is valor, betrayal, and death—rests on Zarwee. Zarwee’s parents paid the bride-price of his future wife, Wlyohn, while he was still a child and while Wlyohn was yet unborn. Zarwee takes his wife as she comes out of the traditional Grebo Bush in total obedience to the will of his parents, now deceased.