Raw Edge of Purgatory: I Survived the Liberian Pogrom

By Alberta Davies

Edge of Purgatory is a memoir of the tribulations and survival of Alberta Davies during the Liberian Civil War. In this book, Ms. Davies tells how God and the Virgin, Mary helped her through the woes, throes, and thrones of the Liberian horror. The book explains how the invasion into Liberia began in December, 1989. It gives a brief history of the country, the three principal parties involved in the conflicts, the rebels attires barbaric attitudes. The book explained the Liberians' reactions to the incursion, the sufferings endured, and the arrival of ECOMOG, the death of Samuel K. Doe, the rule of Prince Johnson, the election of Charles Taylor, and the natural resources stolen. Finally, the book concludes with advices for the 2011 election, the countrys natural resources monitoring, and a letter to the Liberians at home from an exile Liberian.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781477167779

Alberta Davies

I am Alberta Davies-Doe was born in Monrovia, Liberia. My parents were Jonathan E.L. Davies, an Accountant and Cynthia E. Davies, an Administrator. I am the third child of six children. I attended the St. Teresa’s Convent High School and graduated in 1980. I received a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Liberia in 1990; just when the Liberian civil war began. I earned my Master of Business Administration Degree from the University of Phoenix. During my years in college, I worked and attended the Don Bosco Technical School at night where I met and married Hedison Doe, Sr. We had six children: Kayennoh, Benedicta, Cyndi, Blamette, Hedison, Jr., and Sonpon. I decided to remain in the country with my family. I refused to be a refugee or a burden to my relatives. I hoped the invasion would be a coup d’état and the carnage be over soon. My family and I lived in Caldwell and not in central Monrovia where the Executive Mansion was. The place all the Liberian warlords wanted. Like most Liberians, I was wrong. The civil war was atrocious. I lived through the woes, throes, and thrones of the Liberian horror. When I could no longer live in terror, I became a refugee. In my heart, I promised God and Our Lady, to write this book to tell the world of the miracles that helped me survive the Liberian pogrom.

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Copyright © 2011 by Alberta Davies.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-4568-4995-5

                E-book         978-1-4771-6777-9

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This book is based on true-life events; however, some names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

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Contents

1) Introduction

2) Acknowledgment

3) Chapter 1 The Invasion into Liberia

a. The Incursion

b. Brief History of Liberia and the Warlords

I. Liberia

II. The Principal Players in the Liberian Conflicts

1. Samuel Kanyon Doe

2. Charles McArthur Taylor

3. Prince Y. Johnson

4) Chapter 2 The Liberian People

a. Liberians’ Apathy

b. Warned by President Samuel Doe

c. The Terror Began

d. People Started Forming Trusted Groups

e. The Clothing of the Rebels

f. The Rebels Attitudes

g. The Difficulty Faced by the Armed Forces of Liberia

5) Chapter 3 Staying Put

a. The Decision to Remain in the Country

b. Strange People Everywhere

c. The Scariest and Craziest Part of This War the Youth

d. No Respect for Elders and the Unbelievable Things the Children of War Did

e. No Hiding Place down There

f. The Pleading Look

g. At My Mother’s Place

h. The Instructions in the Dream

6) Chapter 4 The Evacuation

a. The Mass Departure

b. A House on Fire

c. The Camp Out

d. The First Day at Camp

e. Moved to a Less Crowded Place

f. The Adam and Eve Creek

g. My Clothing

7) Chapter 5 Learning to Survive

a. Getting Clean Water to Drink

b. The Fears of Being Killed

c. Obtaining Food

d. The First Person Killed Before Me

e. What I Ate During This Time

8) Chapter 6 Fear of the Unknown

a. The Journey Farther Out

b. Caught in the Cross-fire and the Rosary Miracle

c. Bare Footed: No Shoes to Wear

d. The Palm Inspection check point

9) Chapter 7 The Expeditions

a. The Journey Continued: Now with the Other Woman

b. The Journey Forward

c. The New Shoes or Two

10) Chapter 8 The Meetings

a. The Meeting with Prince Johnson

b. My Brave Little Brother

11) Chapter 9 Returning Home

a. The Journey Back Home

b. The First Visit to Our Home

c. What Prince Johnson Did Not Know about Caldwell

d. So Close and Yet So Far

12) Chapter 10 Saved at the Stream

a. The Stream That Saved Our Lives

b. Few Blocks over the Stream

c. Life at the Farrells

13) Chapter 11 The Effect of the War

a. Almost Lost One of the Children

b. Death for US Twenty-five Cents (0.25¢): the Canoe Trip

c. At the Island Clinic

d. Outside the Hospital

e. Our Recovery

f. The Craziest Things to See

g. Sharon Left the Country

14) Chapter 12 Relief Is On the Way

a. ECOWAS Intervened

b. ECOMOG Troops to Arrive

c. The Liberian People and the United States Government

d. The People Living in Central Monrovia

e. Our Major Means of Transportation: the Wheelbarrow and LEG 2

f. The Division of Liberia among the Three Major Groups

15) Chapter 13 Saved at Last

a. ECOMOG Landed

b. An Unexploded Rocket in the Garage

c. Our House was burnt

d. Switch Houses

16) Chapter 14 The Mayhem and Madness

a. Samuel Doe was dead: the Beginning of Lawlessness and Hardship

b. The Relationship between Prince Johnson and ECOMOG

c. The Agreement between Samuel K. Doe and Prince Y. Johnson

d. The Trip to the Freeport of Liberia

e. En route to capture the President

f. At the Freeport of Liberia

g. The No Nonsense Major General

17) Chapter 15 Searching for Food

a. The Hunger, Lawlessness, and Hardship

b. Planting Crops during the War

c. Temporary Peace

d. Words from Behind the Lines

e. The Barter System

f. Preserving Food during These Times

g. The Decision to Join the Rebel

18) Chapter 16 Humanitarian Aids Arrived

a. United Nation Food Ration

b. Lost in Ones Own Neighborhood

c. The School: Another Meeting with Prince Johnson

d. The Goose Had Gotten Fat

e. The Slaying of the Goose

f. A Cry for Help During the Night

19) Chapter 17 The Escape from Caldwell

a. Escaping Caldwell

b. Life on the Other Side of the Bridge on Bushrod Island

c. True to Her Promise

d. Prince Johnson’s Evacuation

e. ECOMOG Had Control of Monrovia and Its Surroundings

f. Life in Sinkor

g. Operation Octopus

h. Live Is Back to Normal

i. Taylor Prepares for the Election

j. Taylor Is Elected President

k. Exiled

20) Chapter 18 The Pretense of the War

a. Why did the Civil War Continue after Samuel K. Doe Died?

b. The Different Groups Involved in the Civil War and Those that Emerged Under the Pretext to Redeem the Liberian People

c. It is Liberia’s Time

d. The Need for a Strong Supreme Court in Liberia

e. The Election of 2011

f. Letter to the Liberians at Home from An Exile Liberian

g. The Letter

21) Conclusion

A promise fulfilled!

Acknowledgment

To my dear friend, Dede and her family for sheltering my family and I when we most needed it and had no where else to go. Thank you very much! May God continue to keep you and your family safe!

Chapter 1

The Invasion into Liberia

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.

Jimmy Carter

US Diplomat & Democratic Politician, (1924—)

The Incursion

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable event.

Sir Winston Churchill

(1874-1965)

December 1989, the rebels of Charles McArthur Taylor and Prince Yormie Johnson of the National Patriotic Force of Liberia (NPFL) entered Liberia through neighboring country, Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivorie), via way of Saniquellie, Nimba County; northern part of the country bordering the republic of Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivorie). While in Nimba County, the National Patriotic Force of Liberia recruited the Gio and the Mano ethnic groups of this county. There were many reasons for the leaders of the National Patriot Force of Liberia to use this route to enter the country.

First, Prince Johnson, being a member of this ethnic group, made it even easier for the people of Nimba County to join faster and allow their children to join the force. Second, the elders of these tribes saw this as an opportunity for one of their children to rule the country as the Krahn tribe had done. Third, the Nimba people were eager to join in the rebellion against President Samuel Kanyon Doe’s regime because both ethnic groups had suffered excessively in 1985 when most of the Gio people were executed, raped, flogged, and imprisoned without trials by President Doe. Fourth, this was an opportunity for these tribal people to revenge all the atrocities committed against them.

Fifth, Charles Taylor and the Ivorian President, Felix Houphouët- Boigny relationship: President Felix Houphouët-Boigny never forgave President Samuel Doe for killing his adopted daughter, Daisy’s husband, Albert Tolbert, especially after the Ivorian president had personally interceded for his son-in-law’s life. This was not only a blow to his family but also a public disgrace from an illiterate twenty-eight years old, Doe. As you can see, President Felix Houphouët-Boigny was a physician and West African’s elder of politics. He had served in the French National Assembly and in General Charles de Gaulle’s cabinet. So when Taylor wanted to invade Liberia, President Felix Houphouët-Boigny granted access to French arms supplies and French commercial investment in the area of Liberia which the Ivorian president controlled during the war. Taylor would never have succeeded in the invasion of Liberia either without the aids of these other African states leaders: Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso and Muammar Qaddafi of Libya.

The people in Monrovia, other parts of the country, and the world were hearing on the radio and television of reports from Amnesty International and the United States of America Department of States, The Liberian Country Report on Human Rights Practices, that stated: The NPFL of Charles Taylor and Prince Johnson were committing immense human right infringement against the Liberian people. On national television, the people of Monrovia were watching and seeing these atrocities that were committed in the villages: people fleeing the areas with their possessions, villages being burnt down, and village officials, religious leaders, and villagers being killed: by being burnt, executed, beheaded, or by stray bullets. The rebels were forcing villagers to give up their little boys and girls (from ages 9 and up) to join them. Sometimes, killing parents who did not let their children to join them or make the children kill their own families and friends. In other cases, a parent or sibling was raped or killed before the child making it impossible for the child not to join them.

On national TV, we would see villages on fire or a whole village lying in ruins. When the reporters interviewed survivors, they would explain that when these rebels entered the villages, they could take the villagers by surprise, killing everyone in the village, raping the women and girls, and burning down the whole village and executing the village officials; sometimes, cutting their heads off to take back to their commanders. These rebels were very proud to accomplish these tasks in order to win favors from their commanders. As a sign to show their victory when the rebels accomplished these assassinations, the killings of all the people in a village, and burning of the villages, the rebels would fire several round of gun fires in the air, give themselves high fives, do some dancing and rejoicing, and brag among themselves of what they have done showing no remorse or emotions. When they did arrive at camp with their possessions, the celebration would again begin with more gun fires, dancing, high fives, and feasting. When the rebels realized that more of the villagers were escaping, they change their strategies. They started attacking several villages at the same time eliminating the number of survivors to tell the stories of their carnage.

Brief History of Liberia and the Warlords

God had his little finger covering Liberia and shielding her from violence. Liberian people, we have to pray for our country to be whole again.

Rev. Fr. Robert Tipo

Catholic Priest,

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Monrovia, Liberia

Liberia

Liberia is located in West Africa, bordered on the south by Atlantic Ocean, west by the country of Sierra Leone, north by the country of Guinea, and on the east by the country of Côte d’Ivoire. Liberia got its independence on July 26, 1847. Liberia is divided into fifteen counties namely: Montserrado, Bomi, Bong, Nimba, Grand Cape Mount, Grand Gedeh, Grand Bassa, Rivercess, Maryland, Sinoe, Lofa, Grand Kru, Margibi, Gbarpolu, and River Gee counties. The government is located in the capital city, Monrovia. The natural resources found in Liberia are: iron ore, timber, diamonds, gold and hydropower. As of 2010, the population of Liberia is estimated to be 3,441,790 million.

The conflict in Liberia had started long before it escalated in 1990. In 1822, freed slaves from the United States of America settled in Monrovia, Liberia. The freed slaves were sponsored by the American Colonization Society (ACS) who ruled them. The administration was finance by the President, James Monroe. In 1847, the settlers proclaimed Liberia as an independent state and calling themselves Americo-Liberian.

These settlers brought with them the ways they were used to and the ways they had been treated during the slavery era in the United States. They did not embrace the people they met in Liberia but enslaved them. The new ways did not go well with the indigenous people they had met. In the name of religion, the settlers stole, and destroyed the indigenous people properties and believe, sometimes killing them or their children. These wicked men who carry on these atrocities were known as heart men. When missing people and children’s bodies were found, many parts were missing including the hearts and the gentiles. The indigenous people had never forgiven the settlers but remained silent and kept all their hatred within them. Tell me this, how can this man, James Monroe, own the whole of Monrovia? As some of the stories of what these settlers continued to travel around today go: these settlers forced the people they met to give up their properties. Other story jokingly tells about how Buchannan, Grand Bassa County was acquired: it was said that the settlers had smoked fish that the indigenous people loved but did not know how it was prepared, traded their land for a piece of smoked fish. Other lands were acquired by stone throws. Tell me this again, a land full of all types of stones, why use stone as a measurement? Except you wanted to cheat the person out of their property because all the stones in the area are alike or someone’s stone had fallen at one spot or the other. Hence, these are some of the treacherous behaviors that continued until Samuel K. Doe came to power in 1980.

Samuel Doe, not being a highly educated man and well exposed to the modern ways of the world, became distrustful of the educated people around him and surrounded himself with his Krahn ethnic group. In one instance, he had asked Dr. Amos Sawyer to be his vice president in the upcoming elections but Dr. Sawyer refused and created his own party, the Liberian People’s Party (LPP), to run against Doe in the 1985 election. Doe became so possessed with power, became threatened, and began killing anyone who opposed him which also deepened the animosity in the country. Though the coming of Samuel Doe, a fourth grader to power, compacted the way people view education in the country, Samuel K. Doe was admired by many indigenous people who saw his coming to power as Liberia was now in the hands of the rightful owners of the land. When Doe started carrying out rampant corruptions and killing innocent people especially people of other ethnic groups including Americo-Liberian, his human rights abuses increased which brought out all the animosities every tribe had against the other—escalating the civil conflict of 1990 to a higher level.

You would think from 1847 to 1980 (133 years) Liberia would be developed as other countries around the world which had independence during this time had developed, including the United States of America, but you would be surprised that it was not and is worse now that the civil war had happened. There were limited power and water supplies in the country including Monrovia, the capital city and it surroundings, there were no good paved roads for people to transport food and goods around the country, limited schools, hospitals, and universities built. The government of Liberia owed few government buildings. The rest of the buildings used as government offices were rented from the Americo-Liberian who lived in the United States. Revenue collected by the government was sent to the United States of America. In fact, the country’s currency used at this time was the United States dollars and coins.

During Samuel Doe’s regime (Between 1985 to 1990), there were many developments around the country both from the government and individuals citizens. Doe built many government buildings for all the ministries of the government in order to stop revenue collected by the government from leaving the country. This action encouraged individuals and government to invest in the country. Doe even changed the country’s currency from the United States dollars to the seven corners Liberian five dollars. The coins were too heavy and noisy to carry around so he later changed the coins to colorful paper notes. All of these government properties were later destroyed by the warlords and citizens who used them as shelters. During the war and after, many displaced citizens from the interior and other parts of the country lived in them because they had no place to live in the city. Doe built roads to transport products from the interior to the city and other countries including the Babangida Trans-African Highway and other road projects. The best thing Doe did for the Liberian people was; he brought in foreign country experts to help teach the Liberian people to plant their most important food—rice. As the Chinese proverb states, Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Liberian people, do you not see that our country is very rich? Doe was trying to make us independent of other countries for our food? Can you not see how rich we are? We have abundance of land, sunlight, and water. If the Chinese and other countries that have rice as their staple food and have a population more than ours can feed themselves and sell their extra rice to Liberia and other countries, why then, can we not learn to feed ourselves? Most of our people are farmers. We can do this Liberia; if we work together.

The Principal Players in the Liberian Conflicts

Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself.

Francis Meehan

Samuel Kanyon Doe

Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Samuel Kanyon Doe was a twenty-eight years old Master Sergeant of the Liberian National Guard of the Armed Forces of Liberia. He was born on May 6, 1951 in Tuzon, Grand Gedeh County. His parents were poor farmers and uneducated. They were members of the Krahn ethnic group. Doe, a fourth grader then, staged a coup d’état on April 12th, 1980 and killed President William R. Tolbert, Jr. and thirteen of Tolbert’s cabinet ministers. Doe ruled the country and remained the chairman of the People’s Redemption Council (PRC) banning all political activities. During Doe’s regime as chairman of the PRC, his slogan was: In the cause of the people, the struggle continues.

In 1985 when he lifted the ban on politics and political parties, Samuel K. Doe created his own party; the National Democratic Party of Liberia (NDPL). Doe won the election. On January 6th, 1986, Samuel K. Doe became the twenty-first president of Liberia and the first President of the Second Republic. He received an Honorary Doctor