What? Raise My Children in the Jungle?: Our 18 Years in Liberia

By Beth Holtam

Beginning before jets flew into Liberia, and ending before the Sgt. Doe coup, this is the true story of the Holtam family, told by the wife/mother/music teacher. She tells of her husband's work to help the Liberian people through agriculture, the education of their children, and friends made while living in four locations. Tales of African animals, travels by Landrover, stories of births and deaths, accounts of making international music...Return to the heyday of church missions and the arrival of the Peace Corps, as seen through the eyes of a family that loved Liberia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479741410

Beth Holtam

Beth Holtam was born Alice Elizabeth Carlovitz in 1933 in Auburn, Alabama. She earned a BS in Education with a major in music from Alabama Polytechnic Institute (Auburn University). She holds an MA in Secondary Education (English) from Tennessee Technological University. She and her husband of 57 years reside near Weaverville, NC.

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by Beth Holtam.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012920336

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4797-4140-3

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4797-4141-0

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.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

121266

Contents

Introduction

FALL QUARTER, AUBURN UNIVERSITY 1956

PART ONE

CUTTINGTON

Bishops

The Flight, Layover in Lisbon, and Landing in Liberia

Excerpts from Beth’s First and Only Journal

Cuttington Days

Newsletter Christmas 1958

Liberian English

Our friend Sara Lou

Some Early Health Problems at Cuttington

The Cuttington College Driver

A Visit from Greenmama and Gran-Gran, newsletter January 1960

Poem by Jordan, published in The Cuttington Review

Our First Furlough, and Other Incidents

Having My Babies at Zorzor: Raleigh

Raleigh’s First Three Weeks

Tales of African Animals, Mostly Non-Domestic

Liberian saying: Don’t look for trouble, let trouble look for you

From Echo’s from Cuttington, mimeographed copy

PART TWO

BOLAHUN

Guns in our Liberia Days

Some Stories about de Sizzers

Merrill and School

Family Meals at Bolahun

More Tales of African Animals, Mostly Domestic

Excerpts from November 1963 newsletter from Bolahun

Communication by Radio

Teaching a Sacred Studies Class at Bolahun

Rescued by the Ashkars

Newsletter from Bolahun, January 1965

De Sizzers an’ De Fadas:

Having My Babies at Zorzor: Margaret

The death of a child at our house

More Tales of de Fadas an’ de Sizzers and Names

Bishop Brown Comes to Bolahun

John Tokpa Drives the Landrover

My Many Colored Shirt

PART THREE

GBARNGA

Enter Peace Corps

Newsletter excerpts, March 1968, Gbarnga

A Paean of Praise for the Peace Corps

The Gbarnga House

Some memories of Mugwet

Peace Corps Weddings

Kaleidoscope of Memories of the Campus School

Dubo

Elizabeth’s poems about Bolahun

Newsletter from Gbarnga, December 1969

Elizabeth’s poem about the trip to Cape Palmas from Gbarnga

Elizabeth’s Memoir of Robertsport

Addenda to Elizabeth’s Memoir

Old Men

Moving from Gbarnga to Monrovia

SOME LIBERIAN SAYINGS

PART FOUR

MONROVIA

Monrovia Days: The Brownell House

Group XXIV Scenario

The Beach House

More Rogues and Con Men

AMAHL and the International Choir

A Peace Corps Funeral

Interlude in England

Newsletter from Monrovia February 1973

HMS PINAFORE: or The Lass Who Loved A Sailor by Gilbert and Sullivan

Ocean Blue

Beth and Clare Baby Travel to Barbados

Health Problems

Our years in Liberia were coming to an end…

The Congotown House

The Night of Elizabeth’s graduation from ACS

Elizabeth Goes to Italy

Some Poems from Elizabeth’s Collection

The Paynesville House

Jefferson

Now Is The Hour

Introduction

Letter to Sue Spencer

Dear Mrs. Spencer

I have been meaning to write to you for years, literally, ever since my husband and I lay in our bed and read AFRICAN CREEKS I HAVE BEEN UP together, because neither could wait for the other to finish it first. Recently our daughter sent us MORE CREEKS and as I read it, I made notes of all the memories it triggered just in case I ever write our book.

When you and your family were living in Sierra Leone, we were living in Bolahun, Liberia (1963-67); during that time we received our mail at Holy Cross Mission through Kailahun, Sierra Leone. De Fadas dispatched a mail man from Mbalatahun, the leper colony connected with the mission, to walk through the bush to a village where the Lebanese storekeeper in Buedu had an arrangement with the Mission to put him on public transport to pick up the mail in Kailahun and bring him back to Bolahun.

Besides having lived in West Africa for 18 years, our other major connection with you is that we too are from Alabama: my husband, Jordan from Birmingham, and I from Auburn. So you spoke our language from the very start. We are a few years younger, judging from the ages of your children when you went to Gambia in 1956. We came along to Liberia in June of 1958, with an almost two-year old son, and a baby girl of five months. Before we left the country in 1976, Merrill and Elizabeth had graduated from high school, and we had Raleigh and Margaret, who were born at Zorzor at the Lutheran Maternal/Child Health Center in ’62 and ’66.

Jordan’s first job after graduating from Auburn in 1957 (Agriculture) was at Cuttington College in Suakoko, about 120 miles from Monrovia in the center of Liberia. He managed the production farm at Cuttington, which included rubber, coffee, and cacao plantations, chickens, some cattle, a few pigs, vegetables for the faculty, and wood for the kitchen of the student dining hall.

The 1500-acre farm required about 200 local laborers. The other part of his job was as head of the Agriculture Department at the college, teaching most of the classes himself or arranging for other teachers from the Government Farm (research station) at Suakoko. He loved every aspect of his work with the farm labor, and hated the faculty meetings. The first time he got in trouble at Cuttington was when he sent me to do the honors at the graduation ceremony, and took off to help Sumo Harris start a fish pond in his village.

Having been raised the daughter of a professor at Auburn, I fitted in nicely to living on a college campus, becoming the organist and choir director as well as teaching one class of English and later, Music Appreciation and some private lessons. We were young, enthusiastic, and energetic; it was a great place to learn about Liberia.

After four and a half years at Cuttington, we took the family to live at Holy Cross Mission, Bolahun, where Jordan started a Rural Development Center, helping farmers on their own farms with the help of a local Cuttington agriculture graduate and an older headman. After yet another four years, we moved to Gbarnga (near Cuttington and Phebe Hospital); Jordan went to work for Peace Corps as the Associate Director for Agriculture/Rural Development, an absolutely delightful era for us and our children. And lastly, we lived in Monrovia for six years; the last three, Jordan was attached to President Tolbert’s ADP Ministry: Action for Development and Progress, as a UNDP/FAO advisor.

As it turned out with you and your family, your travels and ours did not stop in West Africa. We call it the itchy feet syndrome: once you have been OUT, you cannot settle down for long. We lived for nine years in two very rural settings, mostly on a farm outside of Celina, Tennessee, where Jordan farmed off and on when he wasn’t trekking off to Nigeria, Kenya, Papua New Guinea or the Philippines to do Peace Corps training or other consultancies. I managed to take enough classes at Tennessee Tech to get into the school system, and taught full time for about seven years, suffering culture shock like I had never experienced in Africa.

By the time our children were in college or married, Jordan claims I decided that his talents were being wasted on cows and apples, and said I was ready to go back to Africa, probably the only time I spoke up and made a unilateral decision, he says. So we did, and headed for Zambia (almost the exact opposite of Liberia in many ways) with AFRICARE for four years; then worked with CARE in Sudan for three years. Sudan was not our most pleasant posting, although the people are some of the loveliest we’ve ever met anywhere. However, when we got on the plane for Kenya, leaving Sudan, we felt we’d died and gone to heaven, back to freedom to hold hands on the street and not be yelled at by the children when I stepped out of our Moslem-style walls with my head uncovered.

Our last four years before Jordan retired in 1997, we spent in Ethiopia in a village below the Rift Valley Lakes, almost to the border of Kenya, among the Borana people, the most integrated tribal society we had been among. We had a marvelous stay in that most unique of all the countries where we’ve lived.

We live in a cottage (c.1925) in the mountains of North Carolina near Asheville, not too far from our children. We love our home, but, sure enough, the same sorts of things you write about railing against have often gotten under our skin. Jordan worked as hard as a volunteer with Sierra Club, especially with the Environmental Justice program, as he worked in the mission field. Working to make our fellow Americans understand something is much more difficult than working to help Africans understand, we feel. Having too many worldly goods breeds arrogance, which we find extremely hard to tolerate. The current situation in the US is unbelievably frustrating, but hopeless? Surely not! We just have to keep plugging away. As you said so often, we have so much to learn.

We are taking a year off discovering Costa Rica with its delightful climate and marvelous people, and trying to learn Spanish so we can return for the winter months each year.

I think you can understand now why I feel we are soul sisters! Thank you so much for what has become our favorite book.

With very best wishes

Beth and Jordan Holtam

Costa Rica

2006

FALL QUARTER, AUBURN UNIVERSITY 1956

Picture my young husband, back in college on the GI Bill after serving two years in the army. Jordan had a part-time job as secretary in the Episcopal Church office with the Rev. Merrill A. Stevens as his boss.

Enter Father S. Hey, want to go to Liberia?

Jordan: Yeah! Where is it?

Later. I was sitting in the rocker with the baby, waiting for Jordan to come home on his bicycle. He arrived, extremely excited. Father S. had showed him an advertisement in a church journal: the mission office was looking for an agriculturist to work as farm manager and instructor at Cuttington College, in Suakoko, Liberia!

Jordan: Hey, want to go to Liberia?

Beth: What? Raise my children in the jungle?

And that’s exactly what we did.

There were others in our circle of friends at the church who didn’t know where Liberia was.

One asked, looking very concerned: Won’t you get awfully cold up there? (Siberia)

Another, a bit more savvy, said: Isn’t that desert out there? Will you be living in a tent? (Libya)

All I remembered from American History was that Liberia was the place to which the freed American slaves returned in Africa, or were returned, by the American Colonization Society. In the college library, I found only one book on the topic: LIBERIA, AMERICA’S AFRICAN FRIEND, by Robert Earle Anderson, published by the University of North Carolina Press 1952. It was just the book we needed.

An early chapter covered church missions. I read that there are more missionaries per square inch in Liberia than in any other country in the world. Some examples were: Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, Assemblies of God, and Seventh Day Adventists. In other words, there was a missionary behind every palm tree.

We had some major finishing touches to accomplish before we could focus on going to Liberia. Jordan had to complete his degree, and I was pregnant.

1_CU_beth_jordan_1958.jpg

1958

PART ONE

CUTTINGTON

Bishops

There once was a time when Jordan was so caught up in the life of the Episcopal Church in Auburn, he thought he wanted to go to seminary. If he had become a priest, he of course would have had a built-in organist and choir director (me). But, wisely, and as always, pontifically, Bishop Carpenter of the Diocese of Alabama advised Jordan to get a job in a feed and seed store for a year or two after he graduated in agriculture, and think about it. This is the bishop who described the Church of the Holy Innocents in Auburn, where Jordan and I met, dated, courted, married, and had two babies baptized, as Ah, yes. The church where the parishioners are nyether holy nawhr innocent. It was in the church office that we learned about the job available for an agriculturist at Cuttington College in Liberia, which altered the course of our lives in one fell swoop.

While Jordan was finishing up his degree (he’d switched from animal husbandry to plant science, because the missionary bishop of Liberia was hoping to hire a plant pathologist, and did, but that’s another story) the church told us that the position had been filled; they would put us on a list to go anywhere an agricultural missionary was needed. Later, however, when the job at Cuttington was finally in his stars, Jordan was told by Bishop Harris to look into some studies in tropical agriculture to prepare him for working in the rubber, coffee, and cacao crops on the farm which the bishop dreamed would eventually subsidize Cuttington College to a large extent. Jordan was advised by a professor to look into the Instituto Interamericano de Ciencias Agricolas in Turrialba, Costa Rica, one of the early US education-assistance programs of the FDR era. The main administrative building was dedicated by Henry Wallace, a Minister of Agriculture and Vice President under FDR. It still stands, the center of the campus of CATIE (Centro Agronomico Tropical de Investigacion y Ensenanza). After six weeks at IICA Jordan moved on to Trinidad to the (then) Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, now the University of the West Indies. After a couple of weeks studying there, he returned home to wife, son, and new daughter, born 12 days after he left the country, his first trip outside the US.

BW (Bravid Washington) Harris was a building bishop; when it was jokingly said that he had an edifice complex, it was meant seriously. But his record was impressive: Cuttington College, built by the Episcopal Church USA with contributions from the Methodist and Lutheran Churches, both of which had worked in education for many years in Liberia. It was the only college upcountry in Liberia; in those days, the other college, LU, University of Liberia in Monrovia, was considered by many to be about high school level, and was always plagued by politics in the capital city. There was an Episcopal high school with boarding facilities for boys and girls at Robertsport, Cape Mount; and a boarding school for little girls at Bromley Mission. Several years later, a cathedral and a school named for Bishop Harris were built in Monrovia.

In the early days of the fledgling republic, some clever elders had decreed that if a church wanted to establish a mission, it must have either a hospital or a school. And many came. Thus they provided for health care and education for many years.

On our first trip into Monrovia from the airport, after we’d arrived at Robertsfield in the night, Sam Fiore, the treasurer of the mission, drove us through the Firestone Plantation because there was construction occurring on the main road upcountry to Kakata, 60 miles from the capital. We rode through miles of rubber tree plantings, the trees strangely leaned in a spooky sinister way in one direction only. Enroute into Monrovia, an unhappy short-termer who had driven out with Sam to meet us, told us that Bishop Harris ground up missionaries in the mortar of everything he built.

The old man was definitely a tough boss. He was a very light-skinned black from Virginia. He said he stoked furnaces and swept floors to pay his way through college. He was surely among the first African-American bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church. He was a gruff, no-nonsense man of few words with very few social graces. He and his wife Flossie occupied a crumbling but spacious high-ceilinged Americo-Liberian mansion, with verandahs all around, located on a prime piece of property diagonally across the street from the Main Post Office; when Bishop’s House, as it was called, was torn down, it was replaced by the Chase Manhattan Bank, where the PE Church then maintained its offices. At the time we arrived in 1958, there was still a carriage house behind the Bishop’s House, two rooms upstairs used for new arrivals, where we first put our babes and ourselves to sleep under ominous mosquito nets in tropical, dark Africa.

2_CU_bishop%27s_house.jpg

Postcard c. 1958, Bishop’s House, Monrovia, Liberia

The Flight, Layover

in Lisbon, and

Landing in Liberia

We left the USA directly from the Outgoing Missionaries’ Conference, held at Seabury House in Greenwich CT, and were taken to Idlewild NY International Airport. Pan American Airways (PAA) was the first American airline to make runs to Liberia (twice weekly) via Lisbon, Portugal. Commercial jets were not yet in service, or at least to Africa, so we flew prop planes, 10 hours to Lisbon and after a two-and-a-half day layover, we flew 12 hours to Liberia with one stop in Dakar, Senegal. Elizabeth, five months old, slept in a bassinet attached to the bulkhead of the plane; but almost-two Merrill wasn’t given a seat, so Jordan stood up while he slept.

In Lisbon, Jordan stopped at the PanAm desk to reconfirm our flight to Liberia, and chanced to meet a young Methodist minister living in Lisbon for a year to study Portuguese before moving to Angola. Corliss Hansen and Dr. Robert Simpson were at the airport to meet Bishop Wicke, who was touring Methodist missions. Bishop Wicke had chatted with Jordan during the flight. After a night’s rest at the Hotel Embaixador, we were happy to spend a day with the Hansen family, where we replenished Elizabeth’s bottles of formula and enjoyed lunch with a young family embarking on an adventure similar to ours.

Excerpt from Beth’s journal: "We left Lisbon about noon on Sunday, June 22, after being waked up at