Footprints & Papa's Legacy

By Agnes Nyenopoh Dagbe

Footprints & Papa’s Legacy is a portion of my life story, a life story that has its ups and downs, the good, the bad,and the ugly as described in a movie I once watched. Footprints & Papa’s Legacy was intended for a multiplex, diversified audience: Western culture of USA and audience of third world country Liberia, West Africa, my birth country.The story begins with a child of famous village parentage: mom, the daughter of the town’s (Sasstown) famous Paramount Chief, regarded almost as a princess, a father taken away from illiterate parents and siblings to Nigeria by an educated uncle, and therefore the father was the only educated member of his family when he returned from Nigeria. He, a Methodist, married the famous chief’s daughter in the Catholic church, a Catholic priest officiating over the wedding. The union produced three children: Joseph, Elkanah, and me. Joseph being the oldest and Elkanah the youngest. There was a fourthchild who did not survive.Our village royalty ended when Papa brought us to Monrovia, the capital city of Liberia to stay. We were now attending school with grandchildren from the USA who settled in Monroviaand named the city Monrovia and claimed Monrovia to be their city. I with my brothers completed high school and tookup careers, nursing for me and accounting for my brothers.Meanwhile, Dad, a well-educated man, now a politician, member of the House of Representatives, wanted more for his children, for his two sons, not for me. Reason given: I was a girl, a female.In the early days, fathers were interested in the development of their sons and not their daughters. Their names lives on forever through their sons; on the other hand, daughters get married and drop their father’s name. The baton was passed to me because my brothers showed no interest to receive it. So when my frustrated father passed it down to me, I grabbed it and ran with it. University education in the US landed me a UNICEF and World Health Organization (WHO) supported job when I returned home: director of the Physician Assistant Program. A call from President William V. S. Tubman who was always interested in protecting his citizens helped me on my one-month stay in the USSR. The gracious welcome given me by Ambassador Peal and his wife Blanch in London onmy way from the USSR is a memorable treasure. The fake diplomat of the Guinea Embassy and what he tried to do to me in Paris is mentioned in Footprints & Papa’s Legacy. Meeting candidate J. F. Kennedy on Berkeley Campus was an exhilarating experience for me. The favors of Shad Tubman, the president’s son, while in Boston is also worth remembering.Has anyone ever invited you to the residence of the ambassador of your country then kicked you out for no reason?Read Footprints& Papa’s Legacy. Then there were the good Boston police officer that picked me up and carried my books. Can I forget the horse thief who was caught in the park putting my six-year-old daughter on his horse to whisk her away? And what about the Kenya student who left me on a San Francisco street, pushed me out of his car, it was 12 midnight.There is more. Read Footprints& Papa’s Legacy.My book includes the naked picture taken of me in my Moscow hotel room. A vision revealed my dad died twice before he physically died, and then there isthe prediction, Liberia’s civil war predicted in detail ten years before it happened.Writing one’s memories into a story for others to read is considered sharing your life with others to read and compare with their own, using your option to reject the bad and/or to embrace the good, hoping to learn from both.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781684564934

Book preview

Chapter ONE

Mom, Papa, and Children

Our parents deserve our honor and respect for giving us life itself. Beyond this they almost always made countless sacrifices as they cared and nurtured us through our infancy and childhood, provided us with the necessities of life and nursed us through physical illnesses and the emotional stresses of growing up.

—Ezra Taft Benson

You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.

—Desmond Tutu

It was a little past 3:00 a.m. when we arrived at our father’s house. According to the story, Papa had gone on a business trip when his wife, our mom, decided to pack us up and take us to her father’s house in another town to live. He returned from his trip a few days later and found an empty house with wife and children gone. Papa was furious. It seemed this was not the first time Mom had run off to her dad, but this was the first time she took us, the children, with her.

My father and my mom were married very young—Dad in his early twenties and Mom a teenager. Dad was Methodist; Mom, Catholic. They were married in the Roman Catholic church of Sasstown by a Roman Catholic priest. Mom being the daughter of Seyon Juah Nimeneh, the famous Paramount Chief of Sasstown, the marriage ceremony, I was told, was followed with a two-day festivity. Of the two, Papa was the educated one. He was Lay Leader of his church (the Methodist church) and a schoolteacher. Between them, they had four children. The first boy died, leaving three children—two boys and me, Joseph the oldest and Elkanah the youngest.

Getting us back from our mom was not easy for Papa. The civil war between the people of Sasstown and the Central Government in which Grandpa was identified as the principal leader resulted in his being captured, jailed for several years and released when he was considered too old to be a threat. Mom’s desire was to be near her dad in his senior years, now that he was back home, more especially at a time when her husband was frequently gone on official business. Her craving to be near her father was too overpowering for her. So, she decided to use the opportunity, in her husband’s absence, to pack up her children and leave. This created a very dangerous situation for our lives and for anyone going after her to take her children away from her. She was guided by heavy security. Papa hired men, paid them to walk several miles to find Mother, and convince her that it was in the best interest of her children to let them return to their father who was living in a safer town away from danger, the killing between government soldiers and the Sasstown men. The first two sets of men Papa sent, months apart, came back empty-handed without us.

Due to the tension between the people of Sasstown and government, making such errands was very dangerous and expensive. The men traveled by night for safety. We were returned to our father’s house by the third set of men early one morning after 3:00 a.m. We had been gone for almost a year and returned very sick. There were no health facilities in the town we had been living with Mother. We came with potbellies, swollen feet, jaundice, very weak, etc. Dad said it took about a month to treat our illnesses and get us healthy again.

My dad could not figure out or understand Mom’s frequent departures from their home to be with her father (Chief Nimeneh). True, he (Papa) was not a chief, but he was young, educated, loved her, and was doing all he could to provide a good life for her and their children (us). He had a good job and was in the process of starting a farm and raising cattle. Mother, on the other hand, was lonely with her husband away frequently. She had a lot of time on her hand and began craving her old life, life with adorations, and wanting to be Daddy’s little girl again. My father felt it was time for Mom to settle down, be serious, and help him raise their family.

It did not seem to be a compromise. So there was a split in the union, in the marriage. Papa retained his three children. He said after almost losing his children, he came to the decision to separate from his wife and concentrate on raising his children. He had his hands full: teaching, farming, an eye on politics, and three children without a mother. This must be where the decision to send each one of us to more stable homes began.

After some years, Grandpa died, thus leaving Mother fatherless. This means she was now fatherless as well as husbandless, a very lonely place to be in.

Like many well-meaning parents, our father looked to the future and would do all in his power to help his children grow up, become educated, and rise above the average standard of living, the lifestyle in his community at the time. We received home teaching until we were old enough to participate in formal schooling.

Starting in first grade, I began to attend the Catholic Mission School along with my older brother, Joseph. Elkanah, the youngest, later joined us. At the time, Catholic Mission School was the most highly rated school in Sasstown and around the Kru Coast. One of the unrelenting goals of the church, it seemed, was to ensure that every child attending the school became Catholic. The roll was called at church / Sunday school and any student who did not attend church on Sunday got a flogging with a rattan switch on Monday. As said earlier, Papa, who was married in the Catholic church and was now sending his children to the Catholic school, was a strong Methodist leader in his church and was determined his children would not become Catholic. Our father could not control the church policy. Students attending Catholic school had to attend Catholic church or get a flogging.

Papa could not protect us from the Monday morning beating, so we found a way to protect ourselves. We often sneaked out of the house every Sunday morning to attend the morning mass and tried to return in time to go to the Methodist church with Papa. A few times we got caught and were scolded and promised a beating if it was repeated. I don’t recall Papa ever beating me or my brothers at any time. The stern look on his face whenever you got out of line with him was usually sufficient to remind you not to repeat the mischief. In the case of attending Catholic church, we simply had to be careful not to get caught by him. Between a beating at school or punishment from Papa, we came to the conclusion that we would rather get punished or beaten by Dad than undergo a rattan beating by the priests on Monday morning.

My father was a hands-on parent when it came to the interest of his children. He was a doting parent, trying to compensate for the absence of our mother in our lives. With all the work he had to do to make a living, building a business, he still found enough time to spend with us. He helped us with our studies, and we got to bed on time. Like most working Liberians, Dad had domestic workers that took care of home chores such as cleaning, cooking, and laundry. Every evening we had studies, not just going over homework, but keeping us one grade ahead of our schoolwork. For instance, if I were in second grade at school, I was in third grade at home. This was the same for each one of us. This strategy helped keep us ahead of our classmates. Teachers and students thought we were exceptionally smart, but that was not necessarily true. We just had an amazing man for dad, a dad who loved his children and did his part to help them become the best they could be!

We enjoyed our early childhood years with Papa occupying the role of fatherhood and motherhood. I loved lying on his chest, falling asleep, and waking up later in my own room under my covers. The interaction gave me the feeling of oneness with my father. One evening while enjoying our usual suppertime, I suddenly began to choke and having a problem breathing—a fish bone stuck in my throat, a bone big enough to slow down my breathing! Papa immediately sprang into action, applying whatever first response skills he had: slid his fingers down my throat and in a few seconds got the fish bone out followed with much bleeding. From that point on, Dad made sure my food was free of bones.

Unlike most girls, I never knew the luxury of a mother to talk to or to teach me about important feminine things. The situation that persuaded Papa to separate from my mom probably hurt him more than he let on. Later in life, he summed it up this way to me: Your mother was more focused on being Chief Nimeneh’s daughter than she was in settling down with me for us to work together and build a future for our family. Well, I simply took him at his word. He later made a wise decision: remarrying and filling the void in his personal life.

I’ve already explained that Papa was self-sufficient. One measure of that was that he had a well-stocked community store, good wealth of livestock, and a large rice farm. Then there was what could be called a very bad season: his cows were dying, three to five a week. No one knew what they were dying from, what was killing them. Looking back, I can simply guess that it might have been some type of plague. The strange unexplainable death could not hold back many people in the community from trying to get their hands on the dead cows to eat. They thought it was feasting time for them. They refused to heed to Papa’s instruction to have the dead beasts buried. They continued to prevent the herders from burying the dead cows. Nor was anything happening to those who were eating the meat of the dead cows. Later, Papa began to think that perhaps people in the community were killing the cows out of greed or jealousy. So he decided that the next cow that died, we, too, would keep it for food. His herders followed the new order: no more dead cows for the community. The very next cow found dead was cleaned, seasoned, and put on our kitchen dryer.

That day, my brothers and I went to school, no doubt dreaming of the feast we would have upon returning home. It turned out our dream would never become a reality. On our way from school, we saw a huge blaze of fire. As we came closer, we couldn’t believe what we were seeing. It was our house on fire! Our kattah home burning down to nothing along with the meat.

The outhouse where the cow meat was prepared and laid out on a dryer to dry for preservation was only a few yards from the main house. Since we lived near the beach, on this windy day it was very easy for the wind to carry the blaze from the outhouse to the main house and everything else nearby. Fortunately, because we live some distance away from other houses in the community, no other house was burned from the fire.

Papa was at work when our house burned down. One of our neighbors must have gone to his office to tell him. He came looking for us. Someone told him where we were, and he came to check us out. One of his friends in the neighborhood had taken us to his house. When he was sure we were okay, he left and went to see the burning house. One cannot imagine the emotions bubbling within him looking at years of work swallowed in flames. He returned to where we were and had us taken to another house. He must have had more than one house. Because of the fire, we never got to eat any of the cow meat. The frightening reality was that shortly after the burning down of our house, some of our neighbors in the community started dying, dropping dead, as the cows did. They were the people that had eaten the cow meat. This means the cows had been sick with an undiagnosed plague. We lost some of our friends and schoolmates as a result of the massive death toll. It was obvious my family was rescued by divine intervention.

Meantime, Papa was making more steady progress. His circle of friends and acquaintances was expanding. There were the Grisbys, the Davises, and the Greens in Greenville, Sinoe County. In addition, there was Richard A. Henries, then the speaker of the House of Representatives of Liberia. Other friends and acquaintances lived in Harper, Cape Palmas, Maryland County. With this circle of social and political network expanding, Dad’s public service was turning into a life of frequent travel from home, Sasstown. He clearly needed to organize his priorities, get his children in a more stable home. With a wife in his life again, he seemed relaxed and cheerful. His wife was obviously giving him the moral support he desperately needed to carry out his responsibilities. It must have been pleasant to be able to come home after work and have a partner you can share your day’s experience with.

Papa was raised and educated in Nigeria by an uncle who also lived in Nigeria. In those days and to some extent even now, family members have often reached out to one another to share available resources.

With Papa’s help, Papa’s younger brother Uncle Amos, received the required training and was willing to help manage the farm, the livestock, and the only well-supplied community store at the time. Papa placed two of his brother’s daughters in stable homes with friends in Greenville, Sinoe County, to receive formal education. Papa also made some attempt to get Aunt Mwasnoh into school in Sasstown, she was many years the youngest. Aunt Mwasnoh would later confess that even though her brother tried his best, she did everything to frustrate his efforts. In addition to his siblings, Dad helped raise and educated the son of his first cousin. That son