Momo Dudu’s memoir, Harrowing December ( 2018, Amazon), is the most recent of his published works. Other books by this Liberian writer include Musings of a Patriot: A Collection of Essays on Liberia (2014), a poetry anthology, When the Wind Soars (2016), and a novel, Forgotten Legacy (2017).
Harrowing December, which consists of 223 pages, follows Momoh Dudu’s journey from idyllic childhood, to his survival and escape from the Liberian Civil War, to his life as a refugee in Sierra Leone and Guinea, where a chance encounter changed his fortune, to present-day life as a university lecturer in business and finance in Minnesota, USA.
The memoir is divided into three parts. Part I (Chapters 1-8) starts with his childhood on a cocoa and coffee plantation which he describes as liberating because of “the open reaches of the wild…birds singing soul-touching melodies, monkeys howling from their perches in huge Mahogany trees, and natural waterfalls echoing from the heart of the jungle (p.7), all of which “lost [him] in childhood fantasies” (p.7). He talks about the difficulty his mother, the first wife of his father, had bringing children into the world, he being the first boy after several miscarriages. His parents wait until he is five years old before acknowledging that he is here in this world to stay. Being the oldest boy and heir, he is expected to take over his father’s responsibilities. However, this tradition is broken when an uncle arrives from Monrovia and persuades his reluctant father to allow Momoh to be educated in the city. The mother, “given her history of struggle with childbearing…was letting him go with a heavy heart” (p.25). However, we do learn later in the memoir that she gives birth to three additional sons. With the support of his uncle and family in Monrovia, he receives a good education and was attending university when his life was interrupted by Liberia’s unfolding civil war in 1989. Like many Liberians, he and his family flee to the safety of the interior counties and across the border to neighboring countries. In his case, it is Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Chapters three to ten, the end of Part I and the beginning of Part II (chapters 9-14), chronicle the flight, first to the hinterland, which remained untainted by the civil war for a brief time. However, the heartless destruction of life and property forces the family to flee across the Liberian border. During that time …. “being Mandingo or being classified as one, was tantamount to a death sentence” (p.57), and… “girls were now the rebels’ property …sex slaves” (p.57). Or “rebels were looking for…any reason, to kill someone” (p.61). Life in exile becomes a misery as those in charge of their safety are “lowly paid gendarmes—Guinean military police—…eager to augment their paltry incomes (p.99) and misappropriate “food ration distributions” (p.99). Some of them “become guards to UNHCR and Red Cross personnel” (p.99). They lord over the unfortunate and misuse their position of power. “They [act] like bloodhounds always ready to pounce on refugees at the command of their handlers” (p.99). All in all, staying alive across the borders and avoiding starvation in refugee camps becomes a struggle.
Part II (chapters 9-14) relates Momoh’s journey from Guinea to the USA. It starts with a talk with Laura Marks just after he is promoted from “registrar to Vice Principal at the International Rescue Committee (ICR) sponsored Gueckedou Refugee High School” (p.113). The conversation “about the desire of many of us—refugees in the camp—to pursue further education abroad,”(p.113) later leads to him to sitting an exam and writing an essay which enables him to win one of two spots at Marymount Manhattan College in New York.
After overcoming unexpected culture shocks (different climate, social, cultural, financial and new, technical environment), Momoh begins to adapt with the help of a number of women (chapter 11) who step into his life, one after the other. They play a role in smoothening his path on the road to life in America. If he had lost some faith in humanity during the war and his time in exile, it is these women who help to restore it. The most influential one was Mary Ann Schwalbe whom he describes as plucking him…” out of the jaws of despair in the desolate refugee camps in the jungle of Guinea” and placing him “on a path of hope and prosperity” (115). He later mentions that Mary Anne Schwalbe and his parents “got to know each other…on a trip to Liberia…. My parents, in turn, gave [her]…a traditional African gown—in appreciation of her generosity and humility” (p.158).
Book III (Chapters 15-18), entitled “Enduring Life Lessons” fills us in on Momoh’s journey to love (his wife), his mourning the death of loved ones, and life lessons he has learned through his experiences. It details his loss of two brothers during the war, the loss of his uncle, who was like a second father, and the loss of his patron, Mary Ann Schwalbe. He leaves Liberians, as well as the reader, with parting advice. “We must turn our backs on greed, selfishness, primitive sentiments, prejudices, and all such vices…. we must exploit our commonalities…demonstrate that we can rise above all self-interest and identity politics to propagate political, tribal, and religious tolerance and gender equity” (p.218).
One of many things we can take away from the memoir is that despite fear, degradation, loss, division, and “the beast” we might become during our personal “harrowing Decembers,” we must be willing to pull ourselves back from the brink of inhumanity.
Some parts of the book took me back to my own experience at the beginning of the civil war in 1989 in Liberia. My family escaped much earlier that Momo Sekou Dudu did and dodged the worst of its horrors. We had the opportunity to start over again from nothing and we did. We did not dwell on what we lost.
Harrowing December takes us deep into the jaws of war; a war from which Sekou Momoh Dudu was able to recuperate from. He lets us know we can do exactly that. We learn we can begin again from nothing. We learn that there are those willing to lend a helping hand if we show we are willing to help ourselves. We can create our own miracles if we show the willingness to take charge of our own destiny.
Althea Mark-Romeo
Caribbean educator and writer. Her most recent publication is The Nakedness of New (2018) which is available at Amazon.
No comments:
Post a Comment