HELENE COOPER: IN SEARCH OF A LOST AFRICA: PART 1

During my growing-up years in Liberia in the 1970s, I had made the descent to Robertsfield more than a dozen times, usually when returning home from summer vacations. I sat so close to the plane window that it clouded from my breath. I would look down for the landmarks that told me I was home: the rubber trees at Firestone, the squat, red-clay-tinged whitewash buildings of Schieffelin, the three-headed palm tree near our house at Sugar Beach. I would strain and squint to try to see the two mansions that made up the Cooper family compound at Sugar Beach.

 

Now, three decades later, I certainly couldn’t see what remained of our house. From the air, it was all bush and sea, like a set for some movie of Africa 100 years ago. My hands clenched into fists. For 23 years I hid in America, remaking myself into a nondescript black American woman. I polished up my American accent so that I sounded as if I were from New York. I dumped my Liberian passport, got a job as a journalist, covered the Florida presidential recount and the Sept. 11 attacks and even embedded with the Third Infantry Division to cover my country’s invasion of Iraq. And with each new accouterment of my ever-evolving image, I further shed Liberia.

 

Until now.

 

I was going back, finally doing something I should have done a thousand different times since that night, May 16, 1980, when my mother, my younger sister, Marlene, and I got on a Pan Am flight at Robertsfield and fled the place that my great-great-great-great-grandfather helped found.

 

The memory of that night is still very clear: how we sloshed through rain puddles as we ran across the tarmac to the plane. How we sat in the artificially perfumed cabin of the DC-10, strapped to our seats, fearfully eyeing everyone who boarded after us, terrified that the soldiers would come and pull us off the plane. How I pressed my face to the window as we took off, imagining I could still see Eunice where we had left her in the Robertsfield terminal.

 

Robertsfield came into view as the plane made its approach. Finally, I could see a few meager signs of civilization. Zinc rooftops. Corrugated shacks. Fittingly, it was raining, and I could almost hear the tink, tink beating on the zinc. My stomach clenched as we touched down.

 

I should have done this a long time ago.

 

Every time I got on a plane to fly to Geneva to cover trade talks as a journalist, or boarded a flight to London to visit friends for the weekend, or organized trips for myself up the Amazon River in Brazil, I should have instead been coming here, home, to Liberia.

 

I should have been coming home, to Liberia, to find Eunice.

 

 

 

 

ABOUT 150 YEARS BEFORE Eunice came to our house at Sugar Beach and into my life, a 33-year-old free black American man named Elijah Johnson set into motion the chain of events that would lead to the day that I, a privileged, almost-8-year-old “Congo” Liberian girl, acquired my new sister, Eunice, a not-so-privileged 11-year-old Bassa girl. That chain would eventually separate me from most black people in America, at the same time separating me from most black people in Africa.

 

In Liberia, we are called the Congo People — my family and the rest of the descendants of the freed American blacks who founded Liberia back in 1821. It is a somewhat derogatory term, used by the native Liberians after Britain abolished the slave trade and started seizing slave ships leaving West Africa and returning the captives to Liberia and Sierra Leone, whether they came from there or not. Since so many of the slave ships entered the Atlantic from the mouth of the massive Congo River, the native Liberians called the newcomers Congo People. Because the newly freed captives were released in Liberia at the same time that freed blacks were arriving in Liberia from America, all newcomers became known as Congo People.

 

We got the native Liberians back by calling them Country People — far more derogatory, in our eyes.

 

Elijah Johnson, my great-great-great-great-grandfather, was on the first ship that sailed from New York in 1820. Because of him, I would not grow up, 150 years later, as an American black girl, burdened by racial stereotypes about welfare queens. Nor would I have to deal with the weights of a sub-Saharan African girl, with a life expectancy of about 40 years, yanked out of school at 11 to fetch water and cook over a coal pot and rear children barely younger than herself.

 

Instead, Elijah Johnson handed me a one-in-a-million lottery ticket: birth into what passed for the landed gentry of Africa’s oldest republic, Liberia.

 

Elijah Johnson’s parents were freed by their owners, and Elijah could read and write. When he was in his early 20s, he joined the American army and fought against the British in the War of 1812. After the war, he signed up to board Liberia’s version of the Mayflower — the ship Elizabeth.

 

A number of powerful white men had for some time been considering a “back-to-Africa” movement — financing the “return” to Africa of free black Americans, and perhaps someday of all blacks. The American Colonization Society, after some years of preparation, decided to establish a colony in West Africa, and on a freezing, blustery Feb. 6, 1820, Elijah Johnson sailed from New York Harbor aboard the Elizabeth. Tall, with huge eyes, he set sail alongside 87 other black Americans to begin America’s first — and only — attempt at African colonization.

 

The white crew and white agents of the colonization society slept in their own quarters; the 88 blacks were in steerage, sleeping on mattresses made of cornhusks. Still, the atmosphere as the Elizabeth pulled up its anchors was buoyant and festive. Before they left, a white agent assembled all the black Americans before him and read from the Good Book, Deuteronomy 11. He told the settlers they were new explorers, paving the way for other blacks to follow. They were also missionaries, he told them, going forth to the Dark Continent to convert the heathens.

 

On March 9, 1820, they landed in Freetown, Sierra Leone, a bustling mass of people with sheep, pigs and chickens adding to the cacophony. The native West Africans stared at the motley group from the Elizabeth: black men and women dressed in Western garb, quoting the Scriptures.

 

Even though Britain had recently outlawed the slave trade, there was still plenty of trading in human cargo. It was hard for the new colonists from America to stomach, since they all thought they had left slavery behind for good when they left America. Instead, they saw captured Spanish and Portuguese slave schooners being hauled in, one after another, by the British. The captured schooners anchored right next to the Elizabeth and smelled foul, like a mixture of human waste and oil. The holds of the ships — where the slaves were kept — looked impossibly small. This was not what the colonists had come to Africa to see.

 

 

Why were Africans still selling their brothers and sisters to European slave traders? The new settlers took this as another sign of their superiority to the native Africans.

 

The group spent almost two years trying to get various African kings and chiefs to sell them land. The Africans were not easily swayed, suspecting — correctly, it turned out — that the black Americans, once ensconced, would not cede to the authority of the village chiefs. The Africans also didn’t want the new black colonists interfering with their slave trade. Still, the colonization movement plowed on. The American Colonization Society sent more ships, with fresh agents and more settlers.

 

Finally, on Dec. 12, 1821, the group went to Cape Mesurado and requested an audience with the local chief, King Peter. They offered him a bottle of rum and some tobacco as an inducement. King Peter hemmed, hawed and refused the request to buy land but made the crucial mistake of agreeing to meet with the American Colonization Society agents again.

 

The important meeting came a few days later in a palaver hut in King Peter’s village in Cape Mesurado. The king was angry at the continued efforts of the Americans, and he was prepared to refuse them again. Not this time. According to some accounts, the American agents threatened King Peter at gunpoint.

 

The following day, the king gathered several other African kings, representing the Dey and Bassa groups. The deal was struck 21 months after first landfall on the African continent. Cape Mesurado, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the inland tropical bush, about 36 miles long and 3 miles wide, was sold to the Americans for guns, gunpowder, beads, mirrors and tobacco.

 

The net value was roughly $300.

 

A century and a half later, my family had a house in Spain, multiple houses and farms in Liberia and a brand-new, custom-made 22-room house at Sugar Beach — 11 miles from the capital, Monrovia — that my father had built for him by Danish architects. I was almost 8 years old and had my own room. We were Congo royalty.

 

 

And I, princess that I was, could not be allowed to whimper alone in my new room all night hiding under my bedclothes from imaginary spirits. And so Mommee and Daddy went to the Country People and found me a sister.

 

EUNICE CAME TO SUGAR BEACH on a hot, muggy afternoon. After Mommee put out the word that her 8-year-old daughter needed a live-in playmate, Eunice’s mother, a Bassa woman of little means, was quick to respond. The rickety yellow taxi, its front corrugated in rust, came clattering down the dirt road to our house, hesitating briefly at the gate before driving up to the front.

 

“Wha’ you mean some girl just coming here to stay w’ people?” I had demanded of Mommee earlier, after she let it drop that I was getting a new sister. This was not happy news. I did not appreciate, at all, the idea of having my turf invaded by a foreigner. Having my baby sister, Marlene, younger than I by five years, around was bad enough.

 

So I was sulking in the TV lounge, with one ear cocked for the sounds of vehicles approaching Sugar Beach, when I heard the clackety clack of a car engine as it rattled into the yard. I raced to Marlene’s window. From my perch there, I saw three people getting out of the taxi.

 

First there was a woman in full Bassa attire: lapa skirt, a bright red shirt and a head-tie scarf. She looked nervous. Next was a nondescript man, wearing gray wool trousers and a shirt. He reached into the taxi and pulled out a gangly looking girl also wearing a lapa. Long, skinny legs. She looked terrified.

 

Mommee went out onto the porch to welcome them, and I followed to investigate, peering at the girl. She stood with one arm behind her back, holding the other arm. She looked to be about 11 years old. She had a high forehead and huge eyes; between the pair of them you could hardly see anything else on her face. She stood with her legs slightly apart, but even so I could tell that she was bowlegged, a plus in my mind, since I longed to be bowlegged, too. She didn’t look happy to be there.

 

“My name is Helene Calista Esmeralda Esdolores Dennis Cooper,” I announced. I was wearing Wrangler jeans that my father had bought for me in the U.S.

“My name is Eu-u-u-u-unice Patrice Bull,” she stuttered.

 

We inspected each other while Mommee and Eunice’s mother talked. For all that Eunice’s mother would miss her daughter, this wasn’t really much of a decision. Native Liberians routinely jumped at the chance to have their children reared by Congo families. And in Liberia in 1974, it was the chance of a lifetime to leave a poor Country family and move in with the Coopers.

 

Eventually, Mommee turned to me. “Show Eunice her room,” she said.

 

I had no idea what it was like to live in a shack or even that Sugar Beach’s opulence might be a shock to Eunice, but I was more than happy to show off our custom-built house.

 

Eunice trailed after me as I turned and walked through the paneled tunnel downstairs that lead to our recreation room. She took in Daddy’s bar, the playroom with our stereo set and the toy room with all of its dollhouses, teddy bears and games.

 

“Wh-wh-wha’ down deah?” she asked, pointing down the hall.

 

“Da’ de guest room,” I said.

 

“Da’ where I sleepin’?”

 

“No, you upstai’. Ma sister Janice duh sleep there when she come home from England,” I said, adding proudly, “she’s a been-to.”

 

This new girl had better be taking note that this was no flim-flack family she was moving in with, I thought. We had a sister who went to boarding school in England! Being a “been-to” in Liberia meant you had not only “been-to” America or England, but had also lived there.

Eunice trailed behind me as I glided up the stairs to present to her the middle level of our house, with its kitchen, dining room, music room and sunken living room. Finally, we headed to the top level, with the bedrooms, bathrooms and TV lounge.

 

I slid Eunice a sideways glance before I started “talking cullor” — Liberian slang for putting on airs by speaking with an American accent. “This is my mommee’s room and my daddy’s room,” I said, walking Eunice by my parents’ bedroom. “That’s my yucky sister Marlene’s room.” We continued down the hall. “And this,” I said with a flourish, opening the door to what would be Eunice’s bedroom, “is your room. You’re across from me. If you get scared at night, you can come sleep in my room.”

 

Eunice just walked into her room and sat on the bed. She looked as if she wanted to cry, so I left her alone.

 

 

 

FOR THE FIRST FEW MONTHS, Eunice and I circled each other warily. My parents and Marlene took an immediate shine to her — especially Marlene, whom Eunice treated like a precious baby doll. I, of course, was jealous. But after weeks of sulking in my bedroom at night listening enviously to Marlene and Eunice shrieking, laughing and playing silly games in Marlene’s bedroom, I dropped my cool act and joined the two of them. Within a year, it was as if Eunice had always been my sister.

 

One afternoon, Eunice and I were hard at work preparing for our roles in the re-enactment of the Battle of Crown Hill, part of our drama group’s play taking place during the annual Matilda Newport Day festivities. The play was scheduled for the coming weekend, a few days after the actual holiday.

 

Our drama teacher had told us to divide into two groups. “Who wants to be the Country People and who wants to be the Congo People?” she had asked.

 

It was always so hard to choose, because while the Congo People got to win the battle and shoot the Country People, the Country People got to die, and we had been practicing dying for a month now. Our vehicle was Juliet Capulet. Our stage was the yard in the back of the house at Sugar Beach.

 

“Oh hap-pay dagga!” Eunice said, holding a kitchen knife in front of her stomach, with her back to Mommee’s hibiscus bush.

 

“Hap-pee, Eunice! Not hap-pay! You gotta speak cullor!”

 

“Look, lemme hear my ear! I thought de people s’posed to be Italian self?”

“Da’ your business, then.”

 

She started again. “Oh happeeee dagger! This is my sheeef! There rust, and let me die!” With a bloodcurdling scream, Eunice “plunged” the back of the kitchen knife into her stomach, lurched around like a drunk and died, spectacularly.

 

Clearly, our Shakespeare-honed acting abilities demanded that we play the parts of dying Country People in the Battle of Crown Hill re-enactment. When we informed Mommee, she snorted. “That’s your business,” she said. “You all want to go get shot up by a cannon, it’s no skin off my back.”

 

In the years since Elijah Johnson and the other colonists first arrived in what would become Liberia, tales had been told and retold of the Battle of Crown Hill. In 1822, Johnson and the other settlers arrived by ship to Bushrod Island, a fertile tract along the St. Paul River near Mesurado Bay, determined to build their houses before the rainy season came. It was not to be.

 

Members of the Dey ethnic group, angry that their king had signed on to the $300 sale a month before, gathered in front of the boat brandishing swords and guns and forbade the group from landing. Johnson and the other colonists fled back across the river to regroup on Providence Island, an unhealthy, malaria-infested swampland, about two acres large.

 

Finally, in June 1822, Johnson and the colonists headed to the inland region of the Mesurado promontory. To the disgust of the native West Africans, they started cutting down trees and building houses and fortifications. And so was born Monrovia.

 

The Deys began sniper attacks on the colonists. Johnson responded by shooting back, killing a number of Deys. A British gunboat showed up on the coast looking for fresh water to supply the crew. The captain came ashore and offered to help the colonists fight the Deys if Johnson would cede a small piece of land to the British Empire and hoist the Union Jack flag. Johnson gave a point-blank refusal that would eventually be memorized by Liberian schoolchildren:

 

“We want no flagstaff put up here that will cost us more to get it down again than it will to whip the natives,” he said.

 

The Africans wanted the colonists gone. A variety of points were made at their war council. King Peter and King Bristol opposed an attack. The colonists were black people, they contended. They had a right to live in Africa.

 

Others contended that if the black colonists really wanted to reside in Africa, they should place themselves under the protection of the African kings. If left alone, that argument went, the colonists would, in a few years, try to master the whole place.