Chapter Six

Kamalu, Sierra Leone 1998

A stranger doesn’t know a bad road.

—Krio Proverb

The Xaverian priest clicked off the mission’s short-wave radio and slumped back into the wooden chair. “Oh, Lord,” he whispered. “I cannot understand your ways, but I must adore them.”

The news disturbed him. Kamakwie had fallen to the rebels who had filled its streets with corpses and burned most of the buildings. Kamalu, only a few miles to the south, would likely be the next stop for the advancing rebels, and the bishop had ordered the Kamalu mission to be evacuated. The few units of ill-trained, disorganized government soldiers in Makeni sent to repel the rebels found themselves outnumbered, outgunned, and were now in full flight. Some government soldiers had deserted and joined the rebels who now controlled all territory to the north and east of the Kamalu mission

The priest glanced at the mission staff sitting around him and speculated on the best words to communicate the gravity of their situation. Likely, they had heard the horrific stories of the rebel atrocities. The stories that should make a difference in the way one thinks. Stories like the account of the seven Italian nuns who didn’t leave Benduga when they should have and were… He shuddered involuntarily.

“Father Ambrose?” Sister Theresa said. “Did I hear the Bishop correctly? We’re being ordered to evacuate?”

He was grateful that her voice had yanked him out of the downward spiral into the darkness inside himself. You cannot go there, to those dark places inside you. That is a bad road.

“Yes,” he said. “The situation appears to be much worse than even the last time the rebels came through our district. We must reach Port Loko tonight, then move on to Freetown. Freetown is our only sure hope of safety. The RUF could arrive anytime. Likely Makeni itself will soon fall.” Makeni was the capital of the Northern Province. Father Ambrose guessed that most of the residents there had already fled to the bush.

“Perhaps we can stay and reason with the rebel leaders,” Sister Agnes said. “This mission has been here for so many years. The situation might even reverse itself. Surely Christ will protect us.”

Sister Agnes was the workhorse of the mission, the type of woman who could be made a saint after her death. She was a Joan of Arc full of ideals and possessed an energy even the heat and humidity of Sierra Leone couldn’t lessen. She seemed immune to any discouragement or even disease. It seemed incredible to him that the malaria and other tropical diseases that typically plagued newcomers had left her alone. He knew of at least four priests who had died of disease here. Perhaps Christ protected her in a special way.

The priest raised his eyes to the crucifix fastened to the wall above the radio and studied the sacred, wounded form of Christ. Handless images of Xaverian priests and Lutheran ministers and the savagely murdered Muslim Imam flashed into his mind like a PowerPoint slide presentation. Will you protect us from the RUF? he asked the Christ. Why should we receive better treatment than others who have fallen into rebel hands? Had Sister Agnes expressed her faith or her naiveté? Had she been in Sierra Leone long enough to know? I must choose my words carefully.

“No, Sister,” he said. “Perhaps, once, some time ago, the RUF leaders were men with ideals and virtue. But now… Papa has done his work well. The good men are gone from his organization. He has conjured up a mindless, vicious beast, and that beast walks this land. A voracious, ungovernable beast, like the devil himself. An army of monsters, a horde of demons incarnate in the bodies of drug-crazed little boys. Soon they will come. No, Sister, we must leave.”

You sound like an apocalyptic monk, he told himself. Maybe you’re suffering from a fever relapse. Yes, it must be the malaria again that is making you talk this way—like a crazy man.

Cautiously, Sister Theresa asked, “Could we buy protection from them?”

“That too was once a possibility,” Father Ambrose said, “in the days when the rebels were satisfied by our pledge of support and a bribe of a bag of rice or a jug of palm wine. But now their tastes and desires are not so easily pacified. Since they possess enough power to simply take what they want, they are impatient with negotiation. And their demands are greater now. They know they can act with impunity, so they fear and respect no one. They are men governed by a strange logic of violence.”

“Perhaps we should cross into Guinea?” Sister Agnes said.

“No. We cannot go to Guinea,” he said. “The road is bad now. The refugee camps are too close to the border. The RUF have already attacked the Moola and Tassin camps near Forécariah.”

Guinea, only twenty-five miles north of Kamakwie, already hosted an influx of over 250,000 refugees from Sierra Leone and that land’s government did not wish the burden of more. In addition, the RUF controlled all border posts, even the bush paths into Guinea. Guinea was not an option.

Father Ambrose could tell the sisters were waiting for him to explain further, but his head had clouded over, and he did not feel the explanation would be worth the effort. “We must go to Freetown, and even that journey will be precarious.” Freetown was ninety miles away. By American standards, not too great a distance, but in Africa, ninety miles can be a very long and dangerous journey.

“Will we be safe even in Freetown?” Sister Agnes asked.

Father Ambrose reached for her hand, wrapped his own around it, bowed his head and prayed, Lord, protect this woman. He released her hand and looked her in the eyes. “Yes, Sister, we will be safe in Freetown.”

Sister Agnes returned his gaze and shook her head.

She senses my inner terror. She is perceptive. I must wear the mask more carefully. But he knew she had silently made a valid point. Conditions had changed for the worse much faster than anyone thought possible. The RUF were weary of their existence in the bush and their juggernaut had been relentless, and so far, unstoppable. Realistically, Freetown might soon fall under RUF control. Once they possessed Freetown, they would have total control of Sierra Leone. They will not be content until they possess it all. Until they destroy it all.

His mind drifted to the two American journalists who died last month in an RUF ambush. The pair had stopped to visit with him on their way to the front. He fed them, then warned them of what lay ahead.

In spite of the danger, the reporters refused to return to Freetown, bribing their drivers to take them closer and closer to the front. “If there’s no picture, there’s no story,” one had said. The two reporters possessed the careless fearlessness of men who had often escaped death, having already covered the war in Sierra Leone for months.

As it turned out, their luck ran out, and their dedication and sacrifice was for nothing. Wasted. The American editors who had commissioned them had not published a single story they had written, even after both reporters were killed. America’s mind seemed to be focused on other things. The nation’s media-guided apathetic conscience was permeated with indifference too deeply seated to be rattled by the deaths of two reporters.

Probably, someday someone would find the reporters’ videos, their notes, their photographs, and their story would be told and the world will be shocked for one brief news program, shocked that editors and businessmen would have ignored this heart-rending tale of two men in search of truth. And a book will be published and perhaps a movie made, and many people will increase their wealth as a result, but the citizens of Sierra Leone would continue to be poor and oppressed and the cruel men will continue to roam the land with impunity. And more reporters seeking for the truth would come, and the same story would be replayed, but not told. At least, not truly told.

Father Ambrose had retrieved the reporters’ bodies, radioed news of their deaths to the authorities and newspapers, administered last rites, and buried them temporarily in the mission’s cemetery until someone could come for their bodies—if anyone would come. He would have to leave their bodies here. Perhaps he should hide or move their grave markings until he could return. In this land, sometimes even the dead cannot abide in peace.

“Father?” Sister Theresa said.

The priest shook his head, again willing the cobweb thoughts of violence, death, witchcraft, and the future to clear his mind, but they clung—web-like, dirty. He felt his thoughts whirl like a dark vortex, sucking his concentration down into those feared dark places inside him.

“We must hurry,” he said. “God be with you all.” He rose and moved to his study, tossing the mission’s records, his journals, and his beloved books into a wooden carton. He stuffed his laptop into its carrying bag and slung it on his shoulder. The sisters and staff remained in their chairs as if in shock. He clapped his hands to wake them from their introspection. “Brothers! Sisters! Hurry!”

After he dropped his personal belongings into the back of the mission’s Toyota truck, he loaded the mission’s radio. Then he strolled through the mission grounds in order to check on the progress of their exodus. He paused and gathered a handful of flowers from the garden Brother Thomas had worked so hard to create and maintain, and he laid the bouquet at the foot of the wooden cross in the outdoor chapel.

Father Ambrose bowed his head and prayed for the mission’s safety. He thought of other villages the RUF had ravaged, and he prayed they would be on the road soon. So little was left in Sierra Leone. “Concordia res parvae cruscunt,” he whispered, almost like a prayer. “In harmony small things grow.”

Father Ambrose picked up the flowers and lifted them to his nose, inhaling the rich sweet fragrance, then in depression and bathos, clutched the flowers to his breast. The Church had been the people’s last hope, the only trusted point of reference among the converts, and now she had failed. Progress had been made for a short while, but now all that work seems to have been for naught.

Frustration gnawed at his gut like a hungry parasite and his head spun. Why had he even come to Sierra Leone? Did he come here of his own will or because of the Church’s orders? Had he been driven to this land by the proverbial white man’s burden? He could not remember.

Like Ezekiel the prophet, he faced north, staring into the darkening bush like one of Hawthorne’s Puritans afraid of the forest. “Neither I nor the Church can save Sierra Leone,” he said to nothing and to no one.

He raised his fist and shouted, “I came here to help you find Christ, to find a solution to your poverty, ignorance, suffering. But there is no solution. How lost can a nation become? How far into the darkness can men go?”

A few of the workers looked his way, then resumed their preparations. He did not know what his parishioners thought about his words or what they really thought, felt, or knew about the darkness.

The rebels knew the darkness. They were men with dim consciences whose eyes had grown used to it. Humans without humanity who ventured into the darkness as far as they could go, farther than humans should travel. To such evil men, there are no boundaries, no stopping points, no limits. He remembered how as a child he would say to his brother, “Eat your heart out.” Now that flippant childhood idiom stung his conscience because he knew it to be something that a man could do. Something even a child could do. Something RUF boy soldiers had done.

He heard gunfire in the distance, and the sound chilled him. It was not the reports of the archaic, worn-out shotguns and bolt action rifles used by local hunters, but the distinctive rattling sound of AK 47’s. Toward Kamalu, an orange halo now ringed the tree line.

“No, God, please not again,” he said. He ran in panic to join the others. They had almost finished packing when the first of the rebels strolled onto the mission grounds, herding Kamalu’s citizens in front of them.