In Liberia: Tomb of Global Ekklesia editor’s mother wrecked; corpse buried atop uncle’s grave

By James Kokulo Fasuekoi|Editor-Publisher/editor@globalekklesia.com

Just months before I departed Liberia in 1999, The News published a special feature written by me titled: Liberians Stealing from the Dead, (Vol.9. No.169, 08 April 1999). My article sought to expose the enormity of grave robbery in Monrovia, by petty and hardened criminals. But little did I know graveyard thievery would only grow worse in the years to come. Below is my family’s tragic story from the Caduman Cemetery in Johnsonville, Montserrado.   

In April and May of 2021, I was back in Liberia, trying to reconstruct the grave of my late beloved Mom Kebehsuah Boiyea Kokulo. Her tomb is located in Johnsonville, a suburb of Monrovia, but had been shattered by some unknown people and elements of the grave could be seen scattered all over the place.

She had passed away during the afternoon of September 11, 2001 (the day jihadists attacked America). Because of the state of emergency in the U.S., plus a temporary ban on travel and flights in the days after the attack, I was unable to travel for her burial.      

Breaking news

Following the destruction of my mother’s tomb, believed to have happened around March 2021 (my birth month), one of our children in Monrovia, called and broke the painful news. He had made the discovery while he went to the cemetery to check and also clean around his grandmother’s grave, something he does routinely.

Photographs of the damages to the grave he wired me told it all and highlighted the gruesome nature of the attack. Whatever the motive, this act was absolutely an abomination, one that is difficult for any Christian to comprehend, or imagine that it happened in a land founded on “Christian Principles.”

My late Mother Boiyea, was lovely and kind to everyone including strangers, and feared to do wrong to any soul. As her first surviving child, she and I came a long way and kept a very strong bond-something one rarely sees between today’s children and their parents.

Hence, breaking the news of her sudden death to me became a herculean task for the family in Liberia, for they feared perhaps the worst reaction from me upon receiving such terrible news. 

Not even my late Uncle Joseph Z. Mulbah, with whom I lived through high school, could deliver the devastating news.

So, Mr. Mulbah went around, seeking help from Anthoney Quoi, a cousin and best friend of mine, who is more than a brother, to give me the sad news the next day, September 12.

One can only imagine how devastated I must have felt, viewing through those horrible photographs of the demolished tomb of my late mom. 

Meanwhile, it was suggested that we try and reconstruct the tomb as quickly as possible. The family expressed fear that swindlers would take advantage of the break-in and perhaps bury another dead in the spot if we delay. 

Night after night, amidst sleeplessness, I asked myself this question: “What else could I’ve done to avoid such a thing from happening?” 

The incident left me restless, prompting a visit to Liberia by me in April and that’s when I finally found peace in my heart, after landing and seeing the damaged grave first hand. 

Targeted?

Mother’s grave was completely demolished. Judging from the bad shape in which we found it, the assault appeared deliberate, and perhaps well organized by the doers. 

Though looters had succeeded in chiseling out tiles off many of the graves at that cemetery, sold them on black market, yet, most remained in good shape, except my mother’s, blown apart and pieces scattered everywhere.   

Now, whether such action was in any way connected to my professional job as a public service journalist for more than 30 years-period in which I wrote on everything including national politics, arts & cultures, plus the civil wars, and most recently, religion, I can’t tell for sure.   

But one thing for the most part is certain; the bulldozing of the tomb may not have anything to do with our Global Ekklesia publication. That’s because the attack and desecration happened a few months prior to our premiere publication.    

Hostage

Kebesuah Boiyea, the daughter of the great Flomo Fasuekoi of Gizema (in Lofa), was a hardworking lovely woman, with an impeccable character-far removed from national politics in the first place. 

Her sudden flight from her homeland in 2000-2001, like tens of thousands of Liberia’s northerners, had been prompted by a raging war between the LURD rebels and ex-president Taylor’s so-called “government forces.” Once they arrived at Bong-Lofa Saint Paul River displaced camp, Taylor’s guerrillas detained, and extorted money from mom and other war victims. 

Cash for ‘freedom’

At the St. Paul Riverside camp, the largest displace camp in that region at the time, Taylor’s men, accordingly, parceled both civilian women and men-fleeing the fighting-separately,  keeping them hostage, and demanded an unspecified amount of money from each before letting them to move on. 

It is said that those who didn’t have money to bribe Taylor’s fighters were kept at the camp under unbearable conditions and made at times to do hard labor. This camp was near Bong County’s military town known as Gbalatuah, more than about 150 miles north of Monrovia.

Working against time, I managed to wire my uncle some money and without any delay, he was off to the enslavement camp that became popularly known as “Waterside” where he found my mother plus my junior brother, Garbee, then paid for their “freedom” and the two were released. . 

Benevolent parents

Mother Boiyea and my late father, Kokulo Tokpa, otherwise “Zaza,” (name he used when he worked for Firestone, Liberia, during the 60s), were both strong farmers, trusted and respected people in Yeala, Lofa County. 

Also known for their charitable giving, they assisted our relatives, neighbors with food especially in the rainy season, the time when food becomes scarce in most households after the planting of rice.

Government soldiers and other workers such as custom collectors and their families arriving in Yeala during the 70s to pick up new assignments often sought seed-rice from my parents in order to start their first farms. 

At the sametime, some cocoa and coffee farmers in our town entrusted their monies to my father-a supposedly “civilized” man from the Sea coast-for safekeeping because, there wasn’t yet a bank even in the nearby regional city, Zorzor.

Hence, one finds such a grotesque act of the desecration of my mother’s tomb to be unfathomable to say the least. 

On arrival in Liberia, there was yet another family tragic story awaiting me, aside from what happened to my mother’s tomb. Some unknown persons had gone and buried a cadaver atop my late Uncle Albert Zaza’s grave. 

After their hasty burial, they quickly raised up the old grave by several feet-they didn’t place a mark on the head of the grave which is just a few yards from my mom’s.

When I inquired as to where to take a complaint concerning the two incidents, people residing near the cemetery said to me, “Don’t waste your time, because they won’t do anything about it.” They were actually referring to Monrovia City authorities, headed presently by one Jeff Koijee.

Mayor Koijee, since taking over city hall, has shown an insatiable appetite for national politics rather than keep the city clean. He came under stern criticisms from U.S. Ambassador McCarthy in past years for his inability to keep Monrovia tidy, although he was once a strong critic of Ellen Sirleaf’s government.

Teacher & principal

Uncle Cooper, a graduate of the Zorzor Rural Teachers Training Institute (ZRTTI), was a former teacher at Sumo Kota Public School, both campuses connected and located in the highway town of Fessibu, Lofa County. He later became principal for Yeala Public School in Zorzor District. 

Like my late mother, “Cook,” as I affectionately called him, abandoned his hometown, Yeala, and fled along with his wife and children because of the LURD-Taylor vicious war that swept across north-western Liberia like wildfire. 

While on the run with his family he developed poor health due to lack of good food, drinking water and medicine. He later died shortly after he arrived in Monrovia around 2002-03. 

Emancipation

The idea of Black emancipation in America, during the civil rights struggles led by Dr. Martin Luther King and others in the 60s and 70s, ran deep in Africa, especially in colleges and universities in places like Liberia-where the ACS resettled many Black Americans-thus, attracting men like my uncle, Cooper who kept the flames rolling.

Aside of his advocacy for the emancipation movement, aimed to set Black folks in the U.S. free from the yoke of segregation (actually apartheid, the same practised then in South Africans), Cooper kept the Negro Spirit alive by growing a wild afro as the Black Panthers in the U.S. 

Ironically, most immigrants from Africa arriving in the U.S. including writer, have often experienced the worst of discrimination not at the hands of White Americans but from fellow Black Americans.        

A ‘dog eat dog’

On the other hand, Liberia has become like a “dog eat dog” society and the situation has gotten worse with every incoming administration in the post-war nation. There’s always somebody around trying to take a bite off your heels if you aren’t watching or that you appear vulnerable! The reason could be twofold: 1) massive corruption in public offices; 2) the new “rulers” otherwise “newcomers”, most of whom hold no solid education or career and see “power” as their only last chance!     

For instance, a guy named “Anthony,” purported to be the current head of the family that owns the cemetery where my uncle and mom were buried, demanded a fee of U.S. $40.00 from me before he could let me rebuild mom’s tomb.

Anthony lives near the cemetery in an unfinished house, and he doesn’t provide customers like me any other services such as cleaning the graveyard, fencing or security. In fact, the entire cemetery-about the size of 3-4 football fields-is overgrown by hard bush all-round the year.

Probably in his late 40s, Anthony appeared to be raising a family including several kids. Unfortunately, like many of today’s Monrovia young men and women, he seems to lack formal education and worst still, he holds no particular career.  

When I confronted him and demanded he give a justification for such “fee,” seeing his family isn’t any help to us customers, that looters had already damaged and ransacked my mother’s tomb, he quickly offered to reduce the fee to ‘US$20.00.”

As a result, wayward youths involved with petty crimes in the city and known as “Zogos” around town, have now made the cemetery-like most others around the capital-a prominent home where they cook meals and also bathe.  

The day I went in with a contractor to start work on mom’s grave, we saw a male Zogo, sitting and defecating on top of a marbled tomb, near the southern edge of the graveyard.

A contractor recommended by a cousin to redo the tomb has charged U.S. $80.00, although the average day-labor in Liberia is actually US $5.00. With cement, crushed rocks, and sand ready, he and his assistant would finish the entire grave in less than a day.

Tribal sentiment still runs deep in the country and it dates back to the war era when tribes often had to band together to fight off common foes. When my cousin hinted that our “contractor” (half-Mandingoe & half Lorma) had an affinity with Lorma-my ethnic group, I paid him upfront (per my cousin’s advice) without asking further questions.

The man and his helper worked at the site that evening and promised they would return the following day and finish the job but he never returned.

When I called and confronted him he shut off his phone and I never heard from him up till now and was forced to find someone else to finish the work.

Cousin Augustine

Days later, as we were at the gravesite parking and securing the sand, rocks and blocks left behind by our “contractor”, Uncle Cooper Zaza’s older son, Augustine came by on a motorbike and greeted us. I had no clue he does building construction. When I put the matter to him he agreed to build the grave.

He transported additional sand and cement bags, as well as bags of tiles on his motorbike to the gravesite for the job. He finished the remaining work earlier than I had expected and when I asked how much was his charge? He laughed and remarked: “This is our mother’s grave, I don’t need a pay.”

At the time I left Liberia he may have been too young, and lived upcountry with his father, Uncle Albert Cooper Zaza. Meeting him in May was our first encounter. 

As I boarded Air France, on my way back to the U.S. in May, the question I asked him was, “What next do you want us to do about Uncle Cooper’s grave?” 

“Nothing!” he responded in a calm voice.

Whatever the situation, my meeting with Augustine left me with a strong feeling that despite all of the misfortunes happening in Liberia, there are still amazing and hospitable folks such as Cousin Augustine, ready to put a smile on someone’s face. 

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS BY AUTHOR