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Africa Journal: Going Rogue
Gurley Street, Monrovia, Liberia.
Imagine you didn’t have squat. You live in a dirt-floored, corrugated zinc-roofed hut. You work and save and you finally get the opportunity to get a little something for yourself; let’s say an el cheapo transistor radio, so you can listen to the VoA or Liberia Today. Then somebody steals the little gimcrack you spent months saving for. How would you react?
Back in the ’80s, Liberians didn’t react well. When the call “Rogue!” went out, people came boiling out of their huts and shacks to chase, apprehend, and mete out rough justice to the rogue.
Thus, it was at/about 14 years of age, I first saw a man die by violence.
All the third-country kids (get of the diplomatic corps, international businessmen, and the Lebanese diaspora) went to the American Cooperative School in Liberia. About 200 kids, K-12, from 30 different countries. The ACS was located on Old Road, next to the Old Road Fish Market, where we’d buy road-baked fish (four for a dollar) that was amazingly good, once you batted the flies off.
There was a traditional big yellow school bus that would truck all the embassy kids from “embassy row” (Sekou Torre Ave.) to school and back. I’d been in-country for about two weeks and our bus was trundling home one afternoon down Old Road, when we had to stop for an insta-mob; hundreds of people shouting “Rogue!” The subject of the yelling was a 20-something looking guy, and the crowd was knocking the snot out of him right by our bus. I don’t know what the guy had done—or had allegedly done—but the crowd was relentless.
My bus-mates and I hung out the windows with a bird’s eye view of the mob beatdown. Eventually, a soldier showed up to take control of the situation. Wearing a ragtag uniform, literal hobnailed boots, and carrying an AK-47, he started putting his boots to the rogue. After a couple of minutes (seconds?) of mercilessly kicking the rogue, the soldier handed off his AK to a member of the crowd (!) and swinging both arms for momentum, he jumped up, and came down.
Most of my bus-mates screamed, some immediately puked; I just remember thinking that brains didn’t look at all like I imagined they would. Instead of the light, fluffy grey that textbooks depicted, they were dark, storm-cloud grey, with maroon and purple whorls. Yuck.
About a year-and-a-half later, I had Liberia dialed in. I knew all the places a young man could go to get into trouble. I knew and spoke the local patois. I had a deep love of the people.
One weekend evening, me and my buddy Dave were stumbling down Gurlry Street (the Monrovian red-light/bar district) getting ready to shamble home before curfew — not a parental curfew, but the citywide curfew Master Sergeant Samuel K. Doe had put in place upon taking the reins of state via coup d’etat. We’d usually go to Dave’s house, which was on the beach, walk into the ocean fully clothed, and scrub down with sand to eliminate any olfactory evidence of our misadventures. Then we’d hang our clothes over the wall of his house, and sit on the beach until we were dry enough and sober enough to tiptoe into the house and rack out.
On our way off of Gurley Street, a guy started pestering us: asking us for money, offering to show us “de bes’ places” (Dude, I’m wearing a dashiki and talking to you in Liberian English — do I look like I need a tour guide?), and generally being a pain in the tuchus. Finally I wheeled on him and deployed “Ey, my man, how you can be humbugging me so?” He punched me in the chest, and took off running. Instinctively, I lit out after him. I knew within a step what he’d done.
Dad, on his travels, had picked up gold jewelry for my brother and me. The reason, he said, was that someday we might have to make it over a border or back to the Embassy unsupported; cash may not work, but gold will. I can’t remember what my brother got, but I’d gotten a lion’s claw, encased in a golden web, on a gold necklace. On the first stride of my chase, I knew he’d stolen my chain when I didn’t feel it thump against my chest. Son of a…
I chased him for a couple blocks, right behind him (y’know, it’s only after starting these Africa Journals that I realized how much running I had to do back in the day). He finally figured he wasn’t going to outrun me, close behind him and screaming “Rogue!” at the top of my lungs, and turned off onto an eroded dirt alley. I could see the end of the alley ahead of us. Half of the back end was occluded by a white, clapboard building. The other half led into one of the intermittent strips of jungle one found all through the city. He hits that jungle, he’s gone.
I upped my speed, reached out and grabbed the waistband of his trousers, picked him up, and ran us both into the white clapboard at full speed. It’s a technique. We both scrambled to our feet. I don’t know about him, but my bell was a little rung. He grabbed me by the throat with his free, not-holding-my-damn-necklace hand. Bad decision, wasted effort. Let me show you how it’s done. I punched him in the throat and he dropped; the paroxysms of a traumatized trachea can be pretty debilitating. I stomped on his exposed, palm-up forearm, and recovered my necklace.
Just before I could turn and make my egress out of the alley, a hand that was about the size and weight of a canned ham fell on my shoulder and turned me around. The owner of the hand was huge and hugely muscled. He didn’t have a shirt on, just a leather vest. And he had a leather eye patch over one eye. A frikkin’ leather eye patch.
Please don’t be his big brother, please don’t be his big brother…
“Ey, my man, t’enk you for catching the rogue.”
Not a problem, sir.
About then Dave came stumbling around the corner. “What’re we doing?”
We getting the hella outta here.
Published in General
Wow, great story. You sure have led a more interesting life than I have.
Wow, Boss, great story! I haven’t had that much action/excitement in my whole life.
Dunno, RA. I never got (socially) entangled with Colombian drug cartels…
Ha, Sometimes there can be a little too much excitement.
Bookmarked, Boss…I’ll be back!
Another fine story, Boss. What a life you’ve led.
I keep thinking what a great place Ricochet is for exploring a world of places, people and adventures that I – truly- did not know existed (or could even make up.)
And now I need an anxiolytic ;)
Thanks, Trink. And thanks for “anxiolytic”–I didn’t know that word, I really on “whisky-olytics.”
Thanks, too, @garymcvey.
Weird. But a representative sample.
UPDATE to Comment #5, above: Whoa, Boss! I’ve heard of internships, but yours are phenomenal: Later training must’ve been a comparative walk in the park. (I’ve often thought about “going rouge” – wearing a bit of blush – but that’s another story.) :-D
The past few weeks I’ve found myself growing terribly frustrated with my work of helping those without squat. My frustration has turned into anger as politics have entered every discussion of solution — and one thing I identify with Conservatives the absolute most is Politics is the opposite of solution.
Until today I’ve been trying to dam the flood of the filthy waters of politics from entering what I thought to be untainted waters in my prideful, foolish mind. But just as I realized that was not only impossible it was delusional as I’m standing in nothing but brackish political water — a wise man told me of the options I had in healing:
“Even if it’s the nastiest, slimiest, smelliest swamp water you’ve ever encountered, irrigate.”
You’re a treasure, Sir.
This is just to let you know that I give up. You have more (good) stories than I do. Goodbye cruel
worldRicochet.Love it.
Indeed it is. Effective too.
Say it ain’t so, Sñr. Caballéro! You’re gonna give the Church-Lady-Marine an attack of the vapors – good thing I’m already sitting down. OMVVG! You’ve still *plenty* of good stories; they just can’t see the light of day for decades – if ever. :-)
I beg to differ, there, Devil Dog.
OK – due the encouragement, support, and insistence of nearly 100% of my fan base, no White Flag as my current main-squeeze (Dido) might say.
*But from now on just to be somewhat competitive I’m going to have to start making [redacted] up.
**Actually, already started with the Dido comment above.
*** Note to all members of the ST fan base: Thanks to both of you for your continued support and monthly dues installments.
Once again, brother, you gon’ make me blush. And, uh, you do realize I’m not smart enough to come up with that phrase as a metaphor, right? I mean, I’m glad it helped out, but that weren’t me, that was serendipity.
You do realize, mi Colonel, that in about eight years, we’re going to have to collaborate on a project. Here’s the pitch: intrepid counter-terrorism guy bumps into a frustrated-but-not-yet-jaded counter-narco guy down in LATAM. Despite some initial friction (they both got “top dog” issues and they’re from different services), they figure out that their target set is the same because (Ta Da!!) Bad Guys don’t keep to the strict little funding categories our government allocates to those trying to stop them. Hilarity and hijinx ensues. And lots of explosions; and I’m pretty sure there’ll be some shooting people in the face at close range. But, if we do it right (“write”), the gentle reader will be aching for that particular dude to get shot in the face at close range–and then the next.
Just saying. Possibilities.
We won’t have to share a toothbrush will we?
What? There’s a certain value in being the most recent story posted. You can still win. (-:
Boss I have two rules, both given to me by my Grandpa: Miracles only happen to those who look for them — otherwise they’re known as coincidences. And (CoC non-compliant) Don’t sweat the petty stuff and go pet the sweaty stuff.
Also, having sex with a skinny woman is like wrestling a bag of antlers.
Eh, the little skinny ones break too easy. It’s the one’s who could pass the building code for a mason-built stand-alone latrine facility that’ll bust you up…
Great stuff!
Of course not. Pero, coffee-making/drinking best practices rules need to be agreed upon, and no shooting at each other unless there’s a really, really good reason.
Why didn’t they cast one of you to play Mitch Rapp?
Yikes!
Too old, too broke, too many scars. That’s why we have Ben Affleck on retainer to do the heavy cinematic lifting.
What? You think me and @simontemplar don’t have a piece of residuals for The Accountant?
Affleck?…Pshaw! Armor with dents and dings just proves that those wearing it know what it’s for – and aren’t afraid to use it, just sayin’. I dare Affleck to look either of you in the eye, or shake hands. Adam Driver, otoh…
I dunno but if I haven’t rung you up in 10 years to help me run the country — I’m gonna ring you up to help me write a screenplay to make us filthy rich.