Note: If you have not read Hairy Legs you may want to do that first.  This story is the second part of that trip.

If I asked you what was the most memorable trip or the most difficult journey you have taken, what would you say?  Maybe you had a lengthy delay, canceled flights or some other challenging issue.  Sometimes a dream vacation can become a nightmare. We can’t control every factor.  In the dozens of countries I have traveled in I would list my “escape” from Liberia during the civil war as among the most stressful.  The word “escape” may be a bit dramatic but it felt that way at the time.

On my first trip to Africa, I worked in Nigeria and Ghana and it was there that I got my official African name. After a long pastor’s seminar, I was given a traditional African robe and christened “Duweh” which means “mighty elephant.”  Don’t ask what it means because they would not tell me why.  Let’s all pretend that it means I am seen as great and mighty and invincible. Their smiles indicated that it may mean something else but let’s stay with great and mighty and invincible. So, when it came time for a second trip to the dark continent, Duweh was ready.  Duweh is great and mighty and invincible.

Back to Africa

It was quite a difficult trip to get to Liberia. You need to read the previous story, “Hairy Legs,” to understand what happened.  You learned how the great and mighty and invincible one dealt with a large spider (the size of a bush hog).  After a week of teaching by day and hand-to-hand combat at night with creepy crawlers, it was time to leave Liberia.  The Liberian civil war had reached Monrovia.  Bodies were being brought in from the countryside. Stories were making the rounds that the main airport, the one I arrived at, had been bombed. UN peacekeeping forces were inspecting all vehicles leaving Monrovia. With this cheerful news, I made it VERY CLEAR to the seminar coordinator that I needed to get to the airport really early in the morning. I still did not have a return ticket even though, every day, I asked if someone could check on that. I also did not know what our two conference hosts had done with my passport.  One flight per week came in and out of the country and it was beginning to look like this one could be the last flight out for a while if it got out.  The evidence of war was everywhere.  People were nervous.

The Window to Get Out of the Country Was Closing

My hosts thought the weekly flight was around 10 AM.  I had no idea where the domestic airport was and I was concerned about backed-up traffic and roadblocks.  So, I told them I wanted to be underway for the airport no later than 6 AM.  I was packed and on the curb at 4 AM to be safe.  UN vehicles were literally racing around the streets even at that hour. I stood outside on the street and waited. Monrovia, at that time, was a city that had been without electricity for five years, buildings pock-marked with bullet holes and sirens echoing in every corridor.  Back home I would be in a warm bed in a calm city in a land of peace.  Oh, where is that ride to the airport? Am I going to get out of this place?  This is the most dangerous situation I had personally experienced.

6 AM. Nobody.  6:30 AM. Nobody.  7 AM.  Nobody.  7:30 AM Nobody. Pace, pace, pace in front of my spider-infested hotel.  More UN security vehicles racing around the city streets –  emergency lights flashing.  8 AM. Nobody.  Getting really nervous.  REALLY NERVOUS.  No phones, no electricity.  I don’t know anyone.  8:30 AM – finally, a taxi pulls up and two familiar faces get out.  The first taxi broke down they say.  But it is 8:30!  Never mind, let’s get to the airport. VERY, VERY NERVOUS.

But wait, there is a problem.  They tell me they need to make a copy of the report they are sending back to the Christian agency who sponsored this pastor’s seminar.  I told them never mind since I know the folks at that organization and I will make the copy when I get to America.  No, they insisted on making the copy now.  War has come to the city and they are concerned about a report.  I remind them there is no electricity in the city. No problem. One of them has a friend who has a generator and he has another friend who has a copy machine. I have been in third world countries enough to know this was a bad idea. But, we spent an hour going from place to place and by the time we transported the generator and finally got it to the place where the copy machine was, the guy was not there. So, we returned the generator and they decided that the paperwork was not all that important anyway.  Well, at least I am not holding a generator in my lap.

There Was No Way We Would Get to the Airport on Time.

9:30 AM! We still haven’t left the city and the last flight that will ever leave the country is leaving in 30 minutes. I have no ticket, no passport.  I have gone beyond nervous. I am almost sick.  But, my two new Liberian friends are calm as can be.  That is because they are not leaving so they don’t have to be nervous.  Actually, they should have been more nervous than I was because they were staying in Liberia.

We left for the airport.  The driver was happy and in no hurry. Why couldn’t I have the angry driver I had in the Ivory Coast who drove so fast my knuckles didn’t get their color back until the next day. No, I have the world’s most joyful and slowest taxi driver.  Well what do you know, there’s a roadblock. Cars are pulled over and they are taking the seats out and examining everything. It felt like it took forever to reach the roadside inspection station.  It was time to play the “Duweh” card.  “I am a Christian worker named Duweh, the mighty elephant, and I need to get to the airport right now.” They tell me that they are happy to meet Duweh, the mighty elephant, but they still have to take the seats out of our taxi. I don’t think they respected elephants.

Finally, we got underway and when we pulled up at the domestic airport it was complete pandemonium. It was like everyone in Liberia wanted out, can’t imagine why. It must be because of the spiders. The large crowd outside the terminal was agitated, most looked scared.  I was quickly guided by my two calm friends through the crowds and into a room all by myself, and then they sat down next to me and nobody said a word. A glance at my watch didn’t help the tension. 11 AM.  Now, normally, that is not the best time to arrive for a once a week, 10 AM flight, but what do I know? This was Africa.  Then I saw what had to be the most disheartening sight in my life. The three of us watched, in total silence, as the only airplane at the airport slowly taxied out to the end of the runway.  In the calmest, cracking voice I could come up with I asked, “Is that my plane?  “Yes.”  We watched.  The plane went down the runway.  But halfway, it stopped and slowly came back to the terminal. “What is he doing?”  “The pilot wants to make sure it works.”  The plane was an old Russian cargo plane converted to a passenger liner. It would be like flying in a World War II bomber with folding chairs.  I knew this because I had arrived on it. Yep, it worked, so now they would load the plane. Will they do it like in Nigeria when I was there?  They had a plane that seated about 100 and they had issued 500 boarding passes.  Everyone ran onto the tarmac when the two-hour late plane arrived.  It resembled a soccer riot. So, will it be like that again?

Then the door opened to our room. It was then that I noticed the letters VIP on the door. I wondered why all the shouting people were outside in the parking lot and in the big lobby, and we were the only ones in this small private room. The man who walked in the door seemed familiar. He walked over to me and politely handed me a boarding pass and my passport and thanked me for coming to his country, and then he went back outside into the pandemonium.  I was dumbfounded. I asked who he was, and my new friends told me that he was one of the 180 pastors who had attended the Christian seminar. I then remembered him.  But what was he doing with my documents and why was he at the airport?  “Oh, sir, he is the airport controller. He is in charge of everything at the airport.”   “So, I guess I am not going to miss my plane.”  “Oh, sir, you are the guest of honor. They would hold the plane for you all day if needed.”

It is pretty much impossible to describe my feelings after that. Humbled to be sure. Who am I to get such treatment. Upset that they didn’t tell me sooner, so I could have enjoyed my morning instead of fretting. Even angrier at my attitude and my lack of faith. Once again, I had been reminded that God is the great controller of life, and he does not always make His plans as clear to us as we would like. Whether it is a flight, or something else out of our control, it is all the same. He is the controller and we need to rest in His will.  It has been many years since that experience but I still need to remember that lesson every day. Remember, elephants have good memories.

Thank you, Lord, for this important lesson. Thank you, Lord, for bringing me through it and for what I learned at that time.  I may not understand it all but you do and I will rest with you. And thank you, Lord, for even that spider.  On second thought please ignore the spider prayer,  I am not that strong yet in my faith.

The post Duweh, the Mighty Elephant: Getting Out of Liberia Was Harder Than Getting In appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Ah, the lure of exotic locations.  We all have that curiosity, don’t we?  Over 20 years ago I took a trip to one of those faraway places. But this trip turned out very differently from anything I could have imagined.

Liberia was in the middle of its second civil war. Over 200,000 people had been slaughtered, most of them civilians. I had been invited to go there to teach a one-week training program for local pastors. I accepted without doing much research. I knew that there was unrest in the country.  But I also knew the reputable organization, that had arranged for me to go to the west coast of Africa, assured me that I would be safe. They provided all the tickets, and even all the boarding passes for my flights within Africa.

It was my first time to travel alone in Africa, but two people would be at the airport to meet me when I arrived in Monrovia.  It was a very long and tiring trip that had many connections. My first African stop was Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where I was to catch my final connecting flight to Monrovia. Everything had gone fairly well, up to then.  I roamed around the French-speaking airport for a long time trying to find my flight, but nobody had any idea where it was. I finally found an English-speaking person who seemed to have some authority, and after looking at my papers and my boarding passes, he gave me the bad news.  There was no such airline, didn’t exist at all.  “Wait, I have boarding passes.”  Nope, no such airline, it was a scam.  He didn’t even seem surprised and then he walked away, leaving me standing there in shock.  I didn’t know a soul, didn’t speak the language, had very little money since all was to be taken care of by the group meeting me, and at this point in my life, I was a fairly inexperienced traveler. You probably guessed that when I said I didn’t have much money with me. I had been to Nigeria once a few years before but the team I was with took care of these kinds of things. But this time, I was really alone and confused. There were no cell phones or internet in those years.

It would take too long to tell what happened in the following 24 hours but it included a poor attempt at French sign language to a cab driver, a white-knuckle express ride to an unknown location in the city where I found something that resembled lodging. Then I returned to the airport the next morning the same way where I found a Russian transport plane leaving on its one-flight-per-week trip to Monrovia.

So, 24 hours after arriving in the Ivory Coast, I was sitting on a converted World War II cargo plane heading for Monrovia.  I had no idea what was in store. I had no return ticket and I hoped those two guys would be there to meet me. I was already a day late. Definitely the start of an interesting trip.

There are times when it would have been nice to stay in five-star hotels, eat familiar foods and work with people that actually spoke my language, but that was not to be my lot. I was usually assigned to the “armpit of the earth” type of places. But as I look back I can honestly agree with the poet that it was the “path less traveled by that made all the difference,” This trip was one I would never forget.

Liberia had been at war for five years when I arrived to lead a 5-day seminar with 180 Liberian Christian leaders. These men knew what sacrifice was. Most had not seen their families during the entire five years that the country had been embroiled in war.  Over 20,000 citizens had died in Monrovia alone. I learned this shortly after getting off the plane (Surprise, the two men were there waiting for me!), and during our taxi ride to our hotel, I asked my guide why all the houses and churches had bullet holes in them. They began to tell me just now bad it was.

We arrived at our hotel.  Stop reading for a moment.  What image came to your mind when I said the word, “Hotel?”  Sorry, you got it wrong.  I use that word very generously. Like all of the rest of the terrorized city, they had not seen running water or electricity for five years.  What would life be like for you if the country you live in had no water or electricity for the past five years? The hotel was a dive, a dump.  The room they took me to was beyond filthy. I am used to dirt and bugs having been a missionary in third world countries but this was really bad. There were no windows in my tiny concrete room and the mid-summer room temperature had to be 120 degrees, and with no electricity, there were no fans. Outside, on the streets, UN security vehicles mounted with large machine guns, raced around.

I was tired from the excruciating 40 plus hours of travel that had elapsed since I left my comfortable bed and familiar surroundings.  I barely noticed the almost one-foot high lump in the middle of the bed. I had slept on manure-filled mattresses before in Romania, so I ignored it. Totally exhausted, I fell deep asleep as soon as I hit the bed.  I also barely noticed the wailing outside the walls from families who had children dying of Cholera. I began to hear it more the following nights. But this night, nothing was going to wake me up.  That is what I thought.

The Night Was Alive

Some of you understand the depth of sleep that comes from jet lag and a long, hard journey. It is very sound. There were cockroaches climbing through my hair but I have had to deal with that for many years of living in the Philippines, no problem. I also ignored the cloud of mosquitoes. But that night, something else woke me up.

Something very large was crawling up my leg.  Can I somehow emphasize the words, VERY LARGE?  I was still groggy when the thought began to sink in.  “Hey, there is something VERY LARGE crawling up my leg.” It was sweltering hot and pitch black. The room was stinky, steamy and still. Sweat was pouring off my body. I was slimy.  But that was not a problem. The problem was something VERY LARGE was crawling up my leg.

I was now awake and swiped at my leg and I hit something.  I felt like I had slapped a cat.  Maybe it was a large rat. I had a rat on my chest once in Manila. It jumped up on my chest with its cold gooey nose pressing against my throat. When I tried to grab it, the thing jumped off me and landed on my wife. But that is another story.  “Yes, maybe it is a rat,” I said to myself as I bounded out of bed and fumbled for the flashlight.  But when the light came on and illuminated the bed I saw the largest spider in my life.

You need to understand something. Missionaries are people, not super humans.  We have phobias like you do.  We get scared of creepy crawly things like you do.  I hate spiders. I am convinced that they were not part of the original creation but are part of the curse. I have trouble imagining God looking at a tarantula and saying it was “Good.”  Well, I have arachnophobia (fear of anything that resembles a spider and is crawling on my leg).  I stood there paralyzed in my room staring at the immense thing. It had just been dragging its massive body along my leg and was planning on eating something. What was it going to eat?  I shuddered over and over, also known as a panic attack. It probably took me five minutes before I got the courage to splat it all over my bed with my tennis shoe.  And after I had killed it, I splatted it again, and then again, splat, splat, splat.  I never slept the rest of the night.  The walls in the room seemed to move. There were insects of all kinds in the room. This was not a happy place.  Not a good night when you have to teach eight hours the next day.

Counting Legs

What kind of spider was it?  Big, that’s what kind. Apparently, Liberia is known to have huge spiders with names like “king baboon tarantula” the size of an adult man’s hand span. OK, go ahead and do it.  Place your hand on your thigh.  I mean right now, put your stretched-out hand on your thigh.  Now imagine a big hairy tarantula that size looking at you and making screeching sounds. Never mind that last part since that would be me making that noise.  Someone said they also have camel spiders even though uncommon.  Both of these spiders make squealing sounds like a young child screaming. I have no idea since my squeals drowned out any sound the spider may have made.  Here is something interesting about Camel spiders. They get their name because they climb onto the bellies of camels and eat their stomachs from the outside, numbing the flesh by secreting a natural anesthetic. The camels don’t even notice until their intestines fall out.  What a delightful thought.

Spiders and Arachnids are different we are told.  Spiders have eight legs and that other big word has six. Who gives a rip? I have no idea what was crawling on my leg that night. It was the size of a small pig and even when I smashed it into the sheets and panted for five minutes trying to catch my breath I still never bothered to count legs.  It may have had ten, each about the size of a good chicken leg.  Spiders are also put into two major categories, trappers, and hunters.  Some sit and wait and other less patient ones go on a vicious hunt and look for legs to crawl on.  Guess which one this was?  The following description exactly describes what that spider was intending for me:

“A spider is a remarkably efficient killing machine. The two fangs mounted below its head are connected internally to venomous glands, enabling it to sedate and paralyze its prey immediately upon capture. Some spiders inject a digestive enzyme (which liquefies body tissues so that they can be easily ingested) directly into a victim’s body cavity, while others first crush their quarry and then cover its carcass with the substance.”  (Mother Earth News)

The next morning when the pastors came to get me the first thing they said was, “How was your sleep?”  I told them about the spider the size of a large dog that was gnawing on my leg and injecting paralyzing toxins into my body cavities.  They casually commented, “Oh, that spider.”  No big deal to them. They have those things crawling on them all the time.  It is like a fly on the table, just shoo it away and keep eating. I am calling it the Big Squealing Liberia Leg Eater. I don’t think that is the official name, however.

People must wonder about me. When I get back from trips like this and folks ask how my trip was I tend to stare a lot.  They have no idea. They go to malls and sleep in clean places and buy bug spray to kill ants.  No idea at all what it is like to be hunted all night by a giant leg eating predator and shaken from side to side like a rag doll in the mouth of an angry pit bull.  Not quite the same as dipping French fries in ketchup at McDonald’s.  Yes, I am sure they wonder about me.  The next time I go to Africa I am not taking bug spray with me, I am taking grenades.

The post Hairy Legs: A Journey to Liberia During the Civil War appeared first on Traveling Archive.