How Things Have Changed

By 

Gii-Hne S. Russell

Everything was clean and neatly in its place. The dishes were turned over in the sink. Pots, well-scoured, were in the basket under the sink. Shining silver spoons and forks glittered on the platter, along with the plastic drinking cups. The four-plated stove in the corner showed no sign of oil or grease, while the kitchen floor did not have a single grain of sand or rice. 

A kitchen this clean and neat could make any woman proud, but not Wade. She closed her eyes and sighed. If wishes could come true, her little kitchen would be the other way around. The pots and pans would be scattered about, so would the spoons and drinking cups. The stove would be stained with grease and oil, and parched rice grains scattered over it. There would be rice grains and chewed-up bones on the floor, but these were not so. Her wishes would not come true now, and prayer? Well, God answers prayer, but in his own time, not her time. 

Sighing again, Wade left the kitchen. Relatives of her husband sat on the porch, conversing quietly. She stood on the steps and looked about the yard. There were a few leaves before the apartment. Glad that she still had something to do, Wade took the broom and began sweeping. Her in-laws looked with disapproval because she shouldn't be sweeping when there were children to do it. What? Was she trying to say they couldn’t ‘see’ dirt? Relief showed in Wade’s nieces’ faces. They were happy that they weren’t asked to sweep. None of them even offers to take the broom from her as expedience called for. Even if they had, Wade would have refused because she would have had nothing else to do but worry. She put the leaves in the dirt bucket and carried it to the garbage site, where dirt from the neighborhood was dumped. 

In her yard, under the mango trees, three of her children were on the 'palm kernel rock' with the children of her in-laws and neighbors. They were busy searching for the little nut all over the place. Some went as far as the dump-pile, scavenging among the tree roots, in the grass, by the road, and in the banana orchard. They would take their fines back to the big, flat rock and wait their turn to break them. Wade felt sorry for the children, her children most especially. Months back, she would have chastised them seriously for breaking palm kernels to eat. The only time they did was when they were helping her to break them to make oil. She was better. Her husband would punish them when he caught them eating palm kernels, as it was considered disgraceful, a sign of poverty. Now, there they were polluting the yard with their noise and desperately searching for palm kernels. As Wade walked back to her apartment from the dump-pile, Smallman, her youngest child, went to meet her.

She could not bear to look him in the eyes. She pondered the response to the demand she knew was coming. The little boy, not yet three, caught up with her and took her hand. She stopped despite the urge to keep walking to evade giving him full attention. She put the bucket down, knelt to bring her face to his. She clasped his right hand firmly in her left and patted his hair. She buttoned his shirt and pulled up his trousers, which were falling. Looking in his face, he saw that look. Oh, how it gnawed at her. It was hunger. He was pleading with her for food, but she couldn’t do anything about it now. 

Months ago, she would have ployed him with treats if he even asked - biscuits, crackers, or bread. He would run and show off to his siblings. They entice and rob him of his treat. Then he would return to complain and be spoiled all over. But ay! That was months ago. Things were now different.

“Mama, I want to eat,” Smallman said as if convinced that his eyes were not conveying the message.

Indeed, things had changed. Smallman wanted to eat. Before, he would have been specific. Months ago, he would have asked for rice, bread, cookies, biscuits, chocolates, etc. He even asked for rice an hour ago. She gave him some pieces of breadfruit she had kept from breakfast and promised him rice later. She then sent him to his siblings on the palm kernel rock. Here he was again, this time begging for anything besides palm kernel.

“I know, baby,” Wade assured. “I will soon cook, and you will eat.” She picked him and place him on her back.

But Smallman was not assured. Even a child as young as he was could see that there would be no cooking anytime soon. The kitchen was shining and spotless. The fire health, the outdoor cooking place, was dismantled. One of its three rocks was being used now as a ‘palm kernel rock’. The little boy’s face fell. Wade lifted him to her back. Jarpe, Wade's second youngest child, came to her with eager eyes. This one was an opportunist, like the hyena that moves when the vultures drop. Since she was the next in line of priority, she always got at least a taste of whatever Smallman got. Seeing that nothing was doing, she went back to the ‘palm kernel rock’.

Wade had no intention to cook as soon as she had promised. Months back, it would have been unthinkable to cook this late. Now, it was still too soon to cook. She could only coax the children to wait. Her husband and her older boys had gone to the bush. Months ago, her husband was an electric shovel operator at the iron ore mines. Now he was a fisherman because there was nothing else to do. He and the boys would bring fish, wild greens, maybe some cassava, green pawpaw, and wild fruits, which the children relished. She and her in-laws had planted a garden, but it would take months before they would reap from it. That is, if they were lucky, because the potatoes hardly started budding leaves when people came begging for them, while thieves had started raiding them. They were all waiting for her husband and the boys. It was better to go most of the day with an empty stomach and go to bed with something than the other way around. Smallman did not care about either of them. He wanted something besides palm kernel to eat, and he needed it now. With the boy fidgeting on her back, Wade knew what was coming. 

Back at the house, she later took him from her back and set him on her lap. 

“What do you say now, Baby?”

“I want to eat,” Smallman said. 

“Didn’t I say I would soon cook?” 

” I want to eat.” Tears were running down Smallman’s face. 

“Ay God,” Wade sighed helplessly. 

Fortunately, her neighbor sent her some pieces of cooked cassava and eddoes. She called the rest of the children. She broke the cassava and eddoes into smaller pieces. She gave two pieces to Smallman, one piece to Jarpe. For the rest, it was just a matter of rocking their jaws. Wade gave each of the children a cup of water and made sure they drank all of it. They went to play, leaving  Wade more worried.

No one expected things to be as bad as they were as the war went on. Everyone thought it would be like the coups d'état of 1980 and 1985, which came and went quickly, and everything resumed its normal trend. This one was quite different. The differences became more apparent for the people of Bong Mines when the German and other expatriates left, and the Bong Mining Company closed down. Then things like salt and pepper became scarce while rice, cassava, and other foods ran low. To make matters worse, the other rebel, or Freedom Fighter, called Prince Johnson, came to the town. He went to the company warehouse, took the last cache of rice for the employees, and supplied it to the wrong people in a public relations stunt.  

A few months ago, each employee's family received a hundred-pound sack of rice every month. Wade’s last sack was almost gone with no more supplies forthcoming. Still, her family was beset by another problem - the arrival of her husband’s displaced relatives from Monrovia. Seven persons! Like the town of Bong Mines, which was soon overwhelmed by the influx of refugees, mainly from the starving and beleaguered Monrovia, she and her family, after all the joy that came from having those relatives alive, soon found themselves running out of provisions due to the now oversized family. She tried her best to keep friction with her in-laws at minimum as provisions went low. And, yes. It was not something she was proud of, but she did anyway -  sometimes sneaking food to her youngest children. 

The question that troubled her as the days passed and the rice dwindled was: “What will become of my family, especially the little ones?”

Weighted down by the crisis at hand, Wade went into her room and stood before the mirror and pleaded for God’s intervention. She walked across the room to the barrel containing the sack of rice. Reaching into the barrel, she lifted the sack.

“Only four more days!’’ she gasped. 

She sat on the bed, her mind flooded with stories told by displaced people, mainly those from Monrovia. They were stories of people, young and old, dying from hunger. Stories of people eating any bulbs, tubers, and green leaves they could find, of people dropping dead on the roadside from starvation. People were like living skeletons! Even in Bong Mines, everyone in her family had lost a significant amount of weight. She had tried her best to cut down on food, salt, pepper, soap, and everything else, but even so, there was no prospect of replacement. She had even stopped sharing with people who came to beg. One of these was her aunt, who went to the house every other day. The last time she came in Wade’s absence, she went to the freezer and made away with the last chicken. The woman was wicked enough to carry the whole lot! 

This same aunt, about a year ago, who, after helping herself to a large plate of rice and palm butter while watching a war movie, wondered when Liberia fight a war. Liberia’s war had barely gone half a year, and the woman was begging, raiding Wade's storeroom, and looting from the freezer. The scenes of people with washboard chests, which they used to watch on the company’s TV station, terrorized Wade. That people could be reduced to that was beyond her psyche. She would have never believed it if she hadn’t seen it on TV. Then the displaced people confirmed it. Then, Bong Mines was perhaps the only place in Liberia that still had running water and electricity. The town was like a dreamlike world to displaced people and refugees. Food was everywhere. The company's supermarket was still open. The war then was an unpleasant dream. The day would break, and things would once more be normal, but it didn’t. Instead, the unpleasant dream became more than a nightmare.

Wade stared at the ceiling. “De Nyeswa. Will my children starve?” She held her face in her hands. Weeping did not stop her from worrying. Maybe keeping busy would help. She gathered the few clothes in the dirty clothes basket to wash. But as she washed, she still visualized the ‘washboard chest’, living skeletons, and babies with thin limbs and thin necks. Babies whose heads seemed too big for their thin necks to support. She wiped the tears from her face now and then, but they kept streaming down more and more. 

Still, on their break from the palm kernel rock, the children were playing games. They stopped to watch the big yellow dump truck on the road. This one was different in that it had no singing rebel filled in it or hanging on it. It turned left for the street that went behind Wade’s apartment and stopped. Wade was too engrossed in her washing and worries to hear the truck. The driver climbed down.

“Wade!”

“Uncle! Uncle! Uncle!” Wade’s children called as they ran to the man.

Wade turned around. It was Wanwe, a kin of her husband. She dried her face and hands with the tip of her lappa as she went to meet him. The children were jumping all over him. He laughed and tickled them as he called each by their names. A year and a half ago, Wanwe came to Bong Mines seeking a job, and her husband had helped him find a job as a truck driver. Besides that, Wade and her husband offered their own house to him when his family later moved to the town. The rebels of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia had been using the trucks of the company the man worked for to transport men, weapons, and looted goods. He had been out of town for more than a month. Wade shook his hand.

“How is everything?” he asked.

“How is everything?” Wade asked. “Everything is not good.”

“I’m sorry. Where is Nyema?”

“He hasn’t returned from the bush.”

“Alright, say hello to him for me when he comes.”

“Alright.”

“Hello, Wade,” A young man emerged from the back of the truck. 

“Oh, Neowe? Hello. How are you?”

“I am fine.” He waved to the children.

“Eh,” t Wanwe he man said. “We brought something for you.”

The young man brought a heavy, brown cotton sack from the truck.

“What is it?” Wade asked.

“Rice.”

Wanwe explained that they were transporting rice from Buchanan to other parts of the rebel-held territory. Ships of rice and other food supplies heading for the besieged city of Monrovia were seized by the rebels on the sea and diverted to Buchanan, from where they were being supplied to areas held by the NPFL rebels. Wanwe apologized for being unable to stay long, but he promised to come back the next day. He said bye and drove away.

The sack of rice was carried to the house by in-laws. Wade went into her room and stood before the mirror again. This time, it felt as though she was standing before God, completely at a loss for words. At last, she found two words which she repeated again and again: “Thank you! Thank You!”

Outside, Wade’s nieces and her in-laws didn’t have to wait for instructions. The girls went to retrieve the rock for the fire health, while the in-laws started finding the knives, mortars, pestles, and other utensils. Wade was pleased to see them in action. There was no need to wait.

Bio:  Gii-Hne S. Russell is a Liberian and was born in Bong Mines, Bong County. He studied Library Science at Stella Maris Polytechnic and serves as Library Supervisor at WE-CARE Foundation. A member of the Liberia Association of Writers since 2008, he writes for both children and adults, with stories published in three anthologies and two stories forthcoming with Accessible Publishers, Nigeria.