• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary navigation
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Humphrey Hawksley

Author, commentator and broadcaster

  • Home
  • About
  • Journalism
  • Books
  • Humphrey’s
    Diary
  • Blog
  • Contact
    & Photos
  • Rake Ozenna Thrillers
  • Future History
  • International Thrillers
  • Non-Fiction
  • All Books

Dancing with the devil

30th June 2009

ZOGORWEE, LIBERIA, June 2009

In 1935, the writer Graham Greene set off on a journey through Sierra Leone and Liberia. In his book Journey without Maps, Greene asked what were the Europeans doing there? What did the slogans about civilising the natives actually mean? Humphrey Hawksley has been there to retrace Graham Greene’s journey.

Shortly after dark as the solitary stilted “devil dancer” walked back into the Liberian forest, we headed off, but soon found the road blocked and in the darkness it was difficult to see why.

My torch beam picked up piles of bananas on the side of the road. I call it a road, but it was more like a farm track.

I then saw sacks of rice, a huddle of people – maybe 20 or 30 – they were passengers from a blue flatbed truck that was skewed across the route, its front wheels trapped in a ditch.

I heard what I thought was a baby’s cry and ran forward only to find that four bleating goats were part of the truck’s cargo. They were strapped onto the side, hanging and wrapped in brown cotton sheeting.

“We’ll have to return to the village,” I muttered to my Liberian driver, Mickey.

“No, we’ll fix it,” he said. “The chief back in the village is happy because we gave him some dash. So the devil is happy. So soon we’ll go.”

Dash is an old word for gift that the writer Graham Greene handed out to village chiefs when he walked through Liberia in 1935. I was tracing his route to see how much had changed.

Spiritual power

Today, disease is still rampant, although the yellow fever of Greene’s day has been overtaken by Aids. Pot-bellied children run around villages that are controlled by paramount chiefs. Christian missionaries still run much of the health service.

That morning, I had stood outside a small, stone church – such as you would find in any English village – at the entrance to the United Methodist Mission in the town of Ganta.

It was far in the northern interior of Liberia, and in Greene’s day the inadequate map had simply marked the area as being inhabited by cannibal tribes.

Greene had stayed at this mission station as a guest of a Dr Harley who had built the church, set up a clinic and was an expert in the secret societies and spiritual ways of the devil that Mickey and I had just been discussing with the village chief.

One of Dr Harley’s successors was Sue Porter, a quietly spoken and thoughtful American missionary nurse, who explained that many Liberians felt they had one foot in the bush and one in the modern world. And it was the same with their belief in God.

“When you talk about spiritual power here, it’s about the power or an ability to do something whether it is good or bad,” she said as we sat in the shade of a tree in the mission school grounds.

“Our Western culture doesn’t allow us to see it as a dual-sided figure.”

“It’s our bush society,” said Victor, the Liberian mission hospital administrator.

“The secret societies are meant to make you a good citizen, so the devil reminds you that if you are bad you can be punished.”

Devil dance

Mickey and I had gone on to the village of Zorgorwee, where a “devil dancer” was to be performing at dusk.

The village chief, dressed in a bright yellow and brown robe, said he was too hungry to speak to me, until Mickey gave him some dash – a packet of biscuits from our car. Then the chief summoned a translator.

“My name is Jacob Kermon,” he said in a booming voice that carried above the sound of singing and drums heralding the arrival of the devil. “And Jesus Christ is my personal saviour.”

“Then, why are we here worshipping the devil?” I asked, slightly confused.

“When the devil comes out people feel good,” he said. “He brings happiness and reconciliation within the community.”

As the sun dropped and villagers lit fires, a stilted dancer walked in from the forest.

He stood six metres high. His face was covered with a black mask, his head rimmed with shells. He was dressed in orange pyjamas, his hands sealed within the cotton.

One by one the devil plucked us from the crowd.

I had to stretch up my hands to hold his, staring through wood smoke at the mask and on to a star-filled sky, as he twirled me round and round.

“In the Christian world,” wrote Greene, “we have grown accustomed to the idea of a spiritual war, of God and Satan.”

But, he added, in this supernatural world there was “neither good nor evil”, simply power, a concept that was beyond our “sympathetic comprehension.”

But it was not beyond that of Mickey, my driver.

He was a wiry, powerful, young man, expert in making things work when they should not.

He had already used soapy water to replace leaking brake fluid and found petrol hidden in mayonnaise jars in a town where we were told it had run out.

Now he stalked around the hapless flatbed truck, speaking softly to some people, raising his voice to others.

Tree branches went under the wheels. Men lined up to push. The driver waited for a cue, which was delayed while the bleating goats were unhooked from the side.

Then with a heave, the wheels spun and caught. The truck lurched, and to much cheering, it bounced back onto the road.

Mickey gave me a knowing look. “As the chief told us,” he said, “if you dance with the devil, the devil will be nice to you.”

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)

Primary Sidebar

For enquiries and further information

To contact Humphrey:
[email protected]

Before sending your email address please read our GDPR Compliance Statement and Privacy Notice to reassure yourself that we are looking after your data responsibly.

More reports

Democracy fights back

In a business district a couple of miles from Vilnius’ Medieval Old Town, an office block sign lists … [Read More...]

If you want giant glaciers, wondrous wildlife and the adventure of a lifetime, Alaska is waiting for you

Riding in a high-speed catamaran along an Alaskan fjord, the captain asked: ‘See that glacier ahead? … [Read More...]

Asian countries must restrain hawkish AUKUS parties

Since leaving the European Union last year, the British government has decisively pursued two … [Read More...]

ANC Airport

Alaska’s growing global trade hub highlights booming US-Asian trade

For a few months last year, the prize for the busiest airport in the world slipped away from those … [Read More...]

Global rules against cyberattacks must be updated

The cyberattack that shut down an American East Coast pipeline underlines a global security … [Read More...]

From Our Own Correspondent

The Philippines — How China Plans to Win the Asia-Pacific

3rd March 2017

Taiwan-China – a Flashpoint Once More

19th February 2017

Living on America’s Border with Russia

28th August 2015

World Peace Begins in the Bedroom

5th June 2015

The curse of gold

30th May 2012

The supply chain children

30th January 2012

Experiments in aid

30th January 2011

Joining the club

30th July 2010

Banking nuclear fuel

26th January 2010

The ceremony of port

30th December 2009

The Contractor’s War

30th March 2009

Sharing your man for Jesus

30th March 2009

A million good workers needed

30th October 2008

Russia’s human weapon

30th September 2008

Cold War bunker

30th August 2008

Smoke-filled rooms and the law

30th June 2008

War scars, a handshake and a beacon

26th June 2008

Make knives not war

30th March 2008

Baghdad banking and real estate boom

30th January 2008

America is our ally

30th November 2007

Russia’s red line over Kosovo

30th October 2007

Big Brother is watching us all

30th September 2007

Small town with a big heart

30th June 2007

The democratic mission

30th May 2007

How Kosovo worked

30th January 2007

Hell escape

30th November 2006

Reporting from Israel

30th August 2006

Peace? With our politicians – never

26th June 2006

Lenin and Mao – One day they’ll get it right

30th May 2006

China in the backyard

30th April 2006

Reporting from Poland

26th February 2006

Addicted to oil

26th February 2006

The boy who lived on a garbage dump

30th December 2005

Republican missionaries in New Mexico

26th November 2005

The American dream

30th July 2005

Why did they fight?

30th April 2005

Haunted by the Ottomans

27th February 2005

Empires and abortion

30th December 2004

The young political elite

30th September 2004

Beer with the Hizbollah

30th July 2004

The patriot act

30th June 2004

An economist in Patagonia

27th April 2004

Someone else in her house

28th February 2004

Big threats, no health care

30th December 2003

Inside India’s nuclear program

30th November 2003

Suicide slum

30th September 2003

The politics of SARS

30th April 2003

The Christian mission

27th February 2003

Blood cocoa

30th May 2002

The war crime pen-pushers

30th January 2002

Triple border terror

30th January 2002

Europe’s apartheid

30th September 2001

The blonde and the dying

30th March 2001

Never to be freed

30th January 2000

One wrong turning

30th May 1999

Footer

Search site

Goldster

  • The Goldster Inside Story Podcast
  • Goldster Video Archive

Connect with Humphrey

  • E-mail
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Join Humphrey’s mailing list

Subscribe

Email Humphrey

For general enquiries and bookings for events:

[email protected] and [email protected]

Copyright © 2008–2023 Humphrey Hawksley · All rights reserved · Site Terms, Cookies and Privacy · GDPR Compliance Statement · Website by LiT Web Studio