Salute to my father [Part one]

Many people have asked me why I do not talk much about my father. On this father's day, I have decided to talk about him and to honor him. My mother raised me, so I did not know much about my father as I was growing up as a boy in Liberia.

Living in Claratown, an undeveloped area in Monrovia, Liberia, I was happy when my father came to town from Cuttington College in Suakoko during school breaks. I would hold his hands and wanted people to see me with him. Having an educated dad was like having a precious jewel. When my friends and people in the neighborhood told me that my father was a "bookman", I would nod my head in agreement with a big smile. But dad did not speak big book English. I would call him father and he would look at me as if something wrong with me. "Mee", he would say to me, meaning father in our Kru language. He would call me Kiah, instead of my English name Samuel. He was not acting like a big bookman. He wanted us to speak Kru at home. I was embarrassed with him at times when my friends were around. He would speak Kru to them. During back then, "Congoism", or "Americo-Liberianism", was fashionable. Some indigenous Liberians wanted to be or their children to become Congo. He was doing the reverse. I did not get it.

But my father died young after graduating from college. He was not working and left neither money nor properties. I just could not understand as a boy why he died so young and left us penniless..

You see, my father was born in 1917 in Grandcess, a coastal area, which was then part of Maryland County in Liberia. Father was the youngest child of Kiah and Martha Nyanfore. His father, Prince Dagbayonoh Kiah Nyanfore, was a Methodist minister. His grandfather, Dagbayonoh Nyanfore, was a "dogbwo-klorba", meaning warrior-king, of the Sikleo people or Grandcess people from 1901- 1908 during the respective presidency of William Garreston Gibson and Arthur Barclay. Grandcess was a major commercial center and was ruled by kings then. It was an independent entity before it became part of Liberia in 1850. The government in Monrovia under President Arthur Barclay abolished the rule by kings. The administration replaced it with that by paramount chiefs in the running of the Liberian hinterland. In part in return of giving up self- autonomy, indigenous or native Liberians in general received citizenship of Liberia in 1912. From the time of the creation of the nation in 1847 to 1912, native people were not considered citizens of Liberia, though they were the original inhabitants of the land. Despites the granting of citizenship, the government denied them the right to vote until 1946, the year father born his first son. Daddy's grandfather fought against colonialism by the settler central government and against Western cultural imperialism.

Father wanted to become a minister of the gospel like grandpa. So he left Grandcess for Monrovia, the capital city, for school and for a better life. He attended Monrovia College, a high school. After high school, he entered Cuttington College, School of Divinity in Bong County, Liberia. While he was in high school, he worked for a US program, the Bureau of Public Health and Sanitation as a doctor assistant or dresser. People said that he should have gone into medicine for his further study, but to him the ministry was his calling. The common Liberian called him doctor, since he could treat people and give them injection. Mr. J.B. Titus, the bureau head, wrote a letter of recommendation for dad for Cuttington College admission and said "During the time of his employment, I have found him honest, obedient and diligent."

Things went fine at first with him at Cuttington. But later, he encountered problems: the school administration said that he was too radical, argumentative, questioning authorities and not following orders. Though he wanted to become a minister and a true Christian, he did not accept nor support the belief that African culture was inferior to Western culture.

Mr. P.M. Washington, then acting president of the college discussed father in a letter dated July 29, 1953. He wrote. "We all feel that he has a good mind which could class him as above average student and also in situations outside of the classroom, he is amicable and pleasant." He further added. "I fully realize the importance of the "authority of one's conscience", and I believe that he feels divinely obligated to stand up for what he believes to be truth, but unfortunately he seems to feel that he is in possession of all of the necessary truths and has therefore closed his mind to everything else."

Willis J. King, bishop of the Methodist Church in Liberia during that time, tried to convince the Cuttington authority to be patient with father and to consider the problem to be cultural. He pointed out that the Cuttington teaching staff, "after all, have come from Western backgrounds. It is about the same type of problems they are finding in other parts of Africa where the African has begun to think for himself."

Bishop King went on to say to the school authority that what impressed him the most about father was dad's "manifest sincerity and, as far as I can discover, his solidity of character in the ordinary human virtues. I think his own individual conduct and his higher-than-average family life will go a long way to offset certain theological misconceptions".

The school knew that requesting my father to leave would be unjustified. On the other hand, the church could not remove him from the scholarship or from Cuttington College. Doing that could create a backlash, particularly in Grandcess, where the church was facing a stiff competition from the Catholic mission. The Methodist mission was established in Grandcess in 1889 followed by the Catholic Church in 1916. Both religious institutions were constantly recruiting followers in part for dominance. Moreover, dad's uncle and namesake, Nimley Nah (James Nimley) was the superintendent in Grandcess. He was a strong Methodist. Not only was he politically powerful in Grandcess, he was also wealthy.

But dad's radicalism and Africanism were not in the interest of the school and the church. Christianization in Africa during that time meant Westernization. While the church and the leaning institution in Liberia have contributed immensely to the country’s development, the government also utilized them to perpetuate settler-colonial domination and Western cultural supremacy over tribal people during the Americo-Liberian rule. Generally in Africa, the church also used the Bible to divide African communities and encourage slavery and colonialism. But as Bishop King pointed out earlier, on a larger scale, African consciousness was rising on the African continent, as Africans elsewhere began questioning their colonial masters and advocating freedom and independence. Although father’s advocacy was not political, in a sense, it was "liberation theology". This kind of development was not good for the institution.

The school and the church came up with a plan, unknown to father, for him to leave Cuttington voluntarily, perhaps temporarily. The plan included making things difficult for him on campus. Note that dad was not a single man. He was at Cuttington with my stepmother Juah and my other young siblings; Nimley, Kronsiayon, Marylou, and Martha, all depended on father. Comfort, my sister who died recently, was born later. You can imagine how hard it was on him, taking care of a family and dealing with problems at school.

When father came to Claratown during school breaks, I did not know what he was going through at school. All I knew then was that he was a "bookman", a "kwi", literally meaning, "white man", but used to describe a Western civilized person in the Kru language.

The plan worked. Daddy left Cuttington in frustration. The hope was that upon advice from outside of the school, he would change his behavior. He returned later, as he wrote in his hand written letter to the school. The letter read. "Having changed my mind and talked it over with Bishop King, I have decided to return to Cuttington to complete my work for B. Theo." (Bachelor in Theology) But he did not change his ways. He stood his grounds on matters, which he considered to be right. Ma Juah told me that dad also did not like people to take advantage of him. "Nyanfore would stand for his rights and for others he felt were taken advantage of", she added.

He graduated from Cuttington, but the church did not assign him to a regular preaching post. It did not allow him to preach freely. He was frustrated. He later got sick and went to live with his older siblings; aunts Mary, Viola, and Sarah in Cape Palmas, Maryland County. The sisters had done well. They were all-important people. They were high society women. Father died in Cape Palmas. He was 45 years old. At his funeral our native people and others lined up in black as they marched his body to its final resting place in an old pickup truck, a simplicity which represented him well.

Although he did not leave us his children with wealth, he left a legacy of honesty, integrity, and standing for what is right; qualities which schools cannot teach and money and power cannot buy. He left us the greatest gift of humanity. As I grew up as a young man, I understood why father was speaking Kru and wanted me to know my culture and heritage. Father was down to earth. At his club social functions, he beat the drums, told jokes and made people laughed. He never talked of his royalty and neither boasted of it. Instead, he demonstrated it with dignity and fine character.

I admired dad. Looking back, I wondered; here was a man I hated so much as a child for the pain he caused my mother and me for leaving her for another woman, and here I am adoring him. I love my father; I love his personality, his integrity, sincerity, and stance. As an adult reading and hearing about him, I saw myself as a personification of him; and it scares me sometimes!

I am proud of you dad. I salute you on this father's day. May your soul rest in heavenly peace.

Editor’s note: SALUTE TO MY FATHER PART TWO AND THREE are available on the internet under the author’s name.