If he didn't hear from her at
night, he'd go frantic. This is Oldman Achala Cole in his grave speaking. He’s
speaking through tears about his daughter Ayo who died in Havea shipwreck.
Unlike him, his daughter Ayo will have no grave to rest her troubled back from all
her struggles for family and nation. Simply because her corpse disappeared in
the belly of the Atlantic Ocean. We don’t want to guess what could have
happened to her body. And Oldman Achala wouldn’t want to know how his daughter
could have been devoured by the creatures of the Sea.
The night Ayo was crying out for
help in a vessel not seaworthy few miles away from her residence in Harper,
Achala Cole, her father, was deeply troubled in his grave where he had been
lying for over three decades. He told his daughter to be calm, and she did. She
remained calm believing her government would arrive in time to save her
including the innocent children and other adults that perished with her. Then
the opposite became true. The Government failed her and the rest of the victims.
The wrecked ship took her life down the Atlantic Ocean along with little
children and some other adults.
That young man is “Wicked-Joe.”
He was her husband. He cried out to the fishermen to help. Did the fishermen
understand him or just became selfish and unfeeling when they did nothing?
Ayo was most likely thrown by the
sea-wave into the Atlantic’s depth. The little child that she cared for,
slowly, crying for a motherly love and salvation, dropped into the very depth
of the Atlantic.
Ayo remained dashing into the
belly of the Atlantic Ocean while the rest were carried 100 to 200 miles away
from the port of Harper and dislodged from the mattresses upon which they have
been floating and dumped on the Beaches of the Ivory Coast. Some came out with
broken limbs. Some came out with broken souls. But Ayo was no where around to
be found.
I know very well where Ayo was
born - right in the hood of Marsh Street. She was the most beautiful woman of
our time. And she kept her beauty until Havea, a vessel not seaworthy, dumped
her body forcibly into the belly of the Atlantic Ocean.
Ayo would have been in her mid
50s. But a vessel not seaworthy thrashed her entire life in a ditch of no
return.
The Liberian government says the
vessel that killed Ayo and other citizens is “authorized” to ply our National
waters. But it was not seaworthy. How was she supposed to know? National Port
Authority, Bureau of Maritime and Ministry of Transportation didn’t know too?
So who “authorized” the vessel to ply National Waters? Even we know now, it
will not bring back our Ayo! Our President of Maryland Women Inc.
Nothing can bring Ayo back, but we
want justice. Who authorized the vessels that are not seaworthy?
It is as easy -- and terrifying -- to put oneself in the
place of Achala Cole, Ayo’s dead father, watching his beautiful little girl
drowning and calling for help in vain. It is impossible to place oneself in
Ayo’s late dad’s position. It is also terrifying -- to put oneself in the place
of the parents of those little children that were sucked by the power of the
Atlantic Ocean into their early graves. They could have been Presidents like
Dr. Sirleaf had they lived and given the same opportunity.
I, too, would want justice. And I would also want those ship
owners rot in hell. I would feel righteous for channeling my vengeance into the
rule of law, but I would also feel justified for hating, not forgiving, the
perpetrators of our grief.
Some religions teach, “You shall
love your neighbor and hate your enemy,” But Jesus Christ says in Matthew,
"But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute
you." On the cross, Christ absolves his crucifiers: "Father, forgive
them, for they know not what they do." Gandhi embraced those who would
destroy him: He said, "Hate the sin, love the sinner."
Samson's revenge on the
Philistines is to kill more of them at his death than he killed during his
life. When Agag, the captured king of the slaughtered Amalekites, is brought to
the prophet Samuel, he asks for mercy: "Surely the bitterness of death is
past." But Samuel "hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in
Gilgal." After Haman's ten sons are killed in battle, Queen Esther asks
King Ahasuerus to hang their dead bodies from the gallows. The prophetess
Deborah, writes Soloveichik, "appears to relish the gruesome death of her
enemy, the Philistine Sisera, who had, fittingly, been executed by another
woman. Every bloody detail is recounted in Deborah's ebullient song."
It will be up to our secular
legal system, not our religious traditions, to decide what justice means to the
captain who killed Ayo, the two little kids, other adults, ripped off the
fingers of Ma Eliza and killed a twin kid of Sister Seebo and leave her feet
into semiparalysis. The law draws distinctions between homicide, manslaughter
and murder. Mens rea -- intent -- matters. This may be helpful for
distinguishing different kinds of punishment.
Experts in the field say that when
we carry hostility around we can kill all of us. Wanting someone to rot in
hell, we are told, does more damage to ourselves than to the objects of our
anger. Healing comes from letting go of the hatred.
I pray that Clara Ayo Cole
Nyema’s late dad will find peace, and that Sis. Seebo will fully recover, and Ma
Eliza’s fingers that have been ripped off by vessel that was not seaworthy will
not happen for nothing and that the friends and families of those great sons
and daughters of our great country that perished in the belly of the Atlantic
Ocean will find comfort in the bosom of Christ our Lord and Savior. But I am
unable to understand, and unprepared to believe, that their path to healing
must pass through the country of forgiveness when their debts are not cancelled
and no restitution is awarded.
I am Thomas G. Bedell, a peace
volunteer, I write, speak and work from on the ground in Liberia!
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