Abundance

Michael Fine

Description

Julia is an American medical doctor fleeing her own privileged background to find a new life delivering health care to African villages, where her skills can make a difference. Carl is also an American, whose very different experiences as a black man in the United States have driven him into exile in West Africa, where he is an international NGO expat. The two come together as colleagues (and then more) as Liberia is gripped in a brutal civil war. Child soldiers kidnap Julia on a remote jungle road, and Carl is evacuated against his will by U.S. Marines. Back in the United States he finds Julia’s mentor, Levin, a Rhode Island MD whose Sixties idealism has been hijacked by history. Then they meet the thief. Then they meet the smuggler. And the dangerous work of finding and rescuing Julia begins.

An unforgettable thriller grounded in real events.

Sujets

• Thriller
• Liberia

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781629636566
• Langue: English

Extrait

Praise for
Abundance
Much like Norman Maclean s later-in-life masterpiece, A River Runs through It , Michael Fine s Abundance , written after a distinguished career of medical practice here in the U.S. and in Africa, is a powerful first novel, an epic stretching from the civil wars of Liberia to the streets of Rhode Island. It s about the violence we practice on each other and the power of humanity to overcome it. A joy to read.
-Paul J. Stekler, Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker
Abundance is a riveting, suspenseful tale of love, violence, adventure, idealism, sometimes-comic cynicism, class conflict, and crime-especially war crimes. Dr. Fine expertly moves his narrative back and forth between Liberia and America (mostly New England), using his medical experience-especially in serving the poor-psychological insight, and deep knowledge of West Africa to craft a story that displays both the deep disconnect between the First and Third Worlds and our commonalities. I should add that the rescue mission that s at the heart of the story would make one hell of a movie.
-Robert Whitcomb, former finance editor of the International Herald Tribune and former editorial page editor of The Providence Journal
Michael Fine takes us into the heart of a country at war with itself. But our journey in battered Land Rovers along potholed red dirt roads is propelled by love not hate. That love offers hope for Liberia, our often forgotten sister country, and for anyone who confronts despair. Read Abundance . Reignite your own search for a life worth living.
-Martha Bebinger, WBUR
Michael Fine has eloquently captured the expanse of emotions as well as the variety of motivations of those volunteers working in Liberia. An excellent documentary.
-James Tomarken, MD
Michael Fine has brought his lifetime of experience as a doctor concerned with community health in our country and Africa and his considerable writing skills to bear on the great question of our time: How do we heal a broken world? He makes you care about what happens to the people living their answers.
-Bill Harley, author, two time Grammy Award-winning singer-storyteller, and NPR commentator

Abundance
Michael Fine 2019
This edition 2019 PM Press
ISBN: 978-1-62963-644-3
LCCN: 2018948938
PM Press
P.O. Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
pmpress.org
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover: John Yates/ Stealworks.com
Layout: Jonathan Rowland
In Memory of Adell Phyllis Gross Fine (1927-2014)
To Gabriel Fine and Rosie Fine
When you have eaten your fill, and have built fine houses to live in, and your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered, beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget the Lord your God-who freed you from the land of Egypt, the house of bondage; who led you through the great and terrible wilderness with its seraph serpents and scorpions, a parched land with no water in it, who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock; who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers had never known, in order to test you by hardships only to benefit you in the end-and you say to yourselves, My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me. Remember that it is the Lord your God who gives you the power to get wealth, in fulfillment of the covenant that He made on oath with your fathers, as is still the case.
-Dvorim (Deuteronomy) 8:12-18
Contents
Preface
Abundance
Appendix
Glossary
Acknowledgments
Preface
L IBERIA , A NATION OF FOUR TO FOUR AND A HALF MILLION PEOPLE IN W EST A FRICA , IS about the same size as the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is a place of many languages and many communities.
Liberia was created in 1820, when a private organization called the American Colonization Society began transporting freed slaves from the U.S. to a small area of West Africa in an attempt to solve the problem of slavery for the United States without emancipating those slaves still held in bondage. Some of the settlers were from families that had lived as slaves in the United States for two hundred years. Other settlers were recently freed or had purchased their freedom themselves. Others came from families that had been free for generations. Few, if any, came from families that originated in the area they were coming to colonize. Few spoke the languages spoken by the people and communities then living in that place.
The American Colonization Society counted among its members people we now regard as some of the most decent and forward-thinking Americans of their time: James Madison, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Paul Cuffee, and Francis Scott Key. Even Abraham Lincoln was a member for a time. Some of these people believed that African Americans would never be able to have free and equal lives in the United States. Others believed that it was impossible, or immoral, for people of different races to live together.
The American Colonization Society brought about 13,000 free African Americans to West Africa between 1820 and 1847. (In 1820, the U.S. population was 9,638,453, of whom 1,538,022 were slaves.) The free African Americans created a colony of their own in Africa that was modeled on the United States. Plantations, schools, towns, language, culture, and even conservative politics were all copied from the southern United States the freed slaves had left behind-the only culture that the freed slaves themselves shared. Those people and their descendants, who would call themselves Americo-Liberians and are called Congo people by their compatriots, comprise a very small but politically and economically elite segment of the Liberian population.
Most people in Liberia today are descended from the indigenous population. Although English is the official language in Liberia, most people grow up speaking another language, which is the language of their ethnic community. Many people also speak Liberian Kreyol, also called Liberian Pidgin, which is a trading language based on English and Portuguese that has been used for three hundred years. Trading languages are common on the coast of Africa. At first, trading languages allowed traders and indigenous people to speak to one another. Then those languages were used by indigenous people from different cultures and communities to speak among themselves.
Bassa, Gao, Krahn, and Kpelle are four of the thirty languages spoken in Liberia. Kru is one of the four language groups.
The music of Liberian Kreyol often sounds familiar to American ears, but Kreyol itself is difficult for most Americans to understand. Articles, conjunctives, and final consonants are often omitted; adjectives are repeated for emphasis and many words are used in archaic forms. Thus na means not , ma means my or mother depending on context. Ga ca means good car ; sma-sma (small-small) means very small ; and De ro. I yaw wais ma ti, I weh sureleh blow yaw mouf o wais yaw fa means I m the badass (a rouge). You are a waste of my time. I will surely slam your mouth and lay waste to your face.
In 1989, Liberia entered a period of brutal civil wars. The civil wars were fomented by Charles Taylor, who would become Liberia s president, but Taylor was aided and abetted by many people and nations. The wars lasted until 2003. The years between 1989 and 2003 were filled with unimaginable cruelty in Liberia; years of murder, rape, dismemberments, and chaos.
The recent history of Liberia is discussed in more detail in the appendix .
Chapter One
Julia Richmond. District #4 Health Center. Grand Bassa County, Liberia. July 15, 2003
T HE TOO SWEET CALLS OF THE PEPPER - BIRDS WOKE HER BEFORE DAWN . A SLEEP , J ULIA HALF heard the chattering and whistling of the other birds, of course, but it was the fluty, chirping, melodic pepper-bird call that Julia recognized as she lay on her cot in the District #4 Health Center consulting room. She had come out with Sister Martha, her favorite nurse, and with her driver and guard, the previous day just before dark, twenty miles down a rutted one-track road into the middle of nowhere, across bridges that were unstable, and through miles of thick dark jungle. There was a war on, and although it was said to be far away, people like Julia moved about only during the daytime, and even then only with a driver and a guard, because of what was said to happen in the bush at night.
Of all the places she loved and the ideas that moved her, the grand romantic notions about healing the world and making it a safe place for all its children, Julia Richmond loved the District #4 Health Center most. She had only just come to Liberia, after stints in Haiti, Rwanda, and Bangladesh. She came to Liberia when Bill Levin, her friend and mentor in the U.S., forwarded an e-mail describing the position and the need. Liberia, after fourteen years of civil war, was among the most desperate places Julia had been and its people the most distant and afraid. Julia loved desperate places, the places where there was nothing and where the people had no one, so they took her for who she was, as she was, and didn t ask her the questions she couldn t answer for herself.
Julia also loved the softness of the light-the muddy browns, tans, and ochres of a place where you couldn t really see the corners or down the halls, where you could hear and smell people and things before you saw them. There was no electricity in the health center, so the light filtered in through the larger windows, one per room. If you wanted to read or see clearly, you stood or sat by a window, even at midday. Inside, the hallways and the larger waiting rooms were shrouded and warm. When you walked from room to room, the hidden life of the place was rev