A Leap of Faith!
Episcopal News Service. September 17, 1991 [91184]
Henrietta Stabler, Mike Barwell
Rachel Goba knows what it is to take a leap of faith. Last July, in the midst of Liberia's civil war, she leaped a barbed wire fence and landed on the grounds of the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia, in a desperate attempt to let her family in the United States know she was alive.
Thousands of miles away in Columbus, Ohio, a few weeks later a letter mailed from the embassy was the first clue Evangeline Ricks had that her mother had survived the war. Ricks, and her two sisters and brother already in the United States, had given up hope, fearing Goba and the rest of the family had been scattered or killed in the fighting.
Today, Goba, daughter Kayma, and granddaughter Lois are living in new freedom in Columbus with significant assistance from parishioners of St. James Episcopal Church in Clintonville.
Their story includes recounting the incredible events of 18 months of captivity, wandering, starvation, survival in a refugee camp, and sheer terror as troops loyal to Liberia's President Samuel Doe and rebel forces fought for control of the war-torn West African country last year.
Their story also is about deep faith that there is a caring God, whom they say protected them and rescued them almost daily in the midst of murder, carnage, starvation, and reckless plunder by government and rebel troops. They were among the fortunate. Thousands of Liberians-relatives, neighbors, and friends-were butchered or scattered into refugee camps in West Africa.
In December 1989, Cable News Network showed some of the first graphic film on the civil war in Liberia. Four of Goba's children, who were in the United States at that time as students, were horrified by the news reports of the killings and carnage. Her son is now a U.S. citizen living in Texas. Headlines said that death stalked the streets of Monrovia and spilled over into the countryside. More than 10,000 of Liberia's 2.2 million people perished.
Evangeline Ricks, a graduate of Ohio State University living in Columbus, and her siblings had no contact with the family for seven months and concluded from the news reports that their family had died in the wholesale slaughter of civilians in Monrovia.
Little did they know that Goba had already survived being caught in the cross-fire of troops. And, incredibly, Goba had continued working as controller of Liberia's largest television station during the fighting, assuming this was merely another coup and the conflict would soon be over.
On June 22, that illusion was shattered. Kayma and Lois went to the farm of Goba's former husband for a visit when rebel forces invaded. The rebels took the father and girls as prisoners, and forced them to march with them toward Monrovia. Lois, then 6, even was forced to carry a soldier's Soviet-made machine gun through the countryside. Goba's former husband eventually was allowed to return to the farm.
Three weeks later, Goba's large home in Monrovia was caught in the cross-fire between government and rebel troops. Goba, daughter of a wealthy chief and landowner in Liberia, and 75 family members and friends were interrupted in their evening prayers by the shooting and rockets.
Goba said that, despite their fear, "God's peace filled me" and she remained calm as government troops executed her neighbors, then broke into her own home and demanded that they evacuate. "Many refused," she said, but she urged them "to go in Jesus' name, which they did."
Crawling on their stomachs to avoid gunfire, they were held captive in an abandoned school. There, Goba says, she told the other captives to plead for God's mercy. "When all else fails, then just whisper 'Mercy,' and he will hear you," she remembered saying, adding that this enabled them to endure repeated death threats.
One evening, soldiers took one of the young women from Goba's group and attempted to rape her. A commander stopped the rape and protected the family and friends as the troops prepared to transport the captives. When it was time for them to leave, their truck would not start, and eventually they were allowed to join the thousands of refugees wandering the streets of Monrovia. They escaped with only the clothes on their backs. Goba didn't even have shoes.
Goba walked though the city for several days, foraging for food and sleeping outside at night for protection. She was desperate to escape. One of Goba's friends had a large home next door to the U.S. embassy in Monrovia. "There's a low spot in the fence," she was told. Goba leaped over the fence, cutting her knee on barbed wire, and ran across the lawn toward the embassy. She stayed several days, sleeping on the embassy grounds in heavy rains with hundreds of others who had sought refuge. Eventually, "a nice lady" at the embassy helped Goba write a letter to her son in the United States. But she had forgotten the address in Texas. In despair, Goba looked up and recognized a friend of Evangeline Ricks, who also was in the embassy. The friend knew Ricks' address in Ohio, and the letter was sent.
When she left the embassy, she continued to wander, exhausted and starving. On August 4, she was reunited with Kayma and Lois, who by then had escaped from the rebel forces. Goba's legs and feet were so severely swollen, and her body so malnourished, that Kayma and Lois didn't recognize her at first.
Goba and the girls had to flee Monrovia again in October when rebels attacked Monrovia. At checkpoints, having no papers, Goba recited the 23rd Psalm to the soldiers, and she was passed through. They walked to a refugee camp in neighboring Ivory Coast, where they survived on three teaspoons of rice and a cup of rancid water as a daily meal.
When Evangeline received the letter from her mother it was clear her mother was under great stress. Then, in late October, Evangeline received a call from "a mysterious man in New York" who gave her a telephone number in Ivory Coast where she would find her mother, sister, and niece in a Roman Catholic refugee camp.
Ricks called her brother and sisters, and the four siblings sent every penny they had to move the three women out of the refugee camp and into more appropriate housing in Ivory Coast.
Ricks began efforts to bring the family to this country. She had heard that the Episcopal Church was helping refugees.
A parishioner at St. James for several years, she approached the Rev. Gordon Price, interim rector, with her plea for sanctuary for her mother, sister, and niece. They met with the vestry of St. James, which advanced Ricks $3,000 to fly the trio from Ivory Coast to New York.
What followed was endless paperwork over visas and immigration forms. At one point, it looked as though Goba and the girls would be detained in Ivory Coast and perhaps returned to the refugee camp.
Goba's son flew to Ivory Coast from Texas to plead for this mother, sister, and niece. Meanwhile, Ricks worked in Columbus to enroll Kayma in Columbus State, a two-year college, so that Kayma could obtain a student visa. St. James vestry authorized another $2,000 in tuition deposits to close the deal and provided a letter of guarantee and evidence of support for all three refugees.
On June 28 -- frightened and apprehensive -- Evangeline Ricks drove from Columbus to New York to meet her family with no assurance they would be there.
The family was reunited, and the civil war in Liberia is over for them. A new life awaits them in Columbus -- Lois no longer needs to cringe in terror at the sound of a helicopter. She's learning, slowly, to trust.
Kayma now works in a fast-food restaurant to help earn money towards her education. Lois will attend Columbus Public School. Goba, here on a nonimmigrant visitor visa, is unable to work until her green card comes through -- an arduous immigration process now in the works. Meanwhile, Goba -- a talented seamstress and accountant who once traveled worldwide -- is learning to use a computer so she can support the family.
Until recently, they lived with Evangeline, a microbiologist with the Ohio Department of Health. St. James has secured an apartment, and parishioners have donated food, clothing, and furniture to the family.
The people of St. James "have been a God-send" to this family, and Goba says it proves "there are angels on earth."
When the refugees expressed their gratitude, Price replied, "Thanks for letting the church be the church. Remember, Jesus said: 'Inasmuch as you have done for others, you have done for me.'"
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