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    The Shirt on His Back: Escape from Liberia
    The Shirt on His Back: Escape from Liberia
    The Shirt on His Back: Escape from Liberia
    Ebook123 pages1 hour

    The Shirt on His Back: Escape from Liberia

    By Virginia Bergin MacKenzie OFS

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    Joe and Vera Bailey and their four daughters got caught up in a vicious and deadly civil war in Liberia in 1990. Their daughters were fifteen, twelve, ten, and two. At that time in Liberia, Charles Taylor was trying to take over the brutal regime of Samuel Doe by using even more brutal, dreadful methods. The country was in complete political, economic, and social chaos. Their very lives depended on escaping the country. Vera was allowed to escape first with the baby because little Nai Nai had been born in the United States. Vera eluded the shooting and looting to finally reach the American embassy, where she was able to get an American marine helicopter to Sierra Leone, and a flight to America. Joe and the other three girls had to wait for several agonizing months to escape, never knowing if they would ever see Vera and the baby again. Joe said that he got out of there with only The Shirt on His Back!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCovenant Books, Inc.
    Release dateMay 29, 2018
    ISBN9781640039858
    The Shirt on His Back: Escape from Liberia

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      Book preview

      The Shirt on His Back - Virginia Bergin MacKenzie OFS

      Coming of Age in Liberia

      Growing up in Liberia in the 1950s and 1960s was, in some ways, similar to growing up in America. If you were among the privileged class, that is the Americo Liberians, the freed slaves and their descendants who came to Liberia from America, you could be considered to become a been to. A been to is someone who was lucky enough to go to school in Europe or the United States. The indigenous natives of Liberia rarely had the opportunity to attend school at all.

      In Helene Cooper’s bittersweet memoir, The House at Sugar Beach, she describes her childhood in Liberia as one of the upper-class Americos. Her father was called Honorable, they lived in a house with seven bedrooms and drove around in a Lincoln Continental Mark IV. Both her parents had college degrees from America. The Coopers also had a house in Spain. Their pastimes were water skiing and sailboat racing.

      Joe Bailey was born in Liberia on December 18, 1949. His father Joseph Sr. was a jeweler from Sino County. His mother, Sarah, was from Bassa County. I remember seeing a beautiful gold ring that his father made. Joe always wore this ring because it was his wedding ring. Joe was one of seven children, three of whom are still living. Joe’s ancestors, as well as Vera’s, were freed slaves who came to Liberia from South Carolina. What a coincidence that proved to be, since the Baileys later lived in South Carolina after their escape from Liberia. Because they were Americo Liberians, both Joe and Vera were part of the elite in Liberian society.

      Joe Bailey grew up in the Methodist faith. His father was a devout and steadfast Methodist who insisted that everyone in the house keep the same religion. Joe attended St. Patrick’s Catholic Boys School for high school in Monrovia because it was the best school in the city. He then graduated from Cullington College with a BA degree in biology. When he was eighteen years old, he told his father he wanted to become Catholic. His father’s response was, There will be no papists under my roof. When you reach the age of majority and no longer live in my house, you can do what you want. Like St. Francis, Joe’s relationship with his father was loving but somewhat distant. Joseph Sr. was never physically cruel, but he was strict and unbending. When Joe spoke of his father, he seemed sad.

      Unbeknown to his father, Joe studied secretly for the Catholic faith in college. When he became twenty-one years old, Joe was received into the Catholic Church! According to Cathy Kenney who was mentored by Joe for her Franciscan formation, it was the Holy Mass, especially the Eucharist, that drew Joe to the Catholic Church. When the Priest raised the consecrated host at Mass, Joe said, This is REAL. This will be my Church home. This is where I want to be. Joe said the hair stood up on the back of his neck at the Benediction. He just knew that the presence of the Lord was surely in that place. Joe’s mother, Sarah, and his sister Priscilla also came into Communion with the Catholic Church. Their Pastor in Liberia was Father Patrick Kelly. Fr. Kelly told me that the Baileys were two of the reasons his stay in Liberia was such a pleasant one. He was fortunate to leave Liberia before the civil war.

      Joe met Vera, the love of his life, at the Tubman National Institute for Medical Arts in Monrovia where they were both teaching. After dating for four months, they were married in 1974. Vera was a devout cradle Catholic. When Joe and Vera planned their wedding and reception, all their family and friends were there, but Joe’s father refused to attend. Joe received a scholarship through the US Aid for Developing Nations to pursue a Master’s Degree, and then a Fulbright to obtain a Doctorate in biology from Tulane in New Orleans. He earned his PhD degree in 1987. By this time, he and Vera had three daughters.

      Vera Bailey was born in Monrovia to lawyer Samuel Cole Sr. and Georgia Manley Cole. Her mother, Georgia, was Catholic and came to America to school. Vera was one of five children. From the time she was five years old, she went to school in Sierra Leone. At only the age of ten, she went to school in England with her older siblings. In 1968, at the age of eighteen years old, she left Liberia to go to college on Staten Island where she got her nursing degree. Now she was a double been to since she had gone to school in both Europe and America. To Vera, Liberia was more like a place where she went on vacations rather than her home. It was such a nightmare being there during the civil war that she is not anxious to return to Liberia any time soon.

      Along with Joe, Vera also received a Fulbright to study at Tulane for a Doctorate in public health. She came over to the United States a year after Joe. All this while, Joe and Vera found time to produce four beautiful daughters: Ihuoha in 1975, Ngoanathabo in 1978, and Karama in 1980, who were all born in Liberia. Nayeede, who is nicknamed Nai Nai, was born in the United States in 1988. Vera tried to bring her two older children to New Orleans, but she had to fly her mother over to New Orleans to take the girls back to Liberia until she and Joe finished their studies. At the time of their big escape from Liberia in 1990, the girls were fifteen, twelve, ten, and

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