A Non Profit Organization dedicated to Liberia

4300 16th St. NW
Washington DC 20011
202 545-0139

“Help Me Small”: True Adventures of African Village Life

by Gary and Evelyn Harthcock

In the book, “Help Me Small”, Gary and Evelyn Harthcock tell the story of their four year experience as Baptist missionaries to Liberia. In short vignettes, they tell the story of society in up country Liberia.

Their experiences mirror those of other first-timers in Liberia. As the authors say in the introduction, “Going to small villages with names like Zinalormai, Kpakamai and Jowardee revealed to us that our American culture does not prepare us for the way many other people of the world have to live.”

The book brings back memories of one’s first in Monrovia—the heat and humidity contrasting with the coolness aboard the international flight, the seeming chaos of the arrival hall and immigration, the first night in relative comfort, for the Harthcocks at Ricks Institute. Like Lyn and I in 1972, the Harthcocks soon left the comfort of Monrovia for the long trip to Zwedru, first in relative comfort on the paved road to Ganta, then experiencing the red dust and close encounters with logging trucks and money buses. “The small towns slid slowly behind us, one after the other: Flompa, Kahnwi, Sagleipie, Ghankoi, Kpetu, Gloie, Zoto and Tapeta.” Crossing the Cestos River, through parts of the Sapo and Grebo National Forests, the finally arrived in Zwedru.

In Zwedru, the authors work with the local Baptist churches and see the effects on the people of the shortage of proper medical care. They also attend traditional funerals, teach literacy classes, take food to prisoners at the local prison, and construct a volleyball court for the students.

After their tour in Zwedru, the Baptists offered the Harthcocks a chance to extend in Lofa County. The chance to see another part of Liberia and to serve where needed was irresistible, and “The thought if going back to America where people were rolling in luxury” was a disturbing thought. So driving from Monrovia, spending  one night in Gbarnga, they arrived in Voinjama.

Their first view of the city was the park at the entrance to the town. Statues and busts and two marble monuments—reminders of the Pan African Conference held during the presidency of William Tubman—and now laying in a “mat of tall, wild, uncut weeds, all but forgotten.” This image made them ask, “Would the weeds would grow up after we were gone and obliterate everything we were trying to do?”

Their work in Voinjama took them throughout the county, to Dezibah and Foya, Vezala and Lawalazu. In their work they encounter Old Man Kpiti, the sand cutter; they enjoy the Friday market in Voinjama—bananas, christophenes, smoked monkey meat, cucumbers, and tie-dyed lappas; they offer help to a man bitten by a cassava snake; they stand with a Liberian colleague at his marriage in Lehuma Town.

After four years in Liberia, the Harthcocks responded to each “help me small” and made a positive impact on the people they met. Although they first retired as Baptist missionaries to Antigua in 1985 at age sixty-five, they are still helping small, this time in Thailand.

Review by Jim Gray, Peace Corps Volunteer 1972-1976