Hare We Go Again
By Tarty Teh

Dr. William Hare – a professed (or, perhaps, confessed) Seaside Grebo – made a noble attempt at correcting some commonly held notions about how Grebos regarded one another. Of course there is a ‘‘Bush’’ side to his Seaside presentation. To acquiesce now, in the name of gentility or perhaps modesty, is only a postponement of the inevitable truth about what the Seaside Grebos thought about the Interior Grebos. The latter was initially in no position to deny being bush people, but managed some refinement along the way which has now allowed them to lessen the burden of the intended offensive payload of the expression ‘‘Bush Grebo.’’

And so, even if the expression was conceived with contemptuous intent, it has lost its stinging power due to the growing awareness of our larger national agenda on the part of both brands of Grebos. Therefore my attempt here is not to insist on any differences among Grebos, but only to put in a word for the often misunderstood and at times maliciously labeled ‘‘Bush Grebos.’’

There is a Bush Grebo maxim which says that ‘‘Being red must have already been on the shrimp’s mind.’’ That is why the slightest application of heat turns an otherwise black shrimp red. Similarly, disassociation from the interior tribes must have been prominent on the minds of the Seaside Grebos even before the Americos introduced anything that the Seasiders found sufficient as an excuse for following the bent of their own inclination. That is why some Seaside Grebos turned completely Western at the slightest suggestion of Western cultural supremacy.

Looking back now, some Seasiders can claim – as Dr. William Hare has also intimated – that they had been brainwashed. But what would be the point of putting the Seasiders through the full wash cycle when only a rinse might do? The Seasiders’ capitulation to the merest pressure by the Americos has left many questions in the minds of many Bush Grebos. Bush Grebos don’t easily part with their land, but the Seasiders hardly own any land bordering on their mighty sea.

If the Seaside Grebo lyric has any basis in the truth, then much – if not all – of the coastal Grebo land that was sold to the black settlers from the United States was bought with smoked fish as the currency. That must have been a lot of fish. But that’s beside the point. There may be a sound explanation for why the Seaside Grebos gave up their land for fish, but the transactions have not made sense in the interior for well over 140 years now.

The Bush logic runs something like this: ‘‘Give me something I cannot otherwise find on my own.’’ A coastal tribe accepting payment for prime real estate in fish from their own ocean as a medium of exchange is the rough equivalent of trying to entice a Pallipo person with monkey meat. He’ll take it only if it is sufficiently cheap. Even so, there are not enough monkeys in the jungle worth giving up the land for.

Back to the lyric. The Seaside Grebo song goes somewhat like this: ‘‘Flu-a ti-o, Yua Kihn-o.’’ As the Bush Grebos understand it, the song says, ‘‘For the sake of foolishness, Yua Kihn.’’ The words are repeated over and over in a simple melody. But interpretation is not that easy. ‘‘Yua’’ is a common Seaside Grebo name. A woman’s name from this name would be ‘‘Yuade’’ (with the ‘‘e’’ pronounced). ‘‘Kihn’’ is also a Grebo name, but it is more Bush than Seaside. So it is hard to say whether Yua was a son of Kihn, or simply too ‘‘kind’’ with the land of his forefathers. You see, Yua was the alleged broker in the fish-for-land deal.

Remember Dr. Hare’s observation that the Seaside Grebos spoke a lot of English – so much so that an unduly large amount of English words seeped into their brand of Grebo. Speaking a lot of English was also a source of pride, which was why the Seasiders replaced with English expressions some Grebo words that were otherwise usefully employed. Another proof of this is the fact that Krus and Bush Grebos would refer to the foolishness alleged in the lyric as ‘‘boboa,’’ not ‘‘flu,’’ which is a corrupt form of the English word ‘‘foolish’’ in Seaside Grebo.

Some civilized Seaside Grebos, on acquiring a modicum of Western refinement, quickly retrofitted their families with fresh Western last names. Perhaps that’s how we got Hare. The infection spread inland. For instance, Dweh became Dwight, Nyensohn became Hanson, and similar phonetic approximations continued throughout what was referred to, in official Liberian government literature, as ‘‘The Hinterland.’’ Of course The Hinterland became ‘‘Greater Liberia’’ in the 1990s – and only during the war – when Charles Taylor used it as a temporary seat away from the center of his Americo Civilization in Monrovia.

One of the good things about real and not-real Grebos before the 1980s is that the majority of Bush Grebos didn’t know that they were Grebo at all, if, in fact, there was something called Grebo. And the Seasiders must have had an acquired taste for being Grebo since the word doesn’t seem to be native to any known brand of the Grebo tongue. And this is despite the Seaside Grebos’ development of the script they called ‘‘Glibo,’’ which was perhaps the first attempt of a written language in Greboland. These noble attempts, unfortunately, turned some Seasiders into shameless braggadocios. Needless to say, there is still disagreement among all species of Grebos about any etymology of the term Grebo. Otherwise, the Interior Grebos have a rather exhaustive catalogue of the clans that constitute what is administratively known as Grebo.

There is, however, a clan called Gborbo in the cape region in Cape Palmas. Members of that clan were among the latest arrivals in the coastal regions at or near the confluence of the Cavalla River (Duo) and the Atlantic Ocean. Gborbo, as one of the newest additions to the Greboland, came directly from the Zwedru area in Upper Gedeh and kept the same exact name as the Gborbo clan still in the Krahnland today. Yet when you, as a fellow Grebo, meet a Seasider and inquire about his clan, the answer often is ‘‘Grebo.’’ And it seemed that there was delight on the part of some Seasiders when they referred to the Interior Grebos as ‘‘Bush Grebos.’’

Truth be told, however, there are Seasiders who will tell you, as though with pride, ‘‘A koni Gborbo,’’ literally meaning ‘‘I belong to Gborbo.’’ Of course, the other coastal Grebos include Nyanbo and Jallapo who, I believe, call themselves ‘‘Garaway.’’ This is exactly how confusion begins. ‘‘Garaway,’’ for instance, has no phonetic or etymological prompting in any known brand of the Grebo language. Visually and phonetically, it is half way English.

When we the Interior Grebos realized that we were – at least administratively – in the Grebo pool, we began to apply the label to ourselves without much reservation. But the shame of being rebuffed as not being ‘‘real Grebo’’ was not worth the pending glory of acquiring this otherwise strange identity. So some of us avoided the predicted debate by settling for the ‘‘Bush’’ in Bush Grebo. Our tie to our Seaside brothers and sisters, though made tenuous by Seasiders’ abrasive verbal assaults, remained ‘‘Grebo’’ throughout the period of uncertainty.

The Seasiders, it seemed, took credit for the ocean while they thought we were stuck in the bush. And with so much bush around, any debate against being Bush Grebo seemed moot. But the anticipated deficit of being Bush Grebo never materialized as we all struggled to acquire further refinement through Western education. In that endeavor, however, the Seasiders had a leg up, at least for being in the proximity of Western-style academies.

I hope this clears the bush that could have prevented the Seaside Grebos from seeing the jungle that surrounds much of Greboland. And if they don’t mind, we will all be Grebos once again. – Tarty Teh [Washington, D.C., May 20, 2000]