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Joproken, Liberia:
The goal of our trek, Joproken, is a village of thirty round huts like the one I described in Fishtown plus a few zinc-roofed houses collected randomly in a jungle clearing.
Our first stop in Joproken is to a memorial mound of earth decorated with shotgun shells marking the grave of the first Christian in this village--who was murdered by person or persons unknown exactly one year ago.
This progressive nonconformist was also the first person in the village to put a zinc roof on his house. He had even expressed his desire to leave Joproken and go to school in Monrovia to find out more about the outside world but, for someone, this was the last straw.
Poison is the traditional way of dealing with such an upstart in this culture and he was duly terminated.
Soon after his death, as is sometimes the case with visionaries, the zinc roof became popular since resident snakes and bugs are not such a problem as they are in thatch roofed huts--and zinc doesn’t burn as well as seasoned thatch either.
Even education and perhaps even Christianity were becoming tolerable for the Joprokenites as you can see by our presence here on this requested visit from Lutheran missionaries.
So Joproken has its own Zinc-roof /Christian martyr while the nuisance himself is safely dead and buried.
The shotgun shell grave decorations show the high regard some of the the people now have for their hero since firing a gun salute over a grave is an expensive bush tribute.
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