For decades, Monrovian women have gingerly walked the feces-littered beaches fronting the worst slums of the Liberian capital to buy gbapleh, a fish used to prepare pepper soup. The tiny Atlantic fish is cheap, tasty, and especially popular in the slums of Liberian cities. Suburban Monrovian women make do with gbapleh in time of economic crisis. Essentially, the fish is an alternative bargain on the Monrovia fish market; most city dwellers buy it for the sake of its taste, and only its taste.

Thin and tiny, about the size of your index finger, gbapleh is usually sold in large chunks. The head is probably as small as a palm kernel and collects sand, making an unpleasant crunch when eaten. Besides this, gbapleh has a lot of needle-like bones, which can be painful to chew and swallow, so the preparation is awfully time-consuming and demanding. “To make it eatable you first have to chop off the tiny heads,” says Teresa Gray, “and then fry it in chunks before it is ready for soup. When it is prepared, you get the taste rather than meat.”

The name Gbapleh (certainly not an English word!) has taken on a new meaning since the 1980s. General Gray Allison, the articulate Doe henchman, is said to have frequently used it as a descriptive whenever he lashed at the then “irritating” Liberian press. Whatever the late Allison meant, the term has since gained currency among somewhat sophisticated Liberian women, who variously use it to refer to “poor quality” men; that is, men who aren’t their “match.” Invariably, Liberian women in the United States apply it to some Liberian men who, for some reason or the other, have been living at the margins of American society, and for the sake of having husbands, the women have had to go out with. In doing so, the women have had to labor not only to make such demoralized Liberian men gain self-confidence, but also to make them the caliber of men they (the women) deserve to be with.

Who is a Gbapleh?

Gbapleh is a “how for do” man – cognitively, a misfit with several faces. He is the young countryman who has not adapted to the tastes of modernization and sophisticated lifestyle in Monrovia. In other words, he is not trendy or fashionable, still wearing mismatched colors. Gbapleh is also the rural politician who, upon winning an elected post in the Legislature, comes to Monrovia, is given a car with a driver and lives in a modern home with running water. But he practically lacks the attitude of mind, the flair of being bossy and the mannerisms, tastes, dress code and lifestyle of the “elites.” He is too down to earth, if not country.

Gbapleh is also the semiliterate Liberian soldier who suddenly found himself on the corridors of power on April 12, 1980, but who lacked the wits, the appropriate language codes and the posture for being in the limelight, yea the company of the Americo-Liberian “beauties” and/or “civilized” women he has long lusted for. In another sense, Gbapleh is the ill-fated man who has fallen from grace to grass. He is so distressed that he tends to assume an inferiority complex in relation to the so-called sophisticated Liberian women. The name is also applied to a novice who can easily be manipulated by the women.

In the United States, Gbapleh is ambiguously used to refer to the post-war Liberian man. On the one hand, he is that man who, before the war, was either a professional politician or a senior civil servant back in the war-torn country. He is educated and is said to have been an ambassador, a cabinet minister, a managing director, etc. Having been a big shot in Monrovia, he is accustomed to being waited on by servants, his wife and concubines alike. Because of his social and political connections, this guy hardly paid any bills back home.

Following the civil war, this once privileged man is left in the cold. In Taylor’s Liberia, he was practically incapacitated - having lost the privilege and power he once wielded. Demoralized, he has become a refugee made idle in the Americas. His only defense, though, is his academic credentials which he is supposed to have earned in an American university. He is always bragging about his degrees in social gatherings, although he is snubbed on the American white-collar job market, consequently rendering him unemployable. His precarious status in America is the Liberian woman’s burden. “Such a man is the most problematic of all the Liberian men in America,” says Hawa, whose deceased husband was a well connected Americo-Liberian businessman, but who is now living with a former Doe cabinet minister in Maryland, “for he buries his head in past glories. To make him compatible, you’ve got to work on his mindset, and that is painstaking.”

On the other hand, Gbapleh is the ordinary Liberian man who had never dreamed of living in America save for the resettlement program. Thanks to this goodwill American immigration program, he is now able to earn money, own a decent home and a car of the type befitting only a finance minister in Liberia. In spite of these high status symbols, the guy is not groomed enough to enjoy the company of a sophisticated Liberian woman. But since most victims of the civil war were high-caliber men, the woman has no other alternative but to settle down with this “low-grade” man, hoping to fine tune and/or polish him to the standard she's set for her choice of man. “To this end, the woman assumes a sense of duty while at the same time improvising,” says Monica Sirleaf, a successful real estate agent living with a semiliterate soldier-turned-taxi driver in Trenton, New Jersey. “The issue is, you’re making a somewhat parochial chap civilized. Like gbapleh, you are seasoning him in order to enhance your status,” she says emphatically.

What is Gbapleh Like?

The man called Gbapleh has no special physical features; he may be a tall or a short man, fat or slim. He may be good-looking or even ugly. What distinguishes him from other men is primarily his personality. For the most part, Gbapleh tends to be less assertive and lacking in self-confidence, and hence is vulnerable and can be manipulated. In some cases, he buries his head in the past, which makes him somewhat impractical. Because of his somewhat glorious past, this man finds it extremely difficult to acculturate and/or adapt to his new environment. Psychologically, he cannot work with the elderly nor can he take care of retarded kids, the types of entry level jobs that many Liberians do in the United States. The Liberian big shot syndrome is very much with the guy - still regarding Liberian women as those air-headed beauties who, back home in Liberia, had to serve his whims and caprices. “Culturally, he is shocked,” said Hawa, a registered nurse living in Seattle, adding, “the worst can be fatal.”

His Role at Home

In America, Liberian women like Hawa have been empowered by the almighty dollar, but finding a “matching man” is said to be an uphill task, which is why they often settle for a Gbapleh - essentially a window-dresser. His precarious economic standing has cast him in the pathetic role of a two-legged bulldog that barks thunderously but is too lame to bite. He routinely loiters between the kitchen and the sitting room, where he spends the most of his time switching from one TV channel to another.

In what for him is an unsavory swapping of roles, this deflated Liberian male becomes a passive recipient of the benevolence of his spouse, now cast in the dominant role in America. To reciprocate, he has to do the washing up (the dishes), vacuuming, ironing, among other chores. In most cases, he has to mind the children, whom he is not allowed to spank but who occasionally yell profanities at him. More demeaning is the constant surveillance of the omnipresent Big Sister (his benefactor spouse), who effectively remote-controls from her place of work (while warding off female intruders). Since Gbapleh is potentially a class embryo, he must learn how to dance to the music of the Big Mamma, eat to her taste, get on with her crowd and adapt the style of dress she prefers – much to her satisfaction.