Liberia

The Republic of Liberia fascinates me. So let’s think about the country now that it’s Liberia’s Independence Day—independent in 1847 from the United States.

There have been people living in the region at least since the 12th century—people shifted west as inland area experienced desertification. It’s tropical. It’s coastal. I imagine it’s not quite a beach holiday after wandering out of the desert, but that first sighting of the Atlantic must have been pretty amazing. Locals built canoes and traded with people around them. The ethnic Kru, early inhabitants of the region, started trading non-slave commodities with the Europeans, but then took a part in the slave trade too. And I find this interesting: Kru laborers took off from the area that is now Liberia to work on plantations and as construction workers all over the place. There were Kru working on the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal.

As Europeans were finding out what was out there in the wide world, they made contact with this region of Africa—from the mid-fifteenth century onwards there was trade with Portuguese, Dutch and British types.

This is the part that fascinates me: in 1822 the American Colonization Society (don’t you want to become a member of that club?) decided to establish Liberia and send freed African-American slaves there. So I guess the mentality was now that they’re free, we don’t want them in our community. Why not ship them off the Africa? Did they come from there? Good one.

Weren’t they brought from Africa how many centuries ago? Oh, and never mind that Africa is a big place—or that there are already people living in the area. Let’s give them a free country (we’ll call it Liberia to emphasise the point.) Anyway, the new immigrants were known as Americo-Liberians and on 26 July 1847 the Americo-Liberian settlers declared their independence from the US of A.

I guess it’s not surprising, then, that there were tensions between the locals and the new arrivals. At least the country stayed independent during the Scramble for Africa, and didn’t have another regime imposed on them.

More recently, some of you may remember 1980’s military coup or the 1989 and 2003 civil wars. Following the 1980 action, 1985 saw the first post-coup elections, which international observers agreed were fair. By 1989, though, Liberians weren’t happy with their president, Sergeant Samuel Doe’s, rule. Enter the civil war. The 1990s was a bloody time—insurgencies (one backed by Libya’s al-Gaddafi) assassination plots (against child rights activist Kimmie Weeks) and rebellion. So the 1989 outbreak of civil war bubbled along, till it gained new intensity in 2003 as the fighting moved into the capital.

Under international pressure to resign, President Charles Taylor left the country, first seeking asylum in Nigeria, later in Sierra Leone. Now he is to be tried at the Hague—the charges include violations of the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity.

In 2005 Liberia elected Africa’s first female head of state in Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. Johnston-Sirleaf is also the daughter of the first indigenous Liberian elected to the national legislature and a Harvard-trained economist to boot. She’s been working to get Liberia’s external debt cancelled, as well as to address the crimes of the civil war period by establishing a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Today’s poem comes from the book Ebony Dust by Liberian poet Bai T. Moore. Along with his own poems he included translations of Liberian songs, and I have chosen one of the latter from the Vai people.

Fulee (Departed One)

Vai          kaamu banda mui belea keims
                a kele ma muma
                m maa fo a la my to pen
                mu toa kasa jei bonda
                wanga jaa jila la koa

English   When he mingled with us
                we did not long for him
                not until he left us
                before we shed our useless tears
                before we obligated ourselves
                to show off to the world

—Bai T. Moore
translated by the author
from Ebony Dust