Changing My Mind Read online

  The atmosphere in the hallways is jovial and enthusiastic, like a school newspaper. The staff are mostly young Liberians, educated in the early eighties, before the school system collapsed, or schooled elsewhere in Africa. They are positive about the future, with much optimism focused upon Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the Harvard-educated economist and first female head of state in Africa. Johnson-Sirleaf won the presidency in 2005, narrowly defeating the Liberian footballer George Weah. At present she is abroad promoting foreign investment in her country. Liberia’s expectations are on hold until her return. “We hope and pray,” people say when her name comes up. For the moment, her real impact is conceptual rather than actual: Liberia is having its female moment. Everywhere the talk is of a new generation of girls who will “take Liberia into the future.” The popular phrase among the NGO- ers is “gender strategy.” The first visit of the day is to one of the “girls’ clubs” Oxfam funds.

  Abraham Paye Conneh, a thirty-seven-year-old Liberian who looks fifteen years younger, will accompany the visitors. He speaks a flamboyant, expressive English, peppered with the acronym-heavy language of NGOs. Prior to becoming Oxfam’s education project officer, he held down three jobs simultaneously: lecturer at the University of Zion, teacher at the Liberia Baptist Theological Seminary and director of education at the West African Training Institute, a feat that netted him ten American dollars a day. He is the team’s “character.” He writes poetry. He is evangelical about Oxfam’s work: “It’s time for the women! We’re understanding gender now in Liberia. We never educated our Liberian women before; we did not see their glorious potential! But we want the women of Liberia to rise up now! Oh, yes! Like Ellen rose up! We’re saying, anything a man can do, a woman can do in the same superior fashion!”

  Phil Samways, who enjoys Abraham’s impromptu speeches but does not tend to encourage them, returns to practicalities. “Now, security is still an issue. There’s a midnight curfew for everybody here—we ask that you comply with it. We get the odd riot—small, spontaneous riots. But you’ll be fine with Abraham—you might even get a poem if you’re lucky.”

  To Lysbeth and Abraham we now add the photographer, Aubrey Wade, a thirty-one-year-old Anglo-Dutchman. He is thin, dark blond. He wears a floppy sun hat beneath which a pert nose white with sunblock peeks. He rests his lens on the car window. Hand-painted billboards line the road. HAVE YOU BEEN RAPED? Also STOP RAPE IN LIBERIA. Lysbeth asks Abraham what other “particular problems women in Liberia face.” The list is long: female circumcision, marriage from the age of eleven, polygamy, spousal ownership. Girls have “traditionally been discouraged from school.” In some tribes, husbands covertly push their wives into sexual affairs so they may charge the offending man an “infidelity tax,” paid in the form of unwaged labor. A culture of sexual favors predates the war. Further billboards warn girls not to offer their bodies in return for school grades, a common practice. The moral of Liberia might be “Where there is weakness, exploit it.” This moral is not especially Liberian in character. In May 2006 a BBC investigation uncovered “systematic sexual abuse” in Liberia: UN peacekeepers offering food to teenage refugees in return for sex. In November of the same year a local anonymous NGO worker in Liberia told the corporation: “Peacekeepers are still taking advantage of the situation to sexually exploit young girls. The acts are still rampant despite pronouncements that they have been curbed.”

  In a school in Unification Town, fourteen girls from the girls’ club are picked to sit with us in the new school “library.” It is a small room, very hot. Lysbeth’s cheeks bloom red, her hair sticks to her forehead. Our shirts are see-through with sweat. The small, random collection of textbooks on the shelves are a decade out of date. Next door is the typewriting pool, pride of the club. Here they learn to type on ten old-fashioned typewriters. It is not a “school” as that word is commonly understood. It is a building with a thousand children in it, waiting for a school to manifest itself. The preplanned questions—Do you enjoy studying? What’s your favorite subject?— are rendered absurd. They answer quietly and sadly in a “Liberian English” that is difficult to understand. The teacher translates unclear answers. She is equally hard to understand. What would you like to be when you grow up? “Pilot” is a popular answer. Also “a sailor in the navy.” By sea or by air, flight is on their minds. The remainder say “nurse” or “doctor” or “in government.” The two escape routes visible in Liberia: aid and government. What do your fathers do? They are dead, or else they are rubber tappers. A girl sighs heavily. These are not the right questions. The exasperated teacher prompts: “Ask them how often they are able to come to school.” Despair invades the room. A girl lays her head on the desk. No one speaks. “Ask me.” It is the girl who sighed. She is fourteen; her name is Evelyn B. Momoh; she has a heart-shaped face, doll features. She practically vibrates with intelligence and impatience. “We have to work with our mothers in the market. We need to live and there’s no money. It’s very hard to stay in school. There’s no money, do you understand? There’s no money at all.” We write this down. Is the typing pool useful? Evelyn squints. “Yes, yes, of course—it’s a good thing; we are very thankful.” There is the sense that she is trying hard not to scream. This is in contrast to the other girls, who only seem exhausted. And the books? Evelyn answers again. “I’ve read all of them now. I’m very good at math. I’ve read all the math books. We need more.” Are there books in your house? Evelyn blinks slowly, gives up. We file out to the typing room. Aubrey takes pictures of Evelyn as she pretends to type. She submits to this as a politician might to a humiliating, necessary photo op. We file outside into the dry, maddening heat. Aubrey walks the perimeter looking for something to photograph. The school sits isolated on a dusty clearing bordered by monotonous rubber plantations. Evelyn and her girls arrange themselves under a tree to sing a close harmony song, typical, in its melody, of West Africa. “Fellow Liberians, the war is over! Tell your girls, fetch them to get them to school! Your war is over—they need education!” The voices are magnificent. The girls sing without facial affect; dead-eyed, unsmiling. Around us the bored schoolboys skulk. Nobody speaks to them or takes their picture. The teacher does not worry that boredom and disaffection may turn to resentment and violence: “Oh, no, they are very happy for the girls.” As the visitors prepare to leave, Evelyn stops us at the steps. It is a strange look she has, so willful, so much in want, and yet so completely without expectation. The word desperate is often misused. This is what it means. “You will write the things we need. You have a pencil?” The list is as follows: books, math books, history books, science books, exercise books, copybooks, pens, pencils, more desks, a computer, electricity, a generator for electricity, teachers.

  Driving back toward Monrovia:

  “Abraham—isn’t there a government education budget?”

  “Oh, yes! Sure. Ms. Sirleaf has promised immediate action on essential services. But she has only a $120 million budget for the whole year. The UN budget alone in Liberia for one year is $875 million. And we have a $3.7 billion debt!”

  “But how much did what we just saw cost?”

  “Ten thousand. We built an extra section of the school, provided all the materials, et cetera. If it had not been done by us or another NGO, it would not be done at all.”

  “Do you pay teachers?”

  “We are not meant to—we don’t want a two-tier system. But we can train them, for example. Many of the teachers in Liberia have only been educated up to the age of twelve or thirteen themselves! We have the blind leading the blind!”

  “But then you’re acting like a government—you’re doing their job. Is that what NGOs do?”

  “[sigh] Look, there’s no human resources, and there’s no money. We all must fill in the gap: the UN, Oxfam, UNICEF, CCF, the NRC, the IRC, Médecins Sans Frontières, STC, PWJ—”

  “?”

  “Peace Wind Japan. Another NGO. I can make you a long list. But different aid has different obligations attac
hed. With us, there are no obligations. The money goes directly.”

  “So people can send money to you earmarked for a particular project?”

  “Oh, yes! [extended laughter] Please put that in your article.”

  WEDNESDAY

  The street scene in Monrovia is postapocalyptic: people occupy the shell of a previous existence. The InterContinental Hotel is a slum, home to hundreds. The old executive mansion is broken open like a child’s playhouse; young men sit on the skeletal spiral staircase, taking advantage of the shade. Abraham points out Liberia’s state seal on the wall: a ship at anchor with the inscription “The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here.” In 1822 freed American slaves (known as Americo-Liberians, or, colloquially, Congos) founded the colony at the instigation of the American Colonization Society, a coalition of slave owners and politicians whose motives are not hard to tease out. Even Liberia’s roots are sunk in bad faith. Of the first wave of emigrants, half died of yellow fever. By the end of the 1820s, a small colony of three thousand souls survived. In Liberia they built a facsimile life: plantation-style homes, white-spired churches. Hostile local Malinke tribes resented their arrival and expansion; sporadic armed battle was common. When the ACS went bankrupt in the 1840s, it demanded the “country of Liberia” declare its independence. It was the first of many category errors: Liberia was not yet a country. Its agricultural exports were soon dwarfed by the price of imports. A pattern of European loans (and defaulting on same) began in the 1870s. The money was used to partially modernize the Black Americo-Liberian hinterlands while ignoring the impoverished indigenous interior. The relationship between the two communities is a lesson in the factitiousness of “race.” To the Americo-Liberians, these were “natives”—an illicit slave trade in Malinke people continued until the 1850s. As late as 1931, the League of Nations uncovered the use of forced indigenous labor. Abraham, in the front seat, bends his head round to Lysbeth in the back: “You know what we say to that seal? The Love of Liberty MET us here.” This is a popular Liberian joke. He laughs immoderately. “So that’s how it was. They came here, and they always kept the power away from us! They had their True Whig Party, and for 133 years we were a peaceful one-party state. But there was no justice. The indigenous are ninety-five percent of this country, but we had nothing. Oh, those Congos—they had every little bit of power. Everyone in the government was Congo. They did each other favors, gave each other money. We were not even allowed the vote until very late—the sixties!”

  Lys asks a reasonable question: “But how would one know someone was a Congo?”

  “Oh, you would know. They had a way of speaking, a way of dressing. They always called each other “Mister.” Always the big man. And they lived very well. This,” he says, waving at the devastation of Monrovia, “was all very nice.”

  The largest concrete structures—the old Ministry of Health, the old Ministry of Defense, the True Whig Party headquarters—are remnants of the peaceful, unjust regimes of President Tubman (1944-71) and President Tolbert (1971-80), for whom Liberians feel a perverse nostalgia. The university, the hospital, the schools, these were financed by a True Whig policy of massive international loans and deregulated foreign business concessions, typically given to agriculturally “extractive” companies, which ship resources directly out of the country without committing their companies to any value-added processing. For much of the twentieth century, Liberia had a nickname: Firestone Republic. The deals that condemned Liberians to poverty wages and inhumane living conditions were made in these old government buildings. The people who benefited most from these deals worked in these buildings. Now these buildings have rags hanging from their windows, bullet holes in their facades and thousands of squatters inside, without toilets, without running water. Naturally, new buildings are built, new deals are made. On January 28, 2005, while an interim “caretaker” government presided briefly over a ruined country (the elections were due later that year), Firestone rushed through a new concession: fifty cents an acre for the next thirty-seven years. A processing plant—for which Liberians have been asking since the 1970s—was not part of this deal. Ministers of finance and agriculture, who had no mandate from the people and would be out of office in a few months, negotiated the deal. It was signed in the Cabinet Room at the Executive Mansion in the presence of John Blaney, U.S. ambassador at the time. During the same period, Mittal Steel acquired the country’s iron ore, giving the company virtual control of the vast Nimba concession area. The campaigning group Global Witness described the Mittal deal as a “case study in which multinational corporations seek to maximise profit by using an international regulatory void to gain concessions and contracts which strongly favour the corporation over the host nation.”

  It is a frustration for activists that Liberians have tended not to trace their trouble back to extractive foreign companies or their government lobbies. Liberians don’t think that way. Most Liberians know how much a rubber tapper gets paid: thirty-five American dollars a month. Everyone knows how much a government minister is paid: two thousand American dollars a month—a Liberian fortune. No one can tell you Firestone’s annual profit (in 2005, from its Liberia production alone: $81,242,190). In a country without a middle or working class, without a functioning civic life, government is all. It is all there is of money, of housing, of health care and schooling, of normal life. It is the focus of all aspirations, all fury. One of the more reliable signs of weak democracy is the synonymity of the word government with government buildings. Storming Downing Street and killing the prime minister would not transfer executive power. In Liberia, as in Haiti, the opposite is true. The violence of the past quarter century has in part represented a battle over Congo real estate, in particular the second, infamous Executive Mansion. It is hard to find any Liberian entirely free of the mystique of this building. In the book Liberia: The Heart of Darkness, a gruesome account of the 1989-97 war, the author’s descriptions of 1990’s catastrophic battle for Monrovia are half war report, half property magazine:From the university campus, [Charles Taylor’s] NPFL pounded the heavily fortified Executive Mansion: the huge magnificent structure built in 1964 by the Israelis at the cost of $20 million. With its back to the brilliant white beach of the Atlantic, the Executive Mansion is located at the point where West Arica comes closest to Brazil.

  In 1990, that was President Samuel K. Doe inside, refusing to leave. Ten years earlier, in 1980, when the twenty-eight-year-old Doe, a semiliterate Krahn tribesman and master sergeant in the Liberian army, staged his coup d’état, his focus was also the executive mansion. He fought his way in, disem boweling President Tolbert in his bed.

  We visit Red Light market. Aubrey: “Why is it called Red Light?”

  Abraham: “Because a set of traffic lights used to be here.”

  It is a circular piece of land, surrounded by small shops and swarming with street traders. The shops have names like The Arun Brothers and Ziad’s, all Lebanese owned, as is the Mamba Point Hotel. Almost all small business in Liberia is Lebanese owned. Abraham shrugs: “They simply had money at a time when we had no money.” The bleak punch line is Liberia’s citizenship laws: anyone not “of African descent” cannot be a citizen. Lebanese money goes straight back to Lebanon.

  Women crouch around the market’s perimeter, selling little polyethylene bags of soap powder. Some are from WOCDAL (Women and Children Development Association of Liberia), funded by Oxfam. WOCDAL lends them one hundred Liberian dollars (less than two American dollars) for a day. This gives the women a slight economic advantage in Red Light, analogous to the one the Lebanese had over the Liberians in the 1950s: money when others have none. No one else in Red Light can afford to buy a full box of soap powder. This the women then sell in pieces, keeping the profit and returning the one hundred dollars to WOCDAL. It is a curious fact that a box of soap powder, sold in many small parts, generates more money in the third world than in the first. A woman with five children tells us this enables her to send two of her three children
to school. The other three work alongside her in the market. How do you decide whom to send? “I send the fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds to school, because they will be finished sooner. The five-, six-, and seven-year-olds work with me.”

  THURSDAY

  From the 4x4, West Point does not look like a “flagship project.” A narrow corridor of filth, lined on either side with small dwellings made of trash, mud, scrap metal. Children with distended bellies, rotting food, men breaking rocks. It stretches for miles. The vehicle sticks in an alley too narrow to pass. The visitors must walk. Close up, the scene is different. It is not one corridor. There are many networks of alley. It is a city. Food is cooking. Small stalls, chicken skewers for sale. Children trail Aubrey, wanting their photograph taken. They pose boldly: big fists on knobby, twiggy arms. No one begs. We stop by a workshop stockpiled with wooden desks and chairs, solid, not unbeautiful. They are presently being varnished a caramel brown. A very tall young white man is here to show us around, Oxfam’s program manager at West Point. “This,” he says, placing both hands hard on the nearest desk for emphasis, “is great workmanship, no?” Lysbeth peers at the wood: “Um, you do know that’s not quite dry?”