Letter from Liberia
Liberia is a country mired in its past. But, as Zadie Smith discovers when she meets its traumatised boy soldiers, struggling rubber workers and children desperate to learn, it is taking its first tentative steps to a better future. In the second part of the Observer and Oxfam's 'Words in Action' initiative, the prize-winning writer finds hope amongst the heartbreak
Monday
There are no direct flights from England to Liberia. Either you go to Brussels or you book with Astraeus, a specialist airline named after a Roman goddess of justice. They run a service to Freetown, in neighbouring Sierra Leone. The clientele is mostly Africans dressed as if for church. Formal hats, zirconiums and Louis Vuitton holdalls are popular. A toddler waddles down the aisle in a three-piece suit and bow tie. Only non-Africans are dressed for 'Africa', in khakis, sandals, wrinkled T-shirts. Their bags are ostentatiously simple: frayed rucksacks, battered cases. The luggage of a nomad people.
A cross-section of travellers sits in a row. A glamorous African girl in a silky blouse. An English nun. An American aid worker. A Lebanese man, who describes himself as a 'fixer': 'I fix things in Freetown - electrical systems, buildings.' He calls the well-dressed Africans Soon-Comes. 'They come, they soon go. Their families assume they're rich - they try to live up to this idea.' The plane descends over Sierra Leone. The fixer looks out the window and murmurs 'white man's graveyard' in the same spirit that people feel compelled to say 'the Big Apple' as their plane approaches JFK. This, like much else on the plane, accommodates the Africa of imagination.
In Sierra Leone everyone 'deplanes', taking the Africa of imagination with them, a story that has at least a familiar form. Who remains in the story of Liberia? Barely a dozen people, ushered to the front to stare at each other across the wide aisles of business class. The nun is travelling on: Sister Anne of the Corpus Christi Carmelites. Brown socks in brown sandals, brown wimple; a long, kindly face mapped with wrinkles. She has worked in Liberia since the Eighties, running a mission school in Greenville. 'We left when the war became impossible - we're back now, teaching students. It's not easy. Our students have seen such terrible things. Beyond imagination, really.' She looks troubled when asked to describe the Liberian character. 'They are either very, very good people - or the opposite. It is hard to be good in these conditions.'
Flying low over Monrovia there are no lights visible, only flood rain and sheet lightning illuminating the branches of palm trees, the jungle in a bad movie. The airport is no bigger than a village school. The one-ring baggage carousel is open to the elements; through the aperture the lightning flashes. There are more baggage handlers than passengers. They mill without occupation, profoundly bored, soaking wet. It seems incredible that heat like this persists through rain. The only thing to see is the obligatory third-world Coke hoarding, ironic in exact proportion to the distance from its proper American context. This one says: 'Coke - Make it real.' Just after the Coke sign there is a contrary sign, an indication that irony is not a currency in Liberia. It is worn by a girl who leans against the exit in a T-shirt that says: The Truth Must Be Told.
The truth about Liberia is disputed. It consists of simultaneously asserted, mutually exclusive 'facts'. The CIA World Factbook states that in 1980 a military coup led by Samuel Doe ushered in a decade of authoritarian rule, but not - as is widely believed in Liberia - that the CIA itself funded both the coup and the regime. Doe's successor, Charles Taylor, instigator of the 1989-97 Liberian Civil War in which an estimated 300,000 people died, is presently in The Hague awaiting trial for crimes against humanity, yet there are supportive hand-painted billboards across Monrovia (CHARLES TAYLOR IS INNOCENT!) and hagiographic collections of his speeches for sale in the airport. In Europe and America, the Liberian civil war is described as a 'tribal conflict'. In Liberian classrooms children from half a dozen different tribes sit together and do not seem to know what you mean when you ask if this causes a difficulty.
There is no real road network in Liberia. Dur ing the late-summer rainy season much of the country is inaccessible. Tonight the torrential rain is unseasonable (it is March), but the road is the best in the country, properly surfaced: one long straight line from the airport to the Mamba Point Hotel in Monrovia. Lysbeth Holdoway, Oxfam's press officer, sits in the back of an all-weather 4x4 outlining Liberia's present situation. She has long chestnut hair and is in youthful middle age. Four or five times a year she visits some of the more benighted countries of the world. Even by the standards with which she is familiar, Liberia is exceptional. 'Three-quarters of the population lives below the poverty line - that's US$1 a day; half are on less than 50 cents a day. What infrastructure there was has been destroyed - roads, ports, municipal electricity, water, sanitation, schools, hospitals - all desperately lacking or nonexistent; 86 per cent unemployment, no street lights...' Through the car window, dead street lamps can be seen - they were stripped of their components during the war. Lightning continues to reveal the scene: small huts made of mud bricks, sheets of corrugated iron and refuse; more bored young men, sitting in groups, dully watching the cars go by. The cars are of two types: huge Toyota Land Cruisers like this one, usually with UN stamped on their bonnets, or else dilapidated Nissans, the back windows of which reveal six people squeezed into the back seats, four in the front. Our driver, John Flomo, is asked whether the essentials - a water and sanitation system, electricity, schools - existed prior to the war. 'Some, yes. In towns. Less in the country.' Even the electricity that lights the airport is not municipal. It comes from a hydro plant belonging to Firestone, the American rubber com pany, famous for its tyres. Firestone purchased 1m acres of this country in 1926, a 99-year lease at the bargain rate of six cents an acre. They use their hydro plant to power their operation. The airport electricity is a 'gift' to the nation, although Firestone's business could not function without an airport. 'All this is Firestone,' says Flomo, pointing at the darkness.
Tuesday
The Mamba Point Hotel is an unusual Liberian building. It is air-conditioned, with toilets and clean drinking water. In the parking lot a dozen UN trucks are parked. In the breakfast room the guests are uniform: button-down collars, light khakis, MacBooks. Their conversations demonstrate college-town levels of self-reflexivity. The only subject in Liberia is Liberia itself. 'Here's the crazy thing,' one man tells another over croissants. 'Malaria isn't even a hard problem to solve.' At a corner table, an older woman reels off blunt statistics to a newcomer who notes them down: 'Population, 3.5m. Over 100,000 with HIV; male life expectancy, 38; female, 42. Sixty-five Liberian dollars to one US dollar. Officially literacy is 57 per cent but that figure is really pre-war - there's this whole missing generation...' In the corner bar, a dozen male Liberian waiters rest against the counter, devotedly following Baywatch.
All trips by foreigners, however brief, are done in the NGO Land Cruisers. The two-minute journey to Oxfam headquarters passes an open rubbish dump through which people scavenge, alongside skinny pigs. The NGO buildings are lined up on 'UN Drive'. Each has a thick boundary wall stamped with its own logo. Liberian security defends their gates. The American embassy goes further, annexing an entire street. Oxfam shares its compound with Unicef. These offices resemble an English sixth-form college, a white concrete block with swing doors and stone stairwells. On each door there is a sticker: NO FIREARMS. Here Phil Samways, the country programme manager, heads a small development team. He is 54, sandy-haired, lanky, wearing the short-sleeved white shirt English accountants favour in the summer months. Unusually, his is not a development background: for 20 years he worked at Anglian Water. He has an unsentimental, practical manner, speaking precisely and quickly: 'We are moving out of the humanitarian disaster stage now - water and sanitation and so on. Now we're interested in long-term development. We choose schemes that concentrate on education and livelihoods, and the rehabilitation of ex-combatants, of which there are thousands, many of them children. We hope you'll talk to some of them. You'll see a few of our school projects while you're here, and our rural projects in Bong County, and West Point, which is really our flagship project. West Point is a slum - half the population of Monrovia lives in slums. And as you've seen, we have extreme weather - for eight months it rains like this and the country turns into a quagmire. Cholera is a massive problem. But you have to choose the area you'll concentrate on, and we've chosen education. When we asked people what they needed most, they often said education first, over toilets, basic sanitation. Which should tell you something.'
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 in Canada, encouraging foreign investment in her country. After that she is to meet the Japanese. Liberia's expectations are on hold until her return. 'We hope and pray,' people say, when her name comes up. For the moment her 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 37-year-old Liberian who looks 15 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 US$10 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 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 31-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 11, 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 labour. Indigenous laws like these are practised alongside those shakily enshrined in Liberia's US-based constitution.
A culture of sexual favours 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 2006 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, 14 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 10 old-fashioned typewriters. It is not a 'school' as that word is commonly understood. It is a building with 1,000 children in it, waiting for a school to manifest itself. The pre-planned questions - Do you enjoy studying? What's your favourite 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 that sighed. She is 14, 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 wilful, 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, copy books, pens, pencils, more desks, a computer, electricity, a generator for electricity, teachers.
Driving back towards 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 US$120m budget for the whole year. The UN budget alone in Liberia for one year is US$875m. And we have a US$3.7bn debt!'
'But how much did what we just saw cost?'
'Ten thousand. We built an extra section of the school and provided all the materials, etcetera. 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 12 or 13 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 RC, Medecins Sans Frontieres, STC, PWJ...'
'?'
'Peace Wind Japan. Another NGO. I can make you a long list. But different aid has different obligations attached. 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 post-apocalyptic: 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.
