Day Five - Love of Liberty

Today is Liberia’s 175th anniversary, “July 26.” A good sign of the day’s approach was the prevalence of the walk-between-the-lanes hawkers offering Liberian flags, big and small. The flags are now pretty much everywhere, stores, homes, booths, cars, bikes.

The national coat of arms proclaims “The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here.” The “us” are the Americos, sometimes regarded by the “them” already here as the “black white men.”

“The freed slaves and free blacks who first colonized the Windward Coast [now most of Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire], and the whites that sent them, disagreed on many things, including who should run the colony. They did agree that, if nothing else, Liberian should be a black man’s place. They meant different things by this of course. Liberia was born of a white idea: the burgeoning and unwanted population of free blacks and emancipated slaves in post-Revolutionary America could be sent to Africa. The early nineteenth-century politicians

who devised this idea considered it an inspired one. America could rid itself of its most ‘useless and pernicious’ class of people while simultaneously establishing a beachhead from which Africa could be civilized and Christianized.” Another America, The Story of Liberia and the Former Slaves Who Ruled It, Climent, J. (2013).

That Black “us” proclaimed their enterprise an independent republic in 1847, constitution and government patterned on the U.S., capital Monrovia named after the fifth American president James Monroe (1817-1825). “Us,” the Americo population, superior in education, intellect, opportunity and power to the indigenous tribes. Former slaves became the effective slave masters, in every leadership

position, including the presidency until the 1979 assassination of Tolbert and coup by (indigenous) Master Sergeant Samuel K. Doe.

The 1980s Reagan Administration embraced Doe’s ensuing regime as its key African ally in those final Cold War years. Then in 1989 came Taylor – at first embraced by the American Left -- whose independent commander Prince Johnson (now a senator, irony) captured and, on video, tortured and killed Mr. Doe.

Liberty became impunity. “During the multi-sided civil war that [ensued], sadistic teen-age killers sporting names like General Fuck Me Quick, Babykiller, and Dead Body Bones arbitrarily executed civilians and decorated checkpoints on the roads with human heads and entrails. Often on drugs, wearing fetishes they believed made them impervious to bullets, and garbed in costumes ranging from novelty-store fright wigs to women’s bathrobes, these murderous

adolescents raped, pillaged and slaughtered at will. Many engaged in cannibalism, eating the hearts and genitals of their slain enemies in order to enhance their power. “ Letter from Liberia, The Devil They Know,” The New Yorker, July 27, 1998.

The overt madness ended in August, 2003 with Taylor’s exile (and eventual conviction) and the insertion of 15,000 U.N. (heavily armed) peacekeepers, with Ellen Johnson peacefully elected for the first of two six-year terms in 2005.

July 26, Independence Day, seems largely a day of collective relief for those old enough to remember back the 19 years and more when life was minute-to-minute. By late morning, the RLJ pools are packing up with the kids and grandkids of those persisted through the horror. Might the perpetrators be among the perpetrated (or the predecessors of each) around these boisterous decks? Sure … irony.

We have a midday meeting over at the Royal with Dr. Charles Ihedioha, Romelle’s no. two and Cuttington VP Academic Affairs. We hit it off, for over two hours trading common inspirations by the diverse roads that led us here. He is Ibo, a northeastern Nigerian, known as a can-do, big think tribe (the Texans of Africa?). He is gung-ho to restore Cuttington and more than willing to accept our lending hand. Pilot planning, timing, funding and execution are next.

We stop to see Mother Florence and her charges at the Global Cares Academy, not far from RLJ, in the shadow of the ELWA radio tower (Eternal Love Winning Africa).

M-Florence was the more-than-memorable voice of conscience in my first 24 hours in Liberia, May, 2006. Jay and his colleagues had us

visit her school/orphanage that morning, the small house's tiny living room packed with hundreds of new human race arrivals, all loudly welcoming with me in unison. “Good morning, sir! How are you this morning sir!! I am fine sir!!!” In our after-spectacle meeting in the back and before her staff, Florence took me by the collar – not figuratively – and flatly stated I was going to help her and them.

The school has since moved, to an even smaller cinder block structure nearby, a spot you would discount for any such operation (and would never find without expert assistance) since it’s off-road, over pretty tall grass and out of sight around the end of a long wall on a side street to a side street.

But there it is, Global Cares. And so it’s been, 16 years-worth, not huge help, modest but always accepted graciously. We have seen two of her parent-less kids – Prince and Titus – grow from the tiniest

to the tallest, Prince now a teenager and who, for the first time in all that time, cracked a smile today.

With her right hand Reuben and others, she has cared for the young through more than I or anyone I know could confront in 24 hours … because … it’s the right thing to do.

We arrive back at high-end RLJ now with high-end kids playing at high roar in the high-end pool while adults eat, drink and party away in the tables and cabanas all around. The beach and the sea are out there, perfect temperature with perfect breeze embracing the scene. Here are the fortunately comfortable “we,” the “them” out there, in ELWA, downtown, pretty much everywhere else.

But that’s OK, party on. Liberia, the oldest republic on The Continent, forged and fostered by liberty, if limited in definition. Congratulations Liberia, today at rest and relief. Tomorrow, it’s back to work, to continue peace’s creation and, hopefully, enough time and space to bring about a Liberty for the entire “us.”

Tim Bowles
Paynesville, Liberia
July 26, 2022