THE ODDS IN LIBERIA
We seem to think of Liberia in relation to the historic circumstances in which the United States had an active part in founding the nation. Yet, we seldom look further than that point.
We speak of it having started because large numbers of people wanted to establish a place in Africa to which American slaves, when freed from their bondage, might choose to return.
Some actually did so, but not in any great numbers.. The percentage of people in Liberia today who can trace an Americo-Liberian heritage is estimated to be about 2.5 per cent. The majority of those who did return did so, not from mainland United States, but ,rather from the Caribbean islands, where a relationship with the mainland United States was never really established. We have, over the years, perhaps, made too much of the American association – a movement which was not sustained and could only be said to have failed as a missionary project of a kind. It has enabled anti-slavery people to show how “we tried” to return the stolen slaves to their old way of life. Most of them had never been here in a strict sense.
There have been repercussions from time-to-time and the fact that the nation's capital city – Monrovia -is named after our President at the time. There is a city down the coast from the capital area called Buchanan, and one might assume that and other locations where given American names by Americans working with the colonization movement. Or, it could suggest an enclave type of segregation decided by where they came from. The national flag of Liberia has thirteen red and white stripes, a field of blue in the upper left corner with a single white star centered therein.
The other people involved in the Liberian state are varied including such indigenous tribesmen as the Kpelle, Bass, Gio, Kru, Grebo, Manu, Krfalkin, Gilka, Gbandi, Loma, Kissi, Vai and Bella people. I listed the group to show that not one of them is a large, well-recognized tribe from anywhere in the area.. The America-African decendant who returned from the Caribbean were largely people from,the Congo ...not from the Liberian plains at all. The returned person found himself still in a foreign country, under a economy and lifestyle not unlike slavery they had known in the islands.
The religious life of Liberia is divided into three levels, Christians number about forty per cent; Muslims about twenty per-cent and those professing “Indigenous Beliefs” has been set, loosely, at about forty per-cent. Efforts by American missionary groups outlasted in the fervor of the leaders of the new nation which accounts for the rather large number of Christians. That was an easy task. The people speak some twenty ethnic groups of languages and only a few of them are ever used in written form.. Literacy runs at about 53.9 % of males who can read and write and about 22.4% for women. That averages works out at about 39 per-cent which is good for the coast of Africa enough to make it seem to many as a land of promise.
Liberia is, officially, a republic - as we are. The Republic of Liberia. It is made up of fifteen counties, largely geographically designated rather than tribal titles which is also encouraging. It became independent - from whom is discreetly left out of most summaries. They celebrate their Independence Day on the 26th of July each year. Suffrage is universal from age nineteen.
We are reminded of the warning words of Benjamin Franklin, who ,when asked what kind of government the convention had chosen for us responded that “We are a Republic. He qualified his statement. He said we were fortunate to have chosen that way, but expressed a hope -perhaps with a tinge of doubt in his mind - that we might be strong enough to sustain it.
Liberia has become another example of a a new nation founded as a Republic which could not retain it. France went over the end-line in the French Revolution. Civil War in Liberia started in 1989 and continued through 1996. The government formed in 1997 is now in a pitiful state and it is and we have a certain role to play in re-establishing peace once again.
Read. Study. Listen and learn! There must be much each of us can do to help bring about a better life for Liberians..
A.L.M. August 22, 2003 [c763wds]
