Doeba Bropleh

Toting Hammocks: Toward a New Cultural Consciousness in Liberia

We fightin’ so our culture won’t die…
Ma Gbessie, Liberian Cultural Icon (2008)

In Liberia, the overemphasis on Christian evangelization as a precondition for the status of a “civilized nation” relegated traditional cultural expressions to mere paganism.
Abdoulaye W. Dukule’ (2007)

We look too much to foreigners, and are dazzled almost to blindness by their exploits - so as to fancy that they have exhausted the possibilities of humanity…We must not be satisfied that in this nation European influence shapes our polity, makes our laws, rules in our tribunals and impregnates our social atmosphere.
Edward W. Blyden (1881)

“The government in Monrovia used to send agents-protected by soldiers-to the counties and territories to collect taxes and enforce compliance with mandates. When the agents came to Grand Cess, the soldiers would ask the chief to provide people to serve as transporters. People with some degree of Western education were held in higher regard than others, so the chief always turned to families whose children were not in Western-styled schools. Those young men and women were made to tote the agents in hammocks to the next town after they were done with their work in Grand Cess. Pretty soon more and more parents started sending their children to these schools to avoid the embarrassing job of toting hammocks.”

It was three years ago when my mother told me this story as part of her answer to my question: why she and my father had not taught any of their children to speak Kru, our ancestral language. My mother explained how acquiring Western-based education came to be seen in Grand Cess as the most important tool needed to “get ahead in life” as she put it. My parents were convinced that this education was necessary to build a foundation for multi-generational success.

“When we went to Monrovia to further our studies,” she continued, “we encountered even more emphasis and pressure not only on education, but also on acting kwi in order to establish ourselves.” My mother then fixed her eyes in a stare that bore through me. “We did what we had to do to improve ourselves and allow our children to get ahead in life, to have more than we had. And at the time, we thought that teaching you all Kru might hold you back.”

The story intrigued me because I viewed it as a possible explanation of why there may be cultural dilution in segments of the Liberian community.  In their zeal to create a “better” world for their offspring, my parents and some members of their age group dammed up the river of tradition to generate power for realignment to Western values. For the most part, the language, songs, games and stories from my parents’ younger years are entombed in their memories. In my family our culture was dying a torturous death.

Though it is too broad a stroke to consider this piece a representation of Liberia’s broader reality, there are elements here that ring true for larger cross sections of the country’s populace. I know hundreds of members of my generation, from various tribal backgrounds, who, like me, are without their mother-tongue and other legacy markers.

BECOMING “CIVILIZED” - THE MISNOMER

The realignment to Western values was actively influenced by three intertwined prongs: 1) Westerners; 2) Western religions feverishly seeking converts; and 3) Some Americo-Liberians. This group includes descendants of freed slaves from the United States as well as descendants of settlers from various Caribbean islands and elsewhere who, in the early 19^th century, chose, or were made to resettle in the territory now known as Liberia. Some would argue that there was also a fourth dimension: 4) Indigenes who acquired material advancement, then shunned their heritage.

This “dance away from self” however, must be placed within the overarching socio-economic and political context of Liberia; especially in the 60s when my parents’ generation was going to school and trying to carve out their lives. Western-aligned individuals had accrued massive wealth and social stature and the counterbalance from the indigenous side was fairly non-existent. The Western-based educational system spread the influences, mores and cultural markers of the society(ies) from which it originated. Ignoring for the most part accomplished Liberian and African societies, this system demanded that to be recognized as “civilized” required not only the acquisition of said education, but also the absorption of Western practices, perceptions, biases, and ethos.

The intercultural communications specialist, Dr. Emmanuel T. Dolo defined the precept of assimilation in the Liberian context as:

Entrenched expectations (implicit or explicit) of the dominant class that for members of the subjugated groups to gain access to mainstream opportunities they must abandon their cultural norms and values and meld into the cultural milieu of the elites…The ‘melting-pot’ ideology (support for indigenous people subsuming their culture into that of settlers’) held by the ruling political and social elites forced indigenous people who desired to succeed politically and economically to conform to settlers’ cultural norms and values… (16, 20).

Stephanie Horton, the writer-scholar, synthesized this misguided effort:

It is the mental illness arising out of the holocaust of the slave experience, when a person of African descent puts down another person of African descent for being closer to the root of the source of our collective African heritage. There is something sick—a psychic trauma—mental and emotional, when we see this pattern repeated throughout the black world.

Western influence bombarded the prism of my parents’ worldview skewing it toward the less indigenous. Due to the incessant gnawing at their existential fabric I understand why some Grand Cess Kru folks suppressed their heritage. In their determination to be considered “civilized”, some in my parents’ generation soaked up the imported value system, which then became a driving force in their child rearing philosophy. This approach eroded their roots and diminished the retention of cultural values and information for future generations.

In essence, there was negligible constructive tension between equally-yoked, but contrasting elements working to create balanced cultural evolution in Liberia. This produced what former Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah described as “cultural disequilibrium” (73). In this case, Kru heritage was the subordinated one.

After many interviews with older family members and other Grand Cess elders, I realized that the erosion was manifested by interruptions to cultural continuity: traditional educational systems were de-emphasized; then came language indifference issues; followed by the atrophy of orature (oral literature) and rituals. It became acceptable for children of “educated Krus” to display indifference and ignorance of traditional practices and not be able to speak the language.

De facto classism and separation developed in parts of Grand Cess. The so-called educated class began to only subscribe to cultural demands when compelled or shamed into it by older relatives and friends; thus the preservation of Kru heritage was left to the non-Western-educated members of society. A disconnect festered.

Those with some level of Western education congregated in a section of Grand Cess known as Township. Those with no Western education tended to live in Big Town, which by default became where most of the traditional ceremonies were performed. Chiefs went directly to Big Town for hammock toters when government agents came to town. The value fracture was such that some people in Big Town sent their children to folks in Township in order for the children to attend Western schools and learn Western ways.

Professor of Comparative Literature, Dr. Ketu Katrak in an afterword to Ama Ata Aidoo’s collection of short stories, No Sweetness Here, stated that the: “educated class is simultaneously privileged and disadvantaged”. She explained that the disadvantage arose from “conflicts between traditional ways and modern ones that challenge certain restrictive aspects of tradition” (141). Dr. Katrak went on to allude to the “ambivalence of modernization as progress” as a major dilemma for Western-educated Africans (145).

In the Liberian context, this modernization was cloaked in hollow imitation that ignored two glaring fallacies: 1) Western culture is not superior to indigenous Liberian culture, just different; and 2) It did not pull the best from disparate, but intersecting elements to forge an inclusive, mutually beneficial society unique to the stakeholders. True civilization uses synergy to sew a community fabric respectful of diverse sensibilities, and creates a product greater than the sum of its parts: the enlightenment of diversification.

BECOMING TRULY CIVILIZED:
CULTURAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN POST-CONFLICT LIBERIA

When Liberia began as a state, it had one major intersection to navigate-that of the settlers and indigenes. This primary cleavage lasted until the 1980 coup. Today, due to social integration, political upheaval, and civil strife, the country is a more socio-economically pluralistic society. The settler-indigene schism has become outmoded as a result.

Fallout from the Liberian civil war has spawned new divisions and exacerbated others that were in check: Liberians in or returning from the Diaspora versus those who never left; the conspicuous gap between the haves and the have-nots; interethnic strife resulting from the pitting of tribes against each other during the civil war. The country has devolved into what Robtel Pailey aptly described as “compartmentalized classes and social groups” (22).

Members of any ethnic group or socio-economic class/group who may be stuck in the fatal fantasy of separateness will have to stumble out of their stubborn slumber and realize that we are fused together at seams (intra-marriage; intra-ethnic offspring; shared history; integrated economic and living arrangements etc) that are now permanent. What the country needs is a unifying platform to serve as the basis for multifaceted development.

For all its senseless devastation, the 14-year civil conflict which ended in 2003 could function as a cathartic moment that excises some of the stunted, ill-informed thinking of yesteryear which demanded, falsely, that nihilism and self-hate were necessary to excel in the socio-economic mainstream; that Western-centric influences were better than traditional ones. The compartmentalization alluded to bring new, sinister challenges, but the old problem of de-emphasizing ancestral elements seems to have made it through the war unscathed. This cancer must be severed from our collective consciousness; especially since we should now be sophisticated enough to know that we don’t have to treat cultural preservation and advancement as binary opposites.

President Nkrumah said that the past cannot be recreated, but it can be honored, represented and appreciated. He went on to state that: “The way out is only forward, forward to a higher and reconciled form of society in which the quintessence of the human purposes of traditional African society reasserts itself in a modern context…”(82).

It is this “reconciled form of society” that reasserts the traditional African society that I believe is essential for post-conflict Liberia. This reassertion is not to defile the contributions of Western influences in the country, but to encourage parity in order to foster the balanced cultural evolution necessary to create a collective conscience, cohesive national identity, and a civil society. Representative identity-a nationalism of sorts-will work to reduce the probability of the country slipping back into chaos, because a people invested in a common purpose would resist destroying its collaborative creation. This is especially true if it is buttressed by rising standards of living. Nationalism is even more necessary today given the fragmented social groupings evident in post-conflict Liberia.

I believe, however, that national identity will be more difficult to build if a measurable number of citizens have been prevented from realizing fully-actualized self-identities due to the cultural disequilibrium that exists in Liberia. Assuming this premise holds some degree of truth, then an expanded cultural horizon benefits the entire country and should be pursued now.

Dr. D. Elwood Dunn, author, historian and political science professor, in remarks to Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission said: “We must complement physical reconstruction with a process of transforming the Liberian mind through re-socialization.” I am under no illusion: the demands of post-conflict Liberia are daunting to put it mildly. Yes, we have to eat; we have to get jobs to provide for our families; we have to reconstruct the lives of former combatants as well as the decimated infrastructural landscape…But, we also have to live in our skin to effectively meet the challenges of rebuilding Liberia and placing it firmly in the 21^st century.

Societal advancement in Liberia demands actions in the affirmative to nurture a balanced national framework. The following ideas are far from exhaustive and need to be fleshed out by experts in the various areas.

• “Infant Industry” Treatment for Things Traditional

Emphasize resource allocation for traditional elements in an effort to grow the body of knowledge of Liberian heritage. Liberian society would need to become an enabler of the needed consciousness raising. Culturally relevant programming for TV and radio can be a driving force in this arena. Visual and dramatic arts should also be integral parts of this. An example of this infant industry treatment is the unwavering support the late President Tolbert gave to the Kendeja Cultural Center during his tenure.

• Subscribe to Culturally Based Teaching (”CBT”)

CBT is a well-researched concept now promoted by the Campaign for High School Equity (a diverse coalition of national organizations representing communities of color, united under the mission of raising every US high school to a high level of excellence). CBT established that students learn better when taught with culturally relevant material.

In the Liberian context CBT should include exposure to the country’s languages as well as the histories of its various tribal and settler groups. This would be a key component in molding the society as an enabler for the new consciousness espoused in this paper. Much has been written by scholars and experts about the importance of language to cultural development. University of Liberia Professor S. Kpanbayeazee Duworko II argued that students should be exposed to Liberian languages and literary works: “This exposure will give them a broad view of their own culture and will help them to have a sense of pride in their heritage”.

• Active Transfer of Information

Liberia-loving people must learn the full history of the country, then pass this richer version on to peers and subsequent generations. Grandparents, parents, relatives, and friends should make a sustained effort to pass family and societal lore-the language, mores, games, songs, stories-to people in their circles. We must develop an active, accurate cognizance of who we are and where we came from.

Part of this also demands that measurable numbers of well-established people (as viewed through Western-value lens) bend back to tradition. Doing that would send the message to those who look up to them as symbols of success (rightly or wrongly) that the old can exist with the new, that it is vogue to be one with your original trails. This value reassignment will go a long way in ushering in, at the organic level, new perspectives in the minds and attitudes of Liberians.

• Implement a Liberia Memory Project

Compile, categorize and archive pictures, documents, artifacts, along with audio, visual and written forms of stories and memoirs from members of older generations, the keepers of tradition, before they pass on. Many of these folks are up in years so preserving their stories is urgent. The output from the memory project will be an invaluable resource that can be used to depict the beautiful tapestry that is Liberia.

• Document National Folklore

Create a repository of the rich, tradition-laden stories of Liberia which could become part of the culturally-based teaching material.

• Create a Vibrant Historical and Cultural Museum

Improve the museum structure in Liberia and draw on the output from the memory project and the folklore repository. Included should be items and information spanning the entire life of the country. This resource should be digitized as much as possible and made available online for people around the world to access.

• Develop Cultural Tourism

This should be positioned as an integral part of Liberia’s overall tourism strategy. The rich history and traditions of Liberia would be a draw for world citizens who have an interest in the country, including Liberians at home and in the Diaspora looking to reconnect or learn about their roots.

African countries that successfully promote indigenous languages and culture make millions of dollars from cultural tourism. Egypt, South Africa, Senegal and Ghana are examples of countries that exploit this revenue stream. Keepers and demonstrators of Liberia’s cultural heritage will be rewarded monetarily and socially as the influx of tourists and the appreciation of Liberia increases. This would encourage ongoing participation and help with the value reassignment alluded to earlier.

The poet George Crayton signals cultural renaissance in Liberia’s current moment in the first and last stanzas of his poem “Lost Culture”:

Riches forgotten, loose tongues tied, an everlasting echo silenced, pushing a culture to die
We now the fruits of Sinoe, Bassa, Grand Cess and Gedeh
We now the fruits of Cape Mount, Gibi, Nimba and Montserrado
Yearn for Beautiful words once spoken in the wind
“Mein ya fohn ne fohn tuhn nuum”

Mother, we hear your vibration delivered in voices of our babies born now
Our minds are turning back
Our faces show prints of your touch
And we answer you in the hum of bees…

Effective cultural tourism and the other ideas proposed here could help make this emerging renaissance permanent.

Edward Blyden understood that the country needed to harness the power of all of its citizens in order to move to greatness. Only thirty-four years after Liberia gained her independence he lobbied for Liberians to resist subscribing to everything foreign and for the voices of indigenous brethren to be heard, heeded and learned from. He said that we must listen to them:

as they tell of their traditions, of the wonderful and mysterious events of their tribal or natural life, of the achievements of what we call their superstitions…We shall in this way get back the strength of the race… Let us depend upon it that the emotions and thoughts which are natural to us command the curiosity and respect of others far more than the showy display of any mere acquisitions which we have derived from them, and which they know depend more upon our memory than upon any real capacity. (33-34)

Liberia has been facing this problem since birth. 161 years later the players are different, but the equation to overcome it remains the same-all we need to do is execute.

The ironies are deafening: In the name of advancement I’m reaching for what my parents side-stepped in their quest for advancement. An evolution of consciousness perhaps? But what about the fact that this evolution is only possible because of the sacrifice of self to which my parents subscribed. And then there is the issue of the so-called uneducated holding most of the keys to what I now believe completes me.

The complexity of this situation can not be easily deconstructed. Could I have been where I am today socio-economically and also have been more steeped in my heritage? I believe the answer is yes. Both of my parents are multi-lingual and highly accomplished, which seems to blast a gaping hole in their concern that teaching their children Kru might have held them back. But, I realize that I am not a parent facing the daunting pressures of a society that demands a shift away from self in order to surge forward. The adage holds true: You can’t really know a person’s pain until you’ve walked in that person’s shoes.

Towards the end of one of our long talks about Grand Cess and our family’s Kru heritage I asked my mother how she now felt about their decision. She paused, delicately stroked the back of my hand which was propped on her bed and said: “Knowing what I know now, we should’ve taught you all Kru and more about Grand Cess. We really should have. I think we were fools not to. Maybe I can start teaching your niece, my 18-month old granddaughter.”

For all the social and material achievements that my parents ensured our family attain, we, their children, are left with a tangible disconnect that creates a degree of existential barrenness, a disconnect that robs us of the richness of who we are at the core. We don’t know games and stories, birth or death rituals, rites of passage, celebration songs or dirges of our people.

This barrenness is present even in the small moments of life, like when cousins I grew up with call and we can only greet each other in Kru. The brief, empty silence before we switch to English is so palpable I can taste it. It is downright embarrassing when someone who speaks Kru strikes up a conversation with me. Back in the day, a few of the relatives who came by our house mentioned that we were lost because we couldn’t speak our language. Indeed.

In spite of this, everything from the cellar of my soul to the attic of my consciousness exudes a Liberianess that at times seeps through and glistens on my skin; a Liberianess, too, arrested in development because of the truncated deck of heritage markers I was dealt growing up. But the spirits of Wollor Kukor, Tuwlo Juwledi, and my other ancestors are not done yet; they continue to agitate for me to continue seeking out who I am.

There seems to be a rebirth of cultural consciousness bubbling in my generation. It is manifested in our slightly less-distorted value lenses; our on-going discovery and appreciation of the soul-catching beauty of things Liberian; and our burgeoning Liberia-centric perspectives. It is also present in the lament of those of us who rather communicate in the language that is really ours. Thankfully, at least I and other members of my generation now know that we no longer have to deny our essence just to avoid toting hammocks.

WORKS CITED

Blyden, Edward, W.  “The Aims and Methods of a Liberal Education for Africans.” Baltimore: Black Classic Press 2005. Inaugural Address delivered January 5, 1881.

Bropleh, Doeba. “A Cultural Paradigm for Liberia’s Reconstruction.” Pambazuka News. February 14, 2007. (www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/39759).

Crayton, George. “Lost Culture.” Poem to the author. November 2008.

Dolo, Emmanuel T. Ethnic Tensions in Liberia’s National Identity Crises - Problems and Possibilities. New Jersey: Africana Homestead Legacy Publishers, 2007.

Dukule’, Abdoulaye, W. “Art in Liberia.” Sea Breeze Journal of Contemporary Liberian Writings. Volume 4, Issue 2, November 2007. (www.liberiaseabreeze.com/abdoulaye-dukule2.html)

Dunn, Elwood, D. “Overcoming Alienation and Building National Community in Liberia.” Thematic Hearings on Historical Review: Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Monrovia, Liberia. September 5, 2008.

Dunn-Marcos, Robin, Konia T. Kollehlon, Bernard Ngovo, and Emily Russ,  Liberia: An Introduction to their History and Culture. Edited: Donald Ranard. Washington, DC: The Center for Applied Linguistics, 2005.

Duworko, Kpanbayeazee, S, II. “Literary Education and Canon Formation: The Liberian Experience.” Sea Breeze Journal of Contemporary Liberian Writings. Volume 3, Issue 1, February 2006. (www.liberiaseabreeze.com/kpanbayeazee-duworko.html).

Horton, Stephanie. “Rejecting the Gaze: A Critique of Russell Banks’ The Darling.” Sea Breeze Journal of Contemporary Liberian Writings. Volume 2 Issue 3, August 2005. (http://archives-one.liberiaseabreeze.com/sh1.html)

Katrak, Ketu H. Afterword. No Sweetness Here. By Ama, Ata Aidoo. New York: The Feminist Press, 1995.

Kiazulu, Gbessie (Ma Gbessie). Personal Interview by Robtel N. Pailey. Monrovia, 2008

Pailey, Robtel. “A Diaspora Returns: Liberia Then and Now.” MA Thesis. Oxford University, 2008.

Nkrumah, Kwame. The Struggle Continues. London: Panaf Books, 1973.

Wainaina, Binyavanga. “Da Revolution is on da phone.” Mail & Guardian online. (http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-09-11-da-revolution-is-on-phone)

Copyright © 2008 Doeba Bropleh