James Emmanuel Roberts

Seeing Beyond: An Interview with James Emmanuel Roberts a.k.a. Kona Khasu, Former Director of Kendeja  (1972-74)

By Stephanie C. Horton

STEPHANIE HORTON: There are a lot of misconceptions floating about Kendeja, its founding and the reasons why. It seems obvious that a cultural center is there to promote, sustain and support cultural activities and events, but let’s start at the beginning. Why was Kendeja founded? What were the social and political reasons?

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS: Before Kendeja, there was really no institution that was responsible for preserving the essential elements of our culture, while at the same time exploring ways in which these elements could be holistically integrated into the developing ‘new culture’. But having said this, the original objectives of the “Cultural Center” at Kendeja was to have a place near the capital where traditional Liberian life could be on display for visitors and foreigners who visited Liberia to see and experience WITHOUT going into the actual villages.

The emphasis was really on those “physical” elements of traditional culture; by this I mean it focused on the architectural styles of house design and construction, building materials, our dances and music, of course, and the visual arts - sculpture, mask making, weaving, clothing, and basketry etc. So it was that when state visitors came to Liberia, the ‘cultural troupe’ was asked to stand near the highway leading from the airport to welcome them, or they might be requested to be at the airport to welcome visitors. They would be fully dressed in traditional costumes, and with their band of musicians would sing and dance for the arrival. When time permitted, the visitors would even visit Kendeja.

All of this was good. But it did not address the fundamental need of perpetuating the essential cultural values of the people of Liberia; in fact, it did not contribute to the formation and unification of the 16 major ethnic groups that make up the Republic of Liberia. Besides the fact that the troupes preserved the cultural identities of the larger body, the country itself, there was no attempt to identify and expose the fundamental elements of the various cultural beliefs and practices that could be unifying elements or factors in building a strong, unified nation.

Even though there were differences among the various ethnic groups, the differences were not irreconcilable; they were ‘surface’ differences due to ignorance each had about the other. The ethnic groups were actually isolated and knew very little about each other in ways that could promote a common identity and shared values. This was so because there was no national policy to integrate and nurture a national identity through cultural unity. To do this meant identifying, exploring, interpreting, and promoting cultural values through research, and then infusing them into the national consciousness via our school system through a national curriculum, performances, radio and television, our literature and arts and other creative forms.

It would be an exaggeration to say that no one had ever addressed any of this. From the very early beginnings, people like Edward Wilmot Blyden advocated for such strategies. Blyden had a unique and pioneering vision for uniting the nation through an amalgamation of the traditional culture with the best of what the settler culture offered. He was frustrated and forced to go into permanent exile in Sierra Leone because of social, political and family problems with the elite power structure of his day. Benjamin J. K. Anderson and others led explorations into the ‘hinterland’ of Liberia to study the history and culture of the people who resided in the land now called Liberia, but the government itself never really launched a major program to do so, and this was never institutionalized through agents like the education system.

President Tubman announced and promulgated a National Integration and Unification Policy as one of his major programs for Liberia; and to be fair, some gains were made. From the bit I saw at the middle of Tubman’s Administration, it did not seem like a very serious commitment with an effective plan to implement it nationwide, but it was a beginning. And Tubman did it as a political strategy to break the grip of the Montserrado and Grand Bassa monopoly on national political leadership. Tubman came from Maryland County, which besides having the status of an “outside county”, was not one of the original four counties that signed the Declaration of Independence on July 1847. Maryland was until 1857 a separate polity called ‘Maryland in Africa’. All politicians used those elements of the traditional cultures that served their political interests. For example, the element of ‘unquestioned’ loyalty to political leaders, the decision-making of “So Say One, So Say All” perfected by the True Whig Party comes from the tradition of deferring to the traditional Chief in all decisions. However, what the settlers did not take into account was that these communities were often small and almost everyone knew each other and was directly related. It was less difficult to know what was good for those small communities than the larger ones that the settler political system and elite had to make decisions for.

STEPHANIE HORTON: You were the Director of Kendeja from 1972 to ‘74. We knew you then as Kona Khasu, a name that carried star power. How did you get to Kendeja? Give us a historical journey if you will.

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS: I arrived at Kendeja through a different and unexpected route. Speaking about history, I recall that I won a Fulbright Scholarship to attend the School of the Theatre Arts at Boston University in 1967.  I left for Boston in March 1968. On my application, I indicated that I wanted to return to the University of Liberia to build a theatre arts program in the college of Liberal Arts. The University had nothing to do with my getting that scholarship. It was a competitive process presided over by the United States Cultural Foundation to Liberia.

At the time, I was teaching English, Literature, and Social Studies at the Junior High School, then located on Broad Street where the National Museum is presently located. In addition to my teaching at Junior High, I was the Assistant Director of the University of Liberia Players. The players had been re-organized by a Dr. Arthur Plowman, a British national teaching at the University of Liberia. He was assisted by a Peace Corps volunteer, Warren Ashley. Ashley succeeded Arthur Plowman as director, and I succeeded Ashley.

My journey to the University of Liberia was interesting. Upon completion of my studies at Hobart College in Geneva, New York, I applied for a British Council Fellowship and won it to study Shakespearean and Elizabethan Literature at Birmingham University in England. I was interested in this because from early school days I had developed an interest in the theatre. My early childhood involved participating in “Sani Claus” playacting in Suehn and Monrovia and helped me acquire skills for performing in public. I used to dance in the mask and I also learned how to make the costumes. As part of my course at Birmingham University, where, incidentally, is one of England’s most famous theatre companies, the Birmingham Repertory Company, I took practical training at the National Royal Shakespeare Festival Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon. There I worked with such theatre icons as Peter Brooke, Peter Hall, Richard Branaugh, Richard Burton (before he became a Sir) and many others who became famous in the British theatre. I met and befriended students from Nigeria, Turkey, and other countries.

Upon my return to Liberia in August 1966, Arthur Plowman had left; I became the assistant to Warren Ashley. I spent just over a year working with the University Players before leaving for Boston University. During my time with the UL Players, we attended the World University Theatre Festival in 1967, in Nancy, France. It was a wonderful experience. We co-authored a play called “Bush School” about initiation into the sacred Poro and Sande societies. I don’t really know where the script ended up after the performance. I think we won either second or third place. We weren’t  bad for a bunch of amateur theatre people, especially so if one bears in mind that the University of Ibadan Theatre School was also represented at this festival and they had been doing professional training since the ‘50s, thanks to the British influence. And so it was that after a year teaching junior high school and working with the UL Players, I left in March 1968 to study theatre arts at Boston University. I am not sure Boston University would have been my first choice had not my wife, Catherine Watson Khasu, been in school in Boston. I might have gone to the Yale Drama School or New York University, both of which I was more familiar with than Boston University although I knew BU School of Theatre Arts ranked among the best.

I returned to Liberia on December 23, 1971 and spent a very joyous Christmas holiday with my family. I left without any children and returned with two: Sengbe Boakai Kona and Dwalu. After the holidays, I reported to the University of Liberia authorities and informed them that I had returned and was ready to join the faculty. I was very excited about continuing my work with the UL Players. Warren Ashley had ended his tenure with the Peace Corps and returned to the United States. In fact, I stood in the wedding of my friend Warren in New York, reciprocating his gesture as he had been best man in my own wedding in July of 1967 in Robertsport, Grand Cape Mount County.

To my surprise, Dr. Advertus Hoff, then President of the University of Liberia, declared that theatre and dance were not subjects to be taught at the University. I think he said they were things of the devil and unsuitable for an academic environment. I should clarify that my idea, expressed at the time, was for the African Studies Program at the University of Liberia, which had been dormant for some time, should work with the Kendeja Cultural Center to research and document the culture, and it would actually become a part of the proposed Institute of African Studies. I felt it would broaden the scope and function of the Center, justifying the investment of more resources—material and human—and making a living experience for Liberians particularly, not just the occasional state visitors.

President Hoff, an ordained Baptist minister, could not believe that I wanted to actually bring Liberian dance and theatre into the University. He opposed my joining the faculty, to the dismay of Dr. Mary Antoinette Brown Sherman, then Dean of the William V. S. Tubman Teachers’ College. She was absolutely shocked that Dr. Hoff would oppose my employment. She tried all she could, and frustrated, she said I should seek employment elsewhere as the UL was not ready for my talent and training. It was at this point that I began seriously considering employment elsewhere.

At this very time, the Ministry of Information, Cultural Affairs and Tourism, which was responsible for the National Cultural Center, was undergoing changes. Mrs. Dukuly had retired as Director of the Bureau of Cultural Affairs. Roger Dorsinville, a Haitian national, then Cultural Advisor to the Liberian Government and spiritual guru to the establishment of the Center, and Pierre Rayon, also a Haitian, were about to end their contracts with the government. Oscar Norman, Bai T. Moore, Jangaba Johnson and Wilhelmina Dukuly had done much work on the folklore of Liberia. There was a Bureau of Folklore in the old Department of Interior. I am not sure if this handled the artistic side or simply the customs of the people, as was the case then. But this Bureau was relocated in the Liberia Information Service, which later became the Department—now Ministry—of Information, Cultural Affairs, and Tourism.

When G. Henry Andrews was told that I had a degree in Theatre Arts, he invited me for a meeting and at the end of the meeting offered me employment at the Ministry of Information. I would be the Director of Culture, replacing not only Director Dukuly, but also Roger Dorsinville, who was being paid around $12,000 plus housing, car, gasoline, holidays in Haiti, and Pierre Rayon got a similar package. Pierre Rayon said he was from New York, but spoke with a strange accent for a New Yorker at that time.

G. Henry Andrews said my salary would be $333.33, but I would have the rank of an Assistant Minister to Deputy Minister Bai T. Moore. I would get a vehicle and gas allowance. That was it. I pointed out that if I were taking over the work of three persons, Dukuly, Dorsinville, and Rayon, I should at least earn a third of their combined salaries. Minister Andrews answered no. He said we were all working because of our patriotism. He said I could have stayed in the US with my training and degree. By coming back, he thought I understood the situation of making sacrifices for our nation.

I told him I didn’t want to be the Director of the Bureau of Cultural Affairs, just Artistic Director of the National Cultural Troupe. He asked me why and I told him that I didn’t want to be tied down with bureaucracy, just involved in the artistic side of things. He told me something that I will remember to my death, and that probably helped me be a little successful in the small things I have been able to accomplish: “If you don’t deal with the bureaucracy, if you don’t find a way for it to work for you, it will bury you and your talent. This is especially true for Liberia. Young man, I am offering you the opportunity to be successful. You will be your own boss. You will report directly to Minister Bai T. Moore with no one between you and me but Bai. If you accept only the artistic directorship of the troupe, decisions will be made for you, and most of those decisions will be made to obstruct, to stifle you, rather than support you and facilitate your work. Which do you want?”

Minister Andrews had made the case for me. I chose to be the overall boss. And it did make a great deal of difference. Honorable Bai T. Moore entrusted a great deal of responsibility to me. He spent most of his time writing on his ancient Underwood typewriter, writing his novels and poems, and didn’t pay much attention to details. That was left up to me.

I started to make things happen at the Bureau of Cultural Affairs, not just the Kendeja Cultural Center, although that took a lot of my time and attention. But the museum was also given much needed attention. We began to do serious dance dramas at the Center. Word started to get out. I was also performing and doing talk shows on radio and television. We were speaking to schools and community groups and social clubs. Culture began to be a popular topic. This brought on problems for me though. University of Liberia President Hoff, who hadn’t wanted me on the faculty, now made moves to get me there - but only to teach English, not theatre or dance or culture. He reported to President Tolbert that I had tricked him—President Tolbert—into appointing me as an official of government and deserted my assignment at the UL; that the UL had invested a great deal of money in my education so that I could return and work at the UL only to have me return and take up employment elsewhere.

The President was a great supporter of education and became very annoyed with me. He trusted Dr. Hoff’s word enough not to inquire or investigate the allegation. He wrote a letter castigating my dishonesty - yes, that was the way he characterized what had happened. In the letter he ordered that I return immediately to the university faculty for which the government had spent money training me. Furthermore, he threatened to order that I not be employed anywhere else because I had betrayed the trust of the UL/GOL. I received the letter, consulted a few of my friends, among whom were Dr. Mary Antoinette Brown Sherman, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, then at the Ministry of Finance, and of course, G. Henry Andrews, Minister of Information, who also received a similar letter from the President of Liberia. That’s how I ended up at the UL.

STEPHANIE HORTON: Let’s go back to what you found at Kendeja upon arriving. What was the energy there like? What was daily life like for the residents? And can you talk about the performance process, rehearsals, the educational system?

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS: At the time I became the Director of Kendeja, I found the doldrums, a kind of antipathy and cynicism prevailing throughout the Center. There seemed to be a fear that with the departure of Roger Dorsinville and Pierre Rayon things would stagnate. The artists were concerned, rightly so, that there would be no one to advocate on their behalf. To some extent, these fears were justified.

Roger was a man on a mission. He was doing research on voodou, and was sure that its origins were also in Liberia. There was, therefore, much interest expressed in the attention he gave the troupe and its members; the constant photographing of the activities of the Center. He paid particular attention to every aspect of the Center: dances, carvings, masks, costumes, instruments. He brought scholarly analysis to the life of the Center as observed through its activities.

Bai T. Moore was not nearly that interested. Of course, he felt he knew the culture, and he certainly did. But at that point in his life, he was dedicated to the written literature of Liberia. He spent hours on his Underwood typewriter and hardly paid any active attention to the Center and the things that concerned the people who lived there. Bai T. Moore was very slow to take decisions and slower on action. Sometimes I actually wondered if the plane crash he suffered had anything to do with it. There was a kind of absentmindedness on his part. He could be seen sitting in a kind of stupor or daydream looking far off into space. Perhaps he could have been pondering over the stories he imagined. Who knows? All in all, he didn’t seem to act as swiftly and as decisively as the people at the Center needed him to act. Roger and his colleagues, on the other hand, had expressed a kind of immediacy, an urgency that translated into forceful advocacy for the Center and its inhabitants.

Generally, rehearsals were held only when guests were expected at the Center. As I went into earlier, the Center was established as an entertainment spot for visitors, especially state visitors. Tourists also visited the center and were entertained. Rehearsing was not a daily matter.

There was a school that went from kindergarten to the 3rd or 4th grade. There was a principal, and I believe one or two teaching assistants. Only the principal was on salary. Most of the decision makers believed that the artists should not be educated beyond fundamental literacy because if they attained anything beyond those very low primary grades, they would leave the Center. They would be too educated to remain. I was of a different opinion. I believed that the artists needed to be educated if they were to interpret the culture at a higher level, and could be better teachers, preservers, and conservationists of the culture and all of its components. They could go out and teach our nation, beginning with the schools, about the culture, how to live it, and therefore extend the life of our culture as it was being threatened by western culture. So, there was a philosophical disagreement with Bai T. Moore. Fortunately, Roger was on his way out, and could not provide any obstacle.

From what I saw and was told, the performances at the Center tried to duplicate the performances in the villages. On face value, one would think that was good because it would preserve the authenticity of the performances. But this decision to perform them exactly as they were in the villages produced sterility, stultifying the culture, and resulted in an artificial product that was divorced from the cultural and political environment in which it created. Instead of attempting to fossilize the culture, which is the expression of the life, mores, customs, artistic creations, thoughts, beliefs, practices and enduring values of the people, the Center, I believed, should have been involved in multiple missions - surely to protect the culture, surely to preserve it, surely pass it on to posterity; but it should also have looked at the culture that was struggling to emerge from the ‘modern’ sensibilities being developed when several ethnic groups congregated outside of their own traditional environment and began to merge with each other, integrate into a new entity, a new whole from the fragments; borrowing from the other partners in this new emergent entity.

Roger Dorsinville and Bai T. Moore subscribed to the belief that the ‘cultures’ they displayed at the Center were separate and distinct and could not, should not be integrated into something other than their separate parts, even if the developing or emerging entity developed or emerged spontaneously. I subscribed to the other view that each era, each epoch, every generation or combination of generations had to answer to the same eternal questions that all humanity is confronted with: Definition of their existence IN THE LIGHT OF THEIR PRESENT REALITY, and from that definition and commingling of the known and unknown, new songs, new dances, new beliefs, a new self-definition would emerge. These may not be new in the sense of having never existed in the past, but in the sense of forging a slightly different perception, interpretation, and understanding of their contemporary existence.

STEPHANIE HORTON: Was there public support for these ideas?

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS: The public, the real public, did not understand what was going on, nor should they have been expected to. They enjoyed the performances, but we must realize that for the vast majority, these performances were out of their reach. They could not pay their transportation to Kendeja, ten miles out of Central Monrovia. And most of the public did not feel connected with the Center as a place they had to be to participate in their culture. This is why our outreach project named “Kendeja Comes to You” was extremely well-received.

To make the troupe and our cultural manifestation at the Center more accessible to the people, we designed “Kendeja Comes to You” as a platform to take the culture to the people. An annual tour was arranged, starting with a week-long series of performances at the E.J. Roye Building on Ashmun Street, Monrovia. From the performances at the E. J. Roye, we toured the countryside - actually only the capital cities of some of the counties. We could not cover all of the counties. I don’t think we were able to cover 50% of the counties. We did Nimba, Bong, Bomi, Grand Bassa, Gibi Territory - now Margibi County. It was practical to do these counties because they were more easily accessible.

We had plans to extend the national tours to all of the counties. Even though our national tours were not sustained, we got the high school students especially, and many schools of all levels became involved to the extent that most of them organized their own school cultural troupes. To support this effort, I assigned troupe members as teachers in the high schools. This was limited to Monrovia because of logistics, management, and funding challenges; but as we thought of it, the Monrovia-based student population was more deprived of opportunities to participate in cultural activities than the students who resided in the rural areas. After all, the rural-based students could still enter the Poro and Sande Societies. They had the benefit of the many festivals, including harvest, celebrations for the birth of a child, marriage etc.

STEPHANIE HORTON: Who were the stars at Kendeja through this period during your time there as Director, the enduring stars, even before and beyond?

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS: Our biggest star was Gbessie Kiazolu. She was knowledgeable about the culture, an excellent dancer, and she could also sing. She was the total artistic package. There were other dancers who were very accomplished but Gbessie just had a style that was effortless, sensual, focused, and she could improvise in a second. She was the kind of performer who became one with the others, whether dancers, or musicians, and she stood out heads and shoulders above the others. She enjoyed performing, reveled in it, and made you feel like you were not just sitting and watching her but that you, every member of the audience, was on stage with her, going through her steps, and sharing the moments of the performance. She also a teacher and superb storyteller. Her moments on stage were magical and enchanting. She taught me a great deal about Liberian culture, dealing with artists, and I learned to “see beyond” the dance, song, drumming, costumes, and to see beneath them to discover the wisdom that informed those forms.

Other dancers were Nyepan, a wonderful Kpelle dancer who was sheer joy to watch. She glided like a skier off a snow-topped mountain, and her complex movements produced a wonderful ecstasy in the audience. Of course, there were the sensual young Kru female dancers with their silky, earthy movements. There was Birr Suma, Deba Suma, very accomplished Gio dancers. There were the Gola Wula dancers, Gbonglo, Gbongor, Ginda, who somersaulted their way into the hearts of every audience. These guys did some extremely difficult acrobatic dances learned in the Poro Society. They, like all other Liberian dancers, danced in tune with the musicians. But there was a very great difference in their synchronicity with the musicians. To perform and control the beauty and elegance of their dances they had to be in complete harmony, musically and physically, with the lead drummer, who performed on a ‘kpenegai’, a slit drum made out of a dugout log. The drummer dictated how high or far these Wula dancers could extend their acrobatics, and for this reason, the drummer had to have focused eye contact with the dancers. The dancers did not need to see the drummer. They took directions from the music and its rhythms. It was always wonderful to watch and participate, emotionally and spiritually, in the dance performance of these Wula dancers.

There was also a pair of Gio/Mano dancers. One was called Saye Gono. The name of the other escapes me for now, but these guys were excellent dancers. Their foot and hand movements were so delicately coordinated and harmonized with the music and with each other. Rapid hand and foot movements and swift, firm, and supple torso movements culminating in undulating rhythmic movements brought joy and cries of admiration from audiences. Saye could also play the solo drum, the sangba. He could play three of them at the same time. He was once a ‘glegben’ dancer, the so-called ‘long Gio Devil’  that used to be very popular in Nimba and often toured Monrovia.

Hawa Yevia was a wonderful Vai dancer trained in the Sande Society. There are pictures of her in Roger Dorsinville’s book that he published on Liberian masks and dances. I found a manuscript of the book somewhere in my office which he occupied when he was with the Ministry of Education, but in my rush to leave Liberia I left everything behind with my papers at the house. They were destroyed or stolen along with several of my own manuscripts.

STEPHANIE HORTON: There was both western and indigenous instruction going on at Kendeja. How were the teachers chosen?

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS: The teachers for the elementary school and high school were chosen by the Ministry of Education. The older accomplished artists like Gbessie Kiazolu, Boima N’gebla, Nyepan, Deyou Gaih, taught students in their respective areas. In short, the teachers in the performing subjects were recruited from the senior performers in the troupe. I am not sure how cousin Bai T. Moore and Roger Dorsinville did it.

I worked with these accomplished artists to put all the pieces together and make the whole better than its parts. I did not attempt to change the movements or steps. We tried to keep the integrity of the traditional artistic quality intact. There was no attempt to make fundamental changes. I think we were concerned with such considerations as how to reduce a four-hour traditional dance or performance event into the one and a half to two hours of modern performance, or to encourage and persuade our artists to learn each others’ dances, songs, hair styles, costumes, drumming, etc. and to actually play together as ONE troupe without thinking that learning the other person’s dance would bring some sort of curse on the one who learns and performs the other’s dances or songs. This does not seem like a problem right now, but in those days, with Roger thinking vodou, and how it somehow would come back to punish the dancers and musicians who were priests and priestesses for deserting or neglecting their cultural ‘integrity’, we had obstacles to overcome. Even Bai T. Moore bought into that theory, and it fed right into what had been perpetrated all along.

STEPHANIE HORTON: What about the dance dramas or ballets - the stories told through dance and song?  Was there representation from each people—Kru, Vai, Gola, Mano, Bassa, Kpelle, Lorma, Mandingo—as to what stories were performed? Were all of the stories drawn from the cultures or were some written expressly for the troupe?

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS: The dance dramas, ballets, were very collaborative and improvised. Someone might take the lead in choreography, another music, etc. For “The Village of So-So Women”, it was probably Dorsinville who directed it, although I can’t swear on this because I was out of the country at the time. As for “The Sacrificial Victim”, we were sitting around one evening thinking about works for the national tour when the idea came up. It could have been Ma Gbessie who started the scenario, or even Peter Ballah. Can’t really recall now, but it is not a folktale as many assume, although it is based on folklore. Once we got a bare storyline or scenario, we started rehearsing. At that point, the director was responsible for making it a spectacle.

Gbessie led, but all of the dance teachers contributed to the choreography. Peter Ballah helped with the male dancers. Boima N’gebla, now blind, led the musical ensemble. Incidentally, Boima N’gebla grew up at the Center. I believe he went there at the age of six or seven when his uncle Noma, a renowned lead drummer for the Gola male acrobatic dancers Wula dancers, moved from their village near Bomi Hills to the Center.

Boima’s drum was a large slit drum made from a large log. Placed on a raised platform, the drummer, through his music, directed the dancing—movements, tempo, space—of the Wula dancers. It is said that the lead drummer, again, through his music, controls every movement of the dancers, and they could number up to 15. He orders them to leap, somersault, and move from one space to another without running into each other. It is one of the most amazing performances to see, the Wula Dance.

STEPHANIE HORTON: What was the standard or process for entering Kendeja as a student, or as a teacher for that matter? Did the director and troupe members scout for talent?

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS: From what I learned from Bai T. Moore, young people and their chaperons from their villages were persuaded to come to the Cultural Center and reside there. First, they focused on dancers, musicians, and those women who dressed the female dancers. These were strangely called “matrons”. Remember that the government wanted to display the various ‘cultures’ of the nation. The chiefs and leaders wanted to have their cultures exhibited at the center; and I suppose, in the traditional manner, some token was given as a goodwill gesture. Assurances were given that the recruits would be treated well. I think in the beginning, they recruited from graduating classes of the Poro and Sande training schools.

When I assumed the directorship, we did not have to recruit through the traditional leaders. By then the reputation of the Cultural Center was such that it attracted artists on its own merits. It had already been in existence for about 9 years, and had traveled to Dakar and Algiers, where it won 2nd Prize in Algiers. I thought it was in Dakar, 1966, that it won the 2nd Prize; Ma Gbessie says it was Algiers, probably between ‘66 and ‘69. I think it would have been ‘67 or so, but it was certainly before I returned home, and I returned to Liberia in December 23, 1971.

When I took over, I recruited artists from the various counties by attending their festivals and simply negotiating with the artists themselves if they were of the legal age to do so. I once negotiated with the entire community for three or four wonderful female dancers in the Bomi County area, not too far from Ricks Institute. As the popularity of the Troupe grew, artists came to apply, believe me, on their own; and it was not limited to people from the rural communities. We recruited from New Kru Town in Monrovia, from the high schools that had cultural troupes; my strategy of assigning teachers to high schools to teach culture had begun to pay off. Several students from high schools in Monrovia were invited to join the National Cultural Troupe. Our annual high school drama and cultural festival provided fertile recruitment opportunities.

STEPHANIE HORTON: How was Kendeja funded? Who provided the food, clothing, etc.? Were the artists paid?

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS: The Center was wholly funded by the Government of Liberia. We had plans to associate it with the University of Liberia and thus get funding from UNESCO and some foundations, but this never really materialized, as I had to leave the Cultural Center, and eventually Liberia.

Artists were paid a salary. The food was provided by the government through its budget. In the beginning, the government provided cooks for the younger artists of the cultural troupe. I think this practice continued throughout the better part of the life of the Center, but the quality of the food was always a problem. I had to judge many complaints about the quantity and quality of the food. The older workers also wanted to be provided food service. This would have made it very cost prohibitive, and would have, in fact, further eroded the essential family relationship. I encouraged the older workers to prepare their individual family food. The government supplemented the funds for food. This was eventually accepted while I was there. Don’t know what happened after I left.

STEPHANIE HORTON: Which are the most popular or best loved dance dramas and plays produced at Kendeja?

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS: All of the dance dramas were pretty famous. If I were to select the most popular, I would definitely say “The Village of So So Women”, “The Rescue of the Sacrificial Victim”, and “The Leopard Ballet” These had enduring values and were loved by all Liberians. Most of the others, especially the political ones, were no more than praise songs to the ruler of the day, especially under the military regime of Doe when culture was used to establish a culthood for Doe.

The “Greedy Farmer” is a one-act play that takes about 30-35 minutes to perform. It touched a certain nerve of the Liberian society, and that made it one of the most popular Liberian plays. People still stop me in the street and shout “Greedy Farmer”! I wrote the play and had the rehearsal script until the failed coup in 1985, when I was arrested and imprisoned. It got lost along with many other manuscripts.

We first performed the play in December 1972 at the E.J. Roye theatre. “The Greedy Farmer” gets its message/morality from the traditional African philosophical belief in not doing anything to excess. It is based on the fundamental and universal African principle and acceptance of the belief that society is supreme and the individual, to be useful, must serve the community at large. It is a belief in communitarianism, the communal, where the individual behaves with restraint in whatever he or she does: no wealth to excess, bragging about what one has or what one has achieved, the success of one’s children, even their talents must not be boasted about.

The play “The Greedy Farmer” condemns the gluttony of a miserly farmer who does not share food with his neighbor. Returning home, I began to see a new Liberia developing. Neighbors were increasingly forgetting the old practice of looking out for each other. One reason why commercial places of accommodation never really developed in Liberia was that the traditional African culture teaches that ‘strangers’—travelers were always ‘strangers’—were to be given water, food, and accommodation. This was an obligation on all communities. So, travelers had no need to pay for accommodation when traveling and thus, these commercial temporary residences never developed until quite late.

When I noticed this very powerful unifying tradition was being slowly eroded, I decided to do a play that would speak to this. In the “Greedy Farmer”,  a traveler arrives at the village of a farmer who is just about to settle down to his midday meal. In order to avoid sharing the food, he makes every attempt and uses every trick to delay eating his food until the traveler leaves. He even lies by telling the traveler, who is Muslim and can’t eat monkey meat, that the food has monkey meat in it. Neither the farmer nor the traveler eats the meal. This story gets its creative inspiration from a Spider story. A traveler arrives in town when Spider has just begun to roast his meat. Spider does everything to delay eating the roasted meat until the visitor leaves, but the visitor does not leave, and the meat burns.

STEPHANIE HORTON: William Lewis.  Who was he?

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS:  William Lewis founded and operated a night club called the African Jungle that provided live Liberian folk dancing as entertainment. In a sense, he was the first to provide a public platform in urban Monrovia for displaying traditional Liberian dances. I am speaking about around ‘55. I was too young to have visited his place, but I recall having a keen interest in what took place there. It was located in the area of Sinkor now called Wrotto Town, near the Spriggs Payne airfield. Today that area is an overcrowded shanty town but in those days it was famous as being a place where Mr. Lewis provided a steady diet of traditional Liberian dance. Actually, he maintained a troupe of dancers and musicians and put them on payroll.

This was the beginning of ‘modernizing’ and ‘commercializing’ traditional presentations of Liberian dance culture. I am not saying this in a negative way. By presenting Liberian dances at his night club, he provided a forum for presenting these dances at scheduled times to the public. In the past, the dances were performed during special ceremonies, or on holidays. Besides, many of his dancers were mainly itinerant performers, relying on the generosity of audiences or the patrons who hired them to perform at funerals, weddings and community celebrations. What Mr. Lewis did was provide a regular salary for the performers. He gave them rehearsal space and organized the performances so that they began and ended at specified times, unlike the traditional presentations which could go on for over eight hours, even days and weeks. Also, he presented a variety of dances and gave information about the dancers, the dances and their cultural meaning.

The nightclub became popular with visitors and expatriates who resided in Liberia and began to be popular among certain of the Liberian elite, but I can tell you that it was NOT universally received by the Liberian elite or high society for several reasons. Some didn’t want to be associated with this kind of cultural expression, others avoided it, even condemned it on Christian religious grounds, associating it with things of the ‘devil’. The Moslem religion did not encourage their followers to participate in these presentations on religious grounds because of the drinking and sexual implication of going to night clubs.  But Mr. Lewis’ club gained popularity, especially among young Liberians who were inquisitive about the culture. And because the dancers’ costumes were patterned after authentic traditional costumes, which mean they danced bare-breasted, this was an added attraction for both foreigners and a good number of Liberians.

Ma Gbessie Kiazolu was recruited by William Lewis and was one of his star dancers. Mr. Lewis later worked with Bai T. Moore and Wilhmena Dukuly, my predecessors, at the Bureau of Cultural Affairs, at MICAT - the Ministry of Information, Cultural Affairs and Tourism. They all got involved with the Clay Basic Arts and Crafts Center in Klay, Bomi County. At the time, Bomi was a territory of Montserrado County and not yet a county. The Klay Basic Arts and Crafts Center had also had Oscar Norman and Yangagba Johnson. Mr. Norman was an Assistant Secretary of Interior; he presided over the activities of Klay Basic Arts and Crafts when it was first established. Later, it got UNESCO funding, and still later, the Germans were involved. During this period it was a place of vocational education.

Later, Mrs. Dukuly, while Director of Culture, founded her own private entertainment place copying Mr. Lewis’s example. Dukuly’s was called the Liberian Jungle instead of the African Jungle. I left for college right after high school, September 9, 1962, and when I returned in 1966, the African Jungle no longer existed. I did visit the Liberian Jungle a couple of times. It was located where Miatta Fahnbulleh’s jazz club was going down the hill around the curve from Mamba Point towards the old LEC entrance.

STEPHANIE HORTON: Looking back, what other achievements are you most proud of that you played a major role in conceiving and executing at Kendeja?

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS: There are a number of achievements at the Cultural Center for which I can take credit. Let me address the strategic ones.

1, I freed the Cultural Center, Kendeja, from being an occasional, small bit player that appeared only during occasions of state visits and brought it into the national life. The “Kendeja Comes to You” annual performance series at E.J. Roye was part of this successful strategy. Encouraging schools to establish cultural troupes in their schools and assigning senior artists to various high school at no expense to these schools also helped make the culture a meaningful part of our students’ development.

The high school competitions supported the popularization of our culture; the performing and visual arts especially had strategic importance to the development of emerging awareness of the value of our culture and attempts to think and talk about a Liberian national identity and personality. Physically, this laid the groundwork for an intellectual debate during the ‘70s about the food we ate, the clothing we wore, our drinks—palm wine became an acceptable drink at high end parties among the small intellectual gatherings, and even among some of the elites who were not intellectuals.

2, I developed the idea at the cultural center and among its artists and workers that their work was important and deserved to be taken very seriously, not just during state visits. The troupe was no longer asked to stand on the roadside and greet important state visitors. State visitors came to visit the Center and wanted to see the village and all of its activities, not just the dances. Government itself became more aware of the Center’s role. We brought in scholars from the universities—UL and Cuttington—and promoted the notion that the Center could be part of the UL’s Institute of African Studies where the visual arts, performing arts and others could be studied and documented. I welcomed and encouraged artists and scholars from abroad to spend time doing research at the Center. The late Dr. Mary Antoinette Brown Sherman, the best president the UL has ever had, was a great admirer and supporter of the Center as an institution that could help establish an intellectual foundation for the growth of national identity.

3, I was able to spearhead the raising of the Cultural Center’s school from 4th grade level to high school. This was a particularly challenging matter. As indicated earlier, most of the higher ups in the Ministry had become married to the idea that it was better to have artists who were illiterate in English. They could be better controlled and have fewer options to leave the employment of the Cultural Center. I took the opposite view, which is that literate and educated Liberian artists, young and old, could be more productive, easily trained, and would be a in much better position to create, articulate and document the old and new cultures whose emergence was imminent. History has proved me right. There are many artists from the Culture Center days now making meaningful contributions to Liberia from inside as well as outside.

4, We tried to create a truly national cultural troupe. When we took over the center, it required over 100 persons to present a 15-minute performance of folklore dances and songs. By the end of the first year of my tenure at the Center, we could take as few as 10 artists and prepare and present a two-hour program. Artists learned to do multiple tasks. Musicians had to dance, act, and sing, likewise the dancers. Besides, everyone learned and performed any number of dances and songs from other ethnic groups. This was taboo during the era before my arrival. During this period, we began to demonstrate that culture could indeed be unifying. But this unifying role was not AUTOMATIC. In fact, left unchecked, unbridled culture untempered by the notion that other cultures are just as important as one’s own can lead to cultural nationalism and the development of superiority, separatism, divisions, antagonism and enmity among nations and within nations with multi-ethnic populations.

Ma Gbessie helped a great deal in this regard. When I encountered problems with the older artists who felt that if they taught other artists their songs, dances, etc., they would be bringing about their speedy retirement—their major concern was not really diluting their culture, as might have been the concern of Roger Dorsinville, who believed in the purity and sanctity of culture, a culture that never changed, never adopted to emerging new forces in its setting—but they wanted to maintain the status quo, they wanted to give only half of what they were obligated to give. Many times, they simply said they were tired performing, and I could see that and did sympathize with them. But then when I tried to remedy the situation, they opposed it. When I made it mandatory that they perform the dances of others, there was real resistance. Now, being young at the time, and not really being enmeshed in the traditional culture as they were, I was really an outsider. I understood culture from a artistic or creative point of view, and a ‘book’ point of view, but had never really lived it as they did. On this point, they were absolutely right, and I admitted it. But I felt the combination of how to train and produce performing artists and artists in general with those at the Center with traditional experience as performers and trainers could be very productive and rewarding for all. Only Ma Gbessie was willing to try the new way.

As the older folks continued to resist, I noticed that many, if not all of the younger children who were born at the Cultural Center could do the dances and songs of all the ethnic groups represented at the Center. During rehearsals, they watched attentively and even practiced, on the side of course, along with the troupe during the practices. Gbessie affirmed this and said that these kids not only knew the dances, but also could play the instruments and sing the songs. She organized performance of these kids and invited me to attend on one Friday night.

To my amazement, the kids had the ingredients of a youth cultural troupe; kids between the ages of 5-10. They were not inhibited by ethnicity. They didn’t care that some fetish or spell would inflict pain on them and their generations for betraying the secrets of the dance and masks as their elders had grown up to believe, and Roger Dorsinville had reinforced during his stay at the Center.

I hurriedly organized a regular Friday night performance for these kids and invited my friends from the UL and other places to attend them. Prizes were awarded to the best performers and they were singled out for praise. Soon, the regular troupe members began to admit that they, too, could do more than one dance, play several instruments, etc. and wanted a ‘talent night’ to show their stuff. From then on the resistance was over! We began truly working toward real cultural unity and national cohesiveness through culture. Unfortunately, the whole movement failed with the coming of the coup d’etat. Those in power were prepared to desert the culture they claimed meant so much to them; they were prepared to abandon fashions that were based on traditional fashion styles; they actually reversed the entire movement, literally. The very things they said suppressed them, they tried to copy and unashamedly embraced.

The troupe made several tours abroad and established itself as a developing performance company comparable to Les Ballets Africains, the Guinean national cultural troupe. As an aside, Les Ballets Africains is one of the most professional dance groups I have ever seen. I learned a great deal from them. They frequented the US a lot during my days in theatre school, and I even got to meet their director, Italo Zambo, a Senegalese of incredible creative talents. They had a great cora player called Bakary Sissoko and some fantastic dancers who were pretty good actors. In any case, Italo directed Les Ballets Africains for many years. At the death of Ahmed Sekou Toure, Italo was relieved of his artistic directorship.

Back to the subject, I remember, early in my stewardship at the Center, the government people, especially Executive Mansion protocol people, were in the habit of trying to dictate how long the performances should last because the VIPs didn’t want to see the same thing over and over. Gradually, they accepted our authority in this area, and it appeared they stopped watching the clock during the performances. The performances were arranged and staged in ways that made them appear new, even though many of the elements were already in the repertoire. We did develop new ones, of course, but that took a couple of months.

One striking example of this gradual non-awareness to time was the visit of the Queen and Prince Julian and Prince Barhhardt of the Netherlands. The Queen visited Bong Mines by road and had several earlier engagements before leaving for Bong Mines in the afternoon. She returned around 6:00 p.m. and had just enough time to eat dinner and change before attending our performance at E.J. Roye. It is important to note that in earlier times, the performance would have been held in the small theatre at the Executive Mansion. The Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tabago at the time, Forbes Burnham, was entertained in the small theatre in the Executive Mansion. In 1974, we presented performances for state visitors at the E. J. Roye.

5, I tried to professionalize the Center operations. Teachers were recruited by the Ministry of Education rather than the Ministry of Information. We got the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare to establish a clinic. We recruited ‘educated’ staff, simply, people who could read and write. We hired professionals from other institutions to provide training for our artists.

Before I took over the Cultural Center, the Director of the Bureau collected the checks for the Center and paid them in ‘cash’. I didn’t know this and when I found out, I insisted that each employee open a bank account. Many ran to me and said they had never seen their checks and didn’t know how much they earned. I arranged for the bus to take all of them to the Bank of Liberia to open their accounts. Those who could not read and write were taught to write their names. The center was never the same after that.

6, We got the staff of the Center to be more self-reliant. There was this habit of waiting for the government to build houses for the people at the Center. There was a lot of land  at the time, and yet everyone was complaining about not having a house, or their own house. They wanted government to build houses for them. I disagreed and argued they should cut their own sticks and building materials, just like in the country, and get their colleagues to help build each other’s house. It took some argument and persuasion, but they finally agreed. I arranged to purchase cutlasses and axes. We cut enough material from up country and trucked it to the Center. Several months later, we had built more than 15 houses. Each family that had been waiting on the government had their own house built by themselves and was very proud. They decorated them the traditional way with drawings outside the houses, using clay of many colors. This created a great deal of excitement and a good spirit reminiscent of a traditional community supporting its citizens re-emerged throughout the Center community.

STEPHANIE HORTON: When were you sent on “vacation” to Belle Yallah? Did it have anything to do with your activism at Kendeja?

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS: No, going to Belle Yellah had nothing to do with my stay or work at Kendeja. I was arrested on February 1, 1975. Not sure it was the 1st, but very sure of the month and year, February 1975. I was arrested, imprisoned in a police cell at the National Police Headquarters, transferred to South Beach prison and assigned a cell. I never entered the cell because just as I was being taken in, a message came that I should be taken to James Spriggs Payne Airport and flown directly to the infamous Belle Yellah maximum prison.

STEPHANIE HORTON: How did you earn  this most exclusive of Liberian trips?

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS: I was accused of organizing a demonstration to overthrow the government of Liberia, which was then headed by President William R. Tolbert, Jr. A group of young Liberians, Jesus Victor Weeks, Ernestine Cassell, Patrick Burrowes, Keith Best, Othello Brandy, Williard Russell and others had become very activist, and had either associated with or been members of the Movement for Justice in Africa (MOJA). They founded and published a magazine run by all students called The Revelation. As one of the activist young teachers and an English major, I was their principle advisor on the magazine’s editorial content, format, design, etc.

These youngsters organized a demonstration to protest a number of issues, principle among which was to support Albert Porte, an outstanding crusader for freedom of speech and political rights for over half a century. Porte had been taken to court by Stephen A. Tolbert, the powerful Minister of Finance and brother to the President. Steve Tolbert was behind a move to legalize gambling in Liberia, and we were among the citizens who opposed his proposed law. The students organized a student demonstration on that Saturday and I literally walked into it. At this time, I had ceased to work directly with the students because I was no longer at the University although I still supported student activism. I had just returned from Boston, then a hotbed for student activism during the era of worldwide student militancy. I was not a part of the organizing and was not even supposed to be in town when the demonstration was scheduled to take place.  I had just flown back from Harper City, Maryland, where I assisted in the production of a tourism film on Liberia.

STEPHANIE HORTON: You were about how old?

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS: I was then 33 years old, the same age as Jesus Christ when he was crucified.

STEPHANIE HORTON: And you had just left Kendeja?

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS: I was no longer at Kendeja. I had been transferred, with great resistance from me and the Ministry of Information, Cultural Affairs, and Tourism, to the Liberia Development Corporation.  I was appointed to the position of Manager for Arts, Culture and Tourism. At the time, Steve Tolbert wanted to develop a tourism industry in Liberia and felt that I would be the best person to lead that effort. To his credit, he always wanted the best working with him: smart, aggressive, productive. And he always got his way, if it took using his considerable political muscle. So although the fight for Kona Khasu was fierce, it was actually a no contest with Steve Tolbert. It actually reached the cabinet when the Minister of Information argued that my leaving Kendeja would damage the cultural plans of the Ministry.

STEPHANIE HORTON: How were you treated at Belle Yallah? How long were you there? We have heard accounts of torture, whippings . . .

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS: No, not one lash. And definitely no torture. Absolutely true. But there are reasons I was sent there, and it speaks to the nature of the Liberian society, or I should say, the old Liberian society, pre-coup, pre-war. I was there for three weeks, just under a month.

STEPHANIE HORTON: There has been what I would call a systemic assault against Liberian culture. What post war cultural expressions from artists, musicians, poets painters, etc at home do you find interesting and inspiring or hopeful in the context of authentic cultural expression?

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS: There is something creative going on in Liberia right now. Most of these events are occasional and sporadic. The Liberia Association of Writers (LAW) is working on encouraging the writing and publication of Liberian literature for the public and the school system. There are a lot of poets and other writers who are writing about the experience of the long civil war. Unfortunately, there is limited exposure for these artists. The newspapers actually charge to carry such stories, but we don’t feel bad because they charge for all stories. It becomes paid advertisement. The arts and culture are not covered extensively, and since most artists have no money, not even money for food, it is not difficult to see how stories about the arts and culture get left out of the papers. Frankly, for that matter, nothing is covered unless money passes hands to the reporters, and since the reporters themselves are grossly underpaid, they have to write for the ‘highest bidders’ as it were. Only two papers, generally, sometimes carry stories on the arts: Tom Kamara’s New Democrat and Kenneth Best’s Daily Observer. How do we remedy the situation? That is the problem we are confronted with - those of us who are worried about this state of affairs of our arts and culture.

STEPHANIE HORTON: When did you change your name to Kona Khasu and why back to James Roberts? Was Kona Khasu only a stage name or your pen name?

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS: End of my junior year in college, 1965, just before graduation from Hobart College in New York. I wanted Kona Khasu to be on my diploma because I wanted a typical Liberian name as an author of plays and poems. You’re probably wondering, why Kona Khasu? Kona is the Gola name given to twins. It is unisex and people carrying that name are believed to be endowed with extraordinary powers because they are twins. Khasu is the given name of my father from the Dey, meaning “one who provides for the family, one who is given and accepts responsibility to provide for the family”. Specifically, it is the name of the traditional one-leg ladder used to climb to the food storage ‘kitchen top’, usually the upper level of the kitchen where food is preserved because the smoke from the fire goes up there and dries up the fresh food. My birth certificate reads James Emmanuel Roberts.

STEPHANIE HORTON: What do you think about the whole Bob Johnson hotel controversy?  You were a part of Kendeja and your son, our board member, Sengbe Boakai Kona, thinks of the place and the people, especially Ma Gbessie, as a part of himself, family and home. Do you support the government’s action?

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS: I think it will definitely bring employment to some of our people, provided we begin to train Liberians to get the jobs that will be available. At a time when unemployment is extremely high, it is difficult not to look at such a venture in terms of job creation. But there are long-term consequences, which I am not sure the responsible authorities have had time to consider, given the speed with which Liberia must move if it is to address the urgency of job creation for young people.

As you can see, I support the government’s objective. However, I do feel that the responsible authorities misled the President by not giving her all of the facts/issues pertaining to the relocation of the Center,  and what would happen to the students enrolled in the school at the Center. She minced no words in expressing her displeasure at the blunder. As a member of the Ministry of Education Executive Management team and one directly responsible for planning, monitoring and evaluating the Government’s national education recovery plan, I certainly do not support the manner in which the Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism handled the relocation. And I think it was made very clear that the process, timetable, and strategy were not formally approved by the Government of Liberia.

The timing was particularly unfortunate; schools had just reconvened following a one-month break to allow the government to conduct the ‘08 national population census. We were a month or two away from the close of school. And lastly, to the best of my knowledge, and I should have been directly involved as Deputy Minister for Planning, Research & Development at the Ministry of Education, there was no joint planning with the Ministry of Education and other stakeholders. Communication to the students, parents and community was poorly handled.

But there is an overarching issue here, and President Sirleaf publicly stated her anger about the way this relocation was carried out. She even dismissed the Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism official directly responsible for this blunder. At a time when the President is sourcing resources, personally advocating for enrolling all school-age youths in schools, and with the rapid increase in school enrollment and shortage of classrooms, it was unfortunate for one government ministry to plan and relocate students without joint and meticulous planning and implementation. But we all learned a valuable lesson, and I am sure it will not be repeated by any ministry or agency of this government.

That is one side of the issue. The other side is the tearing down of Kendeja, the National Cultural Center. One has to understand that there are very few Liberian villages built on beaches. I would say that even where the ethnic group is coastal, their villages are not located on the beach. I have always felt that it was a poor decision to locate Kendeja where it was if the government’s original objective for establishing Kendeja was to build and maintain a typical Liberian village where the authenticity of Liberian life, including the arts, architectural styles, dress, and daily life could be displayed for visitors to see and participate in, and for researchers and scholars to come to study and document. So, relocating Kendeja in itself was not damaging to the original objectives of the Center.

What I thought MICAT did not carefully consider was the “how” process. For example, as a symbolic ‘typical Liberian village’, with all the consequences and implications of its role and status in the life of this country, MICAT should have arranged a fitting ceremony where the tradition would be honored: the elders of the nation, especially the cultural leaders of the nation, would convene and bless the old and new venture in that spot. Rituals should have been conducted in keeping with the traditions. Honoring ceremonies should have been arranged so that those who worked so hard for the Center and other artistic manifestations could be honored. That would have been fitting for this storied, cultural Mecca, holy grail, for bringing closure to the old, and a good beginning for the new, even the hotel that would replace the Center. And it could have been the beginning of some national honoring for artists of all kinds; writers, painters, musicians, sculptors, film makers, documentary makers, etc. I don’t think it is too late to do any of these.

STEPHANIE HORTON: Do you have any thoughts on the debate around “who is the real Liberian” given the current tensions between Diasporan Liberians returning and Liberians who stayed through the war?

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS: There are several ways of looking at this question. According to our history, any African or person of African descent is entitled to Liberian citizenship. But I am sure you are not speaking about the legal definition of Liberian. When it comes to that definition, I would submit that a clear, precise, cogent definition of Liberian has not yet emerged.  When that definition emerges, it will include the so-called indigenous, the so-called Congo Americo-Liberian. In fact, these distinctions will be blurred in our perspective and will become obsolete. But if history is anything to go by, these terms will survive, even if they lose their distinction, the power of their meaning. I am thinking of nations like Italy, with all of its various ethnic groups. They have not lost the sense of their ethnic groups: Sicilian, Corsican, Roman, etc., or the Netherlands, which I recently visited. The history shows that many of the early settlers of Amsterdam actually came from France and other countries searching for freedom of religion. Today they are simply Dutch. I am sure there are distinctions, but not enough to make a significant difference in their daily lives. One would have to live there for some time to see the significant differences in treatment, I would think.

Now I am really confused! Liberians are Liberians, in my mind, whether they are Diasporan or those who stayed at home. Take my own experience; with the exception of the 2003 LURD war, I spent all of the war years abroad. Did that make me less Liberian? Returning home, I am sure I have made very significant contributions to Liberia, especially in the area of education. At the same time, many who spent their entire war-years at home have spent their time scheming to cheat Liberia. Who is more Liberian? And there are people who are from the Diaspora who have come home only to seek the ‘gravy’ and would do anything to achieve their ambitions. Of course, the opposite is true; there are Liberians who spent their time here, all of the war-years, made sacrifices and are still making significant sacrifices for Liberia. They have not gained a penny for not stealing from Liberia.

Are we talking about people who just wear the clothes, talk ‘Liberian’ and behave otherwise? What is that quintessential quality or qualities that defines/define Liberianness, and how is it expressed, demonstrated, identified? I seriously don’t know these answers anymore. I have seen too much, lived too long to be so sure that I have answers. The answers I had are ‘pre-war’, pre-’80s. We all need to ponder these questions about Liberianness, nationhood, and begin to debate them in the hope that we can agree, down the road, what the term Liberian means now and will mean in the future.

STEPHANIE HORTON: Thank you so much. This has been deep.

JAMES EMMANUEL ROBERTS: My pleasure. I am writing my memoirs and talking about all this has certainly awakened many memories.

STEPHANIE HORTON: Thank you.