Ute Klissenbauer

From “Kendeja 1977″ to Anxiety for Cultural Self-determination in Liberia Today

“Kendeja 1977″ is an eight minute documentation of a dance performance that took place at the Kendeja Cultural Center in December 1977. It is a digitalized sequence of a super-8 film by Bernard Vandemeulebroeke, a Belgian graphic designer based in Düsseldorf in Germany. The films by Bernard Vandemeulebroeke are very special in their unobtrusive way of accompanying either exceptional or ordinary activities. Though short, they have time. They know how to let things be.

In 1977, Bernard and his family were guests of my family living in Monrovia. When I learned that the November 2008 issue of Sea Breeze Journal was to be about Kendeja, I remembered having seen a sequence on Kendeja in one of Bernard’s films. I gave him a call from Frankfurt after years of no contact, and Bernard immediately agreed to have the film digitalized and to let me submit the isolated Kendeja sequence to Sea Breeze Journal. He also gave me the information that the guest of President Tolbert in the film is the King of Lesotho. I then contacted Stephanie Horton, managing editor of Sea Breeze Journal, to find out if a film contribution would be of interest - and yes, it was!

Thanks to my friend Mathias Fechter, the sequence was isolated and converted into different formats to then be sent to Sengbe Kona Khasu, film editor of Sea Breeze Journal. I am delighted to share the Kendeja dance performance of 1977 with Sea Breeze Journal - and potentially with all the world interested. Thank you very much to all involved, especially to Bernard and Stephanie.

The following is not an informative analysis of the film sequence, “Kendeja 1977″, but a reflection on why I cannot give this analysis.

Tourist/Expat Perspectives
“Kendeja 1977″  was filmed by Bernard Vandemeulebroeke, as I have mentioned,  who together with his wife and their two young children visited my family in Monrovia in December 1977. Two years earlier, they had hosted my younger brothers and sister and me in Düsseldorf, while my parents were busy transferring our life from Ecuador to Liberia. Unlike us, the Vandemeulebroekes came to Liberia as tourists, eager to discover a strange new world and to marvel at and puzzle over bright memories and pictures once back in their nice home.

My family hardly took any photos and no film at all while we were in Liberia. We just took everything for granted. After all, would we have gone to see a dance theatre at the Kendeja Cultural Center without having had tourist visitors? Quite likely: on one or another occasion during our stay, which my parents were ready to extend forever, and which instead ended suddenly after five years in 1980. Sooner or later we would certainly have visited a show at Kendeja.

The cultural center was not so far outside the city if you lived between Sinkor and Congo Town in Monrovia, as we did. It had always, since the ‘60s, been famous for traditional crafts and performing arts, and President Tolbert liked to take important guests to Kendeja. In the film he can be recognized by his usual white suit and hat. Bernard recalls that the honored guest at his side is the King of Lesotho, King Moshoeshoe II.

Ambitious cultural presentations offer several layers for perception: they range from entertainment to enlightenment. One and the same presentation can simply amuse you well for a night as it can also reveal to you and even initiate you into a new world of meaning. It depends, to a great extent, on whether the recipient is trained and able to read the signs. This is one reason for the importance of cultural education and documentary works: the chance that 30 years later somebody might sit in the audience that is able to really understand, value and pass on what he sees. Regarding the Kendeja film, I would like to make acquaintance with exactly that person!

Back then, a child of 11 years, I remember the show very well, and in addition to the visual part, I remember the arousing sounds of the drums and beaded calabashes, the damp air and the sea breeze of the afternoon. The whole setting in the arena with its solemn audience and security presence was exciting. I was fascinated by the physical performances, especially of the young on the naked concrete floor, by the adornment of the dancers, by the story play and, of course, by the leopard. I fabricated my own story in fantasy - helping myself out with German fairytale components. None of my people explained anything to me. Nobody knew what the two big masks opposite to us and nearby the musicians were about.

My parents loved living in Liberia; they felt lucky, “blessed” - particularly as they had never had the intention to go to Africa in the first place. They liked Liberia and yet knew almost nothing about Liberian history and culture. After long years in South America, it was there, South America, where they wanted the family to stay. However, in a situation of misery and distress, my father was offered a good two year contract for a project of the German development agency in Liberia, and he was not in the position to think twice. My mother, too, was not excited about going to Liberia, since she expected to be disliked because Germany was part of the colonization of Africa. She was soon surprised to feel very welcome and later she was happy to find true Liberian friends.

Culture and Power
We knew nothing about Liberian art and culture when we came in 1975, and today I find it amazing how little we knew when we left in 1980. I assume part of the reason being that for my parents, art and culture were not in the end, a tribute to the glory of God and an expression of divine love and creativity of mankind. Since it was the mighty God of the Catholic Church they worshiped, Liberia’s contemporary arts and crafts and their historical sacred roots were indeed admired, but not conceived as a challenge to explore and understand.

The same was true of my Baptist teachers at E.L.W.A school. Missionaries go out to win Africa; they don’t want to be won by Africa. To them, understanding Liberian culture and history was only necessary to the extent that this was useful for translating and spreading the message of the West - let it be the Christian message of salvation, the secular message of welfare and progress, the capitalist message of profit maximization and most surely some kind of mixture of it all.

Culture and Economy
Culture is not only often submitted to the dominating history of thought, religion or political ideology, it is also often declared to be a pure luxury, an extravagant supplement, not a necessity of life. This is a popular idea in post-war Liberia, and it seems common sense to simple people everywhere when trying hard to survive.

My father, also, is a survivor by nature - in the wilderness of the woods (and the Liberian bush), not so much in the cultural complexity of urban modernity. His big family of 9 brothers and sisters had lost some members and a farm in Czechoslovakia during World War II. As a refugee in Germany, he was lucky to get training in carpentry by the age of 14, and he continuously worked hard and learned to become a wood engineer, a technical director of sawmills and an expert in wood industry and forestry. Yet, in the many foreign countries where he worked, my father always seemed to be in search of the farm of his childhood. Even today he lives in great part by the work of his hands. He hasn’t had much time for refined art and culture. His aesthetic sense is met by rigid structures such as traditional Catholic liturgy and, a bit contradictory at times, by great, friendly teasing humor. Yet, that is where culture comes in again. Life is not about physically surviving - no matter how. It is about surviving emotionally and spiritually also, as persons of integrity.

Résumé
The human cultural quest for meaning, understanding and creativity is the normative root of our fight for human rights, which most naturally also includes explicit cultural rights. Art and culture in their various manifestations and in their constant flow are the essence of humanity. Ignorance of power and devastation by economic greed suppress cultural self-determination. As in my case: it is due to the narrow-mindedness of the foreigner and her own experience of cultural neglect that she has nothing to offer in terms of informing about “Kendeja 1977″.  Don’t count on expats and tourists to save Liberian art and culture!

Afterthought: Kendeja, Culture and Tourism
It was overwhelming for me to return to Liberia in March 2007 and in March 2008. On my second trip, I suddenly wondered about Kendeja. What happened to Kendeja? I asked my Liberian friends Saar and Vic if they could take me there, and before that could happen, everybody in Monrovia was suddenly talking about Kendeja.

News had it that the post-war remains of Kendeja Cultural Center were to be removed for a big luxury hotel to emerge at the beautiful site on the Atlantic coast. An American investor had been authorized to take the land on lease, the argument being that the hotel would guarantee new jobs and contribute to economic development. It was assured: a cultural center - a better one - would be rebuilt somewhere else. This decision was promptly and heavily criticized in the newspapers. What was convincing about moving a place of such symbolic relevance for a beach hotel in a country that hardly is in lack of beautiful beach sites? Also, the local people from Kendeja that were to be resettled got much public attention and support for their protests.

My friends and I did go out to see Kendeja shortly after and we were all silent, deeply moved and sad walking about the ruins that evoked intense memories. Here, “tourism” seemed to finally complete the destructive business of war. Certainly a hotel for tourism had competed with the cultural center for tourism, and one has to differentiate well.

Early this year, I was disturbed about so instantly coming across the economic argument of “tourism” - even when talking with artists and politicians for culture about the significance of cultural self-determination and ownership. Hopefully, wise people in politics and in the Liberian public will take care that “tourism” will not turn out to be the ultimate means for exploiting Liberia -  what is left of it.

Copyright © 2008 Ute Klissenbauer