Zadie Smith - Changing My Mind - Occasional Essays

In a school in Unification Town, fourteen girls from the girls’ club are picked to sit with us in the new school “library.” It is a small room, very hot. Lysbeth’s cheeks bloom red, her hair sticks to her forehead. Our shirts are see-through with sweat. The small, random collection of textbooks on the shelves are a decade out of date. Next door is the typewriting pool, pride of the club. Here they learn to type on ten old-fashioned typewriters. It is not a “school” as that word is commonly understood. It is a building with a thousand children in it, waiting for a school to manifest itself. The preplanned questions- Do you enjoy studying? What’s your favorite subject?- are rendered absurd. They answer quietly and sadly in a “Liberian English” that is difficult to understand. The teacher translates unclear answers. She is equally hard to understand. What would you like to be when you grow up ? “Pilot” is a popular answer. Also “a sailor in the navy.” By sea or by air, flight is on their minds. The remainder say “nurse” or “doctor” or “in government.” The two escape routes visible in Liberia: aid and government. What do your fathers do? They are dead, or else they are rubber tappers. A girl sighs heavily. These are not the right questions. The exasperated teacher prompts: “Ask them how often they are able to come to school.” Despair invades the room. A girl lays her head on the desk. No one speaks. “Ask me.” It is the girl who sighed. She is fourteen; her name is Evelyn B. Momoh; she has a heart-shaped face, doll features. She practically vibrates with intelligence and impatience. “We have to work with our mothers in the market. We need to live and there’s no money. It’s very hard to stay in school. There’s no money, do you understand? There’s no money at all.” We write this down. Is the typing pool useful? Evelyn squints. “Yes, yes, of course-it’s a good thing; we are very thankful.” There is the sense that she is trying hard not to scream. This is in contrast to the other girls, who only seem exhausted. And the books? Evelyn answers again. “I’ve read all of them now. I’m very good at math. I’ve read all the math books. We need more.” Are there books in your house? Evelyn blinks slowly, gives up. We file out to the typing room. Aubrey takes pictures of Evelyn as she pretends to type. She submits to this as a politician might to a humiliating, necessary photo op. We file outside into the dry, maddening heat. Aubrey walks the perimeter looking for something to photograph. The school sits isolated on a dusty clearing bordered by monotonous rubber plantations. Evelyn and her girls arrange themselves under a tree to sing a close harmony song, typical, in its melody, of West Africa. “Fellow Liberians, the war is over! Tell your girls, fetch them to get them to school! Your war is over-they need education!” The voices are magnificent. The girls sing without facial affect; dead-eyed, unsmiling. Around us the bored schoolboys skulk. Nobody speaks to them or takes their picture. The teacher does not worry that boredom and disaffection may turn to resentment and violence: “Oh, no, they are very happy for the girls.” As the visitors prepare to leave, Evelyn stops us at the steps. It is a strange look she has, so willful, so much in want, and yet so completely without expectation. The word desperate is often misused. This is what it means. “You will write the things we need. You have a pencil?” The list is as follows: books, math books, history books, science books, exercise books, copybooks, pens, pencils, more desks, a computer, electricity, a generator for electricity, teachers.

Driving back toward Monrovia:

“Abraham-isn’t there a government education budget?”

“Oh, yes! Sure. Ms. Sirleaf has promised immediate action on essential services. But she has only a $120 million budget for the whole year. The UN budget alone in Liberia for one year is $875 million. And we have a $3.7 billion debt!”

“But how much did what we just saw cost?”

“Ten thousand. We built an extra section of the school, provided all the materials, et cetera. If it had not been done by us or another NGO, it would not be done at all.”

“Do you pay teachers?”

“We are not meant to-we don’t want a two-tier system. But we can train them, for example. Many of the teachers in Liberia have only been educated up to the age of twelve or thirteen themselves! We have the blind leading the blind!”

“But then you’re acting like a government-you’re doing their job. Is that what NGOs do?”

“[sigh] Look, there’s no human resources, and there’s no money. We all must fill in the gap: the UN, Oxfam, UNICEF, CCF, the NRC, the IRC, Médecins Sans Frontières, STC, PWJ-”

“?”

“Peace Wind Japan. Another NGO. I can make you a long list. But different aid has different obligations attached. With us, there are no obligations. The money goes directly.”

“So people can send money to you earmarked for a particular project?”

“Oh, yes! [extended laughter] Please put that in your article.”

The street scene in Monrovia is postapocalyptic: people occupy the shell of a previous existence. The InterContinental Hotel is a slum, home to hundreds. The old executive mansion is broken open like a child’s playhouse; young men sit on the skeletal spiral staircase, taking advantage of the shade. Abraham points out Liberia’s state seal on the wall: a ship at anchor with the inscription “The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here.” In 1822 freed American slaves (known as Americo-Liberians, or, colloquially, Congos) founded the colony at the instigation of the American Colonization Society, a coalition of slave owners and politicians whose motives are not hard to tease out. Even Liberia’s roots are sunk in bad faith. Of the first wave of emigrants, half died of yellow fever. By the end of the 1820s, a small colony of three thousand souls survived. In Liberia they built a facsimile life: plantation-style homes, white-spired churches. Hostile local Malinke tribes resented their arrival and expansion; sporadic armed battle was common. When the ACS went bankrupt in the 1840s, it demanded the “country of Liberia” declare its independence. It was the first of many category errors: Liberia was not yet a country. Its agricultural exports were soon dwarfed by the price of imports. A pattern of European loans (and defaulting on same) began in the 1870s. The money was used to partially modernize the Black Americo-Liberian hinterlands while ignoring the impoverished indigenous interior. The relationship between the two communities is a lesson in the factitiousness of “race.” To the Americo-Liberians, these were “natives”-an illicit slave trade in Malinke people continued until the 1850s. As late as 1931, the League of Nations uncovered the use of forced indigenous labor. Abraham, in the front seat, bends his head round to Lysbeth in the back: “You know what we say to that seal? The Love of Liberty MET us here. ” This is a popular Liberian joke. He laughs immoderately. “So that’s how it was. They came here, and they always kept the power away from us! They had their True Whig Party, and for 133 years we were a peaceful one-party state. But there was no justice. The indigenous are ninety-five percent of this country, but we had nothing. Oh, those Congos-they had every little bit of power. Everyone in the government was Congo. They did each other favors, gave each other money. We were not even allowed the vote until very late-the sixties!”