Liberating Liberia

Although President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf officially lifted the national state of emergency last week, it was not to say that the battle is over, even as some new hotspots have developed, but rather to encourage the country that the situation is now enough under control to allow people to move around again and to reopen markets in the rural areas.

With the Ebola crisis so much in the news these days and the emphasis on fear-mongering, it is a bit surprising that so little is being written or broadcast in the United States about the actual area where this epidemic broke out. Who lives there? Why did the outbreak occur there? Why did it spread so rapidly?

I have wanted to write about the West African country of Liberia for a long time. Liberia occupies a deep space in my heart. It taught me about animism and love of nature. My first child was born and died there, resting, one hopes, in a peaceful field that later became a virulent battlefield. Liberia taught me about humor and music. It taught me to love the rainforest and anticipate the rising of the full moon. And now there is Ebola. Although its President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf officially lifted the national state of emergency last week, it was not to say that the battle is over, even as some new hotspots have developed, but rather to encourage the country that the situation is now enough under control to allow people to move around again and to reopen markets in the rural areas.

When I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Liberia from 1969-72, I never in my wildest dreams would have imagined the tragic future that lay ahead in just a short tick away. Two devastating civil wars from 1989 to 1996 and 1999 to 2003 spawned unthinkable violence and the virtual destruction of the entire country, and, now, Ebola. While the wars were in many respects internal cultural or "racial" fights, the fight with Ebola is for the soul of the country.

This image of a country market in Liberia during Jack Kolkmeyer's stay as a Peace Corps volunteer is among photos he took between 1969 and 1972.

How is it that such tragic circumstances pick out a certain place or bedevil a certain group of people? More importantly, perhaps, is the question, how does a place recover from such incomprehensible turmoil? This isn't intended to be a scientific discussion about Ebola but rather an introspective look into the heart and spirit of this area fighting for its very survivala struggle of almost biblical proportions. While the number of deaths appears to be dropping in Liberia, they continue to rise in Sierra Leone and Guinea, and a new case has recently emerged in Mali. To date, an estimated 5,177 deaths have been reported by the World Health Organization.

The original Ebola outbreak in this area reportedly started in the forested area around Gueckedougo in northeastern Guinea as the result of eating infected "bush meat" (bats, monkeys and small deer, among many other things) and quickly spread into neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia. As the disease spread, it became of immediate concern to France and Great Britain. Guinea was a French colony until 1958 and many Guineans live in France. Sierra Leone became independent of British rule in 1961, although it remained part of the British Commonwealth of Nations. Liberia was another historic matter altogether. Along with Ethiopia, Liberia laid claim to being one of the longest independent nations in Africa. But still, and regardless of who is now in control, the colonizers of these places are deeply affected.

After the abolition of the slave trade in 1808, a group of Americans, in large part Southern plantation owners, formed the American Colonization Society in 1816, with the intention of repatriating freed slaves back into West Africa. The first groups reached Sierra Leone in 1821 and Liberia in 1822. From the outset, the colonists met resistance from indigenous groups, including the 16 different linguistic groups in Liberia. The American Navy, however, intervened in numerous instances and provided the coastal stability that the original group needed to take root and eventually create their own independent state in 1847.

Indeed, coastal Liberia was and still is an anachronistic throwback to the southern United States. Rambling, two-story wood and zinc houses with verandas dot the swampy coastline and punctuate equally arcane small settlements with names like Virginia, Maryland, Paynesville, Harper, Buchanan and Robertsport. Each community in turn harbors a small church, usually Baptist, Methodist, Catholic or Lutheran. I remember driving through a small community one day and seeing a sign that read: Church of the Ladder Day Saints. Thats a short and easy way to get to heaven, I thought.

A house in Monrovia

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Liberating Liberia