Scott Family Fellows: Views From Liberia

Needless to say, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf beat me to Liberia’s presidency in 2005 when she surprised everyone by edging ahead of the populist favorite, soccer star-humanitarian- turned-politician, George Weah.
Now I work for her.

I serve as a bridge between the Liberian executive and the general public, a connector, a communications strategist, a filter. I’m an information disseminator, of sorts.

No doubt Liberia has become the epi-center of my life’s journey to date. My path to the presidency has taken some interesting twists and turns—from harboring ambitions about being the country’s first woman president to covering the November 2005 elections for a local D.C. community newspaper. My naiveté certainly never prepared me for the day-to-day challenges of a female head-of-state.

The problems are many and the triumphs tend to pale in comparison. I’m learning a hell of a lot about what it takes to repave the foundation of a broken country, with broken institutions. There are a lot of broken people here. Some walk around with physical, emotional and psychological scars and wounds from the war, others attempt to hide them under a slight veneer of indifference. We’re essentially all walking on gravestones, and the reminders of 14 years of conflict-ridden under-development are stark.

The laundry list of necessities weighs heavily like a cloak: restoration of infrastructure, poverty reduction, job creation, debt relief, truth and reconciliation, rebuilding governance and the rule of law structures, high crime rates, illiteracy, free compulsory education for all, under-reported HIV/AIDS incidence rates. All these challenges and more would keep any leader awake at night. That’s probably why President Sirleaf, in all her 69-year-old glory, is usually the last one to clock out of the Executive Mansion. The thrill of watching first-hand from the sidelines as she and her Cabinet handle the Herculean task of rebuilding Liberia has been the ultimate roller coaster ride, and perhaps one of the real perks of my job.

In just two years of Sirleaf’s presidency, she has paved the way for balancing Liberia’s budget; clearing the country’s arrears with the World Bank, IMF and African Development Bank (one of the first steps in corralling Liberia’s ballooning $4.7 billion debt); restoring electricity to key pockets of the country’s capital after decades of darkness; renegotiating concession agreements with the controversial Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, Liberia’s #1 employer to date, as well as securing a $1.5 billion contract with Arcellor Mittal, the largest steel producer in the world, to develop Liberia’s iron ore mining sector; restructuring the country’s military command; and instituting free compulsory primary education. These triumphs, and more, attest to the roving locomotive that is the Sirleaf machinery.

She’s a role model for many people, including me. The first time I heard President Sirleaf speak in front of a live American audience, I couldn’t help thinking, “She’s sharp, and a bona fide pistol.” The newly elected first female head of state in Liberia (and Africa) had to be that and more to pull off a victory in November 2005, against a slew of male candidates vying for the same political pie.

She has replaced history with a sobering dose of herstory.

She’s not alone. Whereas governments of the past have been mired in patriarchal fisticuffs over power, Sirleaf mitigated the masculine nature of Liberian politics by plucking five professional women from their former strongholds and placing them in high level government positions. Dr. Antoinette Sayeh, formerly of the World Bank, is currently Finance Minister, and Olubanke King-Akerele, formerly of UNDP, serves as Sirleaf’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. There’s also Varbah Gayflor, Minister of Gender; Etmonia Tarpeh, Minister of Youth and Sports; and Frances Johnson-Morris, Minister of Commerce. This feminization of higher politics parallels an increasingly active female electorate in Liberia, many of whom brought Sirleaf to the presidency by campaigning in local markets and influencing their children to vote for the woman affectionately dubbed “Ol’ Ma.” This prominence is not quite new: Ruth Sando Perry served as the first African woman head of state when she was appointed Council Chairman of Liberia’s ad hoc government during the Abuja Accords immediately before Charles Taylor’s election in 1997. But it is suggestive. The five female Cabinet ministers sit at the right hand of the ‘Ol Ma,’ accorded the same level of professionalism as their male counterparts. They speak with authority. They perform with a kind of legitimacy that was unheard of 20 years ago.

Liberia’s ethos has become a feminized ethos.:

Women, oh, women! Women, oh, women! What men can do, women can do it…What men can do, women can do it (better)! This is the chant often pulsating from circles of women, led by Liberia’s Gender Minister. With multi-colored lappas hugging generous curves and heads adorned with matching wraps, Liberian women often jump up, buoyed by these chants that legitimate their claim to a piece of the political and social pie. Yes, there’s a new energy in Liberia, and it’s primarily a feminized energy, an energy that exudes change.

Being a woman in Liberia nowadays is like waking up with a jolt from a long dream, and realizing that you were sleepwalking all along. Being female in Liberia nowadays is like claiming your own humanity as a birthright. Being a woman in Liberia nowadays is like recovering from a psychosomatic disorder, and realizing that you were conditioned to be handicapped.

But no more. Being a woman in Liberia nowadays is akin to a rebirth.

I see that rebirth everyday. Walking along Tubman Boulevard, a major thoroughfare in Monrovia, (Liberia’s capital), I see market women out on the streets selling candles, hot scalding ripened bananas, grilled fish, or even roasted peanuts. They are also in stalls, bartering for colorful fabric to be sewed by some of the most seasoned tailors. They stroll up and down with bundles strapped to their heads in the hot sun during Liberia’s merciless dry season. They are the country’s breadwinners. In the hustle bustle of city life, white-collar professional women dressed in power suits duke it out with their male counterparts for a space in rickety yellow shared taxis. They are heading to jobs that put food on the table. They are heads of households.

It never occurred to me why a single-sex education might be beneficial until I was plunged into a society seething with gender disparities, as are most societies in our globalized world.

It’s a testament to the fact that when you educate a woman, you educate a nation. We are the cultural transmitters, the incubators of history, a society’s mores and folkways. We are the conduits of peace and prosperity.
As a young Liberian woman who recently returned to the country in its post-conflict hey-day, I understand all too well how women have become the backbone of this country. President Sirleaf has shown me that you can be an ‘Ol Ma’ and ‘Iron Lady’ simultaneously. Gender, though a social construct, can be mutable and transformative.
My Georgetowner musings seem like eons ago, and a tad sobering. Being in the proximity of such strong powerful women is almost as thrilling, if not more so, than sitting in the throne of the presidency itself.

Thank goodness for life’s circuitous routes. Thank goodness for the feminization of politics.