Changing my mind: occasional essays - By Zadie Smith Page 0,50

At present she is abroad promoting foreign investment in her country. Liberia’s expectations are on hold until her return. “We hope and pray,” people say when her name comes up. For the moment, her real impact is conceptual rather than actual: Liberia is having its female moment. Everywhere the talk is of a new generation of girls who will “take Liberia into the future.” The popular phrase among the NGO- ers is “gender strategy.” The first visit of the day is to one of the “girls’ clubs” Oxfam funds.

Abraham Paye Conneh, a thirty-seven-year-old Liberian who looks fifteen years younger, will accompany the visitors. He speaks a flamboyant, expressive English, peppered with the acronym-heavy language of NGOs. Prior to becoming Oxfam’s education project officer, he held down three jobs simultaneously: lecturer at the University of Zion, teacher at the Liberia Baptist Theological Seminary and director of education at the West African Training Institute, a feat that netted him ten American dollars a day. He is the team’s “character.” He writes poetry. He is evangelical about Oxfam’s work: “It’s time for the women! We’re understanding gender now in Liberia. We never educated our Liberian women before; we did not see their glorious potential! But we want the women of Liberia to rise up now! Oh, yes! Like Ellen rose up! We’re saying, anything a man can do, a woman can do in the same superior fashion!”

Phil Samways, who enjoys Abraham’s impromptu speeches but does not tend to encourage them, returns to practicalities. “Now, security is still an issue. There’s a midnight curfew for everybody here—we ask that you comply with it. We get the odd riot—small, spontaneous riots. But you’ll be fine with Abraham—you might even get a poem if you’re lucky.”

To Lysbeth and Abraham we now add the photographer, Aubrey Wade, a thirty-one-year-old Anglo-Dutchman. He is thin, dark blond. He wears a floppy sun hat beneath which a pert nose white with sunblock peeks. He rests his lens on the car window. Hand-painted billboards line the road. HAVE YOU BEEN RAPED? Also STOP RAPE IN LIBERIA. Lysbeth asks Abraham what other “particular problems women in Liberia face.” The list is long: female circumcision, marriage from the age of eleven, polygamy, spousal ownership. Girls have “traditionally been discouraged from school.” In some tribes, husbands covertly push their wives into sexual affairs so they may charge the offending man an “infidelity tax,” paid in the form of unwaged labor. A culture of sexual favors predates the war. Further billboards warn girls not to offer their bodies in return for school grades, a common practice. The moral of Liberia might be “Where there is weakness, exploit it.” This moral is not especially Liberian in character. In May 2006 a BBC investigation uncovered “systematic sexual abuse” in Liberia: UN peacekeepers offering food to teenage refugees in return for sex. In November of the same year a local anonymous NGO worker in Liberia told the corporation: “Peacekeepers are still taking advantage of the situation to sexually exploit young girls. The acts are still rampant despite pronouncements that they have been curbed.”

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