Changing my mind: occasional essays - By Zadie Smith Page 0,54
as a chartered accountant, worked for the World Wildlife Fund in Indonesia (“I used to be an ecology militant”), performed a management evaluation of the French nuclear fusion reactor program, produced a Reggae album in Haiti and played violin in the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. The above is not an exhaustive list. He has seen the situation in Liberia progress from the direst emergency to the beginnings of “development.” “Basically, we’ve followed the returnees from the camps—many settled in this community. Sixty-five thousand people live here, thirty thousand of them children. Now, there are nineteen schools in the slum, yes? So—” Wait. There are schools in a slum? Patrick frowns, stops walking. He pinches his temples. “Sure,” he says. “But we’re going to the only government one. The rest are private, sharing space with churches, or mosques, with volunteer teachers. There’s also a teacher’s council here, a commissioner, the township council—you understand the slum is a township? It’s organized into blocks and zones. The area representatives call meetings. Otherwise nothing would get done.”
He sets off quickly through the chaotic little alleys, sure of his way. When we arrive, Patrick says: “You should have seen it before. This is the ‘after’ picture!” Aubrey takes a photograph of the long, low concrete building, its four large, bare rooms. Patrick says: “So Liberia has this unique freed-slave history. . . . What this means is the government structures were simply borrowed, lots of titles—minister for this, minister for that—but that was cosmetic. . . . Now, things have changed; they’ve pledged ten percent of their budget to education, which is enormous percentage-wise, but still only twelve million dollars for the whole country. There’s too much to be done right now. NGOs fill the gap. What you saw back there was part of our livelihood project: fathers are taught how to make school furniture, which we, the school, buy from them at a fair price. They also sell this furniture to all the schools in West Point. And mothers make the uniforms—if that doesn’t sound too traditionally gendered. . . . ”
Standing in front of the school are John Brownell, who manages the livelihood project, and Ella Coleman, who until recently was West Point’s commissioner. Mr. Brownell is a celebrity in West Point: he played football for Liberia. This took him to the United States and Brazil. “Rio de Janeiro!” he says, and smiles fondly, as if speaking of heaven. He is crisp-shirted despite the heat, broad as a rugby player. Ms. Coleman is a kind of celebrity, too, well known throughout West Point. Hers is a hands-on approach to pastoral care. She will enter homes to check on suspected abuse. She keeps children at her own house if she fears for their safety. She is impassioned: “We have seven-year-old girls being raped by big men! I talk to parents—I educate people. People are so poor and desperate. They don’t know. For example, if a mother is keeping her child home to earn fifty Liberian dollars at the market, I say to her: “That will keep you for a day! What about the future?” Another example: one of our very young boys here, he was always touching one of our girls—so I made him a friend. He was suspended—but sitting out there will not help. I went to his house. The whole family sleeps in one room. I said to his parents: you have exposed these children to these things too early. Anything that happens to this little girl, I will hold you responsible!”
And are some of your students ex-combatants? “Oh, my girl,” says Ms. Coleman sadly, “there are ex-combatants everywhere. People live next to boys who killed their own families. We, as a people, we have so much healing to do.”
Patrick explains logistics. The principal of the school is on thirty American dollars a month. To rent a shack in the slum for a month is four American dollars a week. Liberian teachers are easily bribed. You pay a little, you pass your exam. At the university level, the problem is endemic. Teaching qualifications are usually dubious. “It’s dull to repeat, but this all stems from extreme poverty. If you’re a teacher living in a shack on a pile of rubbish, you’d probably do the same.” Mr. Brownell begins to speak hopefully of the Fast Track Initiative, to which Liberia has applied for money. He puffs out his wide chest proudly. One of the aims is to reduce class size from 344:1 to 130:1.