The Journey From Refugee to National Cultural Treasure

Members of Vow 2 Praise, a popular Liberian vocal ensemble.

MONROVIA, Liberia

The story of their all-male singing ensemble dates back some 15 years, to the days when they were teenagers living in the squalor of an overcrowded refugee camp in Guinea that housed tens of thousands of Liberians during the country’s long civil conflict. But in the years that followed, the singing group Vow 2 Praise rose to heights they never fathomed, ultimately singing for presidents and being voted in one Nigerian competition as the best gospel group.
The nine members of Vow 2 Praise come from five different groups among the wide array of ethnic tribes in Liberia. They sing with a tightness of harmony and precision in rhythm that is utterly spellbinding. They interact with one another with a closeness that makes them seem more like siblings than choral colleagues. And in delivering their rapturously sonorous songs, they seek to offer an even more essential message to Liberia and to the world.
“Our main intent is to show that there can be unity in Liberia,” said Clarence N. Cooper, a tenor who is also the spokesman for the group. “We want to preach the message of oneness. We want people, especially young people, to know that they, too, have God-giving talents that need to be discovered and used to make a contribution to society.”

The group specializes in acappella religious music, with much of their repertoire being traditional Liberian selections in the country’s indigenous languages. They also sing traditional American-style gospel songs, with those being in English. They have sung at venues raging from festivals in Monrovia to gospel concerts in Nigeria, increasingly being lauded as examples of the finest of Liberia’s cultural resources.

“They represent some of the very best in Liberian music and I think their music needs to be discovered and appreciated by a far wider audience outside of the country,” said Samson T. Tarpeh, the executive director of the Agape National Academy of Music in Monrovia. “They are doing music that reflects the beauty of what we have in this country.”

Yet, theirs is also a story steeped in the pain of Liberia’s brutal civil war, a conflict that left more than 250,000 Liberians killed. For years, thousands of displaced Liberians sought refuge in neighboring countries, from the Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone and Guinea. Housing conditions were often deplorable and living conditions were often unsanitary. Schools were scarce. Food was rationed with people standing in line for hours for a meal.
On one afternoon in 1995, Saykeh Glay, the man who would one day become the group’s leader, stood in line for a meal at a camp in Jeake, in Guinea. “He felt so dehumanized that he wanted to sing a song that would revive the soul,” Mr. Cooper said. “And when he started singing, something got a hold of us, we. One guy started joining in, singing tenor. Another came in and started singing bass. It drew a lot of people to us. They were people who had lost their families, people who were brokenhearted. When we got done singing, they told us they wanted more. That’s how we started.”
The conditions in the camp, Mr. Cooper recalled, were “so completely terrible,” adding, “there were so many sicknesses and diseases there. There were rations for food, no schools to speak of. We were just there because we needed shelter, just living by the grace of God.”

While in Guinea, the group started singing not just in the camp but also at outside churches, schools and in other refugee communities. They came back to Liberia and continued to sing together. Within a few years, they looked for other singing opportunities and moved to Nigeria, where they started to gain a following. It was there that the group became well known in the circles of gospel music. They won various competitions and were asked to sing at everything from churches to presidential events.

But after four years in Nigeria, the founder of the group became ill and another became got sick and died. “After he died, our parents, who were all in Liberia, wanted us back home. Also, we were not in school when we were living in Nigeria.
Since they returned to Liberia in 2004, many of the group’s members got scholarships and financial assistance to go to college. In the last few years, two members of the group received college degrees and another five are on target to graduate next year. Over the same period, the group formed a foundation to raise funds for tuition, fees, uniforms and books for elementary and secondary school students.

“We want to tell the young people, especially the teenagers who feel that things are not working out well for them, that there is something within them that they can tap into,” Mr. Cooper said. “God has embedded in them qualities that will allow them to be a blessing to the world.”

Beyond that, Mr. Cooper and others in the group insist, they symbolize what the Liberia of the future might be, when people from the various ethnic tribes focus more on their commonality than on their differences.

“We are from a lot of different groups,” he said. “We are Bassa, Grebo, Kpelle, Kru and Mano. But we are brothers. We sometimes we argue. But we argue like brothers. More than anything, we love each other as brothers. Our message, I think, is that this is how Liberia should be.”

By Jonathan P. Hicks

From the Football Field to the Atlantic’s Beaches, One Man’s Effort To Ignite Liberia’s Fledgling Hospitality and Tourism Industry

Musa Shannon, chief executive of Nana’s Beach Resort.

MONROVIA, Liberia

Just a few years ago, he was a Liberian football sensation, immersed in a dizzying career that had him crisscrossing the world, from the United States and Portugal to China and his native Liberia.

And while he has kept his ties to football, Musa Shannon has moved firmly into a field that never occurred to him, yet it is a calling he has passionately embraced. He is now the premier leader in the hospitality industry in Liberia’s most trendy destination: Robertsport, in Grand Cape Mount County.

Nana’s Lodge.

He is the owner and chief executive of Nana’s Beach Resort, a collection of highly stylized tents perched along the beachside of one of West Africa’s most up-and-coming tourism destinations. Robertsport is a town in western Liberia, roughly 10 miles from the border of Sierra Leone that has become increasingly well known for its pristine beaches and some of the best surfing conditions in all of Africa.

It is into this terrain – of rolling green hills and shores where fisherman bring in the daily catch of barracuda, grouper and lobster – that Mr. Shannon has resolutely planted himself and his dreams. In doing so, he is betting his all on a Liberia of the future that, after years of war and civil strife, he hopes will see the country’s resort and tourism industry grow into one with worldwide appeal.

“I think Robertsport is one of the things about Liberia that our people should take pride in,” Mr. Shannon said. “I don’t think Liberians ever looked at our country as a tourism destination. We tend to think of Jamaica, Aruba, and other places in the Caribbean. But we have one of the great places for tourism right here in Liberia. And, here, we’re starting to see the emergence of the tourism industry in Liberia.”

It would seem like a decidedly safe bet. Robertsport is nothing if not stunning. The sleepy, quiet community is set along a peninsula overlooked by a stunning mountain of forests, just adjacent to Lake Piso, the spectacular body of water that is Liberia’s largest lake. But developing a tourism industry has been a challenge for a country whose international image for so long was characterized by civil strife rather than brilliant beaches.

Nonetheless, the Cape Mount and Robertsport area has long been considered a Liberian treasure. In the 1970s, there was the Hotel Victoria, standing proudly with its wondrous views and renowned food, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. But the hotel, like so much of the country, was destroyed during the civil war that ravaged Liberia for 14 years until it ended in 2003. The hotel stands today as a dilapidated reminder of grandeur gone by.

But since then, the highway leading to Robertsport from Monrovia has been refurbished, with only a stretch of about a third of the journey in need of repaving. The volume of tourists has improved, if not to a stampede, at least to a steady and increasing stream. The word of the waves has spread, first creating an underground buzz in the international surfing community and, lately, in everything from travel magazines to the pages of The New York Times.

The beach at Robertsport.

Three years ago, Mr. Shannon decided to play a role in making the area a prime destination. He grew up in the Paynesville section of Monrovia, near the Samuel K. Doe Stadium. Ultimately, his parents moved from Liberia to the United States and he learned to develop his skill in a game he knew as football in a country that called it soccer. He went to Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh and graduated with a degree in business management. He considered staying in Pittsburgh to get his MBA, but was drafted in 1997 by the Tampa Bay Mutiny, a professional soccer club.

He went on to play in Europe – in Portugal. By 2000, he was back in Liberia, playing on the Liberian National Team (he was a teammate of George Weah, the football star and future presidential candidate). It was a few years later, in 2003, he went to play for the Colorado Rapids and within a year he was playing with a team in Dong Guan, China, that Mr. Shannon decided it was time to come home.

“I knew that playing for that team in China meant that my career was winding down,” he said. “I had a great time in China. I went back to the New York area and had a couple officers to do coaching. But I started questioning where I wanted to be in four or five years. I came back to Liberia in 2006. And I knew from the time I landed, that it was time for me to stay here.”
His family owned land in Cape Mount and Mr. Shannon settled himself on an acre and a half of it along the gentle slope along the sea. He put up a dozen or so tents perched on stilts, offering breathtaking views of the ocean. He named it Nana’s Lodge, after his late grandmother who hailed from the Cape Mount area. Soon after, he opened a beachside restaurant offering locally grown or obtained items. There is, for example, grilled chicken and grilled fish with local favorites like jollof rice served at tables adorned with bight beach umbrellas.

He still is immersed in football, serving as Vice President of administration for the Liberian Football Association. However, his passion is clearly in his fledgling resort along the ocean. He wants to add cabins and enhance the nightly entertainment offered in the beachside restaurant. He sees his enterprise as a source of economic empowerment for the farmers and market women of the Cape Mount area.

“I’m trying to show people innovative and unconventional ways of making money here, locally,” Mr. Shannon said. “Tourism is a way of doing that. I think people in Robertsport are starting to see the economic impact. We’re buying everything locally: fish, chicken and food from the local market. We’re getting baked goods from the people right in Robertsport. We’re already changing the local economy.”

He talks of a strong desire to do even more. “I want people to take notice of what we have in Robertsport. I think Liberians are starting to notice. I want people here to know that you don’t have to go to Ghana or Senegal to have a good time. I want people to know that we have wonderful places right here in Liberia. “

By Jonathan P. Hicks

For Liberia’s Other “Iron Lady,” Kudos, Criticism — and Mostly Respect

Mary Broh, the Mayor of Monrovia

MONROVIA, Liberia

Monrovia's City Hall

In the course of offering a tour of City Hall to a guest, Mary T. Broh, the mayor of Monrovia, emerged from her office and encountered an information desk that had no one sitting behind it.

“Why is no one behind that desk?” she shouted to a group of aides accompanying her on the tour. Before anyone could answer, the mayor continued, her voice growing ever sterner: “What are we telling people when they come in here and no one is sitting behind this desk? How does this look? Take care of this right away.” With that, the aides scurried to correct the problem, without uttering a word.

It was vintage Mary Broh, the mayor that Liberians have come to know and, well, respect. In little more than a year at the helm of the country’s largest city, Ms. Broh has developed a reputation as a tireless worker committed to scrubbing Monrovia to a point of cleanliness the city has not known since before Liberia’s punishing civil war. She is widely described as a blunt-talking, no-holds-barred administrator who can dish out a barb or a profanity as swiftly as it’s brandished on her.

“And they are right,” Ms. Broh said, when asked if the characterizations hold true. “I have adopted a very unorthodox approach,” she added. “But that’s the way to get the message out. I’m not brutal. I just want people to know that I’m trying to develop Monrovia into a clean, sanitary city. I let people know that if you don’t clean your place, I will fine you. If you keep doing it, I will make sure you go the City Court and you can spend time going through the court system. I say what I mean and I mean what I say. I’m Mary Broh – unscripted.”

And while she has rankled some critics who find her style off-putting, she has legions of supporters who describe her as a tough-as-nails administrator at the right time in a tough city. She is credited for having led a highly successful cleanup campaign, enlisting hundreds of workers to help remove debris and trash from Monrovia’s streets. New sidewalks are being built in Monrovia’s downtown, specifically on the historic heart of the city’s downtown, along Broad Street. Meanwhile, Ms. Broh is now undertaking a massive effort to clean Monrovia’s beaches and to develop a pilot program under which portable toilets will soon be introduced.

What’s more, she is being hailed for her urban renewal initiatives that involve the demolition of dilapidated and old buildings, many of them abandoned after Liberia’s 14-year civil war ended in 2003. That has angered many of Liberians who came to Monrovia after the war seeking greater economic opportunity. Many criticize her as being tone deaf to the pain of the poor who are merely seeking a better life.

But Ms. Broh counters by saying that people simply cannot plant their roots wherever they please in Monrovia, irrespective of zoning laws. “We have to have a city of laws that have to be recognized and enforced. And we have to clean our city, all of us, including me.”

She started with City Hall itself, refurbishing some sections of the half-century-old building with new furniture, dusting off and redoing the building’s cavernous theater and polishing it’s large, public hall to a point where is has become a favorite place in Monrovia for everything from state dinners to wedding receptions. She also admits plainly that “the days of workers coming to work at City Hall at 11 and leaving at 3 are over.” She said that if workers are to receive a full days’ pay, “They’d better do a full day’s work.” She herself said that she works long hours, getting into her office near daybreak and continuing into the evening. “I’m not married,” she said. “My one daughter is grown and I’m free as a bird to do work as hard as I like.”

Her work as mayor has clearly won her a number of fans.

“Watching Mary Broh has led me to have faith that things can get done in Liberia,” said Hesta Baker Pearson, chief executive of Baker Pearson Communications, a publishing company in Monrovia. “City Hall itself has been transformed. She gets in the streets herself and helps to do the cleaning. She has managed to do some things that many people thought were impossible. If Liberia had 20 more Mary Brohs, the country would be massively transformed in about one year’s time.”

Sometimes, her methods display an utter lack of subtlety. On one occasion, with bulldozer in tow, Ms. Broh took to the streets of Monrovia, demolishing illegally built structures, saying they were a haven for criminals and prostitutes.

Ms. Broh, came to government work in Liberia almost by chance. She left the country decades ago and lived in New York City for more than 30 years, working as a collections manager for a Manhattan garment manufacturing company and, later, as shipping and logistics manager for Marvel, the toy company. All the while, she had followed the career of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, she said, and met the future president on a chance encounter on an intersection near the United Nations.

“She gave me her phone number and I started staying in touch with her,” Ms. Broh said. “I never abandoned her. I felt this lady was bound to be great. Every time she was in New York, and even when she was in exile in the Ivory Coast, I was in touch with her. We became friends.”

When Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was inaugurated as the first woman head of state in all of Africa in 2006, Ms. Broh came from New York for the event. “I had no intention to stay here,” she said. “And the president said that she wanted me to stay and work with her. I nearly fell over,” she said, referring to the woman commonly known as Liberia’s Iron Lady. “And when your friend, the president, asks you to come, you come.”

She came indeed, first serving as special projects coordinator for the president. She went on to become the director of the Passport Bureau and was lauded by the president for working to eliminate corruption and bribery. By 2008, she had become Deputy Director of Liberia’s Port Authority and a year later, the president selected to serve as Monrovia’s mayor.

She said, she has no particular career aspirations other than to assist Liberia thrive in the transition from the aching years of war.

“I just want to be part of nation building,” she said. “Even if the President tells me to leave the city and go to the hinterland to work, I’ll be happy to go, It’s all part of nation building in this post war period. I just want my name to be remembered 50 years from now and for people to say that I helped.”

By Jonathan P. Hicks

A National Holiday That Has Remained Intact, With Caveats

Liberians taking to the beach on Tubman's Birthday.

MONROVIA, LIBERIA

There are few people anywhere in the world who don’t enjoy the prospect of a three-day weekend. And Liberians are certainly no different. While Americans celebrated Thanksgiving and immersed themselves in a frenzy of pre-Christmas shopping, preparations for another holiday tradition were unfolding on the other side of the Atlantic: Tubman’s Birthday.

President William V.S. Tubman

Each year on November 29, Liberians celebrate the birthday of William V.S. Tubman, the man who served as president of the country from 1944 until his death in 1971 – an incumbency longer than any other Liberian President. Mr. Tubman was widely viewed as the father of modern Liberia and he has been celebrated for his policies of national unity aimed at diminishing tension between the indigenous Liberians and the descendents of freed American slaves, like Mr. Tubman.
Apparently, little of that history remains uppermost in the minds of most of the celebrants of the holiday, which has instead been transformed into the day that Liberians take to the beach en masse to picnic, barbecue, relax and partake in all manner of revelry. After the months of the West African rainy season, Tubman’s Birthday falls squarely in the early weeks of the cherished dry season. In fact, Liberians seem to have developed a similar relationship with Tubman’s Birthday that Americans have established with Memorial Day. It signals the unofficial beginning of the “summer” season here, when the weather makes it far less likely that beach events will be disrupted by rain.

“For us, it’s a great beach day,” said the Rev. Joseph Johnson III, the pastor of Restoration Baptist Ministries, a church of about 300 members who gathered at the ELWA area beach in the Paynesville section of Monrovia. They ate fried fish, rice and pepper sauce — a Liberian staple. Many of the young men played soccer on the beach, while women strolled and talked leaving the children to play with one another. “The entire church is together at the beach,” Rev. Johnson said. “We’ve chartered buses so that the whole church could participate. And we’re having a wonderful, relaxing, family day on the beach. That’s what the holiday is all about.”

His congregation members are not the only ones following that trend. Liberians headed to the beaches by the tens of thousands, many of them young and most of them staying into the night.

“It’s a holiday that Liberians celebrate even more than Christmas or New Year’s,” said Jacqueline M. Capehart, the assistant minister of culture in Liberia’s Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism. “You find more people in the streets, more people enjoying social gatherings of all sorts and more traffic. It’s celebrated with a lot of zeal and enthusiasm.”
It was not always so. Liberia’s legislature made Tubman’s Birthday a holiday during his lifetime, partly as recognition of his fence-mending initiatives between the 16 indigenous tribal groups here and the descendents of the African American slaves who made up the ruling class of the country. Tubman himself celebrated his birthday by traveling to festivities far from the capital of Monrovia (he was born in Harper, a city in the southeastern tip of the country). Those visits, older Liberians contend, helped to bring attention — and resources — to rural areas and smaller cities. In Monrovia and throughout the country, there were also parades and public events marking the holiday with bands playing and schoolchildren marching.
However, in the years since President Tubman died, Liberia has been through a bloody coup and years of painful, civil conflict that left hundreds of thousands of its citizens dead. And the celebration of Tubman’s Birthday took a back seat to the challenges of human survival. After Liberia’s 14 years of devastating civil war ended in 2003, Tubman’s Birthday remained intact as a national holiday, but with a distinctly different character.

In recent years, there has been debate in some of the country’s circles about whether Tubman’s Birthday should be a holiday at all. While he is lauded by many for policies that brought an influx of foreign investment and modernization into Liberia, the late president is also criticized by many Liberians for what they consider a dictatorial style of governing, particularly in the later years of his presidency. Others, still, suggest that it would better to celebrate collectively all those who have served as president of Liberia since Joseph Jenkins Roberts was inaugurated in 1848.
But Tubman’s Birthday has survived, although somehow over the years, his legacy was less in focus than the various forms of celebration of the holiday that bears the Tubman name. This year, young people flocked to the beaches in a force so strong that extra police offers were put on duty to move traffic along and to look for evidence of drivers who had been drinking.
Many Liberians lament the fact that Tubman’s Birthday has developed something of a distasteful underside, with growing complaints of lewd behavior and drunkenness on the beaches with fights often ensuing. Nonetheless, there are legions of Liberians who, like Rev. Johnson, describe the day as one that offers a more-than-welcome tonic to the struggles of Liberia’s daily grind. It is a day, he said, where families spend time together and where people can simply have a good time.

“We need a day to relax and to be with our families,” he said. “We need a chance to simply enjoy the wonderful beaches that God has given to Liberia. It’s a wonderful holiday.”

By Jonathan P. Hicks

The Quest to Apply New Varnish To Liberia’s Image

Liberia Travel and Life Magazine

Monrovia, Liberia - It’s difficult to look at Liberia Travel and Life magazine and not be intrigued by the idea of touring Monrovia and the breadth of this country. It’s a glossy magazine with alluring photos of eye-catching models in African-influenced fashions, captivating visions of pristine beaches and close ups of bright “country cloth,” the colorful fabric that is woven in Liberia. The magazine celebrates the wide array of goods sold at the busy marketplaces in the city, the rolling mountains of the country’s Nimba region and the stunning waves along the Atlantic at Robertsport, an area gaining attention as a world-class surfing destination.

It is a magazine that has taken on — in its nearly three-year lifespan — a task to which its owners and a growing number of business leaders here are fervently committing themselves: The development of Liberia’s image as a destination ripe for tourism, with its own blend of charm, fascination and magnificence.

It is not the simplest prospect, to say the least. More than anything, Liberia’s reputation in recent years has been shaped by images of bloody civil war, an exodus of capital and brain power coupled with a decrepit infrastructure and a level of poverty that would rival the poorest Third World quarter. America’s State Department, in its travel warnings, urges United States citizens to “plan proposed travel to Liberia carefully and to exercise caution,” adding that “basic services (e.g., public power, water and sewage, landline phones) are either limited or unavailable.” In short, it is hardly the place one might readily associate with, say, luxurious spas, stylish restaurants or trend-setting fashions.

Hesta Baker Pearson

And yet, presenting that image is precisely the aim of many here, most notably Hesta Baker-Pearson, the publisher of Liberia Travel and Life. “For the outside world, it’s important that the image of Liberia be changed. I want the world to see what we have here; that there’s more here than war,” Ms. Baker-Pearson said. Liberia, she said, is a country that for nearly two decades “experienced so much in terms of war, poverty and changes in government. I’m sure to many it looked like a country that would never stopped fighting. The country began to develop a highly negative reputation around the world. Many Liberians began to lose hope for our country, like change would never come.”

After nearly 15 years of civil war, conditions did indeed begin to settle down. And Ms. Baker-Pearson, who was born here but moved to Texas after the 1980 coup that toppled the Liberian government, made the decision to return to her homeland with her family. She decided that she would use her experiences working for newspapers and business publications in Texas and Atlanta to help create and highlight an enhanced image of Liberia. And so, her magazine presents a vivid picture of a handsome, picturesque and quaint Liberia, with fashion photo shoots at beaches and in forests. Even the magazine’s ads reflect an upbeat image of travel, art and fashion. The magazine carries ads from Brussels Airlines, Ecobank and local hotels and clothing boutiques sandwiched between articles about “11 Men of Style” in Liberia, the country’s pigmy hippos and a guide to dining in Liberia. The magazine is doing well, she said, “we’re certainly not in the red.” In fact, her company, Baker Pearson Communications Inc., recently started a new publication: Business Liberia Magazine.

“People need to see Africa, the real Africa, for what it really is,” Mr. Baker-Pearson said. “There is beauty here, there is fashion here and there is culture here. It’s important for us to feel pride in ourselves and it’s important for the outside world to look at us as a continent that is part of the 21st Century.”

Others, too, insist that Liberia is gradually, but steadily, developing its tourism infrastructure.

“I think there is certainly reason for optimism about the outlook of the tourism industry here,” said Ronald Stilting, the general manager of the RLJ Kendeja Resort and Villas and the president of the recently-formed Tourism Association of Liberia. “You see development and progress happening here now that makes it clear that the country is heading in the right direction in terms of tourism. If things continue the way they are going now, Liberia can become a strong destination for tourism and for West African conference travel.”

As evidence, Mr. Stilting points to the development of two hotel projects in the coming year or so, most notably the renovation of the once-elegant Ducor Hotel on the top of Monrovia’s Broad Street. The Ducor is being refurbished by the LAFICO, the Libyan Arabian Foreign Investment Company (the hotel was once a showplace of Liberia but was ransacked and looted by rebels during the way). Another soon-to-be completed project is the opening of a hotel adjacent to the Samuel K. Dow Stadium. They join a number of hotels that have opened in the last three or four years, including the Royal Hotel, the Cape Hotel, the Mamba Point Hotel and Mr. Stilting’s own RLJ, the upscale property opened by the company operated by Robert L. Johnson, the American businessman. “And we certainly expect others to develop,” Mr. Stilting said.

Menipakei Dumoe

It’s also now easier for tourism to develop, Mr. Stilting and others here insist, because of the turnaround at the airport, which for years sat in disrepair and even shut down for a while. Now, Monrovia’s Roberts International Airport, with its small, bare-bones terminal, is served by several airlines, including Brussels Airlines, Kenya Airways, Virgin Nigeria, Ethiopia Airlines, Royal Air Maroc and other regional carriers. And they provide vital links for business travelers and others to get here from Europe, the Middle East and North America.

“Liberia is opening up and it has a lot to offer that people simply don’t know about,” said Menipakei Dumoe, the founder and chief executive of Wow Liberia, a company that offers tour packages that include Monrovia and Liberia’s landmark regions. “We have incredible rain forests here, beautiful hiking destinations, we have the Nimba Mountain, which is offer a breathtaking view of Liberia, Guinea and the Ivory Coast. “

Mr. Dumoe added that, despite the years of civil conflict, Liberia is in need of rediscovery by international travelers. “It’s important for people to become acquainted with the real Liberia,” he said. “They don’t know about the party atmosphere here. Liberians are a hospitable and fun loving people with a rich musical tradition. There is so much here. We just have to get the word out.”

By Jonathan P. Hicks

Liberia’s Young Singers: Breathing New Life Into the Country

Rabbie Nass

Monrovia, Liberia - Rabbie Nassrallah’s mother is a businesswoman, born in Liberia’s Nimba county and a member of the Mano tribal group. His father is an Israeli businessman who partnered for years with Lebanese merchants in Liberia. By the time he was a teenager, Mr. Nassrallah had seen all too clearly the destruction, devastation and gut-wrenching trauma produced by the country’s civil war.

But through the crisis, as his family was held at gunpoint by rebel soldiers who looted their home and burned it; as he was reduced to selling small pieces of dried fish to make money; as he became a refugee within his own country, Mr. Nassrallah kept on singing and songwriting.

“I always sang, no matter what,” he said. “I always felt I had something important to say. Any chance I had to sing, I would sing.”

And that singing is paying huge dividends. Mr. Nassrallah is now one of Liberia’s best known singers. His blend of reggae and traditional Liberian music has taken him to the heights of this country’s music scene. He has sung at every major venue in Monrovia, opening and headlining at important music events here. He has performed in Nigeria and Sierra Leone. With Liberia’s lengthy civil war now over, Mr. Nassrallah — who is best known by his stage name “Rabbie Nass” – is bent on not only developing his own career, but also highlighting the work of his contemporaries in Liberia’s evolving music culture. Their music, he insists, breathes new life into Liberia.

“The appreciation for the work of young artists is gradually picking up,” Rabbie Nass said. “Things are much better than they were even a few years ago. People here are now starting to respect the work of Liberian artists — and they are starting to pay for it, too. There are a lot of young artists coming along now who are doing great things. I would really like to see all of their work get more attention outside of Liberia.”

While it may not have the caché and sales prowess of its counterparts in, say, Nigeria or Ghana, Liberia’s contemporary music scene is nonetheless showing signs of increased vibrancy and activity. There has been a growing number of music festivals here each year. More recording is being done here and radio stations are playing more of the music of home-grown musicians.

“There are a lot more music events and international concerts here now,” said Backue Tubman, who left her job as a music industry executive in New York to return to Liberia and immerse herself in entertainment and event planning here.

“The young artists here are getting more exposure; some are traveling outside of Liberia with more frequency,” Ms. Tubman said. “To be honest, the recording studios here have not been up to standard. But that is changing and more and more places are using more up-to-date, computer-based equipment. Good things are happening here.”

Front, Sametta Morris, Sundygar Dearboy, Back Row, left to right, Nicholas Buigar, Friday The Cell Phone Man, Slo Diamond

Indeed, some young singers have become household names in Liberia. For example, Nicholas Buigar won Liberia’s most recent “Star Is Born” competition, propelling him to local fame with his style of lush R&B singing infused with a distinctly West African flavor. He and another young Liberian singer, Sametta Morris, were finalists in the American Idol-style “Project Fame” competition in Lagos earlier this year. The competition, one of the most widely watched in West Africa, has catapulted them into high visibility. Meanwhile, Friday the Cell Phone Man (yes, that’s his actual stage name) has reenergized the appreciation of traditional Liberian among young music buyers. And Marcus Davis, who is known by the stage name of Sundaygar Dearboy, has become one of the most successful artists here, a singer whose love songs and political anthems have earned him fame even outside of the country.

Many of these young artists came of age professionally in the music industry as the war was winding down or even afterward. As a result, the nearly 15 years of civil war here plays only a peripheral role in their music. “In my music, I talk about corruption and about hypocrisy in government,” Rabbie Nass said. “I often refer to those leaders who are corrupt and about the problem of poverty.”

Whatever their message, it is clear that more Liberians are paying attention to them. And these young artists contend that a flourishing arts community offers a healthy way for Liberia to show the world that it is more than a depository of tragic reminiscences of civil war. “I’m very encouraged because, people here were not supporting Liberian artists that much just a few years ago,” Ms. Morris sad. “The country suffered for so long that people were paying attention to other issues. But if you look around now, you can see that something is going on here. Something great is happening. And that’s important for us.”

Mr. Nassrallah said he is thrilled by the place life has taken him to at last. “I am thankful for the way things have turned out for me,” he said, recalling performances in the Samuel K. Doe Stadium here, where he was greeted by an audience of 30,000 screaming fans.

“It’s the best feeling in the world,” he said, standing in the stadium named for the man who came to power after a bloody coup here in 1980. He beamed while looking on to the field in the stadium. “It’s really overwhelming. When you’re out there doing your music, you don’t think of anything else but that thrill. You don’t think about anything else. I’m in a good place right now.”

By Jonathan P. Hicks

Returning Home: The Nuanced Joy of Coming Back to Liberia

William Tubman

Monrovia, Liberia - He has one of the most storied names in all of Liberia. The grandfather whose name he bears was a larger-than-life figure who was the president widely regarded as the father of modern Liberia. Though his grandfather is viewed as the quintessential Liberian, William V.S. Tubman III is now readjusting to life in the country he left nearly 20 years ago, the country whose very currency carries the Tubman name.

In many ways, Mr. Tubman is very much an example of a growing trend here. More and more educated, privileged Liberians who fled during the country’s lengthy civil war are now returning home from various parts of the world, some from other West African countries – but the overwhelming majority returning from the United States.

He has returned, Mr. Tubman said, because he never considered doing otherwise. When the country’s civil strife began, Mr. Tubman’s mother did what many Liberians did in the face of the brutal conflict: they moved with their children to the United States, in their case to the suburbs of Washington D.C. He went to college at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, majoring in marketing and anthropology. He worked in guest relations at the venerable Peabody Hotel in Memphis and, then, back to the Washington area to work in guest relations for a hospital.

While his life was typically American – he loved the television show “Heroes” and he was a regular at Wendy’s and Ruby Tuesdays – he explained that he never felt comfortable with the prospect of settling permanently in the United States. “I’m shaped by America, but I was raised in a Liberian home with a Liberian mother and grandmother,” Mr. Tubman said. “I was in Maryland but raised in my culture. I ate Liberian food every day at home; I listened to Liberian music every day. We never wanted to be Americans who said that their parents were Liberian. We were Liberian.”

When he was about to turn 30, roughly a year ago, he decided that it was time to return to Monrovia. Other family members had already returned here from the States as calm settled into the country, in the aftermath of the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as president of Liberia. Many came to reclaim property they had abandoned during the nearly 15 years of bloody civil war. Others came because they sought to take advantage of what they considered an exceptionally fertile opportunity for business in a country whose very foundation had been decimated. Some came because they simply longed for the home they had once known, the place to which they felt inextricably linked.

Mr. Tubman said his decision to come represented a combination of all three. When he got back, he worked in the restaurant of a cousin, training staff in all facets of hospitality. He now works as guest relations manager at RLJ Kendeja Resort and Villas, the high-end hotel property that was built here by the American businessman, Robert L. Johnson.

He said that he wanted to contribute something to Monrovia’s hospitality culture. In addition to his work at the hotel, he operates a hospitality consulting company, Star Service Solutions Inc. It is dedicated to “raising the bar in the service industry,” he said. “We screen, train and staff customer service and domestic workers. I felt I had had to come back and do something for my country.”

Liberians, like Mr. Tubman, are returning by the thousands. Their migration here effectively represents the second wave of Africans shaped by the United States returning to the shores of West Africa. Established by the American Colonization Society as a place for freed slaves in the United States to emigrate to in West Africa in 1822, Liberia was founded on the premise that these freed African-Americans would have greater freedom here. The county became an independent republic in 1847, modeled after the United States.

The descendents of the African-American immigrants formed an elite group in Liberian society that was far smaller in number than the vast population of 16 or more tribal groups here, most notably the Kru, Mende, Kissi, Gola and Bassa tribes.

Mr. Tubman’s grandfather was president of Liberia from 1944 until his death in 1971. His tenure in office was notable for the increase in foreign investments that poured into Liberia. He was also known for developing polices that were aimed at reducing the level of political friction between the population of the various tribal groups and the descendents of the freed black Americans. He was harshly criticized in the later years of his presidency for having an autocratic style that bordered on the dictatorial.

In 1980, during the administration of President William R. Tolbert Jr., a coup staged by Sgt. Samuel K. Doe overthrew the government, killing the president and plunging Liberia into a period of protracted instability (Mr. Doe was the first leader of Liberia who was not a member of the so-called “Americo-Liberian” elite. Mr. Doe was later killed and Charles Taylor took the reigns of power. Then, war broke out between rival factions within the country. Liberians left the country by thousands. Some 250,000 Liberians were killed in the war.

Their return has been greeted with a heavily nuanced welcome. Some view it as an assurance that country will regain its footing in brain power after years of war. Others here complain that their return leaves fewer resources – and pay checks – for others who remained. In a country with staggering unemployment and astounding poverty, the return of their countryman from a relatively comfortable life in the United States is not without its resentments.

But for those who have returned, being back in Liberia is not without its own pain and traumas. They are confronted every day not only by the devastation that continues to plague their beloved country, but also the memories and reminders of family members and friends who were killed in the war.

“When I first got here, I was astounded by the fact that it was a shell of what it used to be,” Mr. Tubman said. “And there is always a sense of loss. My cousin was killed in 1990 at the age of 13. Coming back really woke me up that I had lost people who were dear to me. I grieve for people who were killed and lost in the war. The reality of their death sinks into me.”

Still, he said, he had to return. “It’s where I knew I had to be. And, despite everything, I’m very, very glad to be back,” Mr. Tubman said. “It’s home.”

By Jonathan P. Hicks

Driving (and Walking) In Monrovia: Not For the Faint of Courage

Traffic in Monrovia

Monrovia, Liberia - A major challenge in any large, crowded city is simply navigating the traffic in traveling from one place to another. But that task is decidedly more complicated in a city with no traffic lights, few to no stop signs whatsoever and just a handful of traffic agents on the roads. Imagine if all the traffic signals were disconnected and stop signs removed from, say, Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn or Fordham Road in the Bronx.

That’s the case here in Monrovia, where the impact of nearly 15 years of civil strife is most easily seen and felt in the city’s traffic. For one thing, the sheer volume of the population of Liberia’s capital has soared as rural dwellers moved en masse to seek employment in Monrovia, the country’s lone big city. The population here has more than doubled since the war, with about 1.5 million people in the capital (half of Liberia’s population now lives in Monrovia) Furthermore, the war, which ended in 2003, destroyed the hydro-electric plant in Monrovia, and rebuilding it has been a slow – if steady – undertaking. At the same time, the number of motorcycles has skyrocketed with officials suggesting that they now nearly rival the number of cars here.

All of that has made driving here an enterprise that is best not left to the faint of courage. The best preparation might well be a month of test driving on an obstacle course (or even in downtown Brooklyn, for that matter). Simply driving onto the highways and streets here — and certainly seeking to make a left turn from a major road — takes a combination of boldness, pluck and sheer bravery. Pedestrians cross roads as best they can, calculating whether they amass the speed to outrace oncoming traffic. There is no traffic light to bring traffic to a halt at an intersection and rarely is there a police officer. So, crossing the street is a highly-charged, track-and-field event for pedestrians. And the presence of potholes of every size is an extenuating challenge for Monrovia’s drivers.

Michael B. Cole, University of Liberia student

There is a distinctive rhythm to creeping out to enter or make a left turn from the road – it’s the driving equivalent of the school girl poising with intense focus descend into the whirl of jump-rope. “You’ve got be very watchful,” said Michael B. Cole, a 20-year-old University of Liberia student who drives his older brother’s Volvo from time to time. “I’ve been driving since I was 13, starting with my father’s car.”

Driving in Monrovia, he added, involves the utmost in concentration, because of the pedestrians, the unpredictability of the motorcycles’ bobbing and weaving, the potholes and the water that can form small lakes in the roads during Liberia’s rainy season. “You have to always watch, always watch,” he said, while blowing his horn to alert a driver who seemed to be on a collision course with Mr. Cole’s car.

And driving here at night is an altogether advanced level of challenge. With few sections of the city illuminated by street lights, averting the scampering pedestrians in the darkness can be a potentially perilous endeavor to say the least, a virtual suicide mission for those crossing by foot. On a recent event here, the streets at one junction seems even more crowded than during the daylight rush hour and pedestrians at every turn seems to narrowly avert catastrophe.

And yet, amid the motorcycle darting, the fearless pedestrians and the incessant blaring of horns, there is an abundance of courtesy that seems to prevail. Some drivers will simply stop at an intersection to allow the elderly or young children cross. It is not uncommon for a driver, seeing the desire of another to make a turn, to slow down and flash his lights, a sign of allowance to make the turn. All of it is acknowledged with the courtesy of a wave in return.

But things are due to improve, said Miekee S. Gray, the chief of traffic for the national police. “We have plans to get many more traffic signals placed in the busy intersections,” Mr. Gray said, in an interview. “Right now we just have about 150 traffic officers on duty during the course of the day. In two years, I think you will see a big difference in the traffic in Monrovia.”

For one thing, he said that the increase in traffic signals will make it possible to reduce the number of traffic agents on the streets, freeing them to do other police activities. He said there are also plans to set up video monitoring systems that will enable the police to watch traffic around Monrovia from a command center and dispatch agents as necessary. Also, the police will conduct widespread training to better acquaint drivers with standard international traffic signs.

Also, Mr. Gray said, police officers have cracked down on enforcing seat belt regulations so intensely that most drivers now understand the importance of wearing them. And the department plans more public awareness campaigns, he said. “We are making progress and we will be making a lot more progress in the next few years,” he said. “You’ll see street lights in bigger numbers and a better flow of traffic” (To be completely accurate, there is one functioning traffic signal here now, at the Port of Liberia).

In the meantime, drivers have to make the best with conditions. “I think things will get better in time,” Mr. Cole said. “It’s a pain driving in the city. But you have to make the best of it for now.”

By Jonathan P. Hicks

A Pastor’s Determined Message of Reconciliation and Forgiveness

Monrovia, Liberia - Each Sunday morning, as he stands at the pulpit, the Rev. Joseph G. Johnson says he confronts not just a congregation. He looks into the eyes of the more than 600 people in the pews and sees both a reminder of Liberia’s difficult, heartbreaking past as well as the wonder of the human capacity for forgiveness and his country’s potential for reconciliation.

The First Baptist Church in Monrovia’s Sinkor’s section is no ordinary church, even by Liberia’s standards. To be sure, the church reflects much of the heartache of Liberia’s current challenges. Nearly 60 percent of his church members are unemployed and there is an incessant stream of congregants’ requests for money, for food and for clothing.

Pastor Johnson

“When they come to church, it’s not just about hearing the message of God,” said Rev. Johnson, a slight man, who speaks quickly. “People want their needs to be met. They have no food, no money for medical bills. They are suffering sometimes with HIV and tuberculosis. They come expecting to hear form God, but in a holistic way. They want biblical answers, but they want miracles to happen.”

To the eyes of many here, the miracles are very much in evidence at First Baptist. The church is the spiritual home of a large number of the rebel soldiers whose carnage shocked the country and the world during the nearly 15 years of Liberia’s brutal civil war. And now, Rev. Johnson says, these one-time warriors now often sit in the same pews — even serve together in the very same church ministries – with some of the people they victimized before the war’s end in 2003.

Somehow, the church has helped victim and perpetrator come together in an understanding that the act of forgiveness – seeking it and granting it – is the most crucial ingredient in the healthy recovery of their war-weary country and to the individual lives of Liberians.

“When both the victims and the perpetrators come together and see each other as brothers, then you see the foundation of a reconciliation of a people,” he said. “And this is something that is not easy to do. You’re not talking about forgiving someone who forgot to pay you three dollars. You’re talking about forgiving someone who, in some cases, shot your mother, your father or your loved ones. You’re talking about forgiving someone who created a loss that cannot be replaced.”

How did all this come to be? For one thing, the historic church, which first opened its doors in 1898, is located in an area of town where a large number of former rebels eventually settled. In fact, a periodic visitor to the church many years ago was Charles Taylor, one the country’s prominent warlords who led an uprising from the Ivory Coast into Liberia to overthrow the government (Mr. Taylor later became the country’s president). The ethnic violence in the country saw one tribal group turn on another, with horrific tales of killings, rapes, looting and destruction. In all, about 250,000 people were killed during Liberia’s civil war (Mr. Taylor later stepped down and is now on trial in The Hague on 11 charges of instigating murder, rape, mutilation, sexual slavery and conscription of child soldiers during the civil war).

After the war, Rev. Johnson said, he felt it was crucial to include every facet of the community in the life of First Baptist. And the church actively sought anyone who wanted to worship, although he added that many of the former rebels felt ashamed and were reluctant attend church. Nonetheless, Rev. Johnson said he was determined to preach a strong message of reconciliation and love. Guilt, anger and any inability to forgive, he said, has to be actively purged from members of his congregation, explaining that it is “a poison” that prevents people from reaching their full potential. The church aggressively took on sports activities, family dinners, concerts and other projects aimed as getting members to work together and see each other as family rather than having them dwell on the past.

“It is, to me, a most important part of the worship experience, to see people come together,” he said. “Here, we have seen the reconciliation of people. They can come to the same church, serve together on the deacon board and as trustees together. It sends the message that in life, when we focus properly, we can achieve anything.”

Sometimes, however, the results of his outreach are disappointing. There are ex-rebels who visit the church two or three times but stop attending, Rev. Johnson said. He explained that in many cases, the former combatants feel their war crimes were too heinous to enable them to feel comfortable in a church setting for long. Still, he and five or six other senior officials at First Baptist, head out in the early evenings into the community to find the former rebels, to meet with them and encourage them to attend the church, no matter their acts and memories of the past.

“We’re trying to create a situation where everyone will feel love, no matter what they have done,” Rev. Johnson said. “Everyone feels the pain of the past. And our church should not be a place where people get fingers pointed at them for what they did – or didn’t do. We want people to feel like they are one family. We want them to feel God here.”

By Jonathan P. Hicks

The General: A Painful, Aching Rise to the Top

Julia K. Bono

Monrovia, Liberia - Although she rose through the ranks to be a brigadier general in Liberia’s army, Julia K. Bono didn’t want to dwell on that accomplishment. She operates an orphanage and is now in a position of influence as an aide de camp to Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberia’s president. But even that level of influence didn’t seem to be what arrested her concentration.

Instead, she seemed most passionate, most achingly transparent when she discussed — over and over again – her gratitude to have survived the nearly 15 years of civil strife that rocked the very foundation of this country – and of her life.

“The war brought out the worst in people here,” she said. “I saw things I thought I would never see. I was forced to go places I had never been. And I ate things I never thought I would eat. And I did things to survive that I thought I would never do.”

Everyone here who survived the Liberian civil war, which ended in 2003, has a story of pain and of their box-seat view of unspeakable horror. But Ms. Bono’s is particularly striking. She joined the Army in her early 20s. She rose through the ranks, from sergeant, to captain, to major, to lieutenant colonel. In 1980, President William Tolbert was overthrown and killed by Sergeant Samuel Doe after widespread riots over food prices. It was a coup whose aftermath would ravage her very existence, as it did all Liberians.

By the late 1980s, the country’s economic collapse culminated in civil war when Charles Taylor’s militia, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, overran much of the countryside, entering Monrovia in 1990. Soon after, Mr. Doe was executed and the fighting intensified as the rebels splintered, battling each other, the Liberian army and West African peacekeepers.

“It became terrifying because you didn’t know who to trust. You didn’t know if the soldier next to you might actually kill you. It was complete chaos,” Ms. Bono said, explaining that tribal rivalry had infected the ranks of the country’s military, causing soldier to turn against soldier. “People lived like animals, doing whatever they felt they had to do to survive,” she said. “Young children carried guns and killed people, just for no reason. People started killing other people the way you would kill a rat or a lizard, just to be doing it.”

She recalled witnessing rebel fighters killing civilians by the dozens after looting their homes. She spoke of men who were forced to watch their wives and daughters being raped by rebel fighters. She described the scene of army officers and others captured in their homes by rebels who gorged their bodies and placed their intestines upon the front door of their homes. At one point, she said she was held by rebel warriors distrustful of any army officer. They taunted her by firing shots around her head. “They were rough with me,” she said. “But they didn’t kill me. No bullet ever touched me.”

While she escaped death on that occasion, she said, matters had become increasingly dangerous. Any neighbor, friend or even a fellow member of the army fearing their own death, might alert the rebel bandits of her whereabouts. As a senior military officer she was, after all, prized plunder. Upon hearing that her life was in danger, she fled to Liberia’s countryside with her three children. “I saw my own officers being killed,” she said. “I had to escape to survive.”

Within a few short years, her 16-year-old son, the eldest, was killed in the war, her husband had deserted her and her life was in shambles. But while away from Monrovia, she visited Buchannan, the city where her late mother had lived and had, before her death, taken in a dozen or more children left by impoverished parents or orphaned by the war. She decided to continue her mother’s mission and manage the orphanage.

Roughly 250,000 Liberians were killed in the country’s civil war and many thousands more fled the fighting. The conflict left the country in economic ruin. As peace and calm started to settle into the country founded in the 1820s by freed black Americans, Ms. Bono eventually made her way back to the capital and, as she put it, liberation from hell. In 2003, she became a brigadier general, a first for a woman. She retired from that post in 2006 and became an aide to Ms. Johnson-Sirleaf.

Today, she manages many of the arrangements and preparations for events for the president. At the same time she has expanded the orphanage that she named after her mother, traveling on weekends to Buchannan, about 90 miles from here.

Today, the Catherine Memorial Orphanage takes care of some 50 children with assistance from Christian Aid Ministries. She says she is blessed to have her life and a superb job, in a country where unemployment is staggering. “Working with the president is exciting because she is someone who really enjoys her job.

Still, she lives a quiet life, she says. She takes care of her 19-year-old son, her three-year-old grandson who is the son of her 23-year-old daughter, who lives in Canada. She goes to the Pentecostal church in the Sinkor section of Monrovia. She prays and she aches unceasingly for her dead son, she added. More than anything, she says, she thanks God throughout the day and night just to be alive.

“The sad truth,” she said, relaxing on the couch after a meal of palm butter and rice, a Liberian staple, “is that I don’t even know what this war was really all about. I don’t know if it was a political war, an ethnic war or whatever. I just know that nothing good was accomplished. I just thank God every single day for bringing me through it.”

By Jonathan P. Hicks