ANOTHER SIDE OF THE LAC STORY:
A rebuttal to Mr. Rufus Berry's "Good, Good, Good LAC " assertion
By Ms. Frances Potter, B.Sc and Mr. Lawrence Zumo, MD
"Without vision, the people will perish and without courage and inspiration, dreams will die….." - Rosa Parks, 1988. "Yon chen sensii, yon ni chen zlu-eh. (Bassa Proverb) (You learn inorder to be wise, …not to become a dummy)".
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We know in Liberia that we have been caught between the devil and the deep blue sea for a very long time. We, as the real children of the dedicated LAC laborers who sacrificed so much by working long hours and years at LAC (Liberia Agricultural Company, Grand Bassa County) for some of us to the get elementary school education at the Catholic Church run-LAC schools, will not and shall not, remain silent. Hence we will inject our voices at this juncture on a few salient issues.
Whatever the motives of Mr. Berry in writing his floral piece about LAC and "its fantastic good to the people of Bassa and the Republic of Liberia" will not be addressed here. That will be left between the man, his brain power, and his Maker. Neither will we attempt to assess the biochemical, agronomic, ecological, psychosocial nor geophysical impact that LAC has had on that area of Liberia. That will be the subject of a more rigorous scientific exercise which will be published elsewhere. Any discussions of the financial agreements (if any) between the LAC Catholic nuns who taught us and the company which provided the buildings and books will be left out as well.
It is worthy to note ,though, that the legality of the 1959 LAC contract signed by President William V.S. Tubman and the manner in which this was executed is now increasingly being looked by other interested parties.
To ensure that we are all at the same intellectual wavelength, we will give few firsthand accounts/examples to highlight some of the issues that the public should know about the LAC experience.
Despite the terrible human toll and the long term psychological morbidity associated with indentured servitude and slave labor, some of our compatriots will easily say that there is nothing wrong with that; under the pretext that at least these laborers were provided free lodging and at least one square meal a day. Unfortunately, we do not subscribe to that kind of narrow logic and rationalization.
Unfortunately, we do not subscribe to that kind of narrow logic and rationalization. Nobody is challenging the fact that "Liberia needs well-paying jobs in the private sector to enable its reconstruction and the healing process…." We advocate any day for the creation of jobs for Liberians wherever they are. We do need jobs, and all the incentives that should come along with them, including schools, roads, bridges, hospitals etc. However, if the job market has been in someone’s backyard for more than 40 years and he could not benefit directly from these incentives, he will think twice before giving his own backyard for the master’s next garden.
We would like to ask Mr. Berry if he read or has any knowledge of the contract that created LAC, or has he ever visited the plantation to view the conditions he is advocating so lavishly, or did he just receive his fat check from the LAC management and then ran to the nearest computer to write a beautiful article? If he did not, we would like to suggest to read it. If you do, we would suggest that you reread it-paying keen attention to article II which states, "…the corporation agrees to make an examination of the aforesaid areas (land lying between St. John river and the Cestos river south of compound no. 3, Grand Bassa county and including approximately 300,000 acres; and a section of the land situated along the Tappita-Webbo road and including 300,000 acres. The corporation agrees to make an examination of the aforesaid areas to determine the lands therein which may be suitable for the development of such examination, it shall file with the government, with eighteen months from the effective date of this agreement (March 3, AD 1959) more surveys setting forth the geographical boundaries of said areas as they are determined to be situation for exploitation. The ‘concession areas" of LAC shall mean only the area comprised within the surveys…).
We are indeed grateful to have received a good Catholic education in LAC. We must point out, however, that our parents worked diligently ,and many times slavishly, to make this happen for us. Once your parent was fired from LAC, that day was the end of education at any of the Catholic schools in LAC.
One of the authors (F.P.) traveled extensively on the plantation both as a child and for research purposes in 1980’s. During the war years, she spent between 1995 and 1997 working in the Bassa counties (Grand Bassa, River Cess, Margibi ) as a relief worker. She worked for LAC up to June 2000, when she left for the United States. We do not contend to know everything, but we want you to know that the Bassa people know what they are talking about when they resist any more expansion by LAC for rubber plantation. As an agriculturist by profession, she wants you to know that rubber trees and cereal and other shallow root crops which people depend on for food and other forms do not grow interchangeably. Also as a social being, you ought to know that every man wants somewhere to call his "home" be it a niche, a hut, a village or city.
If you ever visited Yekepa, that beautiful oasis of a city in Nimba County, there was a tiny village called "old Yekepa" where the natives reserved as their own. That village had a few huts, but it was a reminder, in the midst of the beautiful European style city that that was the homeland of the Mano and Gio people.A popular Bassa adage states thus: " a man who has seen the corpse of a boa constrictor does not make his farm in a thicket". The Bassa people have lived around the LAC plantation for almost forty years. Zlor River never got a bridge from LAC. The management always maintained that it was not part of the concession area. Wayzohn or compound # 3 never got a high school nor any token assistance from LAC in the form of support for a neighbor. The road from Buchanan has always been maintained by LAC as a matter of business interest. What’s about the road leading from the LAC junction to Barsee Giah’s town and beyond, Gen-tro, a double hill about three miles from the district head quarters which was a headache during the rainy season every year as far as we can remember. Frances Potter’s mother ,as well hundreds of other women, died due to complications of childbirth along that roadside- just a stone throw from LAC because there was no clinic at the district headquarter. (Besides, the government clinic which had virtually no supplies). We could enumerated hundreds of cases where we were left out but we will leave it at that, hoping you get the point.
The LAC sytem is a system that had severe limitations for the many people at the bottom of the pile( ie. more than 95% of us). Basically, there were no further direct means for education beyond the 6th grade. It was an open secret that you would be offered a job as a tapper immediately upon graduation from the sixth grade. That basically was the end of your road unless you were very stubborn, very lucky to get to Buchanan or Monrovia to hustle further education or were smart enough to get a Catholic scholarship by examination at St. Peter Claver’s in Buchanan, Carroll High in Nimba or St. Patrick’s High in Monrovia. Many of our classmate never made it out of LAC because of obvious economic and financial reasons. For example, from the 1974 graduating elementary school class of 28-30 persons, only two of us obtained any education beyond the 6th grade.
The better housing and other facilities----when we grew up in Gorzohn, ten to twenty families, a total of 100 persons @ an average of five persons per family shared one communal bath, 3-5 toilet pits and of course one old man cleaned the building twice a day.One of the authors (LAZ) grew up in one of the "better housing" –2 bedrooms with his father, stepmother and ten siblings. FP’s were twelve in theirs, and former Liberian Defense Minister Daniel Chea’s family may have been six or eight in theirs. There was a creek that ran the length of the camp with about six depots for fetching drinking, washing and bath water. Of course, ring worm, diarrhea, dysentery and other water borne diseases were the norm. There was the "Apollo", a truck converted to school bus to transport students to school and church from the far away camps. If you lived 5 miles away, you had to walk, no matter your age—students from operator’s camp and Zeah’s camps—about 5 miles away had to walk. The better cars were instructed never to pick up anybody, including children. A driver was fired for giving his children ride to school. In 1978, the Apollo had an accident and more than 3 persons died, two of them were children from the same family—the Toublons, now living in poverty in Buchanan after the man had worked for the plantation for more than 15 years.
The hospital—one hospital to serve the whole plantation! If you lived in division 4 or some of the camps far from the hospital, and the "wound"dresser who served the camp left for the day, you were on your own. You don’t know what it means to suffer discrimination from "comers" in your own home- supposed land of liberty. Ask us, we can tell you more. Dr. Zumo’s father was not allowed to give his children water from the pump inside the facility he was working in. They had to go through the back door. France Potter got suspended from school for two days because she asked the teacher why they gave the black people water from the pump outside in the sun while they took the white people to a different place in the bungalows.Talking about better facilities, all the camps had no light, of course. We got one light bulb once or twice a month when they provided the"Captain Sinbad" movies. With all due respect, we are pretty sure, Sir, you do not know what it means for a man to be shackled in front of his wife and children. We do. Talking about LAC schools reaching to high school level. We are glad to know that our sweat has paid off. Peace be unto the soul of Kowee Saywrayne (uncle of F.P.) who led the brave struggle in the 1980’s for LAC schools to be elevated to at least the junior high school level. F.P. was the secretary then of the LAC Youth Association when we led a delegation to petition President William R. Tolbert in 1978 on this case.
Mr. Berry maybe you do not know the humiliation of not being able to attend the good school next door because your father does not work for the plantation and you have to live with a friend or relative and assume his surname and tag number,-and of course all the other child abuse you may undergo when you are "staying with your uncle". Please query fellow Liberians, eg. Daniel Chea, Jacob Myers , Isaac Davis. And Mr. Berry, what’s about having your dad being the tapper for 10-15 years, toting two heavy, back breaking latex buckets from 4:30 am to 3:30 pm and bringing home ½ bags of rice, 1 gallon of palm oil, 2-5 cups of mackerel and $25/mo. If you don’t know how your father smells after those hours of tapping 500 trees, reaping latex, cooked rubber just for you to attend one of the free schools, ask the Tambas, the Flomos and of course, check out the tappers’s camp.
Our parents could not strike for better wages, benefits or work conditions even if they wanted to. An attempted strike by our parents in mid 1970’s was brutually suppressed by Liberian government soldiers right before our eyes. All we did as children was to cry for our parents. I am sure that never made the national news.
In all fairness, we agree that basic medical and surgical care was "free" for all LAC laborers, employees and their dependents. However, informed consent was not obtained for clinical trials of new medications, medical devices/procedures nor for extraction of live biological/surgical specimens for experimental purposes.
Our central government claimed they could not provide the school or similar services that LAC was providing us, despite the near annual head tax, hut tax, presidential and government officials’ birthday and bereavement "taxes", etc that our parents were additionally subjected to.
Uniforms and everything else were the tasks of our parents.We know that our parents were perpetually indebted to Mr. Nadine, the local Lebanese merchant from whom these items were purchased.
Wages, were not living wages in our opinion. One of the author’s father(LAZ) earned around $1.80 per day working as a chief cook at the LAC Main MessHall. Whilst his white supervisior, whose job was only to taste the food, was paid presumably nearly twenty times that amount hourly (commensurate with U.S. Labor Regulations and Stipulations) in addition to "inconvenience stipend" that she also received routinely. (Inconvenience, we guess, for being in Africa).
After deductions for additional bags of rice, palm oil, meats, etc take home pay for some workers were as low as a net of 2 cents per pay cycle. Those workers with large families, for mere survival, had to maintain staple food-farms at patches far beyond the perimeters of LAC.
One of the authors (F.P.) today still point out nostalgically and precisely to where her birth village is near Gorzohn camp, LAC which has now been overtaken by rubber trees and "covergrass".
Whilst there were benefits working at LAC, if you do the math correctly, we believe that our parents contributed more and worked harder than the compensation and benefits they ever received as LAC workers/laborers. Thus it is necessary to put these tangible and intangible factors in true economic and logical perspectives when commenting on the LAC situation.
It would be helpful to know the profit and operating expenses of the LAC company but we are not privy to such information, only the responsible ministries can make that public information public if they choose to. We can only surmise that as a business entity if they were operating at a loss, they would have left long, long time ago.
We are of the opinion that no amount of undying love for black people nor commitment would have kept them in Liberia this long.
There were no sustainable pension plans, disability insurance, workman’s compensation, janitor/life insurances, nor severence benefits that we are aware of. LAZ’ s father left unceremoniously in 1979 with nothing in hand.
A father of one of us (F.P.) worked for the plantation from the stage of planting the bamboo stilts to mark the places to plant the rubber trees to pumping gas and eventually being promoted to "store boy" at the Cold Storage Commissary all between the years 1960-1978. When he got hit in the chest by a huge watermelon by a customer who had gone to buy his goods and her father was packing them in the booth of his car, lifted his head just in time to get the hit. At the time she was in high school (in Buchanan). When we appealed to Mr. Vavoso, then the general manager, for some compensation to send him to hospital in Buchanan or Monrovia because he was coughing blood, we were told that there was no compensation in the contract with the "laborers" for injury on the job. All he got was a monthly pension of less that $30 up to the time of the civil war. He had to pay for whatever treatment he needed from the package. When he died, his family collected $400 from the LAC management as the total compensation due him for 18 years of service.
His end, that is to say, came as it all started-poor and impoverished, despite his best efforts.
An advise to Mr. Berry would be to let the Bassa people fight their own battle. They have their own children who can now read and write and can understand some of the smooth languages of the politicians and corrupt judges. The Bassa people voted en masse for a government to protect their rights,-among them, the right to live on their own land, be their "own man’, making their farms and of course reaping the benefit of their land and labor. There is nothing political or treasonous about a man demanding to stay in his home. This is the 21st century, when many people lost their lives fighting for democracy to come to Liberia. Please leave the decisions with the right government agencies. And of course, we want our say, our home and a piece of the pie—a place to call a home for ourselves, our children and their children’s children.
Will the real children of the LAC laborers/workers stand up and be heard !!!!!!!
Hello, Mr. Berry? Where are you?. For your information, industrial development is the fundamental basis of true national development and a prerequisite for rationally benefiting from globalization (refer to eg. page 70, Manchurian mandate, National Geographic Magazine, September 2006).
If LAC is and has been so good for the people of Bassa and Liberia, why after all these years, LAC has never built a technical school nor a simple agrochemical institute or even a simple rubber processing complex where products (which we are still dying to import) like latex gloves, sneakers, rubber insoles, slippers, rubber bands, car and airplane tires, slippers, condoms, rubber water hoses, "o" rings, rain coats/boats, etc could be readily produced.
Using your logic, Mr. Berry, I am sure you can easily argue and accept that LAC does and did not have to bother with these aspects because these people of Bassa are not capable intellectually and thus would have been a painful waste of company resources. So why does LAC have to bother? Right? Are you still there, Mr. Berry??????
We can only hope that those who can read and write but do not understand what they read and write will not claim any superficial intellectual authority over those who cannot read and write.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Ms. Frances Potter is a 1969 graduate of St. Joseph’s Elementary School, L.A.C, Grand Bassa County, Liberia and holds a B.Sc. (Agriculture - 1980; Management & Economics - 1999) from the University of Liberia. She can be reached at francesfp@yahoo.com
Dr. Lawrence Zumo is a Board Certified Neurologist, is a 1974 graduate of St. Joseph’s Elementary School, L.A.C, Grand Bassa County, Liberia and holds a cum laude MD degree from University Medical School, Debrecen, Hungary, European Union. He can be reached at zumoamos@aol.com
