Liberia In Reverse - Literally and Literarily

Well -- of course, except for the rather fleeting benefit of alliteration in the title of this piece, it is almost unreasonable to get bewildered about Liberia's slackness in matters of literature when we have not yet mastered the rudimentary of simply speaking and writing in English -- our professed official language for one hundred sixty years. So, I'll get to the literary part a bit later; what's more pressing is the fact that we do comparatively poorly among English-speaking West African nations in ordinary speech and writing.

The proof is all around us. Here are some examples. I was driving behind a minibus on the road to Red Light when I noticed a brightly painted, multicolor inscription on the bus which said, “The Lord Is My Shaper.” It was shaping up to be an amusing piece; unless (and consistent with the proclamation) the owner or driver of the bus was in great shape. I wanted to make sure of that.

I was lucky. Bus drivers don't normally dismount as often as cabdrivers do. But this one did because there was some dispute with a passenger over fare. So I got a good look at him. Whoever shaped him -- God or a good fitness trainer -- did a good job.

A few months later, I saw a “Lub Job” sign at an Aminata service station in Sinkor. Because I don't have my own car, I don't pay much attention to what “job” might be done on a car in a Liberian service station. But this job was strange enough even without worrying about how a car might benefit from it. I soon surmised that “Lub” needed an e at the end, to make sense. In fact a few days later I was sure of that because a Total service station had a sign that said “Lube Job.” So we got the right message by deduction.

Some students of the University of Liberia in 2007 had a dispute with the school authorities that almost came to blows, and that's because the students issued a statement in which they claimed they were “stickholders.” The school's administration took their word for it and, knowing what was at stake, called in the police.

An LBS (a government-owned broadcast network) newscaster recently said that U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Borack Obama had won the state of “New Hemisphere,” if I heard correctly. That's in another sphere; we normally don't get it right, right here at home even when the name is Grebo or Kru. For a name that's strange from simply being tribal, Liberian announcers often come to a complete stop and sometimes remain silent long enough for the listener to lose the context in which the fumbled name was being mentioned.

In late 2007 I heard a Liberian professor of English on the radio lamenting some bad usage by Liberians. But I soon determined that he was part of the problem because among his gripes was the word cahoots . He didn't think the word existed, never mind that it was almost in vogue, at least based on his complaint. Still the professor was sure there was no such word. So he suggested that perhaps people meant cohort when they used cahoots . Now that's stretching it!

Here's my problem with the professor. Why didn't he make the otherwise reasonable assumption that somebody else knew a word that he didn't know. And, by the way, there is something called a dictionary. An alert professor would have used one.

This professor wouldn't have been alone in encountering new words. For me, it happens every day. Some days I go looking for new words, instead of waiting for them to surprise me in reading.

That's the literal part of what's wrong with our use of the English language. Now here's the literary part of this discussion. If Mr. Wilton Sankawulo is a good writer, he's probably good in the rough. In fact, almost all writers are seen in the rough by their editors before they are polished and published. Wole Soyinka doesn't come to us straight from his kitchen table or basement office. His manuscript goes to the publisher.

The publishing house applies style rules regarding how the material is going to be presented. For instance, is it going to be British spelling and punctuation or American? If the work is nonfiction, there are people who check assertions to dispute or certify them as facts.

But in Liberia , we get Wilton Sankawulo uncut -- straight from his study to our classrooms as teaching materials. Whatever is wrong with Sankawulo's writings -- and there is a lot -- is compounded by lack of independent editorial judgment in shaping his work toward some useful academic end.

Here is a way of looking at a similar situation in a business setting. If a company's accounts are not audited, shareholders will not accept its claims of profitability. Independent auditors follow certain rules. Those rules in turn conform to certain recordkeeping methods.

If the records are not kept according to accepted practice, then auditors will not be able to say conclusively whether the company is run properly. And with that, the question of the company's solvency will remain unsettled. The shareholders' interest is always at stake.

In literature, the effect of literary work on the whole population is incalculable. But my fear is that Sankawulo's material may be laughable, especially among the WAEC examiners who have to comb through it to draw up questions for the students. From my reading of a couple of his short stories, there is an organic defect running through his writings. Of course only Liberians read Sankawulo as a required academic exercise. The rest of West Africa -- thankfully -- doesn't have to.