January 14, 2010
By Lynette Wilson

Bahnavileh Jones, 26, returned to Liberia from Ghana in 2002, toward the end of the war-torn country's 15-year civil war, making his way to the Episcopal-affiliated Cuttington University in Suakoko, Bong County, where he volunteered on the farm.

Eventually, the university awarded Jones a scholarship, and in May 2008 he graduated with a bachelor's degree in rural development and agriculture; he now works for the university's agricultural extension program.

It is Jones's dream, he said, to continue higher learning.

Cuttington University and the primary and secondary schools affiliated with the Episcopal Church of Liberia have a longstanding reputation for educating the country's professionals: doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, politicians, agriculturalists. Unfortunately the country's civil war forced school closures – the fighting destroyed or damaged 100 percent of the properties – the curriculum stagnated, and school supplies and qualified teachers are in short supply.

The Liberian church, with the help of Episcopalians at home and abroad, has begun to rebuild. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori recently spent a week visiting the Episcopal Church of Liberia – witnessing and learning about its mission. The visit marked the first time Jefferts Schori had been the official guest of an African church.

(Jefferts Schori preached and celebrated solemn high mass for more than 1,500 people on the second Sunday after Christmas, Jan. 3, at the cathedral in central Monrovia.)

Throughout the 1980s and 90s, Liberia, a West African nation of nearly 3.5 million, was crushed by civil war, with more than 250,000 people killed and more than 1 million displaced. The war rolled through rural Liberia, destroying everything in its wake and forcing inhabitants into the capital, Monrovia, where the fighting eventually followed. Early in the war, Liberians with means fled for the United States, Europe and neighboring West African nations.

Liberia's devastation and destruction parallel New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Jefferts Schori said. Katrina, a category 5 hurricane, hit the Gulf Coast in August 2005, devastating New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

"The bald confrontation with violence and its aftermath is strikingly similar: the level of poverty, the lack of recognition by the rest of the world, or the rest of the U.S. in terms of New Orleans; the desperate need for immediate investment and the resistance of many in other parts of the nation or the world to come in and invest; the need for security … I think that's come for a large part in New Orleans, and it's coming here," Jefferts Schori said.

She is the first presiding bishop to visit the Diocese of Liberia since the 1970s and the first to visit expressly to witness the work of the diocese, said Liberia Bishop Jonathan B.B. Hart.

"Bishop Katharine's coming to Liberia gave an eye opening into our continued relationship with the Episcopal Church and how that relationship can develop into a true partnership," Hart said. "After a period of war and destruction, people want to see restoration and a return to normalcy. When leaders come – when a church leader comes – it gives the people of Liberia a sense that they are not forgotten, they are not throwaways."

Founded by the U.S.-based Episcopal Church in 1836, the Episcopal Church of Liberia was a diocese in the Episcopal Church until 1980, when it became part of the Anglican Province of West Africa. As part of that change of affiliation, the Episcopal Church and the Liberia diocese established a covenant partnership, which pledges each entity to mutual ministry and interdependence and calls for financial subsidies with an eventual goal of self-sufficiency and sustainability for the Liberian Church. The most recent version of the covenant was adopted by the Episcopal Church's Executive Council in April.

The Diocese of Liberia serves 120,000 members in between 100 and 200 congregations – including rural preaching stations reachable only on foot. It employs 62 priests, five of them women, and operates 32 schools, serving 6,000 Christian and Muslim students. "We send our teachers to teach children of all religious backgrounds," Hart said.

Accompanied by Antoinette "Toni" Daniels, the Episcopal Church's co-director for mission, and the Rev. Emmanuel K. Sserwadda, Episcopal Church program officer for Africa, Jefferts Schori visited schools, including the Bromley Episcopal Mission School, and congregations; met with clergy and vestry members, U.S. Embassy and USAID officials; and toured rural areas visiting churches and missions. She had lunch with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf – Africa's first elected female president – and met with other Liberian government officials and politicians, many of them Episcopalians, including Gyude Bryant, a member of Trinity Cathedral, who headed the transitional government following the signing of the 2003 peace agreement.

Both Johnson Sirleaf and Jefferts Schori took their respective leadership posts in 2006.

"Your work in the church and my work in the government move along parallel tracks, all with the intent of responding to the needs of humankind, promoting freedoms and rights, and more importantly trying to get people to the point where their welfare is improved," Johnson Sirleaf said during a press conference preceding the lunch. "We have a big challenge in our country. I am sure you have been briefed on the difficult years. But we also are thankful to God that we've had the opportunity in the past six years … to start the process of national renewal.

"With all the challenges after the years of destruction and moral decay, our people have been resilient in their determination to have a normal life and to get our country back on the track where they can have a full life and be assured of peace and stability that will foster the development effort in which we are engaged."

Post-war, the country's infrastructure remains in ruin: impassible roads; makeshift bridges; no universal source of electricity; burned out, decaying buildings. Indoor plumbing is uncommon, and drinking water comes mostly from community wells. During wartimes, mostly an entire generation of Liberians went uneducated. Eighty percent of the population is unemployed; 60 percent of Liberians live on less than $2 a day. Corruption permeates all levels of society.

Access to education and health care, the continued empowerment of women, security and predictability, institutional transparency and partnerships were common themes discussed throughout the presiding bishop's visit.

In her Jan. 6 Epiphany sermon at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Monrovia, a service attended by Johnson Sirleaf, Jefferts Schori said that Liberia's opportunity to shine the light is there, but that it will take cooperation, shared ministry and the cooperation of all Liberians, those at home and those living abroad.

Many Liberian expatriates – many of them Episcopalians with ties to U.S. congregations – have returned to Liberia permanently or for extended stays to rebuild the country and the church.

"Episcopalians are coming out of the woodwork," said Juanita Neal, chair of the diocese's board of trustees.

Dr. Keith Chapman, one of five dentists practicing in Liberia, runs a clinic outside Monrovia with the help of St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church in Nashville, Tennessee. A basic dental procedure costs patients $3, which pays for about one-third of the actual cost, he said.

On 100 acres of land donated by the Diocese of Liberia and with the financial backing and support of the Rafiki Foundation, David and Babs Veneman of California have established a village for orphans.

The nondenominational Rafiki model is used in 10 African countries. Newborns through 18-year-olds live there – with housing, healthcare, education included – until they are college-age, at which time the foundation continues to support their education or vocational training, David Veneman said.

"We are here for the good of the children … we want to fill the place of the parent," he said. "We are here to educate Christian men and women to become leaders in their own country."

The village has 21 orphans and room for up to 85. Liberia's health and social welfare agency and pastors in the church community make referrals, Veneman said.

On a visit to Irving Memorial Church in Robertsport, the presiding bishop was met by a group of committed, enthusiastic people who came together to rebuild St. John's School and the House of Bethany dormitory.

Adeodu Bowen Jones, a history professor at Chicago State University, and her cousin Emily David Russ of Atlanta, are working through the Episcopal Elementary and High School Alumni Association to rebuild the school. Before the presiding bishop's visit, the alumni had spent half a day walking the grounds surveying the damage, Russ said.

"It's very emotional … all the schools were ruined by the war," she said, adding that she was born in Robertsport.

Russ's grandfather was a lay leader in the church, and her grandmother was the only registered nurse in Cape Mount County, she said.

Both Jones and Russ said that students who graduated from Liberia's Episcopal Schools went on to ace college entrance exams and out-perform other students.

Jefferts Schori later said that she was surprised by the bittersweet nature of the gathering. The building's roofs and windows were gone and plants were growing through cracks in the concrete. Still, "the graduates that were there will us were filled with joy."

Julia Duncan moved back to lower Buchanan County after living many years in California. She has worked to establish links between California parishes, including St. George's Episcopal Church in Antioch, and is working on establishing a partnership with the Episcopal Church of St. Matthew in San Mateo. She is a member of St. John's in Buchanan County.

Such ties are crucial to Liberia's redevelopment, Duncan said.

"Partnerships help a lot, especially with the peace that the country is experiencing now," she added. "Partners can lobby for aid [for Liberia] where they live."

Stephen Kaifa, a Liberian and an economics professor at County College of Morris in New Jersey, works with Cuttington University as its academic adviser. Kaifa left Liberia in 1975, when he was 24, to study in the United States. When Kaifa began assisting the university in 2007, the curriculum hadn't been updated in 20 years, he said.

Kaifa has helped the university to update its curriculum and revamp it admissions guidelines and course catalogue. He has been instrumental in recruiting qualified faculty. He currently is recruiting faculty in all disciplines, including agriculture, public administration and business, he said.

Cuttington University, a three- to four-hour drive from Monrovia (in Liberia, distances are measured in hours and depend mostly on road conditions), closed its Bong County campus in 1997. It tried sporadically to reopen over the years and reopened in 2004, when U.N. peacekeeping forces arrived. At the time, internally displaced people had taken over the damaged campus, said Henrique Topka, the university's president.

"The Episcopal Church gave money for the roof and to start an agriculture program," he said.

The presiding bishop received an honorary doctorate from Cuttington University on Jan. 4.

Cuttington operates a rice farm on four hectares that yields about 230 50-kilogram bags of rice three times a year (a 50-kilogram bag of rice sells for about $35) and a rubber plantation. Cooper Siakor, a farm supervisor, is on his way to the Asian Rural Institute to study rural leadership.

Pamela White, mission director for USAID in Liberia, values partnerships with religious organizations, she said, citing the organization's relationship with Cuttington.

"The religious community has its ear to the ground more so than the U.S. government can," she said in an interview following a visit with Hart, Jefferts Schori and U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield at the U.S. Embassy. "At Cuttington, they are serious about what they do, and they have their tentacles out across the country."

USAID plans to invest $200 million in Liberia in 2010, White said, adding that Liberia's long-term sustainability will depend on private investment and a healthy economy.

From 1983 through 2007, the Liberian church received close to $6.6 million from the Episcopal Church. In recent years, in accordance with the covenant, the church's contribution to the diocese has decreased. The diocese's $700,000 annual budget depends largely on rent collected from diocese-owned commercial properties.

Maxwell Jones, another Episcopalian and Liberian who has returned home, came back in 2006 to work in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He now works in the private sector.

"My skills are needed here more so than in the U.S.," he said.

Jones knows many other Liberians who are weighing the option of returning home; much of their decision rests on the country's continued peace and political stability.

Liberia's next presidential election is scheduled for 2011. Johnson Sirleaf, who is 71, has announced she intends to run again.

Gyude Bryant, a member of Trinity Cathedral in Monrovia, hosted a Jan. 8 lunch for Jefferts Schori, Hart and others at his Mamba Point home, not far from the U.S. Embassy in an area populated by nongovernmental organizations.

Asked about the importance of fairness and transparency in the upcoming election, Bryant, the interim head of government from 2003-2005, said, "It means everything. We've had crisis in the past when fair process has been denied. If the election isn't fair, we are going back."

Episcopal News Service
Lynette Wilson is a reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service.