One Million Books for Liberia

By Michael La Mont
Contributing Writer

Civil war tore Liberia apart at the seams for the better part of the past two decades. Between 1989 and 1996, the period of the most intense fighting, 200,000 people—including 50,000 children—were killed.

Deprived of family, healthcare, and education, children suffered the most during the conflict. According to a 2004 Amnesty International report, 21,000 children—both boys and girls—served as soldiers on all sides of the war. Boys were armed with AK 47 assault rifles. Girls were abducted, sexually assaulted, and ultimately forced into “marriage” with their abductors. Many of the former child soldiers are still struggling with reintegration into society seven years after major fighting ended.

In 2010, after five years of relative peace, the country is beginning to pull itself back together, one piece at a time.

Now a nonprofit organization called the Liberian Center for Growth and Development, which is based in the Liberian capital Monrovia and has an office in Fargo, is trying to speed up the mending process through an ambitious book drive. They call it “One Million Books for Liberia.”

The drive is a concerted effort, with organizers holding drives in North Dakota, Oklahoma, Florida, Maryland and Pennsylvania.

The magic number for Fargo-Moorhead is 55,000. The organization is seeking books of all kinds, from children’s books to college textbooks.

The books will be distributed to schools around Liberia, yet the organization’s ultimate goal for the book drive is to establish the first public library in the history of the Republic of Liberia.

Naboth B. Zondo, who co-founded of the Liberian Center for Growth and Development with his wife, Victoria, is leading the book drive effort with the help of Peter D. Belleh from the organization’s office in South Fargo. The group’s motto is “In the absence of unity there can be no progress.”

Zondo was born in Liberia and is the son of Baptist missionaries. A family in the U.S. adopted him when he was 15 years old. Although he lives in Fargo with his wife and four children and has lived all over the U.S. due to six years of service in the Air Force, he still calls Liberia his home.

Belleh, also a native Liberian, was educated at the London’s University College, Department of Geological Sciences. Now retired, he worked as an assistant hydro-geologist for the Environmental Agency in York, England. He specialized in flood defense and alleviation.

Both men believe education is the only path to true liberation for the country whose name means “the country of the free.” True liberation for them means the elimination of ignorance and illiteracy and the unity of the people of Liberia, through progress in the areas of education, agriculture and healthcare.
Zondo sees this book drive as a fight for global justice and human rights for the people in Liberia, where only 57 percent of the population is literate.

“It’s a fight for human rights because ignorance and illiteracy are a toxic mix that can cause disaster anywhere,” he said.

Zondo doesn’t want the book drive to be seen as “just an African book drive.” He wants people to approach the effort from a broader perspective.

“We are often reluctant because the word ‘Africa’ sounds too remote in the Amercan mind-set,” Zondo said. “It is pivotal that the project not just be considered an ‘African book drive,’ because we live in a global community of people who pay for the irresponsibility of others somewhere across the globe.”

Belleh sees the book drive as a way to reintegrate child soldiers into Liberian society and to end the cycle of civil wars in his home country.

“The driving force behind the book drive came out of the need to—instead of giving a child an AK-47—give them a book to read that will connect them with the world in general and dissuade them from looking for the next warlord to follow,” he said.

The Liberian Center for Growth and Development has been working closely with another nonprofit organization called the Liberian Development Foundation, which has an office in College Park, Md. The Liberian Development Foundation has enjoyed considerable success with it’s own “Books to Liberia” and “Computers to Liberia” programs. They have shipped 2,000 personal computers to Liberia to date, including the donation of 110 PCs to the University of Liberia, which led to the creation to the university’s first computer lab. They have plans to create a site called The Resource Center, which would essentially be the country’s first public library since the establishment of the republic in 1847.
According to its website, the group sent a 20-foot container filled with computers, microscopes, school uniforms, and almost 10,000 books on March 19 through the Firestone Natural Rubber Company’s “Donation Cargo” program.

Zondo said his group is considering shipping the books they collect via the same program, which offers free shipping of containers to successful applicants on one of their cargo ships. However, he said that due to considerable systemic bureaucratic delays related to the process of free shipment, they are considering other shipping options.

The Largest Employer in Liberia

The Firestone Natural Rubber Company has a long and complicated history in Liberia. Beginning operations in 1926, the company’s rubber tree plantation in Liberia is now the largest in the world.

According to an article on The Huffington Post written by Fred Redmond, Vice President for Human Affairs of the United Steelworkers Union, workers on the plantation were treated as little more than slaves.

Citing an extensive report written by a non-profit group in Liberia called The Save My Future Foundation, he said workers earned $3.38 a day if they tapped 750 trees. According to the report, entitled “Firestone: The Mark of Modern Slavery,” each worker must gather and carry 150 pounds of latex using 75-pound buckets attached to the ends of a pole to weigh stations miles away. Any worker who gathers less than the 150-pound quota suffers a 50 percent wage reduction.

Redmond said that because the task is a near physical impossibility for one person in a day’s time, the hired workers recruit their families—including children—to work for 12 hours a day in order to get the full daily wage.

“That is how Firestone says with a straight face that it does not ‘employ’ children and that the ‘hiring’ of children violates company policy,” said Richmond.
After three strikes organized with the help of the United Steelworkers and the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, and orders given to Firestone by the Liberian Supreme Court, the workers elected new and “uncompromised” union officers that secured: contracts that give them a 24 percent wage increase; a 20 percent decrease in the daily tree quota for tapping; the use of mechanized transportation for conveying latex to weigh stations rather than the 150 pound yolks that once hung around their heads.

These changes, while seemingly significant, still fail to address the living conditions of workers and their families, where employees live in lean to huts without plumbing or electricity and have to drink from a communal pump or toxic and polluted creeks and rivers. 81 years of toxic waste dumping into Liberia’s water supply by Firestone has made drinking, bathing, and fishing a health problem for Liberian nationals.

Although Firestone has tried to boost its public image by opening 23 schools for exploited children, many are ineligible for the program through a loophole in Firestone’s own policies. According to the International Labor Rights Forum, “only people born on the plantation grounds are eligible [to attend these schools]. To prove eligibility, one must produce a birth certificate that can only be produced with exorbitant fees also charged by the plantation.”

Things Are Looking Up

Back home, Minnesota is home to the third largest Liberian population in the U.S., with over 25,000 Liberians living in the state.

According to the most recent update of the Fargo Housing Study, 28 Liberians lived in Fargo as of 2003. However, this figure is based on estimates made by Lutheran Social Services, whose data only include those people who migrated to Fargo from international locations. The number does not include “secondary” migrants who came here from other places within the U.S. Zondo puts the number of Liberians currently in Fargo as closer to 200 people.

Things are looking up for Liberia. The political situation has remained stable since the 2005 elections, when Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf became the first democratically elected female president of an African nation. She earned a Masters in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and has worked for the World Bank and the U.N. She is a strong testament to the power of education in a country where only 41.6 percent of females can read and write.

Although the book drive is just starting it is gathering momentum. Just last week, Fargo’s The Eagle 106.9 FM and AM 1100 The Flag began airing a public service announcement for the book drive.

More information about the book drive and monetary donations can be found on the Liberian Center for Growth and Development Web site: http://www.liberiancenter.org/. A Web site specifically for the book drive is now in development, and the group has 2,398 fans on Facebook.

Zondo firmly believes that the peace Liberia now enjoys is just the first real step in the country’s liberation from its troubled past, and that this time the country will not fail to unite itself as long as it achieves substantive growth in education, healthcare and food production—none of which will be possible without something taken for granted by people in Fargo and Moorhead every day: books.

“You’re either going to stand up or sit down,” said Zondo. “Hopefully such a project can help liberate the minds of our people.”

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