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Aaron C Sleh Correspondent
AS the Ebola crisis continues to wreak havoc, Aaron C. Sleh examines Liberia’s disposition and perpetual love for “Americanisation” and asks: Why is the dominant culture and psychology in Liberia so Afrophobic? Why is there so much self-loathing among many Liberians about their African identity and heritage, even in times of crisis? His conclusion is that it’s about time his countrymen stopped fantasising about being a “little America” in Africa, if the country is to move forward.

Since its “founding”, Liberia has tried so pathetically to copy America. Sadly, we are not even a good copy, merely a caricature of America. It is as if the Liberian copy of America was run on a defective machine.

Now this Liberia Project has run its course. The ongoing Ebola outbreak and our limp response to it have sounded the death knell. The epidemic has exposed not only the weaknesses in our health systems, but also gross failures of leadership, almost criminal dysfunctions in governance, the near absence of social capital and a virtual breakdown of the social consensus.

The project that began in 1822 as the Commonwealth of Liberia and became the Republic of Liberia in 1847 has gone as far as it can go in terms of delivering human development and advancement. Our identity is conflicted, our self-image is poor and so we hate ourselves. This is why some steal money meant to pay doctors and nurses, and fail to provide ambulances for hospitals and clinics, and leave a whole nation at the mercy of the world’s pity when Ebola is wreaking havoc among its citizens.

There is a need for Liberians to re-imagine a new nation, reconstitute a new state based on new institutions and practices — and maybe even take a new name.
The alternative is to remain stuck with what we now have: this caricature of a state still fantasising about being a “little America” in Africa. Who do we think we are fooling with all this self-delusion?

Why do I say so? To begin with, if America were a god and its way of life a religion, the Liberian nation would have made up its priesthood. Probably no other people worship America and things American as much as Liberians do.

Take our flag. Put it in the hands of flame-bearing jihadists, and an unsuspecting US patriot would probably risk his life to retrieve it, mistaking it for America’s flag. Not only is our flag red, white and blue like the American stars and stripes, but it is itself a “star and stripes”, with the same design as the American original.

The main difference is that where the Americans have several stars, we have a single one, which is why we call our flag the Lone Star and our country the Lone Star nation. But even this nickname is borrowed from America. The Lone Star State is the nickname of the US state of Texas.

Our constitution is another area in which Liberia has aped America. Not only was our 1847 constitution modelled on the American one, but the current 1986 one even opens with the same words that begin the American constitution: “We the people…” Our Pledge of Allegiance is virtually a carbon copy of the American version.

We simply pasted in “Liberia” where the Americans have “United States of America” and removed “under God”.
Otherwise, you might as well be pledging allegiance to the United States when reading the Liberian pledge.

Our founding fathers even made sure to declare our independence in July, the same month as America’s. Credit to them, they spared us the embarrassment of declaring 4 July as our independence day. That would have been too much imitation, even by Liberian standards!

Geographical names constitute another sphere where we diligently copy America.
We have our own Virginia, our own Maryland and our own Georgia (we call it “New Georgia”). We used to have Mississippi, but now we call it Sinoe. We still have Lexington, though. There is also West Point. But it is not a military academy. It is our largest slum community, which made international news for all the wrong reasons when an Ebola holding centre there was ransacked.

Where we cannot find a US geographical name to suit our purpose, it does not deter us.
We go on to name places after American individuals. Our capital, Monrovia, is named after James Monroe, fifth president of the US. Our third biggest “city”, Buchanan, is named after Thomas Buchanan, cousin of America’s 15th president James Buchanan.

Place names are not the only area in which we ape American names. The names of people follow this trend. Liberia is probably the only country in Africa where you have the absurdity of people being ashamed of African names but feeling a misplaced sense of self-importance for bearing American surnames, such as Wilson, Kennedy, Williams, Roberts, Brown and so forth.

Thus, you have Liberians with names like George Wilson, Peter Williams, and Thomas Brown strutting around with ridiculous cockiness and expecting to be treated with deference on the sole basis of such names.

These same people then turn round and look down their noses at other Liberians because they bear African names such as Pentee Sarwieh, Akoi Korvah, Lahai Fahnbulleh and Lakpor Mienkazor.

Imagine such comedy!
Many people with this warped sense of identity do not even realise that Liberians are a big joke in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa because we are so caught up in our pre-occupation with Americanisms that we are ashamed of our African identity.

Ivorians used to tease us by calling us petit Americains (little Americans) and some Ghanaians have referred to us in jest as America’s 51st state. Many others have simply dismissed us in disgust.

There was even a time when this disgraceful crisis of identity led to the bizarre practice whereby people would take a proper and bona fide African name and try to Anglicise it by adding funny prefixes and suffixes in order to make the name sound American-like.

Thus, Kollie became Kollison; Yekeh became Yekeson; Dorbor became McDorbor; and — can you believe this!   Musah became Musahson.
Some simply chose an English translation of their African names where possible. And so Charles Puoh becomes Charles Breeze (because “puoh” is the Krahn word for “breeze”) and Adolphus Kpeh changes to Adolphus Powers (because “kpeh” is synonymous with “power” in a number of Kwa languages).

Until recently, even wearing African attire was frowned upon among so-called “civilised” Liberians. There is even a pejorative term for women wearing printed-cloth wrappers. We call them “lappalonians”.

“Lappa” is the Liberian term for such printed cloths, a corruption of “wrapper”. A “lappalonian”, then, is a woman (especially less educated) who mostly wears such attire.

In music too, it has been much the same. Until the last couple of years, people considered themselves sophisticated when they showed a preference for American music and affected disdain for African music. It did not matter if the African music was by Manu Dibango, the Cameroonian jazz maestro who even Michael Jackson could not resist copying. Or Franco Luambo, the Congolese rumba master celebrated the world over. Or Fatu Gayflor, the mesmerising Liberian songbird who enchanted listeners with her lilting vocals in local languages.

This is why highlife was invented by the Kru people of Liberia, but ignored so long by Liberian society that it ended up being developed and promoted by Ghana. As another example, the Vai language is the only Liberian language with an alphabet and writing system developed by a Liberian.

The Vai script should be a celebrated and much publicised piece of national heritage. Instead, those who control power and resources have largely ignored it.
It would require experts in multiple disciplines to fully unlock all these issues. But I can hazard a guess or two.

One problem with Liberia has been that as long as it was African, it was to be disdained. Even better if you voiced your disdain in an American accent. We even have a colloquial term for the American accent. We call it “ceeree”. — NewAfrican.