Gbi/Doru District, Nimba County – Hannah Tappah, 16, is the only girl in the sixth grade class of four students at the Wontoe Public School in Gbi/Doru District in Tappita, Nimba County. “
Report by James Harding Giahyue
“Hannah has a big dream when she grows up. “I want to become a doctor to work on people,” she says.
Hannah’s grandmother, Bettie Isaac, supports her and her three other siblings in school. Isaac became the sole breadwinner of the family after Hannah’s father went blind from high blood pressure three years ago.
“I want for my grandchild to continue,” she says. “I want them to learn.”
It takes serious effort for one’s dream to become a reality anywhere in the world, but Gbi/Doru is not a place where dreams come true.
Hannah’s grandmother is now worried how her granddaughter is going to further her education.
Her only hope is that Hannah goes and stays with a relative in Thomas Town, a three-hour walk from Wontoe Town. Wontoe Public School stops at sixth grade.
Since the formation of Gbi/Doru Administrative District in 1937, the forest-covered community has not had a single high school.
There are 16 public, elementary schools in the Tappita#1 Educational District—where Gbi/Doru is located—and a lone private, junior high school, according to the County Education Office of Nimba.
Children born in Gbi/Doru, like Hannah, must leave the community once they complete primary school.
This brings a lot of burden for poor parents and guardians. They swallow bitter pills, sending their children away to places like Buchanan, Cestos and Monrovia to complete their educations. Many children never return home.
Things should have been different. Had two community forest management agreements (CFMAs) signed between the two chiefdoms of Gbi/Doru District—Gbi and Doru— and the FDA, as well as a third party agreement with the Liberia Tree and Trading Company (LTTC) become a success, there would have been schools in this district.
In 2011 Gbi and Doru signed the agreements with the company for 15 years each, with a revision in every five years.
The agreement is the result of the Community Rights Law of 2009 with Respect to Forest Lands that seeks to give forest communities more benefits from their forest resources. The Doru CFMA is for 35,000 hectares of land, while Gbi is for 31,155 hectares of land.
In addition to a yearly land rental fee of US$48,125 for Doru and US$43,312.50 for Gbi, each agreement calls for the company to build one high school in each of the two chiefdoms, pay teachers stipends and provide scholarships for students from the chiefdoms at colleges nationwide.
The agreements have rare clauses that the company must help build churches and give pastors, “some incentives while they serve their people spiritually” in the two chiefdoms.
They did not leave out roads, safe drinking water and clinics.
In Jail
Residents of Doru Chiefdom explain their ordeal with LTTC
There was jubilation across the more than two dozen towns and villages across Gbi and Doru when the agreements were signed but it did not last long. Seven years on, nothing has changed.
No project has been carried out in any of the two chiefdoms; neither has the company paid the land rental fees owed the community.
The shouts of happiness across the community in 2011 have now changed to chants of sadness and anger.
“I feel very bad because I was advocating for the forest to be given to LTTC,” says Joseph Quikpeyee, who helped seal the deal with the company, “but they made us shame.”
“We are just here like people that are in jail,” says Neasiah Goanue, 49, resident of Nedononwein in Doru Chiefdom.
“Look at these children that are passing and floating all around,” he adds, pointing at several children playing nearby. “[There are] no schools for them. Nothing they are achieving from here. What will make this place to develop when nobody from here is going to school?”
LTTC in September 2016 embarked upon a school project in Nedononwein after a meeting with townspeople.
Contractors were hired and some building materials were brought, but then it all went back to square-one. Ten bundles of 14-gauge zinc and 50 pieces of ceiling tiles lay in Quikpeyee’s house.
“They told us to clean the spot and we cleaned the spot. We donated some money and chicken [for the workers] but since they left from here they have not been back here,” explains Sam Flahn, Town Chief of Nedononwein, who was chosen to supervise the 10-classroom-building project.
Contractors hired to construct pit latrines and hand pumps to complement the school building also abandoned the project over funds.
“I needed four rods and four pipes to complete the hand pumps but they did not give me it,” says John Debbah of the construction firm Agency for War-affected Liberians on the Roberts International Airport highway. “So I credited money and left from the town with my men.”
“They don’t want to build the school,” Town Chief Flahn laments. All of our children wake up in the morning and go to the farm or on the goldfield, no training, no school, nothing,” Four of his six children live in Nedononwein. Two—18 and 22—are artisan miners, while the other two—32 and 35—are a motorcyclist and a hunter, respectively.
“No [school is] in my town now,” says Ojuku Zarkawhea, resident of Zeewroh Town in Gbi Chiefdom. He has six children and none but one of them is in school. The one that goes to school lives in Tappita with his sister, a nine-hour walk from his Zeewroh Town.
“I am confused about my future. I don’t know whether our children will be somewhere better,” Zakawhea says.
LTTC refused to comment on the matter. New Narratives reporters were denied entry to the company’s headquarters in Wontoe Town. Reporters were told to contact the company’s Monrovia office. Further efforts proved futile as company official Alain Manga refused to speak to journalists and wouldn’t set an appointment for an interview with General Manager Yoryon Toweh.
LTTC was owned by current Nimba County lawmaker Ricks Toweh but is now being run by his wife.
Just for formality
Raymond Seo, Principal of Wontoe Public School stands before the church that houses the school
Liberia tops UNICEF Out-of-School Report, with more than three in five children of school-going age out of school.
With about 90 percent of the education ministry’s budget allotted to salaries it is difficult to build schools in remote places like Gbi/Doru District, sources within the ministry say.
The Ministry of Education has said it may address the situation in Gbi/Doru District before the start of the next school year.
“We are collecting information on schools with gaps for possible inclusion,” disclosed Acting County Education Officer for Nimba County Moses Dologbay.
There may not be much time left. Back at Wontoe Public School, Principal Raymond Seo is counting the days as he plans to quit the school this year
. The school is housed in an unfinished mud-brick church, with floor all but bare ground.
There is no partition for classes. The school has 102 students but has only one teacher: the principal. Seo says he has to shuffle among classes to make sure each class gets lessons for the day.
He caters to the kindergarten section between 8 am and 10 am each morning, and then takes the rest of the day for grade one to grade six. At times he uses Hannah to assist him with the kindergarten section.
“I don’t think that these students are really learning,” Seo concedes. “I think this is just for formality.
“I cannot continue with this kind of situation. The building is not conducive for the students and myself. I have even decided to move from here to go back to my area,” he says.
The townspeople know of Seo’s plan, and they have been begging him to stay. Hannah’s grandmother is one person who wishes Seo stays. She has five other grandchildren there.
But come what may, Hannah remains focused. “I want to learn, I want to become somebody in the future.”
The second part of this series will focus on procedural errors committed by the FDA regarding the Gbi and Doru agreements as well as internal wrangling and alleged mishaps by LTTC.
This story was produced by James Harding Giahyue and was written as part of a media skills development program run by the Thomson Reuters Foundation and New Narratives and funded by Australian Aid. The funder had no say in the story’s content
