Zoloken, Grand Kru County – Recurring pounding sounds are coming from the direction of a kitchen constructed from mud, sticks and aluminum roof as early as 5:00 am.
The sound produced from collision of a wooden pestle and a wooden mortar is reverberating in a residential building, four yards from the kitchen, and forces a visitor (the writer of this story) from sleep.
“Uncle, wa mo nu,” two kids, Doe Weah and Jacob Weah, greet me good morning (“wa mo nu”) in the Wedabo dialect when I reached the spot the noise was coming from.
I’m their father’s biological nephew.
Jacob, 11, and Doe 16, are two of six male children responsible for processing straight-from-farm rice in a 10-member family in Zoloken, a Town of the Wedabo Chiefdom of Grand Kru County, in southeastern Liberia.
The children are eight (seven boys and one girl), the oldest child, Fredrick Weah, born in 2003.
The only girl is called Ida Weah, born in 2004, who does other works, except beating of rice, due to her sex and physical strength.
Processing of the country rice (done with hands, mortar and pestle or stick) to remove husk for cooking is rotated among the senior boys, their mother told me.
“One person beats a day, or two persons beat when we have visitor as you are now,” she explained.”
I was a visitor in the house (built on my late grandmother’s land) and in the Town (Zoloken).
My mission was development media-related in the Town and other parts of Grand Kru County.
Watching the kids pounding the rice, no protection for each person’s palm, I imagined blisters growing in kid’s palms—to be followed by such physical work for these children. I expressed my concern to my host—my uncle (Mr. Peter Jeh)
“If you say the children shouldn’t beat rice, because blisters will grow in their palms, or they will get sick, how will they eat?” my uncle replied.
“I did this from childhood and it didn’t make me sick. When you were at their age in this village, you beat rice and you didn’t get sick,” he argued further.
To relieve the kids, I volunteered to pound the rice—which would be my breakfast and lunch—but after a couple of hits I felt the flesh of my both palms peeling out. I grunted, stopped, viewed into my palms, and surrendered the pestle to Doe
“Sorry, uncle,” Jacob consoled in our dialect. “Ne wea ba,” (meaning “thank you”) I replied.
A 7:00am Doe and Jacob replace their house chores garment with school one (white shirt and blue trouser). Their siblings are also in wearing uniform.
The name of their school Zoloken Elementary & Junior High School. Doe and Jacob are wearing rubber shoes; each person’s ‘book bag’ is a white supermarket plastic.
Each of their siblings has the same kind of container for educational materials. The girl (Ida has on rubber bathroom slippers)
“Where’s your book bag from UNICEF?” I asked the group of my niece and nephews, imagining the officials of the Ministry of Education supplying the ‘UNICEF book bags’ to the Zoloken Elementary & Junior High School (a government-approved public school) as they had done to schools outside this Town.
“Uncle, a na UNICEF book bag kun o,” Ida replied. (Translation: “Uncle, we don’t have UNICEF book o”)
Uncle gives each person ‘recess money’; all said “uncle, ne wea ba”; the group darts off toward their school which is about six kilometers from their house.
Thirty minutes later, I follow my niece and nephews to see learning situation on campus and in classrooms and to donate assorted foreign books I had begged for from a Liberian education NGO (We-Care Foundation) to share to schools in six Towns in Grand Kru County.
In their classrooms, Doe and Jacob (Class?) are reading in English along with their class teacher, but quickly dive into vernacular (Wedabo) when asking question or making comment on what the teacher had read.
I heard vernacular in the other classrooms, including the senior class (9th grade).
“Won’t your school’s students’ communication affect their proficiency in English outside of the classroom and their performance in written communication?” I said the school’s principal, Mr. Peter Jeh, my biological uncle.
“It certainly will affect their proficiency in English and performance in written communication,” the school principal, Mr. Peter Jeh, the father of Doe Weah and Jacob Weah, responded to my concern. “
“But the students communicate only in this dialect in their homes and in the community. So, our effort to get them communicate in only English in the classroom is almost impossible.”
Has the Ministry of Education (MoE) endorse this on UNESCO mandate of preventing extinction of any of Liberia’s native tongue (dialect)—including Wedabo of Grand Kru County?
Report by Samuel G. Dweh/freelance journalists