Barclayville, Grand Kru County – Grand Kru County, on record for producing Liberia’s first Harvard graduate, P.G. Wollo, performed the worst among Liberia’s 15 counties represented at the 2017/2016’s edition of the West African Examination Council (WAEC) exams for 12th graders.
All the county’s representatives failed. The number was 113 from three schools. Barclayville Central High School wasn’t in this number.
The following year, 2017, the county claimed the “worst position”— again—for recording the lowest number of students who reached the “passed” mark.
Only two students—out of 73 sent—got the county at this mark. Both came from the same school: Barclayville Central High School, located in the county’s capital, Barclayville.
“I passed in eight subjects, including English and Mathematics, out of the nine subjects given by WAEC,” Kieh Wissesh, 25, of the 12A Class, one of the county’s two students that passed, told me at his friend’s house in Barclayville, where I met him, on August 4, 2017. “I got eight points in English and Math.”
Kieh, a native of Dorboh Statutory District, is the son of Mr. Harrison Wisseh and Madam Roseline Swen, but his Nursery education through to Senior High education was sponsored by Mr. Michael Wisseh, former Development Superintendent of Grand Kru County, and Madam Doris N. Ylatun, a humanitarian in Grand Kru, he disclosed.
“Mr. Michael Wisseh arrested me in Barclayville in 2006 to send me to school, after he met me being used as a human-vehicle, at age 14, to transport a 15-kilogram sack of imported rice over a fifteen-hour distance from Barclayville to Dorboh,” he recalled.
“The service was free, because my parents made me do it for their friends who were traders that owned the sacks of rice going to our village.”
Kieh, who entered Barclayville Central High in 2014, praised all his class teachers’ performance as “proficient and efficient,” but said many of them “used to be absent in school once or twice a week due to economic problems, which caused students to spend an entire teaching period without learning anything in class.”
Had he been coerced by any of his class teacher on free grades for money when he was in the Junior or Senior High?
“No teacher asked me for any money to give me grades I didn’t work for, because I always studied hard to pass on merit,” Kieh shook his head.
The Barclayville Central High School has a library that looks like “book store,” Kieh described.
Even though Kieh’s education was sponsored by two financially privileged persons, he said he “did some menial jobs to get money to buy toothpaste, deodorant, outing cloths, foot wears, and other things my sponsors’ financial contributions to my education couldn’t cover at the time I needed these things,” he said. “
I worked on gold mines in Grand Kru County; I brushed grass around people’s houses; and I went into the bushes to fell trees people needed to build houses,” he enumerated, showed me his palms, and rubbed his hands hardened from hard physical work. “I didn’t want to depend on my sponsors for every non-educational things I needed,” he sighed.
How did Grand Kru County’s Legislative Caucus and the county’s local leadership (political appointees) react to the success of Kieh Wisseh, and that of his colleague, which has removed shame from the county’s face?
“None of the County’s Representatives or Senators in the National Legislature has called to say ‘thank you for our pass in WAEC’.
The county’s Superintendent hasn’t done that. The County Education office hasn’t said ‘thank you’. No Town Chief has called, either,” Kieh replied, in a tone laden with disappointment.
Also, neither the management of the County’s only Radio Station, Voice of Grand Kru, nor a talk-show host with the station has celebrated the achievement of any of these county’s educational image-saviors by calling him on air to interact with the entire county at once.
Kieh’s greatest wish now is to find somebody, soon, for financial support to get him into a University to read Medical Science, his passion subject, and open a hospital.
“With Medical Science knowledge, I will keep off preventable diseases that have been killing people in my county, Grand Kru, due to lack of hospital and poverty,” he pledged.
The 1992-born says his hobbies are reading, writing and martial art (karate). His love for writing has birthed two manuscripts—all non-fiction. He explained: “The first is titled The New Generation, which is about children’s disobedience to older people and the danger of their recalcitrance. The second book is titled The Business World, which is about children’s being used as breadwinner for their parents or guardians.”
With his education sponsor (Mr. Michael Wisseh) now out of job (removed as County Development Superintendent by President Ellen Sirleaf in June, 2017), Kieh says he sees his entering University soon a pipe-dream, unless an outsider comes to the rescue, and he’s now selling telephone companies’ recharge cards to make ends meet.
“Profits from sales of the recharge cards are small, and hardly go beyond my basic needs—food, cloths, and bodycare products,” he told me at his recharge sale spot in Camp Three, Barclayville. He said these things last for at most four months, due to poor quality and quantity.
Fred Wesseh, 23, the second Grand Kru County’s WAEC hero for 2017, hails from Picnic Cess.
“I passed in seven of the nine subjects, including English and Mathematics,” Fred, whose surname is only different from Kieh by the second letter, ‘e’, told me at his house in Camp Three on the same day I interviewed Kieh. He got the same points in English and Mathematics Kieh earned in the same subjects.
Fred, the product of the union of Alfred J. Soh and Cecelia Wesseh (now deceased), entered Barclayville Central High School in 2014.
He described his class teachers as “equipped” with the requisite teaching knowledge, but said there was no Liberian teacher for Physics for his class throughout the 2016/2017 academic year, which pushed the school’s authority to beg the Mathematics teacher, a Nigerian called Titus Fashikan, to take up Math (along with his main subject) for the 12th graders up to the WAEC time.
Any bribe-for-free-grades offer from any teacher? “No,” Fred retorted.
He described the Library of Barclayville Central High school—when he was there—as “equipped.”
Where his parents couldn’t help due to financial handicap, he said, “I went into the forest to cut sticks to sell to builders, to cut bunches of palm nuts to sell, and brushed grass around different people’s house, to get money to meet my educational requirements and other needs of life,” he said proudly.
Any “thank-you-for-passing-WAEC” call from any member of Grand Kru County’s Legislative Caucus or the County’s local authority? “No, or none of them has called me yet,” Fred replied.
Hobby-wise, Fred says he loves music, sports (soccer), reading, and writing. “For writing, I’ve produced a fictional book entitled ‘Lives of Students in Grand Kru County’, which is about the struggles and survival methods of students, males and females,” he said.
To survive in Grand Kru, a County financially drained due to lack of employment opportunities for the youth, Fred teaches Mathematics (from Grade 1 to Grade 6) at the St. Peter’s Catholic School in Barclayville.
“The school’s administration promised to be giving me four thousand-five hundred Liberian dollars as my salary, but they haven’t started giving me any money because I’m on three-month probation, which began on the eleventh day of October,” he disclosed.
Kieh Wisseh and Fred Wessh are appealing to the Government of Liberia, individual Liberians, education-support NGOs, or Liberia’s development partners to facilitate their continuing their education at any university where quality education is taught.
“I’ll be willing to study at any University my sponsor chose for me,” Kieh told me at his recharge cards sale spot.
“Even if the sponsor tells me I should go to a University in the forest, I will whole-heartedly go just to learn to contribute to the development of my County, Grand Kru, and my Country, Liberia,” Fred wished.
“I want to study Geology, my favorite subject, to search for oil under the soil of my Country and manage it for the nation’s economic growth.”
The success of Kieh Wisseh and Fred Wesseh in WAEC is partly attributed to the leadership of Mr. G. Marvin Young, Principal of Barclayville Central High School.
“I predicted that at least two of the twelve-graders, if not most or all of them, will pass this year’s WAEC during my tenure as Principal; my prediction came to pass,” Principal Young boasted during an exclusive interview with me at his house in Picnic Cess on September 9.
But he has a problem with Grand Kru County’s Legislative Caucus.
“They are not paying much attention to the school, in terms of properly using the County Development Fund to improve education; rather, they are politicizing everything about the school. I asked one of them to help the school with a Printer; the person told me to go to the Ministry of Education.”
The lack-of-support problem is also with the Ministry of Education’s representative body in Grand Kru County, the County Education Office.
“We do not have vehicle to regularly monitor all government schools, especially those in remote areas, to know or evaluate teachers’ and students’ performances” the Acting head of Grand Kru’s County Education Office (CEO), Mr. Nicholas N. Doryen Wleh, lamented in an exclusive interview at his office in Barclayville on September 11.
The Grand Kru County’s Legislative Caucus has expressed its concerns on the dismal performance of the County’s schools, which to some extent seem to be rebuffing assertions by Principal G. Marvin Young of Barclayville Central High School. Speaking officially on the mass failure of the County’s representatives at WAEC, 2017, the Caucus stated, at a Press Conference, that the Ministry of Education had paid “very little attention” to the education sector of Grand Kru County, and that Education Minister George K. Werner “had refused to listen” to the County’s Legislative Caucus’ appeal to replace the current County Education Officer (Mr. Tehneseo Brohdoyen, Sr.) on the “incompetence” due, mostly, to his political ambition in the County.”
The Minister of Education, who is a Grand Kruan, from Grand Cess, replied, through his social media page, that the pass of the two students is “an improvement” by his leadership over the education system of Grand Kru, arguing that no student from the County had passed the senior category of WAEC prior to his ascendancy in the Ministry.”