Happy Thanksgiving! (and some Liberian history for the occasion)

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I am writing this Thanksgiving Eve, and will post it tomorrow morning, while you are all still sleeping. Before your travels to wherever you are going for the holiday. Be safe, and have a wonderful time... Eat some sweet potatoes for me, and I will eat some fried plantains for you. It will be another working day here as usual. In my case, I will keep working here in Buchanan – computer trainings with the staff, attending the local PEI training and interviewing clients.

We celebrated Thanksgiving here on November 6, which is a permanent Thursday holiday like in the US. Liberia’s Thanksgiving origins are as etched in historic, mythic stone and as sketchy in terms of modern-day political correctness as that of the USA. Here follows a brief, overly simplistic (and probably liberally-biased) summary.

Liberia was founded by a boat’s worth of freed slaves (organized and governed by white guys) who came to Liberia in 1822 (or were sent by slave-owners who felt threatened by the presence of freed slaves, depending on which account you’re reading) and traveled up and down what is now the Sierra Leonean and Liberian coastlines, trying to buy land from the local chiefs who kept turning them down. They eventually negotiated the purchase of some land in modern-day Monrovia from a local chief, who initially agreed to the sale (at gunpoint, according to most reports) but later reneged. This led to a series of skirmishes involving cannons, guns, attacks, coalitions between various chiefs, and eventually great loss of life on the indigenous Liberian side while most of the settlers survived (though their numbers had already been diminished thanks to their many months at sea).

And finally finally after all that, the settlers settled on Providence Island and celebrated the first Liberian Thanksgiving. Before or after or during which they were busy reinforcing their fortifications in preparation for the next bout of skirmishes, which promptly ensued.

The settlers of course win the day, flourish, establish a government, declare English the national language and go on to declare independence in 1847 (from the white administrators of the American Colonization Society). The descendants of the settlers, or “Congo” Liberians, become Liberia’s ruling elite and run the country for 150 years, until they are overthrown by a violent coup in 1980, which ushered in the regimes of Samuel Doe and Charles Taylor, under whom Liberia descends into a brutal civil war. Liberia emerges from civil war in 2003, when Pres. Bush announces to the international community and Liberia that its time for Taylor to leave. So he does. And Liberia has been in recovery since then.

Anyway… all that to say Happy Thanksgiving! The great thing about Thanksgiving back in the US is how it really just means family and love and food and gratitude, and doesn’t feel like it has much to do with colonization anymore. And Liberia’s the same. Our Thanksgiving (back on Nov. 6th) was a relaxing day with a huge meal smacked into the middle which took most of the day to prepare and the rest of the day to recover from. As far as what we were all thankful for, in Around the Table fashion: Sis Hawah is thankful for her new job at the Governance Commission – she was saying that it has been such a good change for her after so many years at the Ministry of Education – and Anais and Kemah are thankful to Mommee for food and clothing and shelter and for keeping them in school.

And me, I’m thankful to be here in Liberia. And grateful for my community of friends and family – in Brooklyn and beyond – without whose support (on a plethora of levels) I would not be here. If you’d told me a year ago that I’d be celebrating Thanksgiving by working through the day in Buchanan, Liberia, I would have been speechless. So thank you, everyone for your support and care. I'm grateful for you.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving! Sending you love from Liberia... xo Karen