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To be unable to feed your family is a difficult thing, especially
when the government you are working for has not been able to be
consistent in paying your monthly salary.
And this was a situation in Liberia recently, when angry teachers decided to use physical violence against the one charged by the government to pay them, and as a result reminding Liberians of the truth that a hungry man is an angry man.
Lavern Bryant was a teacher before the war, and he was still a teacher after the war. Now for six months now the meager salary had not been able to come from the Ministry of Education in Monrovia, and along with others, they were threatening assault against the unnamed Grand Cape Mount County Education Officer.
Tessa, Lavern Bryant’s wife was unhappy about the situation, and thought may be Lavern was abusing his income.
“Believe me,” he told her, the morning his youngest daughter Tina, fell ill, and he could not find the money to send her to the nearby clinic, “the ministry has always sent message that our salaries will be here.”
Tessa’s eyes filled with tears as she looked at the little girl on the bed.
“I swear to my ma,” she fumed, “if my daughter die, I will not forgive you.” Lavern Bryant hung his head in shame.
What kind of man was he, when he could not attend to his sick daughter? He felt beaten, and the only thing he could do was glanced about him, and wrung his hands for comfort.
Since the Liberian war ended, and the new leaders took over, true, they had been saying they were doing their best.
“That is,” he said, “if the UN is part of the government.”
He could not deny that things were getting better, but then…
“Lavern, Lavern,” a shrill voice called from outside of his one-room residence, and it was no mistake that it was the landlord calling for the rent.
For six months he had told the landlord one story after another and the old lady had now begun to describe him as the storyteller. What would he tell her? Unable to understand himself and what he must do, he remained silent till the door creaked open and the old lady showed her head in the door.
“You here you’ll not answer me?”
“Mah,” Lavern tried to use an affectionate description to solicit the human feeling of the landlord, “Mah they never paid me yet.” In this country, a man could affectionately call his wife or girlfriend, by saying, “Mah,” before adding up what he would want to say. It was a remarkable thing that made them different from their neighbors. But if Lavern Bryant thought his plan would work, the landlord’s reaction told him she did not buy his appeal.
“So I must not eat?” She did not even end it there, but lectured the classroom teacher about the difficulties she was going through since the end of the war.
Lavern did not have an answer for that, and he wished he had it. He agreed that like elsewhere in the country, Robertsport was becoming expensive to domicile.
“I think you must find a new place,” the landlord said, “I give you two weeks.”
Lavern lowered his body onto the bed as the door slammed and the landlord vanished from his view.
To be a teacher in these days in Liberia was becoming another war, and he stopped short of calling it, “another civil-war.” He did not want to think about that war, for he believed that the present predicament was due to that war.
Since the last war took fourteen years to end, he wondered how long the current one would last before they found a way out.
“I’m taking Tina to my ma,” his wife said, “and if you can, do something.”
With tears in his eyes, the Liberian teacher of three children did not know what to say.
It was near the afternoon, and cries of what sounded like cymbals were getting closer and louder. He had almost forgotten the previous day’s meeting with the affected teachers, and their resolve to do something about their suffering.
The idea of doing something about the government’s apparent failure to pay them and their resolved to do something about it filled him with dread. At the meeting that night, speakers upon speakers spoke about what was happening in the country, and how teachers were being overlooked.
A peaceful man and he could admit most of the teachers were, but what should they do when hunger and starvation stared them in the face? When there were reports and counter-reports of corruption in the country?
He could not stomach the thought that some officials should be beaten for failing to send their salaries, and therefore he hid himself in his room, waiting for providence to come to his rescue.
Outside the voices were louder now, and he could hear them.
“We must not let the paymaster go free.”
“What the hell they would not pay us?”
“They want us to die.”
“We must just flog them.”
Lavern Bryant covered his ears with his hands and dropped face down on his bed.
By now the voices had moved away from his residence, and for the first time he was drained in sweat.
“A hungry man,” he mused, “is an angry man.” He had heard that expression sung by the late Jamaican reggae King, Bob Marley, and he believed it now. He thought of the two-week verbal notice, and fear gripped him.
The threat to flog the Grand Cape Mount County education officer, he knew, would not bring their salaries back, and they would be looking for more trouble, and Liberia did not need that. But he also knew that some of his colleagues had changed their middle names temporary to be known as “trouble.”
Take for example, Joe Korto, the forty year-old balding teacher who was always not far away from domestic troubles! He had always boasted that he needed such trouble to “Shake up the town” from its deep slumber! That thought brought smiles across Lavern Bryant’s face, for he knew Robertsport city and its peaceful inhabitants did not need that.
“Two weeks will soon come,” Lavern Bryant said, back to face his old demon, “and I will still be a teacher.”
He had long resisted the temptation to change his profession, for his parents had all been teachers and they encouraged him to follow their examples.
“Give something back to your country,” his late father had always told him. Memory of his father always made him proud, for according to eye-witnesses, old man Bryant was killed by a rebel soldier, who was once his student.
Eye-witnesses reported the soldier as saying, “Da this papay who failed me when I was in the 6th grade,” and the old man’s plea for mercy did not save him. Lavern had always felt proud of his father’s memory.
He was sometimes overwhelmed with grief, like in the current case, and at his trying moments, his country could not help him, and those of his colleagues who only needed their labor to be paid. It was the irony of the Liberian situation. But for Lavern Bryant, he had made up his mind, no matter what came to be his luck.
So, whether he eventually became homeless or not, he had one more vow to make.
“I’ll still teach,” he said, encouraging himself, “because I am born to teach.”
It was good to be brave but when the day of reckoning comes, who would be there to vouch for Lavern Bryant the man who was born to teach?
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Author’s Note: This is a creative non-fiction because it is reported that some teachers planned to ‘flog’ the unnamed Grand Cape Mount Education minister, and please note that all named characters and their details in the above story were made up by the author. Check on my blog at: http://ojacksomaz8.wordpress.com
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