Write Team: A cultural safari

As the tires of our car, bringing us from the Monrovia, Liberia, airport in July 1971 dropped off the pavement of the main highway, onto the laterite soil of the side street leading to our new home, I experienced a deep sense of anxiety.

Why had I made the decision to bring my wife, son and daughter to live for a year in the country of Liberia, where I had been appointed Fulbright Professor of English at the University of Liberia?

We drove past shanties where partially clad Liberians cooked on open fires in front of their huts, and scrawny dogs lay in the dust in front of the shanties. We approached a large cement two-story building surrounded by an 8-foot gated wall and pulled in through the gates and stopped in front of our Sinkor home.

We unloaded the car, the driver left and the four of us stretched out on our beds to recover from the overnight flight from New York to this jungle city and our new life.

Our Siamese cat, Tasha, who had accompanied us on the trip explored our new home before we did. We unpacked our belongings, toured the house and settled uneasily into a new way of living. Our steward (called a “house boy” in the vernacular of Liberia) would not begin work until the next day, and we pieced on what we had brought with us. We had no car, no television and no friends. We had to depend on the bare essentials – and We were those essentials.

We soon established our routine: I left for the university by taxi at 7:30 a.m. for my classes which began at 8 a.m. Our son left for the African mission school of the Methodist Church, called the College of West Africa, and my wife and daughter prepared for the three-block walk down the street to a Lutheran mission school, where my wife soon established herself as a volunteer teaching assistant and worked with the teachers on a daily basis.

My teaching assignment included four university English classes. Two facts disturbed me about my assignment at the university: the world drama course I was assigned to teach used a textbook with only European and American playwrights; and there was no African playwright in the world drama course taught. I approached the chairman of the English department and asked her “Why?”

She replied, “Because no previous professors had ever asked the question.”

Secondly, in the advanced writing course I was to teach, the subjects assigned had been American and European oriented; no African topics were offered. I solved the problems by teaching two African playwrights in the drama course and using only African-oriented topics for the writing course. In other words, I introduced an African focus. My students were delighted and keenly interested in the new approach, and I had an enriching experience working with my highly motivated students. (Shortly after returning home, I received a letter from a student in the writing class who had just published one of his essays written in the class in a Nigerian journal.)

Our year in Liberia brought us many new friends – including local Africans, peace corps workers, university colleagues and missionaries at the famed Ganta leprosarium.

At the end of the term, I was offered a full-time position, but sadly had responsibilities in America and could not stay. We returned to the States enriched by a year in a new culture and blessed with many new friends.

Robert Cotner spent 25 years as an English teacher that include serving as Fulbright lecturer in English at the University of Liberia. He concluded his career as an executive at The Salvation Army and Shriners Children’s Hospital-Chicago. He now lives in Seneca.

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