![26 | one
and create autonomous spheres, but everywhere administrators used
pressure and incentives to maintain a hierarchical order. No matter
how selected or appointed, chiefs had to act in ways acceptable to
officials or risk being replaced. Many were corrupt, extracting labor
and “customary” fees. In the words of Elizabeth Schmidt,
[f]or most Guineans, canton chiefs personified the evils of
colonial rule. Appointed by the colonial administration, they
served as intermediaries between the government and the
rural population. As agents of the state, they collected taxes,
recruited involuntary labor and military conscripts, and enforced
the mandatory rendering of cash crops. They also transmitted
the orders of European administrators to the local populace.
(Schmidt 2007, 17)
In Liberia, senior government officials up to the president
“manipulated the politics of chieftaincies … supporting the opposition
to any chief who did not conform” (Ellis 2007, 215). In all three
territories, the system of “chiefly authorities” maintained patriarchy
and promoted tribalism.
Cities and certain towns – especially those that were rail and
administrative centers – grew during the “colonial era” and became
the sites of most “modern” educational and health facilities and
of wage or salary jobs – and thus magnets for youth. Capitals
became primate cities where ruling groups, top-down institutions,
headquarters of foreign firms, and salaried jobs were concentrated.9
Their populations grew to be several times larger than any other
center. City dwellers developed a wide variety of social associations
concerned with housing, jobs, recreation, and other aspects of life.
Generally, urban schools provided a higher quality of education than
rural schools. Rural literacy levels remained low, and, generally,
education of girls lagged seriously behind that of boys (Ojukutu-
Macauley 1997; Dunn 2011, 360). For the most part, the curriculums
were not geared to building agricultural or technical expertise.
All three countries developed export-oriented, extractive
economies. Importing and exporting came to be dominated by
large foreign firms, some the precursors of today’s multinational
food corporations (Goerg 1986, 337–367). In Liberia, officials
alienated nearly a million acres to the Firestone Rubber Company.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25335581-250512062656-675bff2f/85/Understanding-West-Africas-Ebola-Epidemic-Towards-A-Political-Economy-Ibrahim-Abdullah-Ismail-Rashid-Editors-40-320.jpg)
![32 | one
the countries sought new forms of external support and patronage.
“Development aid” grew both absolutely and relative to national
sources of revenue. In 1993, to pick a date after war had been rav-
aging Liberia and Sierra Leone, the former received development
aid equivalent to 96 percent of its internal revenue and the latter
178 percent (Reno 1999, 115). This situation was unsustainable,
and failed to “solve” the problem of structural poverty. By about
2000, the Extractive Industries Review (EIR) of the World Bank
recognized the need for stricter guidelines in providing loans and
risk insurance to logging and mining companies in order to reduce
poverty; to protect poor people, local communities, and the environ-
ment; and to ensure that extractive companies honor basic human
rights. Generally, in practice, the guidelines were only implemented
in a minimal way or were not followed.12
Other large forces drained economic and social capacities and
raised dissatisfaction with governments. Urban populations boomed
because of a combination of relatively high birth rates, rural poverty,
and insecurity resulting in the concentration in cities of better paying
salaried jobs, wage work, and informal sector opportunities. Conakry,
Freetown, and Monrovia tripled or quadrupled in size between 1960
and the 1990s. In all three countries 15–29 year-olds became a size-
able percentage of the population. Youth experienced very severe
impacts from the era’s economic downturn and environmental pres-
sures, having especially high unemployment and urban and rural
poverty rates (Abdullah 2004; Aning and Atta-Asamoah 2011).
All three countries became dictatorships. Early leaders of the
newly independent Sierra Leone took steps to consolidate their
power, which among other things entrenched ethnicity in politics and
undermined national institutions. Albert Margai, the second prime
minister, worked to ensure that the army, electoral commission,
and Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) were dominated by Mende
(Cartwright 1978). When Siaka Stevens became prime minister after
a military coup, he “showed himself to be [even] more Machiavellian,
practical, and ‘effective’ at power consolidation” (Conteh-Morgan
and Dixon-Fyle 2005, 81). Within two years he fundamentally
altered the ethnic makeup of the army and its officer corps, then went
on to entrench minority northern groups that aligned with him and
to forge a loyal paramilitary State Security Division that amounted to
a “palace guard” (Conteh-Morgan and Dixon-Fyle 2005, 78–83).](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25335581-250512062656-675bff2f/85/Understanding-West-Africas-Ebola-Epidemic-Towards-A-Political-Economy-Ibrahim-Abdullah-Ismail-Rashid-Editors-46-320.jpg)
![34 | one
accompanied and followed by the IMF and WB retrenchment poli-
cies, which shrunk the national spending for health, education, and
infrastructure, including the incomes of many thousands of rural
and urban people. Patrimonialism in Sierra Leone depended upon
a concentrated source of great wealth, diamonds, which political
leaders could easily tap. Conteh-Morgan and Dixon-Fyle have aptly
described and analyzed how the system operated. Siaka Stevens, who
by 1971 had created the office of president and ruled unopposed,
drained a share of the country’s wealth into his own pockets and
those of close supporters and held the country together by rechan-
neling state revenues. His successor, Force Commander Joseph Saidu
Momoh, continued a similar system with much less skill – until the
diamond supply ran down, foreign debt reached unsustainable levels,
and massive public anger and opposition arose (Conteh-Morgan and
Dixon-Fyle 2005; Reno 1999, 114–133).
Liberia had a much more limited patrimonial order until Charles
Taylor expanded the system and ruled in a manner that combined
violence and personal engagement with networks of supporters.14
During the war era, he became the main global outlet for Sierra Leone
diamonds obtained by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in
Kono and Tongo Fields. Felix Gerdes estimates that in the five years
between 1997 and 2001 the RUF exported between US$175 million
and US$245 million worth of diamonds, and Taylor’s “profits” were
between US$91 million and US$129 million. “The revenue derived
[from diamonds] was a major source of finance for Taylor’s sovereign
system of domination” (Gerdes 2013, 143–144). Once the RUF was
defeated and the embargo against “blood diamonds” was installed,
Taylor financed his regime through timber exports.
War tore Sierra Leone apart through much of the 1990s (actu-
ally March 1991 until January 2002). Over 50,000 people are esti-
mated to have died, with vast disruption of the social fabric (Gberie
2005). The Liberian war lasted from 1989 to 2003 – although there
was a two-year hiatus when Charles Taylor headed an elected gov-
ernment and became engaged in the Sierra Leone fighting. Report-
edly 250,000 to 500,000 people were killed. While there was no
direct fighting in Guinea during this era, Guineans went through
great upheavals. The country was a staging ground for attacks into
its neighbors, especially Liberia. It was a corridor for international
smuggling, received several hundred thousand refugees, and saw its](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25335581-250512062656-675bff2f/85/Understanding-West-Africas-Ebola-Epidemic-Towards-A-Political-Economy-Ibrahim-Abdullah-Ismail-Rashid-Editors-48-320.jpg)
Understanding West Africas Ebola Epidemic Towards A Political Economy Ibrahim Abdullah Ismail Rashid Editors
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- 5. To the heroines and heroes, known and unknown counted and uncounted felled by the epidemic and reposing now in graves, marked and unmarked, in the three lands threaded together by the river, Mano. To the carers and healers, who from places, near and distant compelled or called by duty or compassion who tended the afflicted at great risk to their life and health. To the survivors and torch-bearers, who overcame the Ebola’s murderous embrace, but not its ugly stigma, and the millions, betrayed by insouciant governments, quarantined from the world, but never losing hope.
- 7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project started as a two-pronged trans-Atlantic conversation between us (Ibrahim Abdullah and Ismail Rashid) on the one hand, and Ibrahim Abdullah, Jacques Depelchin and Pauline Wynter on the other, in the heat of the Ebola Virus Disease epidemic in mid-2014. Jacques and Pauline expressed solidarity with Ibrahim and his compatriots in the region, and offered advice on how he and his loved ones could protect themselves. They also urged Ibrahim to “bear witness” to the tragic consequences of a viral plague the world thought it understood. The tone and spirit of the exchanges between us were similar. The conversation inspired us to be actively engaged instead of being helplessly resigned in the face of what then seemed like an unstoppable viral plague. By December 2014 Ibrahim had written three short articles on responses to Ebola, two for a local tabloid, Awoko, and one for a popular media website, Africa is a Country. Ismail had participated in two Ebola teach-ins at Rutgers University and Vassar College. It soon became evident that we were not alone. Other scholars across the Atlantic were also having conversations, writing short articles, and engaging the public on various aspects of the Ebola epidemic. Their enthusiastic response to our call to contribute to a collective project bearing witness to the unprecedented ravages of the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa is this anthology on the political economy of the epidemic. We would like to express our sincere thanks to everyone who contributed to the realization of this project. Without the intellectual labor, commitment, and patience of all of the contributors, the anthology would not have been possible. The two anonymous reviewers selected by Zed offered positive and constructive comments. Jon Chenette, the Dean of Faculty, and Grants Office of Vassar College provided funds that supported research assistance, indexing, and maps. Lauren Fleming, Andrea Ditkoff, and Joseph Goakai assisted with research, collection of source materials, and proofreading. The unflinching support of family, fellow travellers, and friends kept us energized and focused on the project. In particular, we are thankful to Jacques, Pauline, and Stephan Palmie for their concern and prodding us to bear witness in this fashion. Finally, we are pleased that the African Leadership Centre made this anthology the first in their series on Security and Society in Africa.
- 9. ABBREVIATIONS ADB African Development Bank AFRC Armed Forces Redemption Council AGOA African Growth and Opportunity Act APC All Peoples Congress ASEOWA African Union Support to Ebola Outbreak in West Africa AU African Union BDBU Bundibugyo Ebolavirus CBEP Cooperative Biological Engagement Program CDC (Liberia) Congress for Democratic Change CDC (US) Center for Disease Control and Prevention CFR Case Fatality Rate CHA Community Health Attendants CHW National Health Worker COMAHS College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences DfID (UK) Department for International Development DHIS District Health Information System DHMT District Health Management Team DTRA Defense Threat Reduction Agency EBOV Zaire Ebolavirus ECOWAS/ Economic Community of West African States CEDEAO EHF Ebola Haemorrhagic Fever EMBO European Molecular Biology Organization ERC Ebola Response Committee ETC Ebola Treatment Center EVD Ebola Virus Disease FGD Focus Group Discussion FHCI Free Health Care Initiative GERC Global Ebola Response Coalition GOARN Global Outbreak and Alert Response Network. HDI Human Development Index ICG International Crisis Group
- 10. xii | abbreviations IDSI Integrated Disease Surveillance Information System IFRC International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies IHR International Health Regulations IHRIS Integrated Human Resource Information System IMATT International Military Assistance Training Team IMF International Monetary Fund IRC International Rescue Committee JIATF HQ Joint Inter-Agency Task Force Headquarters MARWOPNET Mano River Women’s Peace Network MCHA Maternal and Child Health Aides MCHP Maternal and Child Health Post MDG Millennium Development Goals MMU Monrovia Medical Unit MOD (UK) Ministry of Defence MoHS Ministry of Health and Sanitation MRU Mano River Union MRU-LFN Mano River Union Lassa Fever Network MSF Médecins Sans Frontières NERC National Ebola Response Center NIAID National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases NIH National Institute of Health NPRC National Provisional Ruling Council OCHA Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs ONS Office of National Security PBF Performance-Based Financing PEPFAR President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief PHC Primary Health Care PHEIC Public Health Emergency of International Concern PHU Peripheral Health Unit PPE Personal Protective Equipment PPP Public Private Partnership PRSP Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper RESTV Reston Ebolavirus RT-PCR Reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction RUF Revolutionary United Front SAP Structural Adjustment Program SECHN State Enrolled Community Health Nurses SLPP Sierra Leone People’s Party
- 11. abbreviations | xiii SSR Security Sector Reform SUDV Sudan Ebolavirus TAFU Taï Forest Ebolavirus TBA Traditional Birth Attendants TWP True Whig Party UFDG Union des Forces Démocratiques de Guinée UNAMSIL United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNMEER United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response UNMIL United Nations Mission in Liberia VHFC Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Consortium VVF Vesical Vaginal Fistula WAHO West African Health Organisation WANEP West Africa Network for Peacebuilding WARN West Africa Early Warning and Early Response Network WB World Bank Group WFP World Food Programme WHO World Health Organization WiPNET Women in Peace Network WRESL Women’s Response to Ebola in Sierra Leone Campaign
- 13. Confirmed Cases 1–5 6–20 21–100 101–500 501–4000 No cases reported GUINEA-BISSAU Koundara Malli SENEGAL Koubia Tougue Siguiri MALI Mandiana Kankan Kerouane Beyla Lola Kissidougou Kouroussa GUINEA CÔTE D’IVOIRE LIBERIA Dabola Faranah Koinadugu Bombali SIERRA LEONE Moyamba Tonkolili Kono Bo Bonthe Pujehun Kenema Kailahun Lofa Yomou N’zerekore Gueckedou Macenta Gbarpolu Bomi Margibi Bong Rivercess Sinoe Maryland Grand Gedeh River Gee Grand Kru Grand Bassa Nimba Montserrado Forecaria Kambia Conakry Western Area Urban Western Area Rural Port Loko Mamou Dinguiraye Gaoual Telimele Boke Boffa Fria Dubreka Coyah Kindia Pita Labe Dalaba Lelouma Last Report Date LR - 2015–12–27 SL - 2015–12–27 GI - 2015–12–27 Grand Cape Mount Map 1 Distribution of confirmed EVD cases in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, 2013–2015 (source: adapted from WHO map on case count: http:// apps.who.int/ebola/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/sitrep_casecount_ 31.png?ua=1, accessed April 4, 2017)
- 14. Extensive spread and diversification within Liberia One primary introduction of EBOV to Liberia Grand Cape Mount Lofa Gbarpolu Bong Bomi Margibi Montserrado River Cess Grand Bassa Nimba Multiple re-introductions to Guinea Simcoe Grand Gedeh Lofa Grand Kru Maryland 0 37.5 75 150 Kilometers N S W E Map 2 Routes of EVD spread in Liberia (source: adapted from J.T. Ladner et al. (2015). “Evolution and Spread of Ebola Virus in Liberia 2014–2015,” Cell Host and Microbe, 18, 6 (December): 659–669)
- 15. Kambia Port Loko Western Area Moyamba Bonth Pujehun Bo Kenema Kailahun Kono Tonkolili Koinadugu Bombali 0 25 50 100 Kilometers N S W E Map 3 Routes of EVD spread in Sierra Leone (source: adapted from W. Yang et al. (2015). “Transmission Network of 2014–2015 Ebola Epidemic in Sierra Leone,” Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 12, 112: 20150536)
- 17. INTRODUCTION: UNDERSTANDING WEST AFRICA’S EBOLA EPIDEMIC Ebola: an unknown enemy? Between 2013 and 2016, the inhabitants of the three Mano River Union (MRU) countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and to a lesser extent, Guinea, relived a familiar nightmare. Like in the early 1990s, they were gripped with a pervasive sense of fear, insecurity, and uncertainty as they confronted a wily, ruthless, and seemingly unstoppable enemy. Initially, much was unknown about the path- ways through which this enemy spread and attacked its victims. But, unlike the rebels and renegade soldiers of the recent past, this was an invisible enemy, and a completely unfamiliar one. Those at the forefront of the war against this unfathomable enemy – doctors, health care, and traditional healers – were at a loss and were either dying or being debilitated by it. People, therefore, filled their lack of knowledge about this enemy and its afflictions with myths, rumors, and innuendos (Epstein 2014). What was this enemy that not only snatches the life out of people in debilitating ways, but also makes pariahs out of individuals, communities, and whole countries? We now know that this enemy was scientifically identified in March 2014 through samples sent to European laboratories by the Guinean government as Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). EVD, previ- ously known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever (EHF), is a zoonosis; a disease caused by the spread of the Zaire ebolavirus (EBOV) from wild animals to humans, and then transmitted from person to person. EBOV is one of the five known subspecies of ebolavirus, the other four being Bundibugyo ebolavirus (BDBV), Sudan ebolavirus (SUDV), Taï Forest ebolavirus (TAFV), and Reston ebolavirus (RESTV). EVD, which takes between two to twenty-one days to incubate in humans, generates amongst many other symptoms: fever, muscle pains, vom- iting, diarrhea, and in some instances, serious internal and exter- nal bleeding. EVD symptoms can be difficult to distinguish from malaria and typhoid, diseases prevalent in the MRU sub-region. The confirmation of EVD needs to be done using tests such as a
- 18. 2 | introduction reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay, an antibody-capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), or virus isolation through cell culture.1 EVD spreads through the contact with bodily fluids, secretions, and blood of infected people. Stopping the transmission of the virus entails avoiding contact with fluids and secretions from an infected person or materials on which they are present. Death rates from the disease have varied widely from 25 to 95 percent in past outbreaks. The case fatality rate from the MRU epidemic was less than 50 percent. Even though a range of therapies is being developed, there is no cure for EVD, but early detection and the provision of palliative care, in particular oral rehy- dration, improves an infected person’s chances of survival.2 When EBOV first emerged in the MRU sub-region, it may have been an unknown quantity for governments and inhabitants of the sub-region, but four decades of outbreaks in East and Central Africa have enabled virologists, geneticists, and epidemiologists to produce considerable knowledge about the virus and the disease it causes (Kangoy et al. 2006). From 1976, when the first incidence of EBOV was recorded, this growing library of knowledge (Ballabeni and Boggio 2015; Olinjnyk 2015) and field experience of dealing with ebolaviruses have ensured that outbreaks were usually stopped within seven months. EHFEVD has historically been a rural disease, except for two outbreaks: the first in 1995 in Kikwit, a city in south- western Democratic Republic of Congo and the 2000 to 2001 out- break in Gulu, a city in northern Uganda. Both outbreaks were brought under control within seven months (Muyembe-Tamfum et al. 1999; Lamunu et al. 2004; Mbonye et al. 2014). The EVD outbreak in the MRU area fully traversed the rural and the urban divide, becoming the first epidemic of its kind. The responsibility for responding to outbreaks of infectious diseases like EVD is shared by national governments, regional health agencies, and international organizations (WHO 2008). The communication and cooperation between these parties have been vital in containing previous outbreaks of EHF/EVD. The failure of communication, cooperation, and action in the MRU epidemic underlies some of the core questions of this anthology: Why, in this era of globalization, ubiquitous information, and super-fast communication, was the accumulated knowledge and expertise around EVD not quickly utilized in the case of the MRU countries?
- 19. introduction | 3 Why were local communities, the national public health systems, and governments in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia unable to respond effectively to the spread of the outbreak? Why did international organizations, especially the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Médecins San Frontières (MSF), which had been instrumental and relatively successful in curtailing previous outbreaks, fail to contain the initial outbreak in late 2013 and early 2014? What did it take to get the MRU governments, the international organizations, and the international community in general to respond more strongly to the epidemic? How did the EVD outbreak of 2013–2015 become the largest, most widespread and deadliest in history, infecting more than 28,616 and killing 11,310 people?3 What was it about the MRU EVD outbreak that was different? The starting point, perhaps, should be the frank acknowledgement that despite the publication of hundreds of scientific articles, there are still significant gaps in our knowledge of filoviruses, included that of Zaire ebolavirus. For example, the actual wild animal reservoir of the Zaire ebolavirus in Africa remains a mystery, despite the detection of the virus’s presence in a wide range of dead or sick forest animals and its antigens in fruit bats (Porrut et al. 2005; Groseth et al. 2007). Up to this moment, there is no clear scientific evidence or indisput- able explanation of how EBOV moved from wild animals to humans in the MRU sub-region. This lack of concrete knowledge about the real animal reservoir, the fact that previous outbreaks have largely been confined to Central and East Africa, and ongoing US Defense Department-sponsored bioterrorism viral research in the sub-region, raises the first set of puzzling questions that this anthology flags up (Campbell 2014; Kamara 2016). In Chapter 2 of this anthology, Chernoh Bah, in his incisive critique of the findings of the German scientific team which identified a two-year child in Meliandou as the index case of EBOV in West Africa, foregrounds some of the still puzzling questions about the origin of the disease in the MRU sub-region. Why has the infelicitous conclusion of the German research team on the origin of the Ebola Virus Outbreak in West Africa been accepted so widely and uncritically? Why was it so certain that the two-year- old Guinean, later revealed to be Emile Ouamouno, was the index case of the outbreak? How did they arrive at the conclusion that
- 20. 4 | introduction the Ebola Virus Disease outbreak in Guinea could be traced to zoonotic causes even though it did not find evidence of the virus in the surrounding animal population? Bah’s questions, which also find resonance in Bano Barry’s discussion in Chapter 3 of the two theories of the origins of the disease, cannot be simply dismissed as the unsophisticated speculations of conspiracy theorists. These questions demand straightforward, transparent responses from the Western institutions and scientists engaged in research in the region, which can enable people to come to terms with the catastrophe and its traumatic legacy. MRU, regionalism, and Ebola The first overarching analytical approach that this anthology adopts is a sub-regional one, using the MRU as a unified and coherent spatial framework of analysis. Even though EVD appeared in Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, the UK, Italy, the United States, and Spain in late 2014, it was essentially an epidemic of the three core countries of the MRU.4 Indeed, it could be argued that EVD, through its transmission chains, infections, and outbreaks, mapped out the basic spatial, political, and historical framework within which it should first be analyzed. It was tragic that the governments of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia only belatedly realized the spatial dynamics in the spread of the epidemic, and the need for a concerted sub-regional approach.5 By the end of 2014 and early 2015, their actions to contain the outbreak began to mirror each other, and it was evident lessons were being learned and experiences shared. That EVD fanned out in chains of transmission from communities in the forested border zone of the three countries should not be surprising given the deep historical, ethnic, economic, and cultural connections between communities in the three countries. As Allen Howard posits in the first chapter of this volume, Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone constitute a single region with complementary ecologies, which has been integrated from the nineteenth century onwards by socio-cultural commonalities, flows of people and ideas, and commercial and socials exchanges. Howard draws attention to the similar historical processes – enslavement and slave trading, imperialism, and colonization – that have strongly influenced the developmental trajectories of peoples and their communities in this sub-region. Though Liberia remained
- 21. introduction | 5 nominally independent, its politics and economics had similar features to French-colonized Guinea and British-colonized Sierra Leone. All of the three countries had export-driven economies dominated by mineral and cash crops, with insufficient food crop production. The post-independence trajectories of the three MRU countries have not been radically different, despite the slight variations in the political posturing that they adopted in the 1960s and 1970s, with Guinea being closer to the Soviet bloc, Liberia to the US, and Sierra Leone oscillating in between. Howard points out that all three of the countries experienced deepening rural impoverishment, burgeoning youth population, rapid growth of cities and urban slums, and high incidences of urban unemployment. They had also fallen prey to dictatorship, unbridled corruption, and recurrent military coups by the mid-1990s. These developments produced widespread distrust of government, youth disengagement and rebellion, and lack of popular participation. Harsh structural adjustment programs (SAP), imposed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) on virtually every African country from the 1980s onwards, exacerbated the post-independence turmoil in the MRU sub-region. In Guinea, these developments resulted in an unstable political system characterized by periodic civil violence, while in Sierra Leone and Liberia they were partly responsible for triggering destructive wars, which displaced large numbers of people across the three countries and further afield. Billions of dollars and thousands of ECOWAS, and later UN peacekeeping troops had to be deployed to establish peace and security in the sub-region. The UN intervention in Sierra Leone and Liberia did not interrupt the neoliberalization of state, economy, and society in the MRU region; if anything, it deepened it through the governance, security sector reform programs, poverty reduction strategy programs, privatization, and civil society reform projects that it supported in partnership with the World Bank, IMF, and major Western donor countries. Much has been made of the democratic progress and the positive GDP growth rates of the three countries in recent years, yet high levels of impoverishment, social alienation, and elite misrule have persisted. When the EVD struck in 2013, the sub-region was still wrestling with the contradictions of neoliberal restructuring.
- 22. 6 | introduction The neoliberal affliction: different countries, similar convulsions Neoliberalism provides the second overarching analytical frame- work utilized in this volume. Understanding the transformation of EVD into a regional epidemic is not simply a scientific and medical matter; it is also about uncovering how governance, management of public health, resources, and ultimately human agency at local, national, and international levels intersected in dealing with the epi- demic. In short, it is about understanding how the political economy of neoliberal restructuring of the MRU sub-region is implicated in the outbreak, spread, and eventual containment of the disease. Ebola was not simply a deadly viral disease; it was the manifestation of neo- liberalism as an affliction, which wreaks havoc in the world’s most vulnerable societies. The contributors to this volume are aware that “neoliberalism” is a much bandied and catch-all term used by schol- ars and activists to contest, critique, and organize against aspects of, or the totality of contemporary capitalism. Neoliberalism in this anthology refers to “new political, economic, and social arrangements within society that emphasize market relations, re-tasking the role of the state, and individual responsibility” (Springer et al. 2016, 2). Emerging in the post-Second World War period and gaining ascendancy in the Washington Consensus of 1989, neoliberalism refers to a set of ideological assumptions, policy prescriptions, programs, and practices of how capitalist economic development should be conceptualized in relation to state authority, and how politics and society at all levels should be subjected to market forces. Of particular efficacy in this anthology is the conception of neoliberalism as governmentality (Peters 2001), the process by which the state and, to some extent, international agencies are limited in their power and ability to intervene in economics and society or are made to do so through the rubric of public private partnerships (PPP). For the MRU states, neoliberalism arrived with the World Bank and IMF-imposed structural adjustment programs of the 1980s, and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) at the dawn of a new millennium. Neoliberal reforms have tended to deepen rather than ameliorate the structural legacies of historical violence and postcolonial authoritarianism in Africa. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 of this volume deal specifically with how the crisis of neoliberalism has played out in each of the three EVD-affected MRU states. The approaches
- 23. introduction | 7 adopted by our contributors differ from country to country, but not because of their different academic disciplines. The different perspectives adopted by our contributors underline the similarities that characterized the three countries: the emphasis on the peripheral capitalist state by George Kieh in Liberia could be applied to explain the situation in both Guinea and Sierra Leone. Similarly the empirical focus adopted by Ibrahim Abdullah and Abou Bakarr Kamara, concentrating on the analysis of health infrastructure, inadequate drugs and facilities, and lack of personnel, could also be employed to make sense of what happened in both Guinea and Liberia. Lastly, Bano Barry’s sociological examination of state–society relations and popular repertoire in the time of Ebola is also efficacious in making sense of the damage wrought by EVD in both Liberia and Sierra Leone. Whether we are talking about broken health infrastructure and inadequate drugs or lack of qualified personnel, the role of the peripheral capitalist state in failing to meet the needs of the people needs to be explained. The reluctance or suspicion of citizens about going to the hospital, a place that they rarely ever visit, raises serious questions not only about the nature of health facilities in the MRU sub-region, but who gets to visit them, why, and when. The chapter by Barry deals with a collapsed and compromised Guinean health infrastructure confronting a deadly virus in a context of intense multi-party competition in an environment with deep- seated political and ethnic cleavages. Unlike Liberia and Sierra Leone, where the epidemic engulfed the entire country, Guinean officials were able to contain the EVD largely within their Forestiere and Maritime regions, with certain portions of Moyenne and Haute regions remaining untouched by the disease. Barry explains how this containment played out in Guinea, which had a relatively low EVD infection rate and death toll.6 As in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the broken health infrastructure, lack of qualified officials, inadequate drugs, and a total disconnect between state and society underlines the Ebola moment and the eventual containment of the disease. What Barry documents as having played out in Guinea is not too dissimilar from the circumstances in Liberia and Sierra Leone: there was lack of information at the initial stage of the disease; partisan battles over so-called “sensitization”; and local cultures that were suspicious of health facilities, modern medicine, and its remedies. It is in making sense of the popular reaction – refusal to seek medical
- 24. 8 | introduction help; the need for community mobilization and its total involvement in tackling the disease; and the yanking of loved ones from a community when they fall sick and eventually die – that the chasm between the people and the state becomes evident. As in Sierra Leone, while people were dying, others were busy accessing funding for so- called sensitization. Decades of disconnect and top-down interaction between the people and health/state officials did not go away, even in the face of a national emergency that demanded trust on both sides. Barry neither dismisses nor unduly mystifies cultural practices – especially those pertaining to burial practices during the epidemic; instead, he emphasizes how they emblematized a deep distrust of the region’s elite and outsiders. This lack of trust, a product of the years of alienation, made the fight against Ebola much more difficult than it could have been. The chapter by Kieh on Liberia maps out the politics of a peripheral capitalist state that is programmed not to perform. Why this should be the case is tied up with the predatory politics of accumulation which makes it impossible for the state to perform qua state. Kieh traces the history of the state from its settler origin in the nineteenth century to its contemporary transformation into a liberal democratic project anchored in neoliberal market principles. As Kieh noted, there was no mechanism to deal with any medical emergency nor was there any institution designed to tackle anything close to an Ebola epidemic. Since the state was not designed to cater for the bulk of its citizens, it had to perforce turn to external forces at the first sign of a major crisis. Abdullah and Kamara’s empirical analysis of the decrepit state of health facilities in Sierra Leone, despite several reform efforts, is emblematic of the state of public health not only in the MRU region, but also in many parts of Africa. Like Liberia, Sierra Leone was recovering from a destructive rebel war that had virtually wrecked an already declining and dysfunctional health infrastructure. The infrastructure and new health initiatives had barely been cobbled together when EVD struck in 2014. With only one specialist in the area of haemorrhagic fever, who unfortunately perished as the disease engulfed the nation, Sierra Leone was left to face Ebola literally with bare hands. EVD was not simply about the lack of functional health facilities; it was also a case of the bulk of the population being cut off from access to modern public health services: 70 percent of
- 25. introduction | 9 the qualified medical officers and most of the health facilities were bunched in the Western Area of the country where the capital, Freetown, is located and where 21 percent of the population resides. The situation was eerily similar in Guinea and Liberia. Development, gender, and its discontents Whether viewed through the prism of the predatory peripheral capitalist state, dysfunctional public health facilities, or social alienation and suspicion of officialdom and modern medical practices, the EVD epidemic points to a continuing production of particularly deadly forms of structural violence rooted in the region’s past as well as its present trajectory. Even international efforts to remake the Liberia and Sierra Leonean states, including their health care infrastructure, through international assistance have not broken this cycle of structural violence or public mistrust. As Julia Amos points out in Chapter 6, the militarization of post-war international development assistance, and the response to the EVD epidemic by the UK, the United States, and France have reinforced this violence and mistrust. She argues for a non-securitized and welfare-orientated approach to development and crisis that enables citizens in countries like Sierra Leone to trust those that govern them. As the impact of EVD on women in Sierra Leone and the other MRU countries demonstrates, such trust is difficult to forge amidst deep-seated cultural, economic, and political inequalities. Aisha Fofana Ibrahim’s chapter on gender performance addresses some of the structural inequalities that were played out when Ebola struck. She argues that the gendered structural inequalities, which were reproduced in the context of the Ebola scourge, are an indictment of the post-colonial state. Her analysis goes beyond the epidemiological data, which shows that EVD roughly infected and killed men and women in similar proportions, to mapping out the deep and unacknowledged ways in which the epidemic affected women because of their gender, place, and roles in society. The relegation of women to second-class citizens in society together with their invention as vectors of culture, and “natural caregivers,” placed them in the first line of the defense in the war against Ebola. As caregivers they nursed the sick, in community and the nation, with their bare hands, at a time when knowledge of the disease was hard to come by. As survivors they had to deal
- 26. 10 | introduction with the social abuse of stigmatization and exclusion as well as loss of livelihood as hairdressers, market women, sex-workers, or petty traders. The testimonies of women survivors from Kenema and Kailahun – the original epicenters – and Bombali and Port Loko – the later epicenters – are pointers to the multiple performances of gender in the death and destruction that characterized the Ebola epidemic. Much of Fofana’s incisive observations and arguments have not made their way into the post-Ebola conversation. Nonetheless, she maps out unequivocally the need to privilege the voices, experiences, and interests of women in any post-Ebola restructuring in Sierra Leone and the two other MRU countries. For the neoliberal regimes of the MRU, the tragedy of the EVD epidemic provided cover for corruption, containing dissent, and polit- ical entrenchment. However, in order to make sense of the tragedy, to challenge the official narrative from above, and to hold those in power accountable, a networked community of activists emerged in cyber-space. In Chapter 8 of this volume, Ibrahim Abdullah exam- ines the making of a networked movement in cyber space, anchored in the use of WhatsApp as the medium of communication and choice. Transgressive communication under a state of emergency pooled in activists from all sectors: all were seemingly concerned with change broadly defined and the defense of the liberal principle of freedom of expression. The exclusivity and unfettered security that cyber activ- ists had online made it possible for them to engage in the sharing of information and incendiary conversation, without interference from state officials and security agents. From parody to outright satire and lampoon to the use of video and audio clips, that occasionally go viral, cyber activists questioned state officials in all they did in the war against Ebola. This transgressive mode of engagement did not cease after the end of the epidemic. On the contrary, cyber activists stepped up their campaign with the establishment of more trans- continental WhatsApp groups stoutly defending their right to freedom of expression in cyber-space. Transnational actors and the politics of crisis response By August 2014, the three MRU countries had to rely on massive external assistance to contain the Ebola virus, and finally to bring the unprecedented epidemic to an end. As in the case of the responses of MRU governments, EVD exposed how the contradictions
- 27. introduction | 11 of neoliberalism shaped the responses of various transnational actors to the epidemic. Except for a few organizations, all the major transnational actors who could have helped nip the initial EVD outbreak in the bud in 2013 vacillated until it had become a raging sub-regional epidemic in late 2014. Until August 2014, the contradictory impulse, especially of high-income countries, to benefit from the profitable unfettered circulation of resources within a grossly unequal global economic system, while trying to curtail its undesirable consequences, was evident in the international attitude towards MRU countries. Nearly all of the major airlines and shipping lines stopped going to the affected countries. The wealthier actors in the international community only devoted significant financial, material, and human resources to stopping the EVD epidemic when it threatened to turn into a pandemic and had generated a sub- regional humanitarian crisis.7 Even the description of the situation in the MRU sub-region had to be couched in highly securitized language to elicit international attention. Like the governments of the MRU states, the international com- munity also failed the people of the MRU sub-region spectacularly. By April 2014, the major organizations responsible for respond- ing to the outbreak of infectious diseases, WHO and CDC, knew about the outbreak. So did the pan-African regional and continental organizations, ECOWAS and AU, the major financial institutions, the World Bank, IMF, and the African Development Bank (ADB), and leading Western countries, including the United States, UK, and France. WHO, in particular, has been harshly criticized for its initial tardiness and lack of decisive action. Meredeth Turshen and Tefera Gezmu consider this critique of the international response to the epidemic, especially that of WHO, which should have been the leading responder to the initial outbreak. Though informed of the EVD outbreak at the end of March 2014, WHO did not declare an international public health emergency or take decisive actions until August 2014. While not completely dismissing the widespread cri- tique of WHO, Turshen and Gezmu point out that the organization is primarily designed to provide technical advice, not services. Most important, they maintain that the performance of WHO should be situated within the recent history of neoliberal budgetary constraints that were placed on the organization, which have enabled major donors to dictate its priorities. They argue that given the important
- 28. 12 | introduction role that the organization plays in the improvement of public health around the globe, high-income countries should increase their con- tribution to its regular budget. The African response to the EVD epidemic also suffered from serious financial constraints. As a consequence, it demonstrated the gap between decades of aspirations and rhetoric about continental solidarity and integration, and the ability to operationalize them in a context in which regional and continental organizations were heavily dependent on the largesse of Western donors. To its credit, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was one of the first international organizations to recognize the gravity of the unfolding Ebola crisis in the MRU, and to declare it a threat to regional security by March 2014. The African Union (AU) would also echo the security concern of ECOWAS. Within the still shaky framework of subsidiarity and complementarity, the two organizations tried to mobilize the necessary financial, material, and human resources to end the epidemic and to support the affected countries. The AU created the African Union Support to Ebola Outbreak in West Africa (ASEOWA), an unprecedented civilian–military mission, to help in the containment of the epidemic. According to Semiha Abdulmelik, however, these efforts continued to be embedded in, and mediated by an international political economy and architecture of humanitarian responses to “crisis” in Africa. While the EVD epidemic did constitute a serious “human secu- rity” challenge, the extent to which it was a “hard” security threat to regimes in West Africa, Africa, or any Western nation is debatable. Nonetheless, as Fodei Batty points out in Chapter 11, the specter of a global Ebola contagion emanating from West Africa did offer an opportunity to see US relations with the region in action. The United States pledged over US$500 million to the response, and sent nearly 3,000 troops and medical personnel to Liberia. Looking closely at the media, debates, and legislation in Congress, and pro- nouncements by President Barack Obama, Batty argues that the efforts in Washington DC to stop Ebola in West Africa went beyond humanitarian intervention to addressing the shared consequences of global inequities. The humanitarian and largely militarized US response, along with those of France and the UK, should be situated within the broader framework of the massive international response from August 2014 to
- 29. introduction | 13 contain the epidemic. Anchoring this massive international response was the unprecedented UN deployment of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) for ten months in the MRU region. The creation and deployment of this mission, according to Ismail Rashid, is recognition of the initial failure of WHO on the part of the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and the recognition that the organization had invested considerable resources and energy to ensure peace and stability in the MRU region. Driven by security logic, UNMEER and the international responses against Ebola were conducted in militaristic fashion, with strong martial undertones in the language, strategy, and tactics that were used (Kamara 2016). With the disappearance of the now known enemy into its deep and yet unfathomable wildlife recesses, the people of the MRU are left to grapple with the traumatic legacy and lingering questions of the EVD epidemic. We will never know exactly how many got infected, died, and fully recovered from EVD. We will probably never know why some people recovered and others did not. A numbers game pitting the deaths from the epidemic against infant mortality, malaria, and other diseases, which are much higher annually, will not take us anywhere. The crudely numbered graves behind an Ebola Treatment Center in Nzerekore, Guinea, and the rude crosses at Disco Hill graveyard in Monrovia, Liberia evoked an intense, public calamity that is not comprehensible on a quantitative scale. We are still trying to understand the lingering medical impact of EVD on survivors, and the continuing presence of the Ebola virus in breast milk, semen, and intraocular fluids of survivors. As Aisha Fofana underlines in her contribution to this volume, the region still has to reckon with the social cost, especially the impact on women, of EVD. From early 2015, there have been the usual raft of conferences, meetings, and commitment of resources to the rebuilding of health infrastructure of the MRU countries, but we will not know how robust these efforts are until the next crisis. However, EVD has not left the MRU region with simply trauma, tragedy, and new questions, it has suggested possibilities of incul- cating new forms of knowledge and techniques to tackle unfamil- iar diseases. It has also, perhaps, widened the spectrum of political contestation in the region that is a source of trepidation for MRU governments. As Abdullah points out in his chapter, there is already
- 30. 14 | introduction evidence that the prevalence and dominance of cyber activism in the public sphere is provoking a strident official response from above. Some Sierra Leonean officials are already calling for a policy option along the lines of the Chinese government, enforcing total control of cyberspace. Others want to explore the use of technology to fish out those Sierra Leoneans that are covertly political. Whatever option is finally adopted, it is clear that the battle for freedom of expression in cyber-space may well determine the future of social movements in contemporary Sierra Leone as the country prepares for its fourth post-war elections in 2018. Notes 1 See Ebola Virus Disease Fact Sheet. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/ factsheets/fs103/en/ (last accessed on October 24, 2016). 2 In December 2016, WHO and The Lancet reported that an experimental vaccine, rVSV-ZEBOV, offered protection against Ebola (see Henao- Restrepo et al. 2017), and “Final trial results confirm Ebola vaccine provides high protection against disease” (http:// www.who.int/mediacentre/news/ releases/2016/ebola-vaccine-results/en/, last accessed February 6, 2017). 3 These figures based on actual, suspected, and probable cases of the disease continued to be refined by the World Health Organization. http://www. who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/ en/ (last accessed October 24, 2016). 4 Côte D’Ivoire, the fourth member country and the last to join the MRU in 2008, was untouched throughout the epidemic; not a single case was recorded. 5 Well over a year after the EVD outbreak had started, the presidents of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia together with the Director-General of WHO met on August 1, 2014 to discuss experiences and coordinate their response strategies. 6 Guinea, where the EVD outbreak was first identified, reported at the end of the epidemic in 2016 the lowest number of infections, 3,804, and deaths, 2,536 of the three MRU countries. Liberia has 10,666 infections, and 4,806 deaths, and Sierra Leone, 14,122 infections and 3,955 deaths. 7 The US intervention and concern even in post-Ebola remained anchored on global security. See US documents on post-Ebola projects. References Ballabeni, A. and Boggio, A. (2015). “Publications in PubMed on Ebola and the 2014 Outbreak,” F1000Research, 4: 68. Campbell, Horace (2014). “Ebola, the African Union, and Bioeconomic Warfare,” Counterpunch, October 10. Epstein, Helen (2014). “Ebola in Liberia: An Epidemic of Rumors,” The New York Review of Books, December 18. Groseth, Allison, Feldmann, Heinz, and Strong, James E. (2007). “The Ecology of Ebola Virus,” Trends in
- 31. introduction | 15 Microbiology, 15, 9 (September): 408–416. Henao-Restrepo, A. et al. (2017). “Efficacy and Effectiveness of an rVSV-vectored Vaccine in Preventing Ebola Virus Disease: Final Results from the Guinea Ring Vaccination, Open-label, Cluster- randomised Trial (Ebola ça suffit!),” The Lancet, 389, 10068: 508–518. Kamara, Kewulay (2016). “Ebola: In Search of a Metaphor,” Futures, June. Kangoy, Aurielie Kasnagye, Muloye, Guy Mutangala, Avevor, Patrick Mawupemor, and Shixue, Li (2016). “Review of Past and Present Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever Outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo 1976–2014,” African Journal of Infectious Disease, 10, 1: 38–42. Lamunu, M., Lutwama, J.J., Kamugisha, J., Opio, A., Nambooze, J., Ndayimirije, N., and Okware, S. (2004). “Containing a Haemorrhagic Fever Epidemic: The Ebola Experience in Uganda (October 2000–January 2001),” International Journal of Infectious Diseases, 8: 27–37. Mbonye, A.K., Wamala, J.F., Nanyunja, M., Opio, A., Makumbi, I., Aceng, J.R. (2014). “Ebola Viral Hemorrhagic Disease Outbreak in West Africa: Lessons from Uganda,” African Health Sciences, 14, 3: 495–501. Muyembe-Tamfum, J.J, Kipasa, M., Kiyungu, R., and Coleblunders, R. (1999) “Ebola Outbreak in Kikwit, Democratic Republic of Congo: Discovery and Control Measures,” Journal of Infectious Diseases, 179: S252–S262. Olinjnyk, Nicholas V. (2015) “An Algorithmic Historiography of Ebola Research Specialty: Mapping the Science behind Ebola,” Scientometrics, 105 (October): 623–643. Peters, Michael A. (2001). Poststructuralism, Marxism, and Neoliberalism: Between Theory and Politics. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Little. Pourrut, Xavier, Kumulungui, Brice, Wittmann, Tatiana, Moussavou, Ghislain, Délicat, André, Yaba, Philippe, Nkoghe, Dieudonné, Gonzalez, Jean-Paul, and Leroy, Eric Maurice (2005). “The Natural History of Ebola Virus in Africa,” Microbes and Infection, 7, 7–8 (June): 1005–1014. Springer, S., Birch, K., and MacLeavy, J. (eds) (2016). The Routledge Handbook of Neoliberalism. Abingdon: Routledge. World Health Organization (2008). International Health Regulations (2005), 2nd ed. Geneva: WHO.
- 33. 1 | EBOLA AND REGIONAL HISTORY: CONNECTIONS AND COMMON EXPERIENCES Allen M. Howard1 Introduction It is not surprising that the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) spread fairly rapidly and easily among Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, or the countries faced similar difficulties responding to it. They long have constituted a region in several respects.2 Four points emerge from a regional approach. Their similar histories – especially their histories of extractive economies and structural poverty, foreign intervention, colonial rule, patrimonial regimes, and, in the two cases of Liberia and Sierra Leone, civil wars – made each state ill prepared to address the Ebola crisis. Structural poverty grew out of the Atlantic slave trade, commodity trade, and other global economic relationships. On top of the impacts of long-existing extractive economies, all countries had by 2014 further depleted their educational and health systems because of externally imposed cuts in public spending (through Structural Adjustment Programs) and predatory and military regimes that drained national treasures. Together, those factors led to widespread distrust of government and youth disengagement and rebellion. Second, the three countries long have been and today are integrated by complexly ramifying social, economic, and cultural networks (nodes plus flows) that link individuals, places, communities, and institutions, facilitating communication and providing a basis for coordinated action. Third, in addition to their networks, peoples’ patterns of movement within the region may help account for how the disease spread and how information was disseminated, while their history of social struggles may help explain how people at the grassroots level organized to combat the disease and overcome divisions. Finally, many factors suggest that future delivery of health services and responses to epidemic disease could be organized more efficiently with a regional approach – as could preparation for the challenges of climate change.
- 34. 20 | one Yet, deep skill reservoirs exist throughout the region, and energy rises from below. Over the past 200 or more years, people through- out the region have resisted foreign oppression and struggled against internal structures of domination. And they have debated and created alternatives. Today, women’s, youth, and environmental organiza- tions dedicated to building a better future have launched projects that might serve as local and regional models to other communities and build new linkages among people of the three countries. They often generate imaginative ideas, political pressure, and alternative forms of action that complement and challenge the efforts of officials and health workers. This chapter also poses questions that build upon the structural analysis provided here – and provides some speculations. I was prompted to write after attending a panel at the 2014 African Studies Association Annual Meeting in Indianapolis.3 The panelists were experts on Ebola with field stays in the region. I asked them how historians, geographers, and other scholars of the humanities and social sciences might contribute background research that would help them address the crisis. They had no suggestions and wanted to know about concrete things that would enable their day-to-day work, such as how people in the region handled bodies of the deceased. While it is totally understandable why field workers would want information directly useful in their frontline campaign against EVD, I thought a deeper and wider background would also be valuable in both short- and long-term struggles against Ebola and other diseases. Pre-colonial commonalities and integration: continuities Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia lie within an area where rainfall averages 1,500 mm (59 inches) per year, or more (Brooks 1993, 13). They all contain both lowland rain forests and drier highlands, but the environmental gradient has meant that historically forest covered a great share of Liberia, and a much smaller portion of Guinea, with Sierra Leone in between.4 Futa Jallon and the Guinea Highlands are the sources of rivers that cut through all three en route to the Atlantic (Clarke 1966, 12–13). Each year rainfall patterns into a wet season and a dry season with the interior areas having a shorter period of rainfall. In the pre-colonial past, the region was socially, culturally, and politically dynamic. People were affected by many of the same forces
- 35. howard | 21 of change and had similar, though not identical, beliefs and practices, many of which continue today in modified form. People did (and do) speak languages from the Mande, West Atlantic (Fula or Pular and Mel), and Kruan groups (Brooks 1993, 27–33). Within each group there is considerable but not full inter-intelligibility. Because of migration, trade, and social inter-mixing, many people learned and still learn languages of different groups. Thus, Krio became the lingua franca of much of Sierra Leone in the twentieth century. Age initiation associations were widespread, as were masking arts. In the deep past, the male Poro power association and its variants had spread over much of the region (Brooks 1993, 43 ff.).5 Comparable female associations, especially Bondo and Sande, also have been long present. Masking arts are renowned, and people have created and shared rich dancing, singing, story-telling, and genealogical practices. People freed from slave ships in Sierra Leone, especially Yoruba- speakers, also have introduced beliefs, social practices, rituals, and associations, as well as masking and dancing practices, which have been borrowed by others (Cole 2013, 32–45, 155–163; Lamp 1996; Nunley 1987; Wyse 1989, 9–14). The geographic distribution of languages seems to have been relatively stable over many centuries, but that does not mean that “ethnicity” or “ethnic” identity, however defined, has either coincided with language or remained stable. Though recent political leaders often have played up “ethnic” differences, “ethnic” lines have been fluid and blurred historically (Howard 1999, 13–40). Today, a great many people, perhaps most, have “ethnically” diverse ancestry and often live in “ethnically” varied households, especially in towns and cities (Harrell-Bond et al. 1978, 320–332 ff.; Cole 2013, 45–51). Islam and Christianity have spread widely. The former has been established over many centuries through the influence of migrating Muslim traders and clerics, and through state-building, reformist, and expansionary movements (Barry 1998; Person 1968, 1015– 1141; Skinner 1976). Christianity has been present along the Upper Guinea coast since the fifteenth century, but in its current forms is a nineteenth-centuryarrival,havingbeenintroducedand/orpropagated by missionaries, repatriated and liberated Sierra Leoneans, and Americo-Liberians (Coifman 1994; Fyfe 1962; Wyse 1989, 33–39). The region long has had highly trained clerics and scholars of both “world” faiths, especially of Islam.
- 36. 22 | one Nowadays, most people in the region claim to be members of a “universal” faith. One report states that Christians make up 86 percent of Liberians, about 21 percent of those in Sierra Leone, and 11 percent of Guineans, while, conversely, about 84 percent of those in Guinea and 78 percent in Sierra Leone are Muslims.6 Such statistics fail to consider the strength of “indigenous” beliefs and practices, especially around healing and sacred places. Syncretism is widespread, and many have blended “universal” religions with “indigenous” beliefs and practices around naming, remembrance of the deceased, and so on (Cole 2013, 180–209; Ellis 2007, 220–280; Skinner 1976; Wyse 1989, 33–59 ff.). Despite religious chauvinism in some circles, people tend to be tolerant of religious difference. Like religion, food, above all rice, has provided a shared set of deep beliefs and practices around which many people of the region might come together (Fanthorpe 1998). Rice historically has been the staple food crop for most (Currens 1979; Njoku 1979: 105 ff.). People tended and cultivated tree crops. Palm trees have been universally present in the lowlands and its margins, and palm oil has provided a nutritious base for soups with leaves and meat or fish (Holsoe 1979). Kola trees were scattered widely and dense stands were found around the lower Moa and Scarcies Rivers (Brooks 1993, 24; Howard 2007). In the drier uplands people raised cattle, most notably in Futa Jallon, where from the eighteenth century on large herds supported a hierarchical social order. Goats and sheep were kept by farming families nearly everywhere. In the pre-colonial era, farmers, authorities, and traders organized exchange across the coastal, lowland, and inland zones of the region. Gold, mainly from Bure, circulated widely. The sea and coastal strip yielded fish and salt, the forest and its margin produced indigo, palm oil, and other products, especially kola, while the drier regions exported cattle, as well as shea butter and other things (Fyle 1979a; Fyle 1979b; Holsoe 1979, 66; Howard in preparation a). Women and men produced cloth, pottery, iron tools, jewelry, weapons, leather goods, wood carvings, and other manufactures for exchange (Holsoe 1979). Thus, although farming communities grew much of the food they needed and exchanged many things locally, a significant commerce existed within and across ecological zones. Traders also carried out an internal traffic in captives and other enslaved people, with Futa becoming a major recipient from the eighteenth century
- 37. howard | 23 onward. Finally, from the 1400s, traders and others sold ivory, gold, manufactures, woods, and other commodities to Europeans and Eurafricans on the coast. Once Atlantic demand for enslaved labor began to grow, and European, Eurafrican, and African traders along the coast organized to mediate that demand, the region became a supplier of captives. During the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries, the overseas human traffic remained small in scale, relative to other areas of Africa and to later regional exports. It nonetheless was very harmful to people who came under attack and was instrumental in the rise of new classes of power holders, both those who specialized in trade and those who claimed political titles and established family dynasties, some of Eurafrican ancestry (located in what later became Guinea and Sierra Leone) (Rodney 1970). Starting in the mid-1700s, shipments rose rapidly and reached their highest levels by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. On January 1, 1808, the British began their campaign for abolition of the slave trade, with Freetown as the primary base. Exports from places near the Sierra Leone peninsula stopped but they remained quite high for the region as a whole into the 1840s and were not finally ended until the early 1860s.7 The impacts upon security and social life were devastating, though not evenly felt throughout. Southeastern Liberia seems never to have become an important source of enslaved people, whereas areas raided by Futa Jallon were hit hard and lowland Sierra Leone and southwestern Guinea were deeply affected (Barry 1998; Misevich 2008; Howard in preparation a). Many sections of the region underwent a transformation of the kind described by Paul Lovejoy, as slave holding became widespread, slave gathering mechanisms were developed, and political leaders geared up to participate (Lovejoy 2000). Regional economies were weakened and skewed toward exporting. Enslaved Africans laboring on American plantations contributed significantly to the enrichment and industrialization of Britain, the United States, and other northern countries (Fields- Black 2008; Blackburn 1997, 510–580; Solow 1991). While the slave trade was stimulated by external demand, its organization in the region and often its impacts were connected with local and regional processes of social and political accumula- tion, power, and struggle (Howard in preparation a). Certain ruling groups, along with some other big men and women, professional war
- 38. 24 | one leaders, and traders built wealth, power, and influence through their participation in the slave trade (Rodney 1970; Mouser 1996). They also gained greater capacity to dominate those with fewer resources, especially those enslaved or otherwise under their patriarchal author- ity. The dominant classes, however, did not go unchallenged. Traders fought over control of towns; enslaved people and disgruntled wives took advantage of the presence of the colony and, later, European customs stations to escape (Howard in preparation a). States and decentralized polities organized to resist Futa Jallon (Barry 1998, 258–270; Hawthorne 2003). Enslaved people in Moria, now part of southeastern Guinea, and in nearby sections of contemporary Sierra Leone rose up against their masters, created Maroon settlements, and offered religious and other arguments against slavery (Mouser 1996; Mouser 2010; Rashid 2003). In the nineteenth century, internal slaving and slavery itself expanded, in part because those with means put enslaved people to work as producers (Howard 2006; Klein 1998). In this so-called “legitimate” trade era, large numbers of free and enslaved farmers grew, harvested, and, often, processed palm oil and kernels, peanuts, and other commodities. Overseas and African demand, especially for cattle, kola, and imports, promoted economic and ecological integration. Professional traders spanned much of the region, and countless small traders and farmers carried commodities to exchange points. In the second half of the nineteenth century, traders, commodities, and information flowed widely through the “Sierra Leone–Guinea System,” which comprised much of the upper Niger, southern Futa Jallon, and the highlands and plains of northwestern Sierra Leone and southeastern Guinea (Howard 1979). Traders also linked parts of interior Guinea and Liberia, and moved along coastal roads that ran from well north of what is now Conakry to near Monrovia. Various coastal areas, such as southeastern Sierra Leone, were tied into the world market (Hogg 2013). The integration that farmers, traders, and authorities forged involved protracted struggles over trade routes and sites of exchange (Howard 2003; Howard, in preparation a). The “colonial” era: regional similarities and variations People in all three countries experienced many commonalities in the era from 1900 to about 1960, with long lasting, often negative
- 39. howard | 25 impacts.Politically,non-democraticregimeswereestablished,andonly late in the period were there limited moves toward wider participatory government. It is often said that Liberia and Ethiopia were the only African countries not colonized. While that is true in important ways, it obscures two realities in the Liberian case. First, the US has been a dominant foreign power in Liberia from that country’s origins, and France and especially Britain have also exerted strong influence at times. Second the Americo-Liberian government based in Monrovia carried out an internal colonization of the hinterland, following a trajectory roughly parallel to that of the British in Sierra Leone and the French in Guinea. As one scholar has written: Liberia “was an active (albeit weaker) partner in the scramble for the hinterland. It made great efforts to demonstrate effective control in the hinterland territories it claimed” (Gershoni 1985, 35 ff.). All three conquered the interior, often with great brutality, and early on ruled autocratically through military officers (Abraham 1978; Barry 1998: 284–294; Denzer 1971; Ellis 2007: 208–209). All applied similar colonial techniques: defeating intransigent rulers, staging imperial events to demonstrate power, coopting “friendly chiefs” who ran patronage networks, dividing territory into administrative units headed by officers appointed from the center, and imposing taxes and forced labor.8 While there were certain differences in administrative methods, all three governed without democracy or popular participation, thus creating a model of top-down rule that carried over into the national period. In Liberia, the True Whig Party (TWP), run by a rather small group of Americo-Liberian elite men, had a monopoly of power from 1883 to 1980. Even though it was challenged on several occasions and coopted some from the majority, the TWP never undertook basic reforms and continued to run the country hierarchically (Dunn et al. 2001, 332–336). Because of the miniscule public treasury and the entrenchment of Americo-Liberians as district officers and county administrators, Liberia developed a particular form of administrative corruption while promoting tribalism. “Some district commissioners built personal fiefs in the hinterland by these means, accumulating money and private estate … In order to remain in power, they had to redistribute some of these resources through local patronage networks” (Ellis 2007, 214–215). Throughout the region as a whole, chiefs and other local authorities varied greatly in their qualities and ability to maneuver
- 40. 26 | one and create autonomous spheres, but everywhere administrators used pressure and incentives to maintain a hierarchical order. No matter how selected or appointed, chiefs had to act in ways acceptable to officials or risk being replaced. Many were corrupt, extracting labor and “customary” fees. In the words of Elizabeth Schmidt, [f]or most Guineans, canton chiefs personified the evils of colonial rule. Appointed by the colonial administration, they served as intermediaries between the government and the rural population. As agents of the state, they collected taxes, recruited involuntary labor and military conscripts, and enforced the mandatory rendering of cash crops. They also transmitted the orders of European administrators to the local populace. (Schmidt 2007, 17) In Liberia, senior government officials up to the president “manipulated the politics of chieftaincies … supporting the opposition to any chief who did not conform” (Ellis 2007, 215). In all three territories, the system of “chiefly authorities” maintained patriarchy and promoted tribalism. Cities and certain towns – especially those that were rail and administrative centers – grew during the “colonial era” and became the sites of most “modern” educational and health facilities and of wage or salary jobs – and thus magnets for youth. Capitals became primate cities where ruling groups, top-down institutions, headquarters of foreign firms, and salaried jobs were concentrated.9 Their populations grew to be several times larger than any other center. City dwellers developed a wide variety of social associations concerned with housing, jobs, recreation, and other aspects of life. Generally, urban schools provided a higher quality of education than rural schools. Rural literacy levels remained low, and, generally, education of girls lagged seriously behind that of boys (Ojukutu- Macauley 1997; Dunn 2011, 360). For the most part, the curriculums were not geared to building agricultural or technical expertise. All three countries developed export-oriented, extractive economies. Importing and exporting came to be dominated by large foreign firms, some the precursors of today’s multinational food corporations (Goerg 1986, 337–367). In Liberia, officials alienated nearly a million acres to the Firestone Rubber Company.
- 41. howard | 27 Although Firestone devoted only a small portion of that acreage to rubber production, the enclave, plantation model became dominant. From the late 1930s to the 1960s, rubber was the “largest single sector” of the Liberian economy (Dunn et al. 2001, 134–135, 284). Although some Americo-Liberians and chiefs gained wealth through ownership of small rubber plantations, rubber did not result in a diversified rural economy and over 80 percent of the population remained subsistence farmers. Sierra Leone developed a different model. Small farmers produced a wide variety of export crops – palm oil, palm kernels, peanuts, kola, ginger, coffee, cocoa, and rice. While palm was the leading export, Sierra Leone did not become as mono- cultural as many West African countries. Guinea was somewhat of a mix. African small farmers contributed a significant share of exports, while Europeans established plantations. Though their acquisitions were tiny compared with land alienation in Liberia, they grew crops in competition with African farmers and were favored by authorities. Traders who once had integrated complementary ecological zones were often thwarted or harassed after imperial rulers laid down territorial boundaries and enforced customs duties. What had once been normal commerce now was deemed punishable smuggling. Separate currencies, different legal systems, and incompatible laws further inhibited cross-border traffic. African traders countered by managing alternative commercial institutions and re-arranging their travel patterns and networks. Some of this re-orientation involved crossing colonial borders, for instance in the Kambia–Forekaria area (northeastern Sierra Leone–southeastern Guinea), and integrating new rail and administrative centers, for instance Mamou (Guinea) and Makeni (Sierra Leone). Thus Africans sought to sustain a wider commercial integration, while authorities opposed it (Howard 2014; Howard in preparation b). Whatever their differences, all three export- and revenue-oriented regimes failed to promote economic diversification and regional integration. While there was growth as measured by expanding exports, the economies did not develop in ways that raised the standard of living of the vast majority. Administrations neglected the crucial role of women in agriculture and did little to advance food production that drew on local knowledge. Research, extension services, and other support for small farmers received little funding. Officials emphasized rail and feeder roads, thus installing a dendritic
- 42. 28 | one system to channel export crops overseas and manufactures inland. Only late in the colonial era did attention turn toward creating a reticulated national transport system and improving the connections with neighboring territories. The Second World War increased pressures upon ordinary people in all territories. Freetown became a strategically critical convoy port enabling the Allies’ victory over the fascists. To handle the vast number of ships entering the harbor, tens of thousands of men and women flocked to the city, which doubled in size in less than two years. Laboring under extremely arduous conditions, dockworkers went on strike, building upon the militancy of the mine strikes of the late 1930s but also responding to the needs of city living (Howard 2015). In Guinea, both the Vichy regime and the Free French extracted forced labor and requisitioned crops to support their war efforts (Schmidt 2015). To escape such pressures, vast numbers of people fled their home districts: by the end of the war, “some 7,000 to 8,000 people had migrated from N’Zerekore circle … to Liberia, depopulating all of the frontier cantons” (Schmidt 2015, 452). Capital-intensive, foreign-owned mining began (in Sierra Leone) in the 1930s, and expanded during the war. By the early 1960s, each country was mineral dependent. In Sierra Leone, diamonds and iron together then accounted for over 90 percent of the overseas earnings. Rubber lost its position as the premier Liberian export when the Timbi Hills were discovered to be almost solid iron and companies vied for the right to exploit it and other rich sites. In Guinea, bauxite rose quickly to rank first among exports. Enclave operations prevailed. The owners built dedicated railways and ports, or, in the case of diamonds, airports, for taking the unprocessed minerals out of the country. Managers lived in protected, closed- off stations. Labor practices were backward especially in Liberia where the rubber industry provided the example. Generally, wages were low, work conditions dangerous, and bosses cared little about injured workers. Workers took the lead in resisting top-down controls and racism. In Sierra Leone, some of the earliest strikes had been by civil servants and rail workers, who demanded fairness in wages and promotion. Ibrahim Abdullah has documented the fierce, sustained resistance offered by mine workers in Marampa in the late 1930s, in part inspired by I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson and the West Africa Youth
- 43. howard | 29 League (WAYL) (Abdullah 1995). The WAYL was a militant socialist, anti-imperial movement that responded to and mobilized popular antagonism to colonial rule. Its largest rallies in Freetown on the eve of the war drew 40,000 or more. Officials were extremely fearful of this movement’s base support and the ideological challenge offered by Wallace-Johnson, whom they imprisoned for the duration of the Second World War (Spitzer and Denzer 1973). Historically, unions in Liberia have been nominal, controlled by the state and weak in comparison with employers. Important exceptions were the Mine Workers’ Union and Dock Workers’ Association, which flourished briefly in the late 1970s before authorities suspended them (Dunn et al. 2001, 199–200). A strong, independent left grew up in late colonial Guinea, mainly based in the labor movement, but also involving peasants, veterans, and urban dwellers who were not organized workers, especially young men and women. During the war and immediately after, great resistance arose against forced labor. Once France ended its prohibition against labor organizing, workers quickly formed unions. A 1946 strike paralyzed Conakry and other important cities. Guinean rail workers joined the 1947–1948 rail strike that spanned much of French West Africa, and were supported by workers in other sectors and the general community. This led to the massive general strikes of 1950 and 1953, which included public and private sectors and skilled and unskilled workers (Schmidt 2005, 58–83). Guinea also experienced much rural unrest during this era and beyond. In part, this was manifested against chiefs; peasants had been resisting their pressures since the Second World War, when chiefs served as collectors of special levies and attempted to extract unpaid labor (Schmidt 2005, 91–111). In Sierra Leone rural dissatisfaction led to widespread uprisings against chiefs in 1954–1955 (Rashid 2009). Women’s base organizations were strong in Sierra Leone and Guinea.10 They challenged colonial rule and gender-based injustices, and sought to advance women’s interests. In Sierra Leone, during the period after the First World War, market women, petty traders, and others fought the efforts of large firms to commandeer urban spaces (Howard 2003). Later, Constance Cummings-John emerged as the principal leader of a cross-class alliance of Western-educated women and market women, an alliance that sought, among other things, fair prices for traders. Cummings-John was a feminist,
- 44. 30 | one Pan-Africanist, member of the militant West African Youth League, and, later, leader in the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), that headed the country at independence (Cummings-John and Denzer 1995). In Guinea, the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (RDA), the primary nationalist party, took up women’s campaigns over rice prices and urban water supplies, as well as education and health (Schmidt 2005, 116–126). During one anti-tax campaign in early 1955, a chief killed a woman leader, M’balia Camara. The RDA and others built momentum around this event, and M’balia Camara became a national heroine, with moving songs composed to honor her memory (Schmidt 2007, 86–87). Economic crisis, dictatorship, war, and popular resistance in the post-colonial era Liberia, always nominally independent, joined the United Nations when it was established in 1945; Guinea and Sierra Leone became independent in 1958 and 1961, respectively. The wave of African independence brought widespread optimism. From the 1970s, however, all three countries went through wrenching changes that greatly decreased their economic and political capacity to respond to the Ebola crisis: highly unfavorable global economic forces, heavy international debt, and imposed structural adjustment programs; dictatorship and corruption; military coups, destructive wars, and large numbers of refugees and exiles. Existing economic weaknesses continued, but were intensified by the oil price jolts of the 1970s and precipitous declines in world commodity prices. Especially harmful were the retrenchment programs imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) in the 1980s and 1990s, which led to reduced incomes for the poor and layoffs of teachers, nurses, and others who delivered medical services (Kamara 2008, 133–148). Economies were further undermined by corruption and mismanagement. Still, many people continued to organize energetically for a more just social, economic, and political order within each country and internationally. By the 1980s, if not earlier, it was apparent that extractive mining under prevailing global forces brought vast human, environmental, and economic costs. Guinea is an instructive case. It has the world’s largest supply of high-grade bauxite, and in 2005 contributed 40 percent of global trade in that mineral sector. During most of
- 45. howard | 31 his leadership (1958–1984), Sekou Toure pressured companies to process bauxite to create aluminum within Guinea. The value added by selling finished aluminum rather than raw bauxite could then be channeled into other sectors, resulting in a more balanced development. At the heart of the strategy was a massive electricity- generating project on the Konkoure River. Yet, by his death, in 1984, companies had failed to carry out such plans, and Guinea suffered from external debt. Toure’s successor through a coup, General Lansana Conteh, turned to the IMF and attempted to meet Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) conditionalities by reducing the public sector. He also opened the economy to foreign investment. In the 1980s and 1990s, state revenues from bauxite fell, making it impossible to meet IMF and World Bank loan repayments. Guinea lost its capacity to sustain income from bauxite because of international forces: low bauxite prices due to competition from other producers and, especially, weak bargaining position vis-à-vis mining companies (Campbell 2009). Sierra Leone felt its vulnerability to world prices and corporate policies when Delco Mining unilaterally closed the Marampa mines in 1975. Marampa, known for its high-quality iron ore, was once a major employer and earner of foreign currency. Iron mining resumed at two sites in the twenty-first century, but company financing was weak. When world prices fell and the spread of Ebola affected operations, companies closed mines in 2015.11 Liberia went from being dependent on rubber exports to being dependent on mineral exports. President William Tubman (1944–1971) advocated for an “Open Door Policy” that he claimed would bring increased foreign investment, economic diversification, revenue, and income for workers. During the 1960s, iron mining at Bomi Hills and elsewhere increased nearly seven times in volume. All ore was exported through dedicated rail lines. About 11,000 men were employed as unskilled or semi-skilled laborers in the iron mines by 1970 (von Gnielinski 1972, 88–91). In 1977 the mine at Bomi Hills was closed, and eventually the three other major mines shuttered (Chinese firms have recently re-opened two). Although iron brought jobs and revenue to the national coffers, it resulted in little economic integration or diversification. A great austerity took hold of the region in the 1980s and 1990s, following on the oil price hikes, commodity price falls, and greater national indebtedness. In the aftermath of the Cold War, leaders of
- 46. 32 | one the countries sought new forms of external support and patronage. “Development aid” grew both absolutely and relative to national sources of revenue. In 1993, to pick a date after war had been rav- aging Liberia and Sierra Leone, the former received development aid equivalent to 96 percent of its internal revenue and the latter 178 percent (Reno 1999, 115). This situation was unsustainable, and failed to “solve” the problem of structural poverty. By about 2000, the Extractive Industries Review (EIR) of the World Bank recognized the need for stricter guidelines in providing loans and risk insurance to logging and mining companies in order to reduce poverty; to protect poor people, local communities, and the environ- ment; and to ensure that extractive companies honor basic human rights. Generally, in practice, the guidelines were only implemented in a minimal way or were not followed.12 Other large forces drained economic and social capacities and raised dissatisfaction with governments. Urban populations boomed because of a combination of relatively high birth rates, rural poverty, and insecurity resulting in the concentration in cities of better paying salaried jobs, wage work, and informal sector opportunities. Conakry, Freetown, and Monrovia tripled or quadrupled in size between 1960 and the 1990s. In all three countries 15–29 year-olds became a size- able percentage of the population. Youth experienced very severe impacts from the era’s economic downturn and environmental pres- sures, having especially high unemployment and urban and rural poverty rates (Abdullah 2004; Aning and Atta-Asamoah 2011). All three countries became dictatorships. Early leaders of the newly independent Sierra Leone took steps to consolidate their power, which among other things entrenched ethnicity in politics and undermined national institutions. Albert Margai, the second prime minister, worked to ensure that the army, electoral commission, and Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) were dominated by Mende (Cartwright 1978). When Siaka Stevens became prime minister after a military coup, he “showed himself to be [even] more Machiavellian, practical, and ‘effective’ at power consolidation” (Conteh-Morgan and Dixon-Fyle 2005, 81). Within two years he fundamentally altered the ethnic makeup of the army and its officer corps, then went on to entrench minority northern groups that aligned with him and to forge a loyal paramilitary State Security Division that amounted to a “palace guard” (Conteh-Morgan and Dixon-Fyle 2005, 78–83).
- 47. howard | 33 In Guinea, the RDA moved from being a “highly democratic mass party to the ultimate source of power in a repressive authoritarian state” (Schmidt 2007, 184). The RDA took advantage of the sense of a state of siege felt by Guineans when France, the United States, and others isolated and rebuffed its overtures after the “no vote”; then and in subsequent years it cracked down on dissent within the party and outside it. Leaders accumulated political functions at several levels, from the local to the national, and concentrated power in their hands (Schmidt 2007, 184–186). A military coup, at the time of Sekou Toure’s death, opened the way for decades of brutal and highly repressive military rule, culminating in 2009 when soldiers killed hundreds of citizens peacefully assembled to protest and raped scores of women.13 Liberia saw a more twisting path, but much the same results. The True Whig Party (TWP) was founded in 1869, and in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries TWP presidents accrued much power. Liberia gained a reputation for being “West Africa’s first de facto one-party state” (Ellis 2007, 213). William V.S. Tubman, president from 1944 to 1971, consolidated an authoritarian regime through shrewd political manipulation and a cult of personality as a “powerful, stern, generous” father to “his people” (Ellis 2007, 215). Besides his familiarity with local politics throughout the country, his patronage machine stemmed from his ability to distribute contracts and largesse. His successor, William Tolbert, lacked the same personal and political capabilities. He held office during most of the 1970s, a time of economic difficulties that culminated in mass civil disobedience and his 1980 overthrow and assassination by enlisted members of the army, ending 133 years of political domination by Americo-Liberians. The military-run People’s Redemption Council was headed by Samuel K. Doe, who ruled until 1990, when he too was ousted and killed. Doe increasingly resorted to violence and ethnic favoritism (as well as US backing) to maintain power, laying the basis for the bloody regime of Charles Taylor and the ethnic retributions of the civil war (Ellis 2007, 45–74, 211–219; Dunn et al. 2001, 111–113, 324–326, 332–338). If dictatorship and violence thwarted the development of partici- patory democracy, all three countries were sapped by a patrimonial- ism that drew wealth into the center and re-distributed (part of) it outward to officials, chiefs, and other leading supporters. This was
- 48. 34 | one accompanied and followed by the IMF and WB retrenchment poli- cies, which shrunk the national spending for health, education, and infrastructure, including the incomes of many thousands of rural and urban people. Patrimonialism in Sierra Leone depended upon a concentrated source of great wealth, diamonds, which political leaders could easily tap. Conteh-Morgan and Dixon-Fyle have aptly described and analyzed how the system operated. Siaka Stevens, who by 1971 had created the office of president and ruled unopposed, drained a share of the country’s wealth into his own pockets and those of close supporters and held the country together by rechan- neling state revenues. His successor, Force Commander Joseph Saidu Momoh, continued a similar system with much less skill – until the diamond supply ran down, foreign debt reached unsustainable levels, and massive public anger and opposition arose (Conteh-Morgan and Dixon-Fyle 2005; Reno 1999, 114–133). Liberia had a much more limited patrimonial order until Charles Taylor expanded the system and ruled in a manner that combined violence and personal engagement with networks of supporters.14 During the war era, he became the main global outlet for Sierra Leone diamonds obtained by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Kono and Tongo Fields. Felix Gerdes estimates that in the five years between 1997 and 2001 the RUF exported between US$175 million and US$245 million worth of diamonds, and Taylor’s “profits” were between US$91 million and US$129 million. “The revenue derived [from diamonds] was a major source of finance for Taylor’s sovereign system of domination” (Gerdes 2013, 143–144). Once the RUF was defeated and the embargo against “blood diamonds” was installed, Taylor financed his regime through timber exports. War tore Sierra Leone apart through much of the 1990s (actu- ally March 1991 until January 2002). Over 50,000 people are esti- mated to have died, with vast disruption of the social fabric (Gberie 2005). The Liberian war lasted from 1989 to 2003 – although there was a two-year hiatus when Charles Taylor headed an elected gov- ernment and became engaged in the Sierra Leone fighting. Report- edly 250,000 to 500,000 people were killed. While there was no direct fighting in Guinea during this era, Guineans went through great upheavals. The country was a staging ground for attacks into its neighbors, especially Liberia. It was a corridor for international smuggling, received several hundred thousand refugees, and saw its
- 49. howard | 35 economy further damaged by the chaos around it. Finally, Guinea experienced intensified internal military oppression, partly justified by regional instability. The war in Sierra Leone, following on decades of insufficient funding, resulted in destruction of the educational and health infrastructures. A joint report by the IMF and International Development Association drew special attention to disruptions to schooling owing to population displacements; a devastated school infrastructure, displacement of teachers and resulting difficulty in maintaining records and paying salaries on time; lack of basic furniture and teaching and learning materials; overcrowding in many schools in safer areas; disorientation and psychological trauma among a large segment of the population, especially children; and a weakened institutional capacity of the Ministry of Youth Education and Sports (MYES) to manage the education system. (International Monetary Fund/International Development Association 2002, 15) The same report noted that the “health situation of the population is more critical than in other sub-Saharan African countries.” The life expectancy at birth was only 38 years, and under-five infant mortality was 286/1,000 live births. Many health facilities had been destroyed and the sector’s operations were severely weakened by lack of staff and disruptions in transportation, communications, electricity, and water supply. All in all, Sierra Leone ranked last among 174 countries on the United Nation’s Human Development Index. According to the Index, Guinea ranked about the same as Sierra Leone in basic health and other measures, with Liberia only slightly better (IMF/ IDA 2002, 5, 16 ff.). During the era of warfare, cities again grew massively while social resources shrunk, making their populations especially vulnerable to contagious diseases. Freetown, in particular, may have doubled as refugees and people seeking safety flowed in. According to some estimates, over a few years in the 1990s, the city rose from about 500,000 to 1,000,000. By 2014, Sierra Leone and Guinea were nearly 40 percent urbanized, and Liberia was approaching 50 percent, according to United Nations data.15 Youth unemployment skyrocketed in all three countries, leading – along with corruption, military abuses, and inadequate spending on education and social
- 50. 36 | one services – to widespread alienation of youth from government. Tens of thousands of young men and women were drawn into the Sierra Leone war as combatants and supporters of combatants, but also as its victims. In both Liberia and Sierra Leone, women and girls were subject to high levels of rape and other forms of sexual abuse and violence (O’Neill and Ward 2005). When the RUF carried out its devastating attacks on Freetown, women stood out as protectors of the city and proponents of peace, none more so than Zainab Bangura. An NGO activist in the 1990s, she later would head the ministries of foreign affairs and health before being appointed as Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict of the United Nations Secretary-General. During the war she challenged the RUF for its atrocities against civilians and was threatened with assassination on several occasions. Later, she targeted the national army for its abuses and the then ruling party for corruption. Many other Sierra Leonean women joined in her oppositional campaign.16 In Liberia, the Association of Female Liberian Lawyers drew attention to sexual and other abuses of women and took the lead in bringing prosecutions of criminal acts. One of the standout figures was Leymah Gbowee, who in 2011 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. As a young woman she became a leader of the Women in Peace Network (WiPNET), consisting of mainly Christian women, and joined forces with Muslim women to form Liberian Mass Action. The group gained a face-to-face meeting with Charles Taylor, extracted his agreement to attend peace negotiations in Ghana, and then sent a delegation to keep pressure upon combatants.17 Throughout the region, women were actively engaged in recon- struction as well as peacemaking. Probably most important from a regional perspective has been the Mano River Women’s Peace Network (Réseau des Femmes du Flueve Mano pour la Paix), started during the later years of the Liberian war. It sponsored peace tours around the region and held seminars in all three countries to repre- sent and empower women and build gender into policy planning. Specific campaigns have focused on stopping the abuses and extrac- tions that women traders have experienced when crossing borders and doing business in countries where they were not citizens.18 It also has engaged in dialogue with youth organizations seeking to build social and economic skills among former combatants. Despite its
- 51. howard | 37 potential, leadership cooptation could drain away the energies gen- erated by the elite–mass linkages. Rethinking regional history/networks in the context of Ebola: by way of conclusion During the late decades of the twentieth century, elite leaders recognized the value of pulling their countries together and formed the Mano River Union (MRU). Sierra Leone and Liberia first created the compact in 1974, and Guinea joined in 1980. The MRU took some useful steps, such as reducing customs barriers as a move toward greater economic integration. It collapsed during the wars, but in 2004 was revived and has since expanded its objectives and membership by adding Côte d’Ivoire in 2008. In its first incarnation, it sought to build from the top, rather than from the bottom, and it remains to be seen if, now resuscitated, it will incorporate the energy and knowledge of the vast majority. The movement of people within the region to trade, work, and settle is ancient and continues. Typically, people who migrate build ties in their new residences while retaining connections with their former homes. Their flows back and forth result in extensive transnational networks, while their settlement embeds them in dense, local networks. This is especially true for certain patterns of trade and migration. In the Guéckédou–Kailahun and the Forekaria–Kambia areas, large numbers of traders in rice, cassava, cattle, imported goods, and other things have been moving back and forth across the frontiers, sometimes illegally, from the establishment of colonial borders in the early twentieth century up to the present. They have focused their exchange in particular market centers. Those flows grew out of earlier, pre-colonial commerce, but were intensified by the growth of towns and modern motor roads within the countries and across borders. (Howard 2014; Bah 1998, 89 ff.) The same (or nearby) routes and towns were important during the crisis of the 1990s and early 2000s. When hundreds of thousands of people fled fighting in eastern Sierra Leone, they crossed into Guinea through Kailahun and Kono districts and wound up in camps near Guéckédou (in the so-called “parrot’s beak,” where the three countries meet). Later, many refugees from those camps and other locations in Guinea returned to Sierra Leone via the Guéckédou– Kailahun route, which early on included a dirt causeway across a
- 52. 38 | one branch of the Moa River. Or, they followed a roundabout way through Guinea to Forekaria then Kambia.19 A 2013 study found many of the same roads in Guinea and across the borders were vital for commerce.20 It is possible that the trans-border networks (nodes plus flows) established through trade and refugee movement were important in the transmission of Ebola in at least two time periods: first, during the rainy season of 2014 in the “parrots beak” zone where the first heavy outbreak of EVD occurred, and, second, during March and April 2015 in the Forekaria and Kambia districts.21 The World Health Organization is aware of the importance of such regional factors: in an “Ebola Situation Report” issued late in the epidemic when new cases were few, WHO noted that its criteria for prioritizing support to other partner countries “include geographical proximity to affected countries, trade and migration patterns, and strength of health systems.”22 Personal and institutional networks have long existed among members of so-called “universal” religions and across those faiths – and also among members of “ethnic” associations. Such networks also have linked emigrants to neighboring countries of origin (Sierra Leoneans in Guinea and Liberia, Liberians in Guinea and Sierra Leone, Guineans in Liberia and Sierra Leone) and linked immigrants living overseas with one another and with their homelands. Sometime such networks have promoted narrow national, ethnic or sectarian loyalties, but they have also been critically important in facilitating a flow of information and in rallying people. Such networks need much deeper study with regard to education about Ebola and other diseases, mobilization in times of crisis, and distribution of assistance. At an inter-faith training meeting in Bo, Sierra Leone, in mid-2014, as EVD was spreading rapidly, a prominent convener of the Religious Leaders Task Force on Ebola declared: “Ebola does not discriminate between Muslims and Christians … When it strikes it kills anybody of any faith or political group.”23 The Ministry of Health called for religious networks to take a larger role in disseminating accurate information about EVD. It would be equally valuable to investigate how assistance funds from overseas were channeled, particularly if they were channeled in exclusive ways that led to division and antagonism, or thwarted efforts of more neutral agencies to coordinate responses regionally. At the most applied level, this survey raises questions about ways that historical, geographic, and social research with a regional
- 53. howard | 39 perspective might be of value to those providing medical services. Detailed information about people’s migratory patterns and social, cultural, and commercial exchanges could assist officials seeking to stop the flow of contagion or responding to an environmental crisis – especially with the recent seaweed invasion off the coastline of the MRU states and the growing threat of climate change. There are many other cultural questions. For instance, how might knowledge of people’s beliefs and practices and their communication networks provide understanding about how they perceive the etiology of disease and share those perceptions with others, and how they generate local responses to disease or other threats? The kind of structural approach offered here prompts questions about how people recognize and express commonalities and come together around issues of health, disease, or economic advancement. Gender and class have intersected differently from place to place, yet women in all three countries have been affected by similar forces of patriarchy, colonialism, predatory government, war, environmental deterioration, and retrenchment of services. Those commonalities of experience provide a foundation for the sense of solidarity and kinds of organizations that women are building across borders. Youth, too, have a trans-regional foundation in experience and struggles. Needed are local, national, regional, and external policies and programs that promote rather than inhibit the strengthening of such ties. While organizations like MARWOPNET have modeled a regional approach, international agencies generally operate on a country-by-country basis. The major “northern” powers involved in the area (United States, Britain, and France), often seem to have continued a “neo-colonial” division of the region into spheres and distributed money to national branches of transnational organizations rather than promoting region-wide coordination. Continuation of state- rather than region-oriented planning is likely to generate costly redundancies, promote narrow nationalism, and serve politicians who take credit for projects. For example, while many basic health services may most efficiently be provided locally or nationally, no individual country can afford a full range of medical training and health delivery services. It makes economic sense for more costly training, equipment, and facilities to be supported on a regional basis with full access by citizens of all states, perhaps through a restructured Mano River Union.24
- 54. 40 | one Most of all, history shows that common people need to forge a region that benefits them. A regional economy could be the framework for easier foreign access to resources; it could facilitate large corporations using the electricity generated in one country to extract minerals of another country at lower cost. Or it could provide the framework for building a sustainable economy based on complementary ecological zones and people’s knowledge, skills, and contemporary education – an economy that allocates scarce resources justly. The similar experiences of ordinary people also demonstrate that they must organize and struggle economically and politically to have sufficient decision-making capacity and bargaining power to ensure their interests are protected and advanced. Notes 1 This chapter honors four decades of work by Boubacar Barry, Professor Emeritus of History at Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal, to conceive and promote a more unified West Africa. Thanks to Ibrahim Abdullah, Sarah K. Howard, Ismail Rashid, and Elizabeth Schmidt for their very helpful comments on drafts of this chapter. 2 The three countries have constituted a “formal” region through their legal integration into the Mano River Union. They also have been and are part of different, overlapping interactive regions (social, political, cultural, and economic), shaped by flows of people, goods, and ideas. For definitions of “formal” and interactive regions in African history, see Howard (2005, 46–50 ff.). 3 Board-sponsored Round Table: Ebola: Exposing the Fault Lines, November 21, 2014. 4 The farthest interior areas of Guinea lie in the drier savanna/ woodland zone. 5 Ellis presents a succinct overview of pre-Liberian politics, masking, and religion, and notes that the southeast, corresponding with the Kruan-speaking areas, lacked poro and masking (Ellis 2007, 191–206). 6 Pew Research Center, The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010–2050 (April 2, 2015), 234–242, www.pewresearch. org (accessed December 9, 2015). This survey does not adequately indicate the widespread blending of “world” and local religious beliefs and practices. 7 For details on the organization of the Atlantic slave trade, see Hancock (1995); Mouser (1996). 8 Ellis has written the following about Liberia: “A description of a military expedition to put down a rising in the south-east, apparently in 1930, led by President Barclay in person, reveals it to have been a veritable plundering operation” (Ellis 2007, 210). 9 In Freetown, a system of “tribal” headmen and women emerged; some were close to “their people,” assisted immigrants find jobs and housing, and promoted schools and other amenities (Harrell-Bond et al. 1978). Monrovia had certain parallels (Fraenkel 1964). 10 Little has been written about the resistance of peasant and market women’s organizations in Liberia; elite women’s groups existed in all three territories, but are not covered here.
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- 56. beautiful. Sunny and sweet and good, sitting there in her faded dress, her face shining with exhaustion. 3 They walked down the length of the pier through the stiff breeze arm in arm. The pavilion was gaslit, ready for the entertainment. “Would you rather stay outside this afternoon?” “No. Perhaps the entertainment may cheer me.” There was a pink paper with their tickets—“The South Coast Entertainment Company” ... that was better than the usual concert. The inside of the pavilion was like the lunch table ... the same people. But there was a yellow curtain across the platform. Mother could look at that. It was quite near them. It would take off the effect of the audience of people she envied. The cool sound of the waves flumping and washing against the pier came in through the open doors with a hollow echo. They were settled and safe for the afternoon. For two hours there would be nothing but the things behind the curtain. Then there would be tea. Mother had felt the yellow curtain. She was holding the pink programme at a distance trying to read it. Miriam glanced. The sight of the cheap black printing on the thin pink paper threatened the spell of the yellow curtain. She must manage to avoid reading it. She crossed her knees and stared at the curtain, yawning and scolding with an affected manliness about the forgotten spectacles. They squabbled and laughed. The flump-wash of the waves had a cheerful sunlit sound. Mrs. Henderson made a brisk little movement of settling herself to attend. The doors were being closed. The sound of the waves was muffled. They were beating and washing outside in the sunlight. The gaslit interior was a pier pavilion. It was like the inside of a bathing- machine, gloomy, cool, sodden with sea-damp, a happy caravan. Outside was the blaze of the open day, pale and blinding. When they went out into it it would be a bright unlimited jewel, getting brighter
- 57. and brighter, all its colours fresher and deeper until it turned to clear deep live opal and softened down and down to darkness dotted with little pinlike jewellings of light along the esplanade; the dark luminous waves washing against the black beach until dawn.... The curtain was drawing away from a spring scene ... the fresh green of trees feathered up into a blue sky. There were boughs of apple- blossom. Bright green grass sprouted along the edge of a pathway. A woman floundered in from the side in a pink silk evening dress. She stood in the centre of the scene preparing to sing, rearing her gold-wigged head and smiling at the audience. Perhaps the players were not ready. It was a solo. She would get through it and then the play would begin. She smiled promisingly. She had bright large teeth and the kind of mouth that would say chahld for child. The orchestra played a few bars. She took a deep breath. “Bring back—the yahs— that are—dead!”—she screamed violently. She was followed by two men in shabby tennis flannels with little hard glazed tarpaulin hats who asked each other riddles. Their jerky broken voices fell into cold space and echoed about the shabby pavilion. The scattered audience sat silent and still, listening for the voices ... cabmen wrangling in a gutter. The green scene stared stiffly—harsh cardboard, thin harsh paint. The imagined scene moving and flowing in front of it was going on somewhere out in the world. The muffled waves sounded near and clear. The sunlight was dancing on them. When the men had scrambled away and the applause had died down, the sound of the waves brought dancing gliding figures across the stage, waving balancing arms and unconscious feet gliding and dreaming. A man was standing in the middle of the platform with a roll of music—bald-headed and grave and important. The orchestra played the overture to “The Harbour Bar.” But whilst he unrolled his music and cleared his throat his angry voice filled the pavilion: “it’s all your own fault ... you get talking and gossiping and filling yer head with a lot of nonsense ... now you needn’t begin it all over again twisting and turning everything I say.” And no sound in the room but the sound of eating. His singing was pompous anger, appetite. Shame shone from his rim of hair. He was ashamed, but did not know that he showed it.
- 58. 4 They could always walk home along the smooth grey warm esplanade to tea in an easy silence. The light blossoming from the horizon behind them was enough. Everything ahead dreamed in it, at peace. Visitors were streaming homewards along the parade lit like flowers. Along the edge of the tide the town children were paddling and shouting. After tea they would come out into the sheltering twilight at peace, and stroll up and down until it was time to go to the flying performance of The Pawnbroker’s Daughter. 5 They were late for tea and had it by themselves at a table in the window of the little smoking-room looking out on the garden. Miss Meldrum called cheerily down through the house to tell them when they came in. They went into the little unknown room and the cook brought up a small silver tea-pot and a bright cosy. Outside was the stretch of lawn where the group had been taken in the morning a year ago. It had been a seaside town lawn, shabby and brown, with the town behind it; unnoticed because the fresh open sea and sky were waiting on the other side of the house ... seaside town gardens were not gardens ... the small squares of greenery were helpless against the bright sea ... and even against shabby rooms, when the sun came into the rooms off the sea ... sea-rooms.... The little smoking-room was screened by the shade of a tree against whose solid trunk half of the French window was thrown back. When the cook shut the door of the little room the house disappeared. The front rooms bathed in bright light and hot with the afternoon heat, the wide afterglow along the front, the vast open lid of the sky, were in another world.... Miriam pushed back the other half of the window and they sat down in a green twilight on the edge of the garden. If others had been there Mrs. Henderson would
- 59. have remarked on the pleasantness of the situation and tried to respond to it and been dreadfully downcast at her failure and brave. Miriam held her breath as they settled themselves. No remark came. The secret was safe. When she lifted the cosy the little tea-pot shone silver-white in the strange light. A thick grey screen of sky must be there, above the trees, for the garden was an intensity of deep brilliance, deep bright green and calceolarias and geraniums and lobelias, shining in a brilliant gloom. It was not a seaside garden ... it was a garden ... all gardens. They took their meal quietly and slowly, speaking in low tones. The silent motionless brilliance was a guest at their feast. The meal-time, so terrible in the hopelessness of home, such an effort in the mocking glare of the boarding-house was a great adventure. Mrs. Henderson ate almost half as much as Miriam, serenely. Miriam felt that a new world might be opening. 6 “The storm has cleared the air wonderfully.” “Yes; isn’t it a blessing.” “Perhaps I shan’t want the beef-tea to-night.” Miriam hung up her dress in the cupboard, listening to the serene tone. The dreadful candle was flickering in the night-filled room, but mother was quietly making a supreme effort. “I don’t expect you will”; she said casually from the cupboard, “it’s ready if you should want it. But you won’t want it.” “It is jolly and fresh,” she said a moment later from the window, holding back the blind. Perhaps in a few days it would be the real jolly seaside and she would be young again, staying there alone with mother, just ridiculous and absurd and frantically happy, mother getting better and better, turning into the fat happy little thing she ought to be, and they would get to know people and mother would have to look after her and love her high spirits and admire and scold her and be shocked as she used to be. They might even bathe. It
- 60. would be heavenly to be really at the seaside with just mother. They would be idiotic. Mrs. Henderson lay very still as Miriam painted the acid above the unseen nerve centres and composed herself afterwards quietly without speaking. The air was fresh in the room. The fumes of the acid did not seem so dreadful to-night. The Pawnbroker’s daughter was with them in the room, cheering them. The gay young man had found out somehow through her that “goodness and truth” were the heart of his life. She had not told him. It was he who had found it out. He had found the words and she did not want him to say them. But it was a new life for them both, a new life for him and happiness for her even if he did not come back, if she could forget the words. Putting out the candle at her bedside suddenly and quietly with the match-box to avoid the dreadful puff that would tell her mother of night, Miriam lay down. The extinguished light splintered in the darkness before her eyes. The room seemed suddenly hot. Her limbs ached, her nerves blazed with fatigue. She had never felt this kind of tiredness before. She lay still in the darkness with open eyes. Mrs. Henderson was breathing quietly as if in a heavy sleep. She was not asleep but she was trying to sleep. Miriam lay watching the pawnbroker’s daughter in the little room at the back of the shop, in the shop, back again in the little room, coming and going. There was a shining on her face and on her hair. Miriam watched until she fell asleep. 7 She dreamed she was in the small music-room in the old Putney school, hovering invisible. Lilla was practising alone at the piano. Sounds of the girls playing rounders came up from the garden. Lilla was sitting in her brown merino dress, her black curls shut down like a little cowl over her head and neck. Her bent profile was stern and
- 61. manly, her eyes and her bare white forehead manly and unconscious. Her lissome brown hands played steadily and vigorously. Miriam listened incredulous at the certainty with which she played out her sadness and her belief. It shocked her that Lilla should know so deeply and express her lonely knowledge so ardently. Her gold-flecked brown eyes that commonly laughed at everything, except the problem of free-will, and refused questions, had as much sorrow and certainty as she had herself. She and Lilla were one person, the same person. Deep down in everyone was sorrow and certainty. A faint resentment filled her. She turned away to go down into the garden. The scene slid into the large music- room. It was full of seated forms. Lilla was at the piano, her foot on the low pedal, her hands raised for a crashing chord. They came down, collapsing faintly on a blur of wrong notes. Miriam rejoiced in her heart. What a fiend I am ... what a fiend, she murmured, her heart hammering condemnation. Someone was sighing harshly; to be heard; in the darkness; not far off; fully conscious she glanced at the blind. It was dark. The moon was not round. It was about midnight. Her face and eyes felt thick with sleep. The air was rich with sleep. Her body was heavy with a richness of sleep and fatigue. In a moment she could be gone again.... “Shall I get the beef-tea, mother?” ... she heard herself say in a thin wideawake voice. “Oh no my dear,” sounded another voice patiently. Rearing her numb consciousness against a delicious tide of oncoming sleep she threw off the bed-clothes and stumbled to the floor. “You can’t go on like this night after night, my dear.” “Yes I can,” said Miriam in a tremulous faint tone. The sleepless even voice reverberated again in the unbroken sleeplessness of the room. “It’s no use ... I am cumbering the ground.” The words struck sending a heat of anger and resentment through Miriam’s shivering form. She spoke sharply, groping for the matches. 8
- 62. Hurrying across the cold stone floor of the kitchen she lit the gas from her candle. Beetles ran away into corners, crackling sickeningly under the fender. A mouse darted along the dresser. She braced herself to the sight of the familiar saucepan, Miss Meldrum’s good beef-tea brown against the white enamel—helpless ... waiting for the beef-tea to get hot she ate a biscuit. There was help somewhere. All those people sleeping quietly upstairs. If she asked them to they would be surprised and kind. They would suggest rousing her and getting her to make efforts. They would speak in rallying voices, like Dr. Ryman and Mrs. Skrine. For a day or two it would be better and then much worse and she would have to go away. Where? It would be the same everywhere. There was no one in the world who could help. There was something ... if she could leave off worrying. But that had been Pater’s advice all his life and it had not helped. It was something more than leaving off ... it was something real. It was not affection and sympathy. Eve gave them; so easily, but they were not big enough. They did not come near enough. There was something crafty and worldly about them. They made a sort of prison. There was something true and real somewhere. Mother knew it. She had learned how useless even the good kind people were and was alone, battling to get at something. If only she could get at it and rest in it. It was there, everywhere. It was here in the kitchen, in the steam rising from the hot beef-tea. A moon-ray came through the barred window as she turned down the gas. It was clear in the eye of the moon-ray; a real thing. Some instinct led away from the New Testament. It seemed impossible to-night. Without consulting her listener Miriam read a psalm. Mrs. Henderson put down her cup and asked her to read it again. She read and fluttered pages quietly to tell the listener that in a moment there would be some more. Mrs. Henderson waited saying nothing. She always sighed regretfully over the gospels and Saint Paul, though she asked for them and seemed to think she ought to read them. They were so dreadful; the gospels full of social incidents and reproachfulness. They seemed to reproach everyone and to hint at a secret that no one possessed ... the epistles did nothing but nag and threaten and probe. St. Paul rhapsodised
- 63. sometimes ... but in a superior way ... patronising; as if no one but himself knew anything.... “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of those who bring” she read evenly and slowly. Mrs. Henderson sighed quietly.... “That’s Isaiah mother.... Isaiah is a beautiful name.” ... She read on. Something had shifted. There was something in the room.... If she could go droning on and on in an even tone it would be there more and more. She read on till the words flowed together and her droning voice was thick with sleep. The town clock struck two. A quiet voice from the other bed brought the reading to an end. Sleep was in the room now. She felt sure of it. She lay down leaving the candle alight and holding her eyes open. As long as the candle was alight the substance of her reading remained. When it was out there would be the challenge of silence again in the darkness ... perhaps not; perhaps it would still be there when the little hot point of light had gone. There was a soft sound somewhere ... the sea. The tide was up, washing softly. That would do. The sound of it would be clearer when the light was out ... drowsy, lazy, just moving, washing the edge of the beach ... cool, fresh. Leaning over she dabbed the candle noiselessly and sank back asleep before her head reached the pillow. 9 In the room yellow with daylight a voice was muttering rapidly, rapid words and chuckling laughter and stillness. Miriam grasped the bedclothes and lay rigid. Something in her fled out and away, refusing. But from end to end of the world there was no help against this. It was a truth; triumphing over everything. “I know,” said a high clear voice. “I know ... I don’t deceive myself” ... rapid low muttering and laughter.... It was a conversation. Somewhere within it was the answer. Nowhere else in the world. Forcing herself to be still she accepted the sounds, pitting herself against the sense of
- 64. destruction. The sound of violent lurching brought her panic. There was something there that would strike. Hardly knowing what she did she pretended to wake with a long loud yawn. Her body shivered, bathed in perspiration. “What a lovely morning” she said dreamily, “what a perfect morning.” Not daring to sit up she reached for her watch. Five o’clock. Three more hours before the day began. The other bed was still. “It’s going to be a magnificent day” she murmured pretending to stretch and yawn again. A sigh reached her. The stillness went on and she lay for an hour tense and listening. Something must be done to-day. Someone else must know.... At the end of an hour a descending darkness took her suddenly. She woke from it to the sound of violent language, furniture being roughly moved, a swift angry splashing of water ... something breaking out, breaking through the confinements of this little furniture-filled room ... the best gentlest thing she knew in the world openly despairing at last. 10 The old homœopathist at the other end of the town talked quietly on ... the afternoon light shone on his long white hair ... the principle of health, God-given health, governing life. To be well one must trust in it absolutely. One must practise trusting in God every day.... The patient grew calm, quietly listening and accepting everything he said, agreeing again and again. Miriam sat wondering impatiently why they could not stay. Here in this quiet place with this quiet old man, the only place in the world where anyone had seemed partly to understand, mother might get better. He could help. He knew what the world was like and that nobody understood. He must know that he ought to keep her. But he did not seem to want to do anything but advise them and send them away. She hated him, his serene white-haired pink-faced old age. He told them he was seventy-nine and had never taken a dose in his life. Leaving his patient to sip a
- 65. glass of water into which he had measured drops of tincture he took Miriam to look at the greenhouse behind his consulting room. As soon as they were alone he told her speaking quickly and without benevolence and in the voice of a younger man that she must summon help, a trained attendant. There ought to be someone for night and day. He seemed to know exactly the way in which she had been taxed and spoke of her youth. It is very wrong for you to be alone with her he added gravely. Vaguely, burning with shame at the confession she explained that it could not be afforded. He listened attentively and repeated that it was absolutely necessary. She felt angrily for words to explain the uselessness of attendants. She was sure he must know this and wanted to demand that he should help, then and there at once, with his quiet house and his knowledge. Her eye covered him. He was only a pious old man with artificial teeth making him speak with a sort of sibilant woolliness. Perhaps he too knew that in the end even this would fail. He made her promise to write for help and refused a fee. She hesitated helplessly, feeling the burden settle. He indicated that he had said his say and they went back. On the way home they talked of the old man. “He is right; but it is too late” said Mrs. Henderson with clear quiet bitterness, “God has deserted me.” They walked on, tiny figures in a world of huge grey- stone houses. “He will not let me sleep. He does not want me to sleep.... He does not care.” A thought touched Miriam, touched and flashed. She grasped at it to hold and speak it, but it passed off into the world of grey houses. Her cheeks felt hollow, her feet heavy. She summoned her strength, but her body seemed outside her, empty, pacing forward in a world full of perfect unanswering silence. 11
- 66. The bony old woman held Miriam clasped closely in her arms. “You must never, as long as you live, blame yourself my gurl.” She went away. Miriam had not heard her come in. The pressure of her arms and her huge body came from far away. Miriam clasped her hands together. She could not feel them. Perhaps she had dreamed that the old woman had come in and said that. Everything was dream; the world. I shall not have any life. I can never have any life; all my days. There were cold tears running into her mouth. They had no salt. Cold water. They stopped. Moving her body with slow difficulty against the unsupporting air she looked slowly about. It was so difficult to move. Everything was airy and transparent. Her heavy hot light impalpable body was the only solid thing in the world, weighing tons; and like a lifeless feather. There was a tray of plates of fish and fruit on the table. She looked at it, heaving with sickness and looking at it. I am hungry. Sitting down near it she tried to pull the tray. It would not move. I must eat the food. Go on eating food, till the end of my life. Plates of food like these plates of food.... I am in eternity ... where their worm dieth not and their fire is not quenched. Note.—The next volume of this series is in preparation.
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- 69. THE LIBRARY OF ART Embracing Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, etc. Edited by Mrs S. Arthur Strong, LL. D. Extra cloth, with lettering and design in gold. Large cr. 8vo (7¾ in. by 5¾ in.), gilt top, headband. 5s. net a volume. Inland postage, 5d. LIST OF VOLUMES Donatello. By Lord Balcarres, M.P. With 58 plates. Great Masters of Dutch and Flemish Painting. By Dr W. Bode. With 48 plates. Rembrandt. By G. Baldwin Brown, of the University of Edinburgh. With 45 plates. Antonio Pollaiuolo. By Maud Cruttwell. With 50 plates. Verrocchio. By Maud Cruttwell. With 48 plates. The Lives of the British Architects. By E. Beresford Chancellor. With 45 plates. The School of Madrid. By A. de Beruete y Moret. With 48 plates. William Blake. By Basil de Selincourt. With 40 plates. Giotto. By Basil de Selincourt. With 44 plates. French Painting in the Sixteenth Century. By L. Dimier. With 50 plates. The School of Ferrara. By Edmund G. Gardner. With 50 plates. Six Greek Sculptors. (Myron, Pheidias, Polykleitos, Skopas, Praxiteles, and Lysippos.) By Ernest Gardner. With 81 plates. Titian. By Dr Georg Gronau. With 54 plates. Constable. By M. Sturge Henderson. With 48 plates. Pisanello. By G. F. Hill. With 50 plates. Michael Angelo. By Sir Charles Holroyd. With 52 plates. Mediæval Art. By W. R. Lethaby. With 66 plates and 120 drawings in the text. The Scottish School of Painting. By William D. McKay, R.S.A. With 46 plates. Christopher Wren. By Lena Milman. With upwards of 60 plates. Correggio. By T. Sturge Moore. With 55 plates.
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- 81. A Critical Introduction to the New Testament. By Arthur, Samuel Peake, D.D., Professor of Biblical Exegesis and Dean of the Faculty of Theology, Victoria University, Manchester; sometime Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. Philosophy and Religion. By the Rev. Hastings Rashdall, D.Litt. (Oxon.), D.C.L. (Durham), F.B.A., Fellow and Tutor of New College, Oxford. The Holy Spirit. By the Rev. Principal Rees, of Bala and Bangor College. The Religious Ideas of the Old Testament. By the Rev. H. Wheeler Robinson, M.A. Tutor in Rawdon College; sometime Senior Kennicott Scholar in Oxford University. Text and Canon of the New Testament. By Alexander Souter, M.A., D.Litt., Professor of Humanity at Aberdeen University. Christian Thought to the Reformation. By Herbert B. Workman, M.A., D.Litt., Principal of the Westminster Training College. THE WINDERMERE SERIES OF COLOUR BOOKS A New Series of Standard Books, well illustrated in colour, bound in cloth with picture wrapper in colour, designed end-papers. Illustrated by Milo Winter and by Hope Dunlop. Cover design by Charles Robinson. Royal 8vo. Cloth gilt. Picture wrappers in colour. 5s. net. The Arabian Nights. Robinson Crusoe. Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Gulliver’s Travels. Hawthorne’s Wonder Book. Tanglewood Tales. The “Story Box” Series of Books for Children. Stories of Wonder and Fancy. With Illustrations in Full Colour and in Line. From 12 to 16 Illustrations in each Volume. Boards, with coloured cover inset, picture end-papers, attractive wrapper. Square cr. 8vo. 1s. net a volume. The Buccaneers. By A. E. Bonsor. The Fortunate Princeling. By A. D. Bright. Wanted a King. By Maggie Browne. Elves and Princesses. By Bernard Darwin. The Enchanted Wood. By S. H. Hamer. The Four Glass Balls. By S. H. Hamer. The Adventures of Spider & Co. By S. H. Hamer.
- 82. Gervas and the Magic Castle. By B. S. Harvey. The Magic Dragon. By B. S. Harvey. The Fairy Latchkey. By Magdalene Horsfall. The Little Maid Who Danced. By Helena Nyblom. The Strange Little Girl. By B. Sidney Woolf. Golden House. By B. Sidney Woolf. The Twins in Ceylon. By B. Sidney Woolf. More About the Twins in Ceylon. By B. Sidney Woolf. TWO SHILLING NOVELS A Series of Popular Fiction, containing only Volumes which are very popular, and now issued, in response to a continual demand for them, in an inexpensive yet durable form. ELINOR GLYN’S NOVELS. Collected Edition Three Weeks. The Reason Why. Halcyone. The Sequence. The Man and the Moment. ⁂ Other books by Mrs Glyn will be added from time to time. The Book of Martha. By the Hon. Mrs Dowdall. The Spare Room. By Mrs Romilly Fedden. Vronina: A Welsh Romance. By Owen Vaughan. Where Bonds are Loosed. By Grant Watson. DUCKWORTH & CO.’S SHILLING NET SERIES The Brassbounder: A Tale of the Sea. By David W. Bone. Boards. The Widow’s Necklace: A Detective Story. By Ernest Davies. Cloth. Wrack: A Tale of the Sea. By Maurice Drake. Cloth. Beyond the Rocks. By Elinor Glyn. Picture Paper Covers. Halcyone. By Elinor Glyn. Picture Paper Covers. The Reason Why. By Elinor Glyn. Picture Paper Covers.
- 83. The Reflections of Ambrosine. Picture Paper Covers. The Visits of Elizabeth. By Elinor Glyn. Picture Paper Covers. Guinevere’s Lover (The Sequence). Picture Paper Covers. Vicissitudes of Evangeline. By Elinor Glyn. Picture Paper Covers. When the Hour Came. By Elinor Glyn. Picture Paper Covers. Scottish Stories. By R. B. Cunninghame Graham. Cloth. South American Sketches. By W. H. Hudson. Cloth. Old Fireproof. By Owen Rhoscomyl. Boards. In the Foreign Legion. By Legionnaire, 17889. Cloth. Sahib Log: An Anglo-Indian Tale. By John Travers. Picture Paper Covers. The Navy’s Way. By John Margerison, R.N. Boards. The Misleading Lady. By C. W. Goddard and Paul Dickay. Boards.
- 84. Transcriber’s Notes The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical errors were silently corrected. Further careful corrections, some after consulting other editions, are listed here (before/after): ... feeling of orginality in the remark. Perhaps ... ... feeling of originality in the remark. Perhaps ... ... and a rose-white frame and her strong yellow ... ... and rose-white frame and her strong yellow ... ... ready, and as Mrs. Kronen rose tall to welcome ... ... ready, and Mrs. Kronen rose tall to welcome ... ... their clothes, their carriages and hansom, their ... ... their clothes, their carriages and hansoms, their ... ... wrong. You should have them cut higher, about ... ... wrong. You should have them cut higher, above ... ... Mr. Grove walked clumsily. His arms brushed ... ... Mr. Grove walked clumsily. His arm brushed ... ... Piccadilly; a glimpse of the gaze of the Green ... ... Piccadilly; a glimpse of the haze of the Green ... ... may trees in flower ... fresh clean colours, ... ... May trees in flower ... fresh clean colours, ...
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