Bold Women for Peace

May 2009

by Deb Bogaert

The country of Liberia was founded in 1822, when a small group of African Americans—supported by the American Colonization Society, which encouraged free persons of color in the United States to settle in Africa—colonized a piece of land along the Atlantic coast of Africa. Twenty-five years later, the colony declared its independence.

In the 1920s, the Firestone Company discovered that Liberia was an ideal place to grow rubber. After World War II, mining and agricultural companies flourished in Liberia. A few elite, most descended from the colonists, lived very well in this economy, but the majority of the people saw little benefit.

Economic woes and discord between the rich and the poor began to fester in the 1970s. A military coup in 1980 ushered in a brutal and repressive government, and all-out civil war erupted in 1989. Warlord Charles Taylor was elected president in 1997, but civil war continued until 2003, when the Liberian women demanded—and eventually won—peace.

The work of peacebuilding

Leymah Gbowee, president of the women’s organization at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in the capital city, Monrovia, and Comfort Freeman, president of the National Lutheran Church Women Fellowship, had begun organizing the Women in Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET) among Christian women in 2002. They broadened their network by reaching out to Muslim women with the message, “Can a bullet pick and choose? Does it know Christian from Muslim?” In spring 2003, the Christian and Muslim women agreed to work together, and that April, some 3,000 women gathered for the launch of WIPNET.

For more than a month, every day, whether under blazing hot sun or pouring rain, the women held public sit-ins for peace along a road that President Taylor had to travel on his way to work.

Initially, Taylor refused to meet with the women, but eventually it became clear that he had to deal with this growing movement. The women were granted a meeting and presented their call for a cease-fire and good-faith negotiations. A plan for peace and a new government in Liberia was finally established at peace talks that began in 2003. Taylor was exiled later that year, and the United Nations stabilized the country. Liberia is now headed by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, elected in 2005.

The work of peacekeeping

The war may be over, but Liberia still faces enormous challenges. Running water has been re-established in only about half of Monrovia, home to more than one million people. The city’s power grid was destroyed in 1992, so electricity is supplied by private generators, often for only a few hours a day. Former refugees and displaced persons are flocking back to the nation now that the war is over, putting further strain on the housing stock and what’s left of the infrastructure. Unemployment is higher than 70 percent.

I traveled to Liberia to visit projects supported by Women of the ELCA grants and endowments, and to learn more about the Lutheran women of Liberia. Their organization sounds remarkably like our own: They meet in national and local conventions for elections and to enjoy speakers, workshops, and fellowship; they develop programs for spiritual and personal development; and they engage in service.

While staying at the Lutheran Church in Liberia (LCL) compound in Monrovia, I was happy to discover that the spirit of WIPNET continues among the women of Liberia. Every Tuesday, a group of at least 30 women gathers in the LCL chapel for an all-day prayer meeting. As they did during the WIPNET protests, the women come wearing all white garments to symbolize peace. All day, they pray, sing, and dance for continued peace and reconciliation in Liberia.

Jassa Gbaroyon, the coordinator of this faithful prayer group, explained, “We are here so that the work of Christ can go on in this world. We are here to continue the work of Christ, the work of peace. We are all branches of the same tree, so we are here together. We come because reconciliation and healing are not finished.”

The work of rebuilding

Later in the week, Linda and I left Monrovia to visit other parts of the country. The first stop was Phebe in central Liberia. In 2007, the Women of the ELCA grants program awarded money to the women of St. Luke Lutheran Parish, Phebe, for their Vital Initiative for the Empowerment of Women (VIEW) program. The program supports women and teenage girls living with HIV and AIDS through counseling and self-improvement initiatives, and it also teaches women income-producing skills.

With the grant, the women chose to learn soap making because the ingredients are easy to obtain and there is a good market for locally made soap.

Every woman we met that Saturday morning had a story of how the civil war had affected her family. One woman’s husband had died early in the war. Then her only son was killed. Her soap-making business will support her and the nine children and grandchildren who depend on her.

We talked with another woman whose husband and uncle had died in the war. She is caring for her own and her uncle’s children, but cannot afford to send them to school—the fees are too much. She is hoping to sell enough soap to send her children back to school next term.

Another young woman’s family was intact, but her husband has been unable to find work. They have started a small farm, and she is happy to be able to contribute to her family’s support by making and selling soap.

Thirty-five women participated in the soap-making project. Since we were visiting near the end of the training, we got to see the results of their hard work: large batches of various soaps, which they are now bringing to market in small cooperatives. We purchased a two-and-a-half- foot bar of soap—their first sale!— and brought it back to the churchwide office as a tangible reminder of the reach of our grants program and the hope these grants provide.

The coordinator of the project told us how helpful the grant has been. “After the war, I used to see the women going around to beg people for food and for clothes.” Knowing the women could help themselves if they knew how and if they had the means, she said she learned about the Women of the ELCA grant program.

After receiving the grant, she said, “I see the women are improving. I see life in their faces.” Before learning how to help themselves, they would “appear so depressed.” But most of them are happy now, she said. “They are very happy that they learned something to help themselves and their families. Tell the women in the United States that we are thankful and we appreciate what you have done for us.”

The work of healing

Our grants program is well known. But ministries supported by our long-established endowment funds are not. Two of those endowments support Curran Lutheran Hospital in northern Liberia.

The hospital, opened in 1924, is operated by the Lutheran Church in Liberia. It is the only health care facility in a large area. It also supervises 23 health centers and clinics in three surrounding districts as well as across the border in Guinea.

The Curran staff visit villages that have no clinic in a mobile unit that is on the road for days at a time. The top five illnesses they treat are malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia, acute respiratory infections, and sexually transmitted diseases. Diabetes and hypertension are also prevalent in adults.

The hospital has a certified midwifery program that reopened in September 2008. Liberia’s maternal death rate is high; trained midwives will help more women survive childbirth. When we visited, there were 39 women in the 18-month midwifery program. After passing the government licensing exam, the graduates will be assigned to rural clinics; Liberia’s national health plan calls for a midwife in every clinic in the country.

Future projects at the hospital include a training program for firstaid instructors and a school health program, which will include nutrition education and vision testing. They hope to start with five schools. Curran Hospital was almost destroyed during the war. Volunteers from the Upper Susquehanna Synod and Women of the ELCA in that synod have been key partners in rebuilding and providing funds. Curran’s medical equipment has been provided by Global Health Ministries, and its beds have come from churches in Germany.

Women’s groups in Liberia support students, and sometimes patients, with the produce of their gardens. The proceeds raise money for transportation to and from the hospital.

The work of teaching

American Lutheran women have been supporting education in Liberia for generations; Women of the ELCA holds an endowment created in 1916 that now serves the Lutheran Training Institute in northern Liberia. Over the last five years, the endowment has provided the school about $13,000.

The Lutheran Training Institute (LTI), built in 1958, was a boarding high school with more than 300 students. It was the largest Lutheran school in the country. But during the war, most of its buildings were nearly destroyed.

LTI reopened after the war, offering courses in agriculture. Carpentry and masonry were added in 2006, and in 2007, plumbing, tailoring, and auto mechanics were introduced. LTI is committed to technical and vocational education that prepares young people to contribute to post-war society and hopes eventually to reintroduce an academic high school program.

The work of women

When the opportunity to go to Liberia came up, I couldn’t say no. I especially wanted to meet women who had brought down a dictator— talk about women mobilized to act boldly!—and kept on with the work of rebuilding their lives, communities, and country.

Liberia is not an easy place to live. It’s not an easy place to visit. The roads are terrible. The economy is a mess. Sometimes we had running water, but most of the time, we didn’t. We slept under mosquito nets to prevent malaria. We had electricity for only few hours a day, and no one could predict which hours. We struggled daily in the 95-degree heat and oppressive humidity.

But the effort was absolutely worth it. I was able to see and come back to tell you about the good things Women of the ELCA is accomplishing all over the world. Your ongoing support of Women of the ELCA and its grants program— and the legacy of our foremothers— makes stories like these possible. In the words of Apostle Paul, “We thank God for you.”

Deborah Bogaert is director for communication, Women of the ELCA.