wfn.org | Episcopalians: Cuttington president seeks help in US for Liberian college

[dmack@episcopalchurch.org]

July 1, 2003

2003-153

Episcopalians: Cuttington president seeks help in US for 
Liberian college

by Jan Nunley

(ENS) Dr. Henrique F. Tokpa is a college president, but his 
professional life is about as far from the ivory towers of 
academia as it is possible to get. He is the president of 
Liberia's Cuttington University College, established by the 
Episcopal Church in 1889--and for many years caught in a war 
zone. 

For most of the past year, Cuttington, based in the central 
Liberian town of Suacoco--a site of extensive rebel 
activity--has been forced to hold classes in the capital of 
Monrovia, as the government of President Charles Taylor and 
forces calling themselves Liberians United for Reconciliation 
and Democracy (LURD) fight for control of the West African 
country.

Liberia, a country of three million established by freed 
American slaves more than 150 years ago, has suffered 14 years 
of near-constant civil war. Lutheran World Service officials 
report that it is believed that more than 750,000 people have 
been displaced by the war throughout the country. No death toll 
has been confirmed, but it is believe that several hundred 
people have been killed just in the latest fighting.

LURD troops currently hold more than 60 percent of the country 
and are pressing hard on Monrovia. According to the UN 
Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), a second rebel 
group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), has 
occupied the southeast of the country since March. 

At peace talks held in Accra, Ghana, a cease-fire was negotiated 
June 17, which included provisions for Taylor's resignation 
(Taylor's term as president ends in January 2004). But Taylor, 
who faces a 17-count indictment for war crimes from the United 
Nations Special Court, has reneged on his promise, and there are 
growing calls for the United States to lead a multinational 
intervention force under chapter VII of the UN Charter, 
particularly given the historic ties between the US and Liberia. 
President George W. Bush, who will visit West Africa July 7-12, 
has urged Taylor to step down.

Tokpa's manner is pleasant and friendly, but there is a 
weariness behind his smile that betrays the burden of trying to 
administer an institution of higher education in a world that 
seems bent on teaching only the arts of war. ENS deputy director 
Jan Nunley interviewed him after a day of meetings at the 
Episcopal Church Center in New York.

ENS: What's the situation at Cuttington right now? Is everyone 
safe, as far as you know?

Tokpa: Even though we have transferred classes from the main 
campus in Suacoco and reestablished in Monrovia, we had classes 
until last week when fighting was renewed in the city. I have 
been in contact with my staff every day, twice a day, finding 
out what the situation has been. Everyone is well; there has 
been no harm, except for our public relations officer [Ted 
Brown] who was at the Greystone building when a shell landed 
there. The Greystone is the building owned by the United States 
[the US Embassy compound]. He didn't get hurt. He immediately 
left the area with his family. Everything is fine.

ENS: What kind of relationship does Cuttington have with the 
Charles Taylor government?

Topka: With regards to the relationship of the church and the 
state, I think it's cordial. The government needs Cuttington. 
The government supports about one-fifth of our students; it has 
a large amount of students there, mainly those who serve in the 
military who decide to go back to school, and they are pretty 
good students. They have no intention of going back to the 
front. They are on scholarship. In most cases they told us what 
was coming up and we were prepared to take the kind of safety 
measures that we needed. The government supported our 
fundraising effort to appeal to the Taiwanese government to try 
to get some money to fix up the university.

So there has been pressure on us to open when we felt it was not 
safe to open and we have stood up to that, especially when I met 
the president on May 13 and we had a discussion on that issue, 
because he wanted us to go back on the campus and I felt it was 
not safe and we were not going to put at risk the students. But 
he understood after some talk.

As far as that's concerned, our staff have not been harassed by 
any of the groups. We hope that remains the case.

ENS: How do you keep educating students in the midst of this?

Tokpa: It's hard to describe, but you have a situation where 
those who are willing to learn will ask you, 'Come and teach 
us.' They're willing to go to school. You have no choice but to 
teach them, except that you have to do what you can to provide a 
kind of atmosphere for learning. We have a staff counseling 
program in our student services; we try to identify students who 
have problems. If, for example, we find out they are dropping 
their studies or they are not coming to school, something is 
wrong, we will counsel them. And they take advantage of the 
counseling services. 

Cuttington is a small school. Almost all the teachers know all 
the students and they come to their homes for help; when they 
have personal problems, they share. That's how Cuttington was 
set up, to be a small Episcopal college that would have 
person-to-person contact, and not be situated in a major city 
where there's no contact among the teachers and the students.

So that has helped a whole deal. We also have a religious life. 
The Rev. Dr. Tomba is the head of the Epiphany Chapel at 
Cuttington, also the head of the theology department. He helps 
churches, he holds services, those who need to go to church, 
those who need to pray, he prays with them.

So far things have been working out. We just hope that this 
nightmare will finish and we'll go back to doing what we do 
best.

ENS: What's the feeling about the ability of the US to intervene 
in this longstanding conflict?

Tokpa: To be honest, it's a very bad feeling for most Liberians. 
Most Liberians feel closer to the United States than the United 
States feels close to them. There have been a lot of instances 
where they could have intervened, and just a pronouncement, we 
believe, would have ended this nightmare.

That hasn't happened. In fact, I think it was yesterday [June 
26] that there was some demonstration where the civilians just 
got annoyed and took a couple of bodies and went and dumped them 
before the US Embassy, and said you cannot sit on the sea and 
have your Marines. Liberia has a close tie with the United 
States, a lot of the officials there. A large percentage of our 
population has relationships here. They trace their background 
here up to now. And we feel that what the French did in the 
Ivory Coast by intervening, and what the British did in Sierra 
Leone by intervening, the United States has more reason to 
intervene in Liberia than those other nations had to intervene 
in their former colonies. But we just cannot understand why, why 
that hasn't happened.

ENS: You're here in New York to obtain some support for 
Cuttington from the Episcopal Church.

Tokpa: Actually, I know times are hard here with the church, but 
I came to see whether I could get some money. We do have a 
little money in our account. We haven't paid our staff since 
April and I was trying to see how we could get some money to pay 
them because the bank is closed in Liberia, we cannot get money 
out, and we have a little amount of money in the Chase Manhattan 
Bank here. I do not have access to it because my bishop [Edward 
Neufville], who is a co-signatory to that account, was not here, 
but he has now come.

There was other money that would have been released by next 
week, but I came to try to see if I could have them release it 
earlier so that I can give at least fifty percent salary relief 
to my people. Since we don't have relief services, at least we 
can have access to the little money that we have. That would 
help. I was told that would be possible, that we'll get some of 
that money, and we are working out the details as to how to get 
it to Ghana, for me to go there and pick it up and try to get it 
back to Liberia. We hope everything will work out.

ENS: What can Episcopalians do for Cuttington?

Tokpa: We just want everyone to pray for us. We need prayers, 
because the point where things are now, I think prayer would do. 
And that's what carries us, a great deal of faith and belief 
that things will be all right. We are just asking for people to 
pray for us and any kind of help that anyone can give to help us 
rebuild the only Episcopal college in West Africa, to help us 
rebuild and carry on our work.

------

Resources:

Anglican and Global Relations Office: 
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/agr/index.html

Episcopal Migration Ministries: 
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/emm/

Peace and Justice Ministries: 
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/peace-justice/index.asp

Liberia News from allAfrica.com: http://allafrica.com/liberia/

--The Rev. Jan Nunley is deputy director of Episcopal News 
Service.