Liberia Communication

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© 2009 Samuel R. Watkins. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 7/10/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4208-1044-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-3141-1 (e-book)

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

DEDICATION

PREFACE

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

HISTORY HIGHLIGHTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

REFERENCES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

COMMUNICATION DEVELOPMENT

DEDICATION

This book is affectionately dedicated to the memory of my parents and family sponsors, Samuel Richard Bismark Watkins, Catherine Mleayeneh Watkins, and Samuel C. M. Watkins.

To my mother, Catherine M. Watkins, for the lifelong loving care, prayers, and encouragement given throughout her life.

To my loving, devoted wife, Mildred T. Watkins, who stands by me as a source of inspiration and motivation, a partner in all of our undertakings.

To my nephews, Emmett Dennis, for providing production support, material, and equipment, and Richelieu Campbell, for assisting with compiling and finishing.

To my loving children, I give special mention for their moral support.

To those who assisted in any way in production, including Sonia Roberts and Rose Moulton, I give my grateful thanks.

PREFACE

Samuel R. Watkins is to be congratulated for his venture in writing. He undertakes to outline for the reader the history and development of electronic communications in the nation of Liberia.

Mr. Watkins’ extensive training and experience in the field of electronics uniquely qualifies him for this important work

In interweaving the general history of Liberia with the communications aspect of that history, he is able to show how important a role communications play in the development of a nation.

In addition Mr. Watkins patriotism and love for his country through all of its wrenching experiences in recent years, having suffered tragic personal loss in the political upheavals gives added strength and validity to his book.

I was fortunate to have served as Mr. Watkins’ pastor for a number of years and found him to be a man of exceptional honor, courage, and religious devotion.

Readers in Liberia as well as those of other nations, will benefit from the information contained in Liberia Communication

Arthur S. Jones

President/Ceo, Arthur S. Jones Religious Enterprises

Former Pastor, St. Marks A.M.E. Church, East Orange, N.J.

The myth that Liberia history is dormant -

The real story is Liberia study and research is alive and vibrant.

The wave of insurgency, civil war and sociopolitical instability

Aroused the conscious desire to write and tell the story.

The question now posed by eager minds

How do we hold on to what we have achieved?

Liberia with Liberia

FOREWORD

This book, Liberia Communication, is the first true record of communication in the Republic of Liberia. It satisfies the compelling desire for genuine recorded facts and information about Liberia. A most important need is now met. The book gives deference to the many dedicated pioneers who sacrificed to make the history of Liberia and communication possible, and they are portrayed as pioneers without reward. This book deals with Liberia’s past, its founding, and the present struggle 1822 to 2006.

The book covers radio telecommunication in Liberia, sacrificial dedication, and interest in bridging the gap of national socioeconomic integration and development linking Liberia through the medium of radio telecommunication.

There is much ignorance and racist prejudice against Liberia and its people. There are many persons who take manifest spiteful pleasure in interpreting such unfavorable judgment, influenced by colonial delineation.

There is wide spread craving and justifiable demand by many Liberians and others for information on the history of Liberia and the events of communication development. At times the demand is expressed in controversial debates over exaggerated terms, seeking true and correct information to be able to place in history Liberia’s sense of worth and respect.

Though Liberians have a sense of history, they failed in the past to preserve their artifacts and to record relevant events. Liberians have left a valuable and rich past to a substantial degree open and unrecorded, and have relied on the remembered past, which has made it impossible for historians to follow and to avoid concealing what may have been the truth and the pitfalls of favoritism and prejudice.

This book, Liberia Communication, records Liberia’s capable virtues. To a degree, the country has succeeded in guiding itself to reveal historical truths within the limits imposed by circumstances, including civil war that destroyed such valuable national history.

Liberians always indulged in the pleasing hope and belief that establishing Liberia released Negroes (Africans) from the bonds of slavery and permitted them to exercise and improve those faculties that impact their dignity in order to nourish in their heart the flame of honorable ambitions.

INTRODUCTION

The Republic of Liberia, shining Lone Star, a light in the path of Africa’s independence, has the distinction of being the oldest black republic in Africa that has no history of being ruled by colonial power. This is vividly exemplified in its emblem the Lone Star symbol in its flag that illuminates the path of self-determination and independence in Africa.

Liberia is situated a few degrees north of the equator at the southwest corner of the continent’s great bulge. Liberia covers an area of about 43,000 square miles (111,370 km) that is comparable to the size of Switzerland in Europe or Tennessee in the United States of America. Its coastline extends 370 miles (15,050 km) along the Atlantic Ocean, between Sierra Leone on the northwest and Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire) on the southeast. Inland, the land ascends from the seaward slopes through of series of highlands to the irregular border with Guinea in the north. See the map below (fig. 1).

HISTORY HIGHLIGHTS

Pedro de Santra the first Portuguese to reach the coast that is now modern Liberia. He was dispatched by then-king Alfonso V to survey the coast of Guinea’s farthest point (Cape Roxo and the Casamance River). His voyage took him past the archipelago of Cape Verde, the high mountains of Kaulago*1 (near modern Conakry), Sierra Leone, which natives of the period called Bulombel*2, and the western promontory of Shebro Island, which is also known as St. Anne Island.

Pedro de Santra first reached the west coast near modern-day Liberia, a part of which is in the vicinity of modern Marshall on the River Junk*3. He described this place as a great green forest. He reached this place on the coast in the year 1461, an important date in the history of the Republic of Liberia. It is possible that this was the first time the people of that area had seen a white man.

Pedro de Santra noticed a piece of land jutting into the sea and named the remarkable promontory of Cape Mount*4 (Cape de Monte), and beyond this, he name Cape Mesurado. Mesurado in Portuguese means modest diminished, quiet. Here the narrative description:

The natives were lighting fires with smoke signals apparently to announce that something unusual had occurred. They seemed to convey in some way the intelligence that no European ship had ever come to our shore before. By their action they appeared to have been neither hostile nor timid.*5

Later the Dutch and the French were very active on the coast, in the vicinity of the River Cestos, a land with a great quantity of ivory.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, according to a letter by John Snoek, a Dutch man who visited the Grain Coast in a yacht, Fohanna Fabo, stated that ivory was the main interest.

Snoek described the natives around Cape Mount as wearing the voluminous Mandingo garment. In the country where the city of Monrovia is now situated, he wrote that the natives lived in large houses containing two or three apartments. In one of these buildings, as many as fifty or sixty men, women, and children were sleeping promiscuously. They lived very close together. He noted, for the most part, that the people along the coast were generally hospitable and friendly to strangers.

From accounts of early Africa, there were constant wars and excessive rivalry between the people of the coast and the interior*. Each party when victorious was ready to sell their prisoners of war to foreign traders who were readily available with money and rich gifts to trade for human commodities.

There is not much evidence of this, but it is indicated that the *King of Portugal had expressly ordered the traders, on mutual terms on their return, to carry a man from the last country they had visited. If they could not make themselves understood in seeking required information, they should bring him by force or by love gifts.

The king, being optimistic, advised that it was possible that upon arrival in Portugal, he might meet other Negroes, most likely from the same vicinity, and that he might be able to give an account of his country.

The first native who was forcibly carried away from the shores of West Africa to Europe actually did meet a female slave in the service of a civilized citizen of Lisbon. Records show that she was from the Vai tribe, who had gone there from an adjoining region, and she could make herself understood in a tongue the natives of Basque Santa Maria could understand. This reveals that a woman from the area presently known as Liberia was already in Europe.

Apparently, the only item of interest that His Portuguese Majesty could extract from the conversation was Guinea corn, found in West Africa. After the Portuguese king had obtained information about Guinea corn and shown this native all the sites of Lisbon, he loaded him up with presents and sent him back to his home country of West Africa on the second voyage of de Santra. It is assumed that he joined other captains and explorers.

They seemed to have extended their voyage along the Atlantic coast as far as Cape Palmas, though this promontory did not receive its Portuguese name until a later date. The Cavalla River was perhaps the limit of Pedro de Santra’s exploration. By 1471, other Portuguese captains had braved the Atlantic coast of Africa and sailed eastward from Cape Palmas. It is believed that this native who was sent back continued with the voyage eastward and was used as an interpreter.

By 1462, they had named what is now known as Liberia the Malamute coast, where the malaguetta pepper is found. Earlier European navigators recognized the tribal groups along the coast a distance of thirty miles above and below Sinoe, between the tribes of the Kroo people and the Cavalla River, and called them Kabo, Yedabo, Bwidabo, Sedewe, Wiabo, and Grebo. Of these the most important are the Sedewe, said to be our ancestors. The largest town on the Grain Coast has a population of about twelve thousand. Early European navigators know it as the kingdom of Malaguetta. The kingdom carried on much traffic in a spice known as malaguetta pepper. This spice is recognized in Europe as the grain of paradise.

The Dutch followed the Portuguese on the west coast of Africa concurrently. The name Grain Coast is derived from the records compiled by the great German geographer Lewvinus Hulsius*. The English and Dutch soon applied the shortest designation of the Grain Coast to all countries between Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast.

CHAPTER 1

HUMAN RELATIONS

Liberian communication is not unlike other communication, but only varies in the circumstances in which it was established to participate as a means of conveying knowledge and information. Liberian communication can be traced to a period over fifteen centuries ago, when the natives of Liberia on the Grain Coast of West Africa south of the Sahara lived a relatively carefree life. They conducted their own affairs, possessing their own culture and their own effective means for communicating by the beating of the drum, the blowing of a horn, or visual smoke signals and message-bearing runners between villages and towns, conveying needed information.

The account of slave trade invariably provided contact through various media of communication. The ships on the West African coast stimulated curiosity about the strange and different people. Their skin color and the things they brought stimulated many questions; they wanted to know and understand. Who are these people? Why did they come here to our land?

Earlier explores in narratives said these people were lighting fires and making smoke signals apparently to announce that something strange was occurring. It is possible that this is the first time in the history of Liberia that these people had met a white man. It was impossible for the traders and the natives to make contact, though, because the tribesmen could not understand what the traders were trying to convey. Many questions lingered without answers. Snoek, the Dutch explorer, described the gestures and attitudes as emphasizing friendship, stating that these people, by their actions, appeared neither hostile nor timid. They were generally hospitable and friendly.

This concept and conceived attitude opened up a new medium of communication, and the act of giving and receiving established mutual trade through which some of the questions were answered. The gestures and signs of the ship traders or agents were interpreted as friendly. The chief and the natives assumed this was their way of saying, We really want to be your friends.

This assumed friendship motivated mutual trust, which resulted in free exchange of gifts that created excitement on both sides, confirming mutual friendship. It is amazing to realize that even though the chief was intrigued by the gifts, he was still curious, and asked, Why did you come to our land?

After the discovery of America and the cotton gin, the cotton industry boomed in the United States. This brought wealth and profit to plantation owners and had a tragic effect on traffic in human slaves. New methods for obtaining labor created concern with the Africans as the need for labor increased in order to provide manpower to grow cotton and operate the cotton industry. The profit was used to buy more slaves, grow more cotton, and pick more cotton. The problem of obtaining labor stimulated the slave trade into Africa to acquire human cargo. Slave traffic with human cargo boomed and slavery became the medium of communication and trade, bringing more traders to the coast of Africa.

Greed and financial ambition motivated traders and agents to kidnap those who were friends to be sold in business deals for personal gain. Though earlier records of traders point out that the Africans along the coast were eager to establish friendly communication with the traders, the traders had changed and now had different motives and intentions under pretenses, trickery, and arranged barter transactions.

Changes in the business development of Europe and America created drastic effects. The attitudes and the behavior of the ship agents’ mutual friendship that had been established became compulsory ventures of personal enrichment. A trip to Africa was no longer friendly. It was competition for the ships to obtain the desired commodities.

History blamed King Henry of Portugal under authority from Roman pontiffs who, in 1454, took possession of several islands and havens on the coast of Africa. They took many slaves by force and bartered them for small sums per head and staged raids of the tribes. The traders would capture men and women and many times children. A Dutch vessel on the coast of Guinea, West Africa, confirmed this fact that slaves were obtained by paying a native king a certain sum per head if he would stage a raid. The areas severely raided were in the vicinity of Gambia, Sierra Leone, Dahomy, the Niger Delta, and the lower Congo along the Grain Coast, including Liberia. The English are remembered on the Liberia stretch of the coast due to the fact that John Hawkins, in 1562, took three cargo ships of slaves to the West Indies accompanied by Francis Drake.

It is disheartening to find accounts given by English slavers: They would encourage the head man of the tribe to obtain a loan from him. He would then publicly demand payment. The head tribesman was not able to repay the loan that the English trader claimed as his honest debt. The trader would threaten the head tribesman and force a raid on the head tribesman’s village or town. The trader would raid and capture many of the people. He might in some situations capture and carry off the entire inhabitants of a town. This is an obvious demonstration of deception, conveying messages of distortion. Many unanswered questions are still asked. Why did the traders violate their trust? Why did they abuse their hospitality?

Distorted communication was transmitted to the natives. Wrong messages were received. The chiefs and tribes depended on the true interpretation of the content of the message received from the traders and agents to determine the appropriate action. This chapter, Human Relations, shows clearly the human element in the history of Liberia.

During the early years of the exploration of Africa, the Portuguese purchased Africans from the Fula and Mandingo chiefs of Sine-Gambia. They occasionally kidnapped some along the Grain Coast, including the Gold Coast, the Congo, and Angola, trading them in Africa and elsewhere, including Europe and Asia.

Evidence of the English slave trade is narrated in the account of a slaver’s activities. In his slave trading and dealing, he says, I am known to sail up a river with some large craft. Arriving in a town, I give a speech to get [their] attention. I would open a puncheon* or two of rum and I would invite the people to sit around and drink. At night when I have got them all thoroughly drunk, I would give the signal to my people who are waiting in the craft to secure all those parties ready to be sold. We sell everyone* worthy of purchasing to some slave ship that had been waiting at the river mouth.

When asked how he manages to guard so many slaves with few crew, he said they are already drunk. I put them in Leg-iron*. If there be not enough leg iron, why, I handcuff them. If handcuffs are not many, I put a collar around their necks with a chain lock to a ringbolt on the deck. If chain won’t do, I put two and if two wont do, I put three. With dignity he boasted, You can trust me for that.

It cannot be conceived the degradation of these Africans when they reached the slave marts. Proud men and women and sometimes children were stripped and exhibited. Early accounts state that they were usually nude for display. They would be examined, weighed, and measured like domestic animals before they were auctioned. Many times husbands were separated from wives and parents from children. They were considered as ordinary property and were branded with hot irons, most times under the breast, to show property ownership.

Reading this account of the communication development of a nation, you must include the human relations—social and cultural—and respect for human dignity in understanding the people of Africa and Europe man to man. The gripping part of the overwhelming story is the gross inhumane acts of the traders and their deception and distorted communication that induced Africans

They did not correctly interpret the communication of brutality. When they were on board, these same people described as generally hospitable and friendly were packed in rows and bound together in chains.

These proud people, stripped of dignity, were forced to remain in a spot immersed in defecation. Disease spread rapidly. Their legs, their hands, or their necks had iron-infected wounds. Many Africans died on the voyage due to the lack of medical attention. Some simply died from shame, the lack of judgment, and the distorted communication of deception they received from so-called friends.

A state of hopelessness engulfed them. Dead bodies were often left in the hold for days. At least 10 to 15 percent of the Africans taken on board the slave ships died before reaching their destination. They did not always die of natural causes. Many were brutally murdered or were simply thrown overboard while still alive. Wholesale murder was inflicted upon those who dared mutiny or who tried to escape. These events of the voyages are recorded from the seafarers’ trade ships.

The slave dealers who by false and deceptive communication kidnapped and forced the Africans by means and methods we have clearly seen in this chapter are guilty. The business dealers and plantation owners who profited from the human trade that dehumanized Africans are also guilty. Such events have no parallel in history except the extermination of the Jews by Hitler.

CHAPTER 2

LIBERIA AND COLONIALISM

Liberia earnestly desired to firmly establish a progressive nation and maintain a nation of power and influence in Africa. This desire was confronted with criticism and interference from colonial imperialist powers seeking to destabilize the effort.

These powers were confronted with the fact that a nation of Negro Africans took upon itself the difficult task and responsibility of contributing largely to the solution of the problem of Negro (black) possibilities. Liberia committed itself to the care and destiny of the Lone Star, the emblem representing the light in dark Africa.

Britain in 1772 abolished slavery as a result of the lawsuit brought before the court by Granville Sharp*. With the backing of the British government and parliament, legislation was enacted that prohibited the slave trade. In 1787, Sharp sponsored the establishment of a self-governing colony at Sierra Leone in West Africa for settling free slaves under British sponsorship.

A few years later, at the end of the American Revolution, many blacks left the United States with departing British troops who, living in Nova Scotia, joined the ship for Sierra Leone.

In 1819, the American Colonization Society received the support of the United States Congress to establish a transit camp* in West Africa, similar to that in Sierra Leone, for free people of color. The agents of the American Colonization Society experienced difficulty in locating a suitable place to settle. They traveled from Sherbro Island sixty miles along the West African coast