It's a Close Community
One of the things that we expatriates often talk about is how close a society Liberia is. It’s not a terribly large country, but once you factor in extended families (and everyone here knows their extended families in ways I’ve never seen in the US), clan kinship, and educational and professional relationships, well, everyone seems to know everyone else. And everyone talks to everyone else. I got a real taste of that last week and earlier this week.
As background, there has been a huge controversy brewing here in Liberia over the past year concerning private use permits (PUPs). PUPs are the means by which a private land owner is supposed to be able to commercially log timber on their privately owned property. Word got out that some folks were abusing the laws and, after a series of allegations, court filings, moratoria, and press stories, the President appointed a special independent investigative board (SIIB) to investigate the allegations. Long story short, the SIIB recently released a report that documents abuses by government employees (probably bribed or personally profiting), fraud and other criminal activity, collusion by several timber companies (actually all subsidiaries of the same parent company) and blatant failure to conform to the requirement of laws in ways that abused local communities (on customary lands) to the profit of companies and individuals and the financial detriment of the communities and the government. The President subsequently issued an executive order setting forth a number of actions to be taken (to include investigations for prosecution).
Back to the story - a couple of weeks back I wound up going over to the President’s legal advisor’s office with several State Department Political and Economic Affairs officers to discuss the Government of Liberia’s intentions and progress towards implementing the executive order. Normally I don’t cover the PUP stuff (though I have been in close consultation throughout the year) because USAID’s natural resource person covers it, but she was on vacation and the duty fell to me.
So there we are, doing our introductions with the President’s Legal Advisor. As per protocol, our head person discusses his background in a bit more detail than the rest of the team. I introduce myself as USAID’s Senior Rule of Law and Land Conflict Resolution Advisor and noted that I’ve advised USAID and the embassy on the PUP situation over the past year. The Legal Advisor then goes into a lengthy description of his background, noting that he started his academic career with a degree in agriculture from the University of Liberia.
At one point later in our conversation, as things were settling down after the formal discussions, I said, “So you did your undergraduate work in agriculture, were you a classmate of Dr. Brandy? (the Chairman of the Land Commission, who used to be the former Minister of Agriculture and who the Legal Advisor had to know from the PUP meetings - which Dr Brandy was a part of). He said, “Sure I do! I’ve known him since high-school and yes, we were undergraduates together!” Diplomatic tip - an easy way to work yourself into someone’s good graces is to identify someone you know in common. I didn’t think much of it. At least until 5 days later.
Tuesday of this week, I facilitated a meeting between our economic growth team leader and the natural resources person (now back from vacation and handling the PUP mess!) and Dr. Brandy at the Land Commission. I’d arranged the meeting because during a meeting with him the previous week Dr. Brandy started talking about his ideas of how to further agriculture in Liberia and I thought our EG folks really could benefit from hearing that for themselves. At one point, when the topic turned to working with communities to help them understand their rights, Dr. Brandy noted that as part of implementing the President’s executive order the Land Commission will be doing that . . . he turned and looked me in the eyes, “as I’m sure you’ll recall my good friend Seward Cooper explained to you last week Dan . . .” Dr. Brandy turned his eyes back to the team leader and continued his comments.
So, with that one glance and comment, Dr. Brandy (who I really like) let me know that the President’s Legal Advisor and the Chairman of the Land Commission (a ministerial position) had a conversation about, among other things, me in the intervening 5 days. It’s the first time I’ve really ben hit with the fact that it is a very, very close community here.