E3W Literature | University of Texas

William Powers
Blue Clay People: Seasons on Africa’s Fragile Edge
St. Martins Press, 2006
292 pages
$14.95

Reviewed by Rebecca Rossiter

Few history texts claim Liberia’s bough on America’s family tree. And yet, the once thriving West African nation, founded by “freed” US slaves in the 1820s, christened its major cities after American presidents and still claims to be the abandoned, fifty-first state. Likewise, few missionary memoirs bring uncensored humanity to the page quite like William Powers’s first work, Blue Clay People: Seasons on Africa’s Fragile Edge, an often nail-biting account of his years spent trying to make a lasting difference in Liberia, starting in 1999.

Leading Catholic Relief Services, the largest NGO (non-governmental organization) in Monrovia, is not an easy assignment. This is especially true when based in the only capital city lacking running water, working sewage systems, or electricity. Blue Clay People records the ongoing collapse of this “fourth-world” nation, due mostly to insatiable corruption and past civil wars that brought the country to its knees. Powers, however, offers an additional hypothesis that no other news story or non-fiction account of Liberia I have read has been quite so willing to voice: aggressive dependency. After nearly two decades of foreign aid, Liberian citizens ironically own nothing of sustainable value for themselves. Chinese, Lebanese, or the UN—not Liberians—own most steady businesses like shops and restaurants. In addition, the gap grows between wealthy and destitute. While a cease-fire still holds when Powers arrives in Monrovia, the average Liberian’s quality of life had not improved elsewhere, even with the influx of funds, peacekeeping troops, and resources from around the world.

To add to this corruptive pyramid, Powers wonders in his first-person account if NGOs in Liberia have taken the place of colonists. He is increasingly uneasy with the role that he, as expatriate and American male, is expected to play out daily: “I had landed in a strange reconstruction of the southern antebellum plantation system,” he writes during his first unsettling months in Monrovia, “and I was unwittingly cast in the role of master.” Just as Powers cannot forget the constant expectations for a “white bossman-o,” his American readers cannot dodge repeated anecdotes on global accountability, for which some may abandon the book. Whether Blue Clay People is highlighting America’s part in the demand for blood diamonds or the continued destruction of rainforests, Powers somehow announces these truths without succumbing to blatant anti-American or anti-Liberian views. His intertwining tales of disaster, homesickness, and even falling in love always, always keep us on the edge of our seats. This is mostly because he is willing to let us witness his humility, his humanness. By the end of the book, it is obvious that Powers has been deeply affected by his time in Liberia, and, in some ways, even broken. As Blue Clay People recounts, the stubbornly positive nature of a country dealing with so much desperation is relatively astounding. To the very end, Powers makes sure his readers experience all sides of Liberia: reoccurring patterns of violence and poverty in his book do not detract his readers from also experiencing the resilience and energy of so many Liberian individuals. The lush, hidden beauty of the country itself stands out compared to the economically-challenged people.

Each section of the memoir foreshadows the “fragile peace” as included in the book’s title. The “Rainy Season” turns to “Dry Season,” which soon climaxes towards “Warring Season.” Each section also begins with quotations from social justice giants like Mahatma Gandhi. Powers uses a lengthy quote from Wendell Berry, a writer and activist known for his stance on nonviolence and sustainability, as a kind of epigraph to the prologue: “We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us…” Even without this reiteration throughout Blue Clay People, Powers’s testimony remains a fascinating collage of language and characters. It dances together environmental science, history, popular culture, and action film. The natural tensions of Liberia’s uncertain future complement the author’s reservations as a Western outsider vowing to “reduce poverty and dependency while conserving the rainforest.”

But can change really come to a place like Liberia, “hell with a beach,” where seventeen practicing physicians represent 3.1 million, and students recite “France is the capital of Paris”? After all, some of Liberia’s youth felt empowered only when drugged and carrying AK-47s. But were they simply emulating “Americo-Liberians” who enslaved indigenous tribes by force for over a century? When will the cycles towards violence and power cease for a nation that knows little else? Powers directs these seemingly impossible questions towards Liberia, as well as America.

When my parents volunteered as humanitarian workers in Liberia for two years from 2004-2006, I turned to Blue Clay People to feel like I was there with them, engaging all five senses with the culture. Already too familiar with Liberia’s horrific past, I was hungry to read about its everydayness, about the slow recuperation of a nation that has seen so much torment. Powers did not let me down. While he sometimes outrageously tames the Liberian dialect for clarity, I truly lived many scenes from his book—sometimes word for word—while spending a summer teaching in Monrovia. Also unapologetically agnostic, Powers’s work is unique among expatriate memoirs. He narrowly missed Liberia’s “World War III” in 2003, switching to a new assignment in Bolivia during 2002. His second book, Whispering in the Giant’s Ear: A Frontline Chronicle From Bolivia’s War On Globalization, was released in May of 2007.

Today, Liberia’s former “President” Charles Taylor faces a long war crimes tribunal, while Harvard graduate Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf struggles as Africa’s first female head of state. As Johnson-Sirleaf took office in 2006, nearly 85% of the population was still unemployed, and there had been little effort to bring past warlords to justice. The Liberian population today continues to fear that a rekindled surge of emotions could fuel yet another outbreak of violence, since several warlords are still in positions of governmental power.

If only reporters and writers, like Powers, could honestly record Liberia’s birthing pains as the world’s largest concentration of UN troops prepares to leave Monrovia later this year. Yes, there are other countries in today’s headlines with similar stories of war and its aftermath: inevitably painful generations of healing and chance. But as Americans, can we truly forget about Liberia and her ties to us? On most days, our media and history textbooks say “yes”: Blue Clay People, however, says “no.” Like Liberia’s new President Johnson-Sirleaf, this book is a driven attempt to prove that change is possible, if only one life at a time. It incites the necessary tools for the reconstruction of any war-torn nation: hope, and even more importantly, relevant action from both aid workers and citizens. Whether an academic or a history buff, a student of post-colonialism or someone bound for humanitarian service, readers of Blue Clay People can expect to read another fascinating side to Liberia’s ongoing story.