Liberian Studies Association Conference at Temple University, Philadelphia

The last time I ever gathered in the same setting with that many Liberians was probably sometime is July 1992 when we piled up on the deck of a peace-keeping ship en route to Ghana searching for peace and security as refugees. For some reason, I have always found myself in places where Liberians are "naturally" hard to find. I must emphasize that, Liberians tend to have this "twisted idea" that "their forefathers (not their foremothers) came from America." So, before the inception of the civil war - the "Great United States of America" was the only country on the planet. According to Liberians informal standard, if you had not travel to the US, then you've not travel anywhere. The point I'm drifting at is that, outside the US, you seldom see Liberians (although the trend is changing mainly due to the civil war). Even more pronounced is that, with such small population as a country, the few of us that make it to "proper" universities (if you know what I mean?) are in the minutest number, especially outside of the US.

For example, at the University of Ghana we were only three Liberian female students between 1997 and 2000. At the University of British Columbia, we were only two female students between 2001 and 2004. At the University of Nottingham, before I enrolled as an international student for academic year 2005/2006, I specifically requested to be connected to other Liberian students, there was none! Later on in the year, I will find a Liberia-British student who didn't consider herself to be a Liberian because she's never lived in Liberia. At York University, where I'm currently studying, I know of only two other Liberians students (a male and a female) c'est tout! In the grand scheme of things, my limited sample is apparently a happenstance, albeit, some level of "truth" can still be seen. Thus, you can appreciate my excitement when I received an email from Professor Elwood Dunn (my mentor) encouraging me to submit a paper to the 42nd Liberian Studies Association Annual Conference.

I was truly elated! I immediately submitted my abstract and invited my good friend to apply as well. By mid February both of our papers were accepted for oral presentation. We quickly booked flights and organized accommodation with family members in anticipation for our first Liberian academic gathering ever! Nevermind that, on March 25th I had to teach between 8:30am and 10:30am before boarding an American Airline Flight which later delayed for almost 6hrs pushing my ETA to almost 1am so that I ended up having only 3hrs of sleep in order to make my 9:30am presentation - I still made it just in time!

I had prepared a 4-page paper to present in 20 minutes - I usually refrain from doing power-point presentations because I personally think they can be too distracting - but I ended up speaking for 10 crisp minutes. I did not realize how captivating my presentation was until I had finished and saw participants lined up to speak with me. I am always very humbled by such reaction at conferences/events as I consider myself to be simple, down-to-earth and approachable. I do appreciate how far I have come in life but it is no excuse to be pompous, proud or snobbish, in fact, I detest such people because I believe, though I had to work hard to acquire my achievements, it is only by chance that opportunity was granted me (know what I mean?). In other words, no matter my hard work, if (say) WUSC had not offered me the opportunity to emigrate to Canada, I'm not sure I would have had this much successes - Note: there's no way of predicting otherwise though.

Anyways, the long to the short is that, for three consecutive days, I was blessed to be in the presence of renown Liberian scholars, activists, entertainers, and more. The highlight of the conference was when Professor Elwood Dunn appointed me to be a part of LSA Ad Hoc Committee, whose major goal is to review the organization's Constitution as well as make recommendation(s) to the Executive Team before the next conference in 2011. Finally, after all these years of education, I have established my links with Liberian academics - the best is yet to come!