By Samuel G. Dweh, Contributing Writer
The ‘former students’ list of Madam Jessie Wah King, born in 1919, has more than hundred persons. More than 25% of those on this list currently occupy top positions in the Liberian government, in Liberia’s private sector, and one of them is occupying a top position at the West African Examination Council (WAEC).
Four of the persons on the roll, from the 1950s toward the 1970s, include: Ellen Sirleaf (who later became Liberia’s 22nd Head of State), Joseph Nyumah Boakai (who later became Liberia’s Vice President), Evelyn White (now bearing ‘Kandakai’ as matrimonial surname. Currently, she chairs the West African Examination Council (WAEC), and Eugene Shannon (who later became Minister of Land, Mines and Energy).
The first three names were under Madam King’s tutelage at the College of West Africa (CWA), a High School in Monrovia. “I taught Bible and Music from 7th grade to 10th grade,” she told this writer in an interview for his education newspaper, Edu-Diary, in September, 2017.
She taught Eugene Shannon in Grand Cape Mount County.
But this 99-year-old Teacher is sad about her current financial flight. This, she says is negatively affecting all aspects of her life.
There’s a pothole almost at the entrance of the veteran educator’s compound (hosting a four-room apartment with the peach paint fading off) on V-Road, in the Old Road Community of Monrovia. During rainy season, water sets in this ditch, reaching to knee-level of some of teacher King’s visitors.
It’s this route Head of State Ellen Sirleaf sometimes passes to visit her former teacher “every Sunday, except the President is sick or she’s outside of Liberia,” teacher King told me during a chit-chat at her home.
At 99, Madam Jessie Wah King mounts commercial motorbike when she’s going to attend a State function on invitation from President Ellen Sirleaf, or going to be a part of a meeting of the Senior Citizens Association of Liberia of at the YWCA building in Congo Town on the first Tuesday of each Month. She’s an active member of this group.
“My Assistant helps me mount the bike so that I don’t fall. On the bike, I don’t stride. I sit with my face adjacent the back of the rider and I grip his body so that I don’t fall,” she explains.
Her use of bike is due to lack of a personal car.
President Ellen Sirleaf has intervened with offer of one of the official cars for her government, to be used by teacher King anytime she has an important program to attend. She has three major events she would always need the car for: Sabbath (every Saturday) at a Seventh-Day Adventist Church—far from her home but in the same community, Senior Citizens Association of Liberia’s meeting (first Tuesday of each Month), and meeting with her sister living on Pipeline Road, Paynesville (first Sunday).
But the President’s humanitarian gesture has its constraints for her teacher on a condition of getting the car.
“I should put in for the car two days in advance, and sometime I leave home, due to urgency of the meeting, before the car arrives,” teacher King disclosed.
With the expiration of the presidency of Madam Sirleaf fast approaching—22nd day of January, 2018, teacher Jessie King is worried.
“All her humanitarian gestures toward me, especially the official car offer, will end soon,” she mused in a tone laden with pessimism. By this time—the 22nd day of January—Africa’s global football legend-turned politician, Ambassador George Manneh Weah will be on the most exalted seat.
President Sirleaf’s other humanitarian gestures toward her former teacher include: total renovation of her house (from the roof to the floor) in 2012, paying electricity bills (not always), recharge of call-time credit on teacher’s mobile phone (not always), offer of cooked foods from the President’s pots (mostly on Sundays) and offer of basketful of fresh fruits and vegetables direct from the President’s farms. I tasted one of the President’s meals (fried cabbage with one chicken’s wing and a piece of fish for me) sent to her teacher on Friday, January 12, 2018.
Vice President Joseph Nyumah Boakai has also registered his ‘thank you’ to his former teacher (in the 7th grade class) with a forty United States dollars (US$40)—the only money Madam Jessie Wah King remembers the VP giving her since he took over Liberia’s #2 seat in 2006.
“He gave me the money months ago at his house when I was there to beg him to give me the list of my students in the 1962 class at CWA,” the retired teacher told me during boredom-crushing sessions (for her) at her home.
The third person on my list, above, Mrs. (Dr.) D. Evelyn S. Kandakai (former Minister of Education) has expressed appreciation to her former teacher by re-dressing Madam King’s family’s children’s school (Mini King Dunbar Center for Early Learning) with blue-white garment (paint) and drawing different pictures on the School’s fence.
She also paid fifty US dollars for her to the publisher of Edu-Diary to produce the edition of the paper in which the veteran educator is featured. (Go to Samuel G. Dweh’s Facebook to view photos of teacher Jessie Wah King holding a copy of Edu-Diary with her stories).
Dr. Eugene Shannon, the fourth person mentioned in this article, is former Minister of Lands, Mines and Energy. He has not impressed his former teacher, Madam Jessie Kings, in terms of saying ‘thank you’ with financial help.
The veteran educator insinuated during our chat. “Eugene failed to support a program of my group, Senior Citizens Association of Liberia, after I’ve personally spoken with him on that more than twice,” Madam King told me about her former student in grade school. He was appointed to that position by President Sirleaf during her first term.
Shannon’s response is almost similar to that of General Services Agency boss, Madam Mary Broh, and National Investment Commission head, Etmonia Tarpeh (all political appointees of President Sirleaf).
When I met them at their respective offices in September (2017) to help me produce the edition of my weekly education newspaper (Edu-Diary) produced late—on 5th of December, Madam Broh replied to my request: “I’m not here for Jessie King promotion business.”
Madam Tarpeh responded: “Go to Jesssie King’s children, or the people she taught, to help you. One of her students is Eugene Shannon, who used to be at the Ministry of Lands and Mines.”
I didn’t have money, but I was under the nationalistic urge to celebrate this woman in my education newspaper, hence my begging the friends or buddies of her former student, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, to help. Assistance never came.
Two months later, I relayed teacher Jessie King’s former student’s two buddies’ responses to her. She exclaimed: “Wow! Mary Broh attended CWA, and she sometimes accompanies Ellen to my house, here I knew Etmonia’s family in Gransd Cape Mount (County), when she was a little girl going to school when I was teaching in the County.”
THE TEACHER’S OWN ‘BLOOD’
Many of Madam Jessie Wah King’s biological children and grandchildren in the United States of America are financially well-off. Three of the four walls of her Living Room is pasted with photos of the Jessie Wah King’s blood lineage—more than 30.
She told me that her eldest girl child, Mini King Dunbar, now deceased, was a founding member of the Florida International University in the USA, and later became a librarian there. The now-oldest child, Hawa Amanda Weeks, is a teacher in America.
But mother Jessie King is unhappy, especially from pains of mounting commercial motorbikes or bouncing with a speeding bike whose operator saw a pothole and plunged fired the machine through it.
“Have you ever asked your children or grand children for a personal car to end body pains you feel from travelling on motorbikes?” I asked during one of our chatting sessions.
“I haven’t asked anyone of them to buy a car for me, but my children or grand children are seeing my physical features. They should know I need a car,” she replied in a plaintive tone. “When the official car released by the President can’t’ arrive at my house, I have to still move about away from my residence. At my age, I can’t continue mounting a motorbike, which hurts my aging physical frame,” she complained.
When I was writing this article (January 17, 2018)—three days to the constitutional expiration of Madam Ellen Sirleaf’s political leadership of Liberia, the 99-year-old was living with none of her biological family members in her apartment, which she shares with tenants. She described them as “troublemakers and ungrateful people” on their refusal to pay rent and to greet her in her own house.
As people age, them sometimes get crossed. The veteran educator is not without characteristic fault, in terms of her verbal approach (talking) to people under her direct control.
Her longest-serving Assistant, Susanna William, mother of four, told me that the old woman’s major ‘but’ is nagging.
“I was living with my children’s father in that house, but we left when she got behind us, complaining everyday that she na want fornicators living in her house,” Susanna said in broken English to me.
“The old ma hard to deal wif,” Susanna continued. “Her children in America brought me into her house to be her house girl. But when I prepare her food in the morning, she well tell me it’s too soon prepare food. When I ask her when I she wants me to cook her foods, she will complain again, saying, ‘why are you asking me about what you know you should do’. Sometime she teh me my food na sweet or na cook well, so she way refuse to eat it, and herself will cook dey same food or a different food. I tink her old age is making her hard to deal with.”
Does this woman deserve our love—on what she for our country in the classroom, or she deserves our hatred—on her natural shortcoming (nagging)?