From palava huts to TikTok: How Liberians are preserving their past

Monrovia, Liberia – For generations, Liberia’s past lived successful the voices of its elders, carried done conversations, ceremonies and assemblage gatherings.

Today, those stories are uncovering caller audiences crossed TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, podcasts and integer archives.

Young Liberians are documenting their history, exploring their civilization and reaching audiences astatine location and crossed the diaspora. Rather than replacing accepted storytellers, they are carrying an age-old contented into the integer age.

Across overmuch of West Africa, griots, oregon oral historians, preserved past done storytelling, euphony and oral tradition. Liberia ne'er developed the ceremonial griot contented recovered crossed the Sahel, but its elders fulfilled a akin role, preserving household histories, taste traditions and the stories that bound communities together.

Over time, however, that contented has travel nether increasing pressure.

Among those starring efforts to sphere Liberia’s past is Bilphena Decontee Yahwon, laminitis of Archive Liberia, a representation and governmental acquisition task that explores Liberian past done research, archives and nationalist storytelling.

“I didn’t primitively acceptable retired to archer Liberian stories. I wanted to archer my ain story,” Yahwon says.

“Within my communicative was besides a communicative of warfare and migration, 1 that I felt I could lone contextualise by knowing the communicative of Liberia, who we were earlier the 1800s, what happened afterwards, and what we became. I realised I was wrong a web of stories, and that is yet what brought maine to the enactment I bash now,” she tells Al Jazeera.

Her idiosyncratic hunt has go portion of a wider question of young Liberians utilizing integer platforms to reclaim the country’s past and reshape however it is remembered.

A past interrupted by war

Elders passed down the memories of families, communities, taste traditions and the events that shaped Liberia for generations, but the country’s civilian wars severed that chain.

Liberia’s 2 civilian wars, fought betwixt 1989 and 2003, killed an estimated 250,000 people, displaced hundreds of thousands much and disrupted the transmission of history, civilization and household memory.

“Liberian societies successful the wood loop lacked the nonrecreational caste of griots that existed successful the Sahel. But our elders did their champion to transmit humanities and taste knowledge, albeit connected an unpaid basis,” says Patrick Burrowes, a Liberian historiographer and author.

“The concatenation of transmission crossed generations continued successful an unbroken manner for centuries until the war. That is wherefore we are seeing little and little transmission of close humanities and taste knowledge,” Burrowes tells Al Jazeera.

The effects of that disruption are inactive felt today.

As Liberia has go much urbanised, galore young radical person moved distant from the communities wherever oral histories were traditionally shared. According to a 2022 study by the Liberia Institute for Statistics and Geo-Information Services, interior migrants relationship for 46.7 percent of the municipality population, compared with 13.6 percent of the agrarian population.

The places wherever stories are shared person changed. The request to sphere them has not.

The caller palava hut

For galore young Liberians, the caller gathering spot is online.

A humanities photograph shared connected Facebook, a TikTok video explaining a taste contented oregon a podcast exploring Liberia’s past tin present scope audiences acold beyond a azygous community.

Stories erstwhile shared betwixt elders and younger generations present question crossed cities, continents and the Liberian diaspora successful seconds.

Zuleka Dauda, main programme serviceman astatine the Center for Integrated Solutions, a Liberian-owned probe and strategical readying organisation, says the displacement reflects improvement alternatively than loss.

“Culture should ne'er basal still,” she tells Al Jazeera.

“Young Liberians are consuming civilization differently, but it’s inactive being taught and shared. Instead of gathering astir the palava hut, they stitchery astir TikTok, Facebook, podcasts and YouTube. We didn’t suffer storytelling. We changed the stage.”

For galore creators, these platforms person go spaces to papers traditions, sphere household histories and situation narratives astir Liberia that person often been shaped from extracurricular the country.

Historical photographs, forgotten traditions and household memories are reaching caller audiences arsenic Liberians usage exertion to reconnect with their past.

But taking storytelling online has besides brought caller challenges.

Truth and memory

Access remains 1 of the biggest barriers.

According to World Bank figures, conscionable implicit 1 successful 3 Liberians uses the internet, limiting who tin enactment successful this increasing integer archive.

There is besides the situation of misinformation.

Traditional storytellers learned implicit galore years, with elders liable for correcting inaccuracies and protecting the cognition passed betwixt generations.

Social media has opened storytelling to everyone, but it has besides removed galore of those safeguards.

Participants successful an Archive Liberia oral past task airs for a radical photograph [Bilphena Decontee Yahwon/Al Jazeera]

“Historically, African griots underwent rigorous training, and the recitation of cognition by young acolytes was fact-checked by their elders,” says Burrowes.

“But societal media is simply a brave caller world. Individual users bash not acquisition grooming successful sifting information from falsehood. Many users station accusation without vetting. They often usage their platforms to summation followers and influence, without respect to societal responsibility.”

Limited literacy and restricted entree to archives besides marque it harder for galore Liberians to verify humanities claims. Government figures estimation literacy among Liberians aged 15 and supra astatine 58.6 percent.

For Yahwon, however, the situation is not lone astir accuracy but besides astir who gets to signifier Liberia’s humanities narrative.

“For me, 1 of the biggest challenges successful telling Liberian stories, civilization and past is undoing the ahistorical relationship of our past that has dominated for truthful long,” she says.

“So overmuch of what has been written astir Liberia is shaped by narratives that deficiency an anti-colonial and anti-imperialist perspective.”

Who gets to archer Liberia’s story?

As much Liberians crook to integer platforms to sphere the past, the situation is ensuring those stories stay rooted successful grounds arsenic good arsenic memory.

The Liberia Tourism Authority says it is moving with historians, taste institutions and contented creators to amended entree to humanities resources and assistance nutrient accurate, engaging stories astir Liberia.

Dauda believes the reply is not to discourage young radical from telling stories online, but to assistance them archer amended ones.

“Silence is simply a acold greater menace than conversation. We request to find ways to promote young Liberians to archer amended stories,” she says.

The voices person changed. The work has not. Whether stories are shared beneath a palava hut oregon uploaded to TikTok, the task remains the same: ensuring Liberia’s past is preserved for the generations that follow.

“Our procreation doesn’t conscionable inherit history. We are creating it and sharing it,” Dauda says.

“Think astir it. The aboriginal of Liberian past whitethorn not beryllium written archetypal successful textbooks. It whitethorn beryllium uploaded.”