Nine-year-old Emmanuel has been pulled out of school to help his family make ends meet
SALALA, Bong County- The midday sun beats down here as 10-year-old Nulee runs from one vehicle to another with plastic sachets of cold-water urging passengers to buy. “Cold water, cold water here! Make your chest cold!” he calls out in a high-pitched voice.
By Joseph Titus Yekeryan with New Narratives
His childhood, once filled with the promise of school and a bright future, has been overshadowed by poverty. Last year after her farm produced a small crop, his grandmother Nowai, pulled him out of the second grade to help the family. Nulee had loved reading and dreamed of being a banker. Now he has much more simple dreams.
“This is all I have to do for my grandmother and me to keep eating,” Nulee says with despair. (Nulee and his grandmother’s last names are being withheld.) “When you are born into this kind of life, it feels like there’s no way out.”
As poverty in rural Liberia rises a growing number of children are being forced out of school and onto the streets to help families make ends meet. Experts say it’s threatening to leave another generation locked out of the opportunities that come with an education and that can break the cycle of poverty that has plagued rural Liberians.
Nulee is very aware of the opportunities he is missing out on.
“I feel bad when I see my friends going to school,” Nulee says. “At the beginning, I used to hide myself whenever I was selling and I see them coming but now, everyone knows that I am no longer in school.”
Nulee’s former classmates head to school without him.
According to the latest World Bank report on poverty in Liberia, the country is grappling with severe economic inequality. While 3 out of 10 Liberians in urban settings live below the poverty line, the situation is much worse in rural communities like Bong County, where eight out of ten people live in poverty. The crushing weight of poverty has driven families to rely on their children to make ends meet, often at the expense of their education and well-being.
UNICEF’s 2021 report on child labor found that a third of Liberian children aged 5-17 are engaged in labor, with 30 percent working in dangerous conditions.
I feel bad when I see my friends going to school,” Nulee says. “At the beginning, I used to hide myself whenever I was selling and I see them coming but now, everyone knows that I am no longer in school. – Nulee, a ten-year old school dropout
Nulee carries the weight of both his family’s survival and his lost dreams of education. Dressed in clothes worn thin by constant use his young life has already been marked by struggle and pain.
“I sell based on the season. Now that the sun is shining, I sell cold water but when the rainy season comes, I sell banana or cucumber,” he says.
It’s more than four years since he started living with his grandmother. Nuless says his mother made sue he went to school until she died in car accident while traveling to Nimba for a wedding in 2020. His father had disappeared before Nulee was born so his grandmother took him in.
He dropped from school just a year later. “As you can see, my legs are all tired, I do not have anywhere to get money from,” says his grandmother Nowai. “Every grandmother wants to see the best for their children and grandchildren but for my case, I have nowhere to get the support I need to help my grandchild.”
Nowai understands the negative impact of pulling a child out of school and says she hopes that Nulee will get the help he deserves to pursue his dreams. “He is my only hope so I am praying for the best for him,” Nowai says. “I had two children – a male and a female – but since the female (Nulee’s mother) died, I am left with one who does not want to be serious. He has his children on the farm, and he is just from one place to another.”
A growing number of children in Bong County face a similar fate, being driven into the streets to help support their families. Climate change has worsened this crisis, affecting farming activities that many rural Liberians rely on for their livelihoods. A recent survey conducted in five counties by Front Page Africa/New Narratives found that 9 out of 10 farmers and their children are considering migration due to the unpredictable weather patterns that are making farming unviable. For many, migration leads to cities where they are forced to depend on their children to sell items on the streets to sustain the family.
Educators in rural areas are growing alarmed at the number of children leaving school.
“Education is key to breaking the cycle of poverty, but the economic hardships faced by rural families make it impossible for children like Emmanuel to continue their schooling,” says Mr. Josiah B. Kollie, district education officer for Fuamah School District. “We need immediate action to provide financial support to families and ensure that children can stay in school rather than being forced into labor.”
Unicef’s latest fact sheet on Liberia showed primary school completion had been rising until 2022 but at just 54 percent, was still one of the lowest rates in Africa. There is no data available for more recent years.
Mr. Kollie says parents also need more information about the importance of an education to the child’s whole family. He says many of the parents who did not go to school think it is not necessary for their children to go to school either. Some of the ideas Mr. Kollie would like to see government implement are education incentives for parents, such as subsidies and community-based education programs, and he urges government to promote opportunities to work with local actors to create sustainable solutions.
Education is key to breaking the cycle of poverty, but the economic hardships faced by rural families make it impossible for children like Emmanuel to continue their schooling. We need immediate action to provide financial support to families and ensure that children can stay in school rather than being forced into labor. – Mr. Josiah B. Kollie, district education officer, Fuamah School District.”
Civil society organizations say the growing problem is an indictment on successive governments. “The rise in child labor in Liberia is a direct result of the failure to address systemic poverty and economic inequality,” says Prince Eric Cooper, Bong County coordinator for NAYMOTE Partners for Democratic Development. “Many of these children would not be on the streets if they had access to a proper education. The government must invest in policies that empower rural communities, and civil society must hold them accountable.”
As the sun sets over the lower Bong city of Salala, Nulee’s silhouette is still visible, his task unfinished. He sells two sachets of water a day, earning between LD 300 to 400 which is $1.50 cent or $2.00.
After every daily sale, he takes the money to his grandmother to buy food. Nulee wants to go back to school and continue from grade one (where he stopped), he is hopeful that he will once again have the opportunity to pursue his dreams.
This story was a collaboration with New Narratives. Funding was provided by the American Jewish World Service. The donor had no say in the story’s content.
