January 2006

In My Words

In My Words is a new column in FYI Online that we plan to include, when, frankly, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves! Unlike Faculty Forum, where UMUC faculty write of their expertise, In My Words might be about something entirely personal. If you have an idea to suggest for this new column, contact Andrea Martino.

Judy Livingston, assistant to the president for special projects at UMUC, has a long-term special project. Since 1968 she and her husband Richard have been supporting a foster son in Liberia, with money, letters, phone calls, and most recently a visit. In November 2005, the Livingstons spent 11 activity-filled days with Samuel Wuo and his extended family of seven children and six grandchildren in Ghana, where they live as refugees from the turmoil in Liberia. The Livingstons have known Samuel since the late 1960s when, as newlyweds, they joined the Peace Corps and were posted to Liberia.

This is Judy Livingston’s story of a decades-long relationship with her Liberian son.

Our foster son

By Judy Livingston

It’s hard to describe what the recent visit meant to both Richard and me. It was heartwarming, exciting, rewarding, validating. It had been 29 years since we had seen Sammy, and we decided that it was time to meet the family members whom we had only heard about via letter, picture, and phone call.

Samuel Wuo, Judy Livingston, Maxwell, a family friend, and Paye Wuo

The visit lasted 11 days. We stayed at a small hotel about six miles east of the refugee camp, and spent all of our time with the family except at night, when we retreated to our air-conditioned hotel room. In addition to spending several days at the Wuo home, we took the family shopping for computer equipment and on a tour of the local sightseeing spots.

Our relationship with West Africa, Liberia, and Sammy began almost 40 years ago. Joining the Peace Corps was really Richard’s idea since I was in the middle of a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin when we got married and less focused on an overseas adventure.

We were offered a post as elementary school teacher trainers in Liberia. I have to admit that at the time, I was not sure I could locate the country on the map.

We were given teacher education and language training before we went. Our Liberian instructors taught us not only how to communicate in Mano, a tribal language, but also how to skin and roast a rattlesnake and how to dispatch a chicken – deemed to be useful once we arrived in the country.

Shortly after our arrival in Liberia, Samuel showed up at our door looking for work. He was about 14 or15 years old at the time and in fifth grade. His mother was a subsistence farmer and his father had died. Sammy had worked for Peace Corps volunteers in the past, and knew the basic drill of boiling and filtering the drinking water and preparing tasty rice and soup as the main daily meal. Sammy was a godsend.

He was an appealing teenager. He was honest, kind, hardworking, and had a great sense of humor. In exchange for his keeping our house in order, we paid him a monthly stipend that covered his food, school fees and uniform, and his room rental in a nearby house. He soon became very much part of our small family.

About a year into our tour, Sammy said he wanted to take us to his village. We took a bus about an hour down the main road, then another small bus to a path leading into the bush. From there we walked for an hour and a half. When we arrived in the village, everyone greeted us and there was a small ceremony. It gradually dawned on us that the purpose of the ceremony was to give Sammy to us as our ward – in American terms, our foster son. That ceremony was the start of a long-term commitment.

We left Liberia in the late spring of 1970. In 1972, Richard accepted a position as a Foreign Service officer with the U.S. Department of State and we spent the next 26 years working in different posts around the world.

When we left Liberia, we arranged to channel funds to Sammy through a missionary so that he could complete high school. By 1976, he had taken a job as a teacher in a small town. That year we were able to visit Sammy and to meet his wife Nancy. He already had a young daughter named Jean (after Richard’s mother) and his wife was expecting their second child. The reunion confirmed our relationship with Sammy and our desire to help him move forward.

In the1980s, Sammy decided that he wanted to attend Cuttington College (one of three colleges in Liberia at the time), and to major in English. Although we were strapped financially with house payments and two small children, we agreed to pay the fees. Sammy graduated in four years, bought a house and began teaching at a local school.

The family was well settled until the war broke out in 1989. Since then, Liberia has been caught in a maelstrom of competing rebel leaders. Sammy and his family were forced to flee first to a UNHCR refugee camp in Danane, Ivory Coast, and then to the Buduburam Refugee Camp outside Accra, Ghana. All of their possessions were lost, and their house razed. We started sending help again.

The family stayed in Ghana for several years, but returned to Liberia after elections in 1997 and started afresh again with our help. Now there were seven children (two are named after Richard and me) and several grandchildren.

In 2001, Sammy wrote to tell us that rebel groups were approaching Monrovia, burning and raping as they moved forward, and he feared for the safety of his family. He decided to take his family again to the Buduburam Refugee Camp in Ghana. They left only with what they could carry in their suitcases.

Now, four years after becoming refugees for the second time, the whole family—with sons and daughters and grandchildren—is settled in a large house we have leased for them in a market town near the refugee camp.

Since 2001, we have provided the money for the family’s housing, quarterly school fees for the kids and grandkids and for Sammy himself, who is pursuing a master’s degree in adult education at a local university, and a monthly allowance—now $750 a month—for living expenses. The monthly sum we send is the equivalent of a teacher’s salary in Ghana.

Liberia is gradually stabilizing with the presence of UN troops and the recent election of a new president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Sammy longs to return home and become self-sufficient. He plans to take the family back to Liberia this month.

Once back in Monrovia , the family will see if they can rebuild their former house, get the children in school, and find employment for themselves. We admire greatly how Sammy and Nancy have kept their family together despite the trauma of losing their home and possessions twice and living as refugees for more than nine years.

Living overseas influences one immensely. We have formed lasting ties not only with Sammy and his family, but also with friends in each country where we served. Our outlook is global, as are our tastes and interests. In that sense UMUC, with its worldwide presence, has been a good fit for me.

Judy Livingston has taught British and American literature and culture, comparative literature, and interdisciplinary American Studies courses in university and adult education settings for more than 20 years. She joined UMUC in 1998 and has worked in various positions, including assistant to the senior vice president for global outreach and administrator of UMUC’s marketing and communications budgets. She is currently an assistant to the president for special projects, keeping abreast of trends in higher education, researching and writing speeches and presentations, drafting legislative testimony and annual reports, and managing a variety of special projects.