Home About Us Contact Us Activities

REBUILDING THE BROKEN WALLS

                         Address by D. Elwood Dunn at BHS Association Gathering '07

 

 

Salutation

Charles Johnson
Mr. Elwood Dunn

 

         I have a tendency when given a task to immediately think of framing, of seeking to understand the context in which I must execute the task. And so as I looked upon this fifth annual convention of the Bassa High School Association USA and its theme of “rebuilding the broken walls”,  the contexts that immediately presented themselves , the contexts within which to understand the Bassa High School were the city of Lower Buchanan, the County of Grand Bassa, and the country of the Republic of Liberia. BHS is meaningless outside of these contexts, and so as we consider rebuilding BHS we must begin with the questions of rebuilding to what end, for what purpose. Put otherwise, where does BHS fit in the scheme of things having to do with the city, the county, and the country within which it is situated?

 

            I would like to speak of yet another type of context.. Many years ago I was invited to speak to a similar association of Suehn alumni in Atlanta during which I observed that a Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville when observing 19th century America noted an American tendency to form “associations”. Diaspora Liberians seem fully acculturated to this American practicee, including, I dare say, the Bassa High School Association USA.  I commend you for organizing to serve, to contribute, to give back a bit of what you have received.

 

            I have noted on your website the background to the association and its prodigious efforts to date – a Diaspora community organized to remit, to do the natural, the responsible, the expected. I have read about the renovated building, the 200 plus chairs you had built, the 25,000 books you have secured from this country, not to speak of other resources you have freely made available to your, to our alma mater. And there are yet projects in the pipeline.  I was in Lower Buchanan last month and saw some of what you have been doing, and the challenges that lie ahead – the school, the library, students, teachers.

 

 

            I would like to suggest that rebuilding Bassa High School is like rebuilding Liberia, rebuilding Grand Bassa County, rebuilding Lower Buchanan. There are two dimensions to the rebuilding project – a physical or tangible (the most apparent, the presumed practical),  And then there is the intangible or visionary, the stuff that constitutes “mission statements”. The two are not mutually exclusive, but mutually re-enforcing. They must go hand-in-hand, together. They are two dimensions of a single issue, the issue of education. And if we stay focused on the purpose of education the two dimensions become clearer.