I had the pleasure of meeting Zaccheus, one of the senior security officers at our hall of residence. Zaccheus was brought to the United States in 1980 from Liberia, during what he described as the end of “a time when Liberia was sweet.” His father, then a scholarship student, had sensed that this “sweetness” masked deep structural inequality in Liberian society, where about “two percent of the population controlled the wealth” of the nation. As prominent Liberian scholar Amos Sawyer would later document, the 1970s in Liberia were characterized by stark inequality and extensive corruption among the elite, creating a devastating divide between the ruling class and ordinary citizens.
For Zaccheus’s father, who was studying in the United States on scholarship, the signs of impending crisis were unmistakable. Liberia — founded in 1822 as a colony by the American Colonization Society (ACS) to resettle free African Americans and freed slaves — seemed poised for upheaval. His intuition proved tragically prescient. In April 1980, just months after he had managed to bring Zaccheus and his sister to safety in the United States, Master Sergeant Samuel Doe led a violent military coup that would forever change Liberia’s trajectory. The assassination of President William R. Tolbert Jr. marked the bloody end of over a century of Americo-Liberian rule and the beginning of two decades of instability that would eventually spiral into devastating civil wars.
It was against this backdrop of historical timing and parental foresight that I found myself chatting with Zaccheus about my accent. “Where are you from?” he asked, and before I could respond, he invited me to speak more so he could figure out my country of origin. Two sentences later, he confidently declared, “Nigeria!” I nodded in agreement. It turned out that Zaccheus was married to a Nigerian and commented that “I have heard many Nigerian stories!”
The weight of history emerged in his next words. “My father,” Zaccheus shared, “taught that two of his smart kids (I was smart at one time) should come to the United States before things became bad.” That parenthetical comment — “I was smart at one time” — caught me off guard. Here was a man whose father’s wisdom had quite literally saved him from a country about to implode, yet he still carried the burden of measuring up to expectations. The timing of his arrival in 1980, at age twelve, meant his entire American journey had been shaped by both the privilege of escape and the responsibility of fulfilling his father’s foresight.
I related deeply to the impact of expectations and experience that Zaccheus shared. Having gone through periods of teenage years where people would say “you can pass a school examination without reading,” I found myself working extra hard to prove that point right. What people called “pass without reading” didn’t account for the midnight oil or candlelight studying, given the unpredictable nature of Nigeria’s power generation and distribution system.
Looking at Zaccheus now, more than four decades after that pivotal escape from Liberia, the glint in his eyes and the urgency in his voice still communicate a desire to prove his father right. He speaks of his newly wedded wife from Nigeria, who lives in a different state while he works in New York, where he has two years left to qualify for his pension. He talks proudly of his daughter, a senior at New York University, her fees covered by his current employer. Despite life’s challenges, Zaccheus has built exactly the kind of stable, successful life his father envisioned when he orchestrated that prescient departure from Liberia in 1980. I would argue that this — learning from experience, building a family, maintaining a seventeen-year career, and creating opportunities for the next generation — is the very definition of “smart.”
We may not always measure up to others’ metrics of success, but we can find ways to bounce back, make meaning of life’s circumstances, and take action to shape our futures. Zaccheus’s story, beginning with that crucial departure in 1980, reminds us that true intelligence encompasses not just academic achievement but also the wisdom to recognize approaching storms, the resilience to build a new life, and the strength to carry forward the hopes of those who helped us reach safety.
Francis Egbuson
New York, November 8th, 2024
With editing done by Claude.ai
