Native sons of Kolahun join RHL
NATIVE SONS OF KOLAHUN JOIN
RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA'S ADVISORY BOARD
When people leave Liberia, whether they were born and grew up there, or lived and worked there for a brief period of time, they leave behind a little piece of their heart. They take with them the heartfelt memories of another life, of people, family who are gone, and a place that cannot be forgotten, though some of those memories are difficult.
Some were forced to leave family behind in times of bitter struggle. Some left to pursue education, some because of war, disease, or to seek a better livelihood. Some left at the end of their work or volunteer assignment.
Though many do not return, many do, the attachments and memories bringing them “home” to Mama Liberia. They return to provide continued support to their families, their communities. Others to be of service to those communities that “adopted” them.
RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA has been organized as a community of support by a number of those “returnees” who will always love Liberia and her people.
We’re very pleased to announce that two very prominent Sons of Kolahun have agreed to join our Advisory Board. Dr. Andrew Cole, M.D., and Vamba Sherif will be known to many and their stories may be familiar. We share their short biographies here.
And, as a special bonus, Vamba Sherif has written a short account of his very vivid memories of Dr. Cole, carried in his heart since he was a young boy in Kolahun, for many years and across thousands of miles. We’re grateful that Kolahun and RESTORE HOPE: LIBERIA have brought them together again.
DR ANDREW COLE, MD
Dr. Andrew Cole is a native son of Liberia, born in the village of Fangalahun, in the Kolahun District of Lofa County. He came to the US as a teenager and pursued his education here, always planning to return to Liberia one day.
Following his undergraduate education at
Gonzaga University, Dr. Cole studied medicine and received his medical degree from the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, Washington, in 1972. He completed his internship and residency, training that included medicine, surgery and pediatrics, in Youngstown, Ohio.
Dr. Cole provides RESTORE HOPE with extensive, deep, pre-war history and knowledge of health care in Liberia and Kolahun. Following two years of post-graduate medical education in medicine and surgery, Dr. Cole returned to Liberia in 1974. For the next three years he served as the Medical Director at Curran Lutheran Hospital in Zorzor.
Recognizing the need to improve pediatric care in Liberia, Dr. Cole returned to the US to complete a full pediatric residency, learning skills he knew were so needed back in Liberia.
Returning to Liberia once again in 1981, he served as the staff pediatrician at Phebe Hospital in Bong County until 1983. His work then took him full circle as he returned to Lofa County where he served as the County Health Officer for Lofa County, and as Medical Director of Kolahun Hospital from 1983 to 1990.
Dr. Cole’s professional experience has also included Lassa Fever Control efforts in Liberia (1982-1990), planning and evaluating community health and financial programs in Lofa Co., and participant in the WHO World Health Assembly (1983-1989) and as WHO Board Member (1988-1989).
The outset of the Liberian Civil War forced Dr. Cole and his family to flee Kolahun and the country, leaving behind a beloved community. Though he returned to the United States to live and practice medicine, a piece of his heart remained in Kolahun. He and his wife have returned to the community on numerous service missions over the years.
Currently Dr. Cole provides Family Medicine and Pediatrics services for the community of New Castle, Pennsylvania.
VAMBA SHERIF
Vamba Sherif was born in Kolahun, Lofa county, Liberia. In his early teens, he moved to Kuwait, where he attended high school and wrote his first story. During the First Gulf War, he fled Kuwait through Basra and Bagdad to the border with Jordan. There he was forced to stay at a refugee camp where thousands of refugees lived. There were hardly any facilities. For months, he suffered deprivation, and the heat and dust of the desert. The experience marked him forever.
On leaving the camp, he arrived in Amman, where he stayed for a while before settling in Damascus. He could not return to Kuwait or go home to Liberia, and so he sought asylum in The Netherlands.
Vamba lost his mother in the Liberian civil war. His memories of her and of his boyhood in Kolahun remain vivid today. His family kept a library full of ancient manuscripts which were handed down from one generation to another. His father, a great scholar, was the custodian of these manuscripts. These manuscripts were burned in the war.
While living in a refugee camp in The Netherlands, at the height of the war in Liberia, Vamba decided to attempt to explain the complexity of his country’s history to himself by trying to write about it. He wrote Land of my fathers, a novel about the founding of Liberia with the return of the freed men and women from America to Africa in the 19th century.
Vamba Sherif is a lawyer by training and has written many novels and edited the anthology, Black: Afro-European literature in The Netherlands and Belgium.
Besides his love of writing and his collection of rare books on Africa, Sherif has developed a passion for films, which he reviews. He’s ambassador for the Dutch Refugee Council. He has written for The New York Times, Long Cours in France and Kulturaustauch in Germany, and many other newspapers and magazines. He divides his time between The Netherlands and Liberia.
HOW I MET DR. COLE - BY VAMBA SHERIF
I met Dr. Andrew Cole in my early teens in Kolahun, Lofa county, Liberia. It was not so much a meeting as a glance from the distance. I was standing in a long queue along the main road in Kolahun, together with students from other schools who had turned out in droves to welcome him. I saw Dr. Cole alight from the car, and I felt at that moment that he was the sum of my dreams. At no time did the profession of medicine become so attractive to a child than at the sight of a man who had been educated in America and had returned home to help his people. I wanted to be like him, to know him and to learn from him. It seemed a far-fetched dream for a child of my circumstances, but not impossible.
My daily life in Kolahun consisted of waking at dawn in Sherif Quarter to sweep the compound, fetch water from the well nearby, and then head to the school up the hill, in the direction of Halaypo.
My brother, Vamuyan Sherif, and the people of Kolahun had built the school after his return from his studies in Egypt. The role my brother would play in my life would help bring me closer to Dr. Cole. Through his efforts, I won a scholarship to attend high school in Kuwait. From there, I began to correspond with Dr. Cole, who was generous enough to respond to my letters. I remember presenting him with a special pen which I had won in a school essay competition in Kuwait.
It was clear that one day I would become a doctor and follow in the footsteps of my hero. But then war broke out in Liberia and in Kuwait, almost at the same time, depriving me of the possibility to pursue my dream. The war left me only with memories of a place and a land that had been altered forever. My attempt to hold onto those memories and onto faces like those of Dr. Cole and many others, including my family, made me a writer. Writing for me is primarily an effort to keep those memories alive.
Dr. Cole succeeded in transforming a small hospital into one of the best in the country. People came from far and near to be admitted to the hospital. He was and still is one of our greatest prides.
