Liberia's Minister poet
by Elizabeth Ohene
On a stopover in London on his way from a visit to China, you could not get him to talk politics. Not for him the excitement that has gripped the whole of Liberia, the heated arguments about the forthcoming elections and the political parties.
Mr Moore explains it all quite simply: "I am not a politician, I am a writer".
And on the subject of writing and books and culture in general you will be lucky to get a word in edgewise. For, Mai T. Moore is a writer and a poet and his preoccupation is with culture and his great worry is that Liberian literature or African Literature as a whole has not been accorded the recognition, he believes is its due.
For over thirty years he has been writing poems, folk tales, novels and stories and some of his poems have appeared in Italian, German, Russian and Hebrew anthologies; his themes are African, and unavoidably Liberian. In his own very picturesque way he says his eyes are a camera lens that sweeps over Liberian life. He picks the ordinary and the spectacular, the funny and the bizarre and as one commentator has put it: "To read Bai T. Moore is to understand better the common people, what they wear, what they eat, how they speak and how they think". His book, "The Money Doubler" unfolds a humorous rather than gloomy picture of people on a relatively subsistence level trying to improve their lot".
He believes passionately that African folk literature ought to be popularised and art should be used to dominate society.
The experience of black people as they relate to folk culture, Bai T. Moore is convinced, will help African society to gain confidence. There is a lot that has been lost in the public perception about African civilisation and culture and Bai Moore sees it as his mission in life to ensure that African children know that they have a rich heritage.
I asked him why he thought that it was so important that Africa should spend her energies discovering past greatness when all other people are going to the moon. "How does the popularisation of lost glories help twentieth century problems or help us to achieve the technological advances that are so urgently needed and most of all help Africa to feed herself?"
Bai T. Moore's answer is that "it is because we do not know that we come from a worthwhile past and have allowed ourselves to suffer from an inferiority complex that we are not able to catch up with others".
On his trip to China for example, he recounted a Liberian folktale to a classroom of Chinese school children and he is convinced that he succeeded in making them realise that it takes wit to survive.
He is currently engaged in compiling a programme called "Legends and Songs of Liberia" which is proving a huge success.
But can you cast your lens over the whole society and still be unaffected by politics? Bai T. Moore demonstrates enough passion to show that it is possible.
