Thieves have smashed a hole through the wall of the library at the Carolyn A Miller School in Payensville, Liberia. They took the school's two computers, passing them through the person-sized hole, protected by the cover of darkness in this un-electrified neighbourhood. But they left the school's scant collection of books and this surprises me, because they are expensive in Liberia. A set of Grade 4 books costs $50 – a month's rent. Karrus Hayes, the founder of the school, has nailed a block of wood across the hole. Daylight seeps through the cracks, illuminating the near-empty shelves.
Karrus Hayes started the school in 2003 on the Buduburam refugee camp in Ghana with a $50 loan and the use of a church hall. A decade since he started his project, the school is still one of a few non-fee paying schools in Liberia that educates up to 12th Grade.
Karrus' school seeks to solve the dual problems of corruption in education, and delivering quality teaching to Liberia's poorest young people; state schools only educate up to 6th Grade, are under-resourced and are often closed due to staff shortages. But Liberia's textbook crisis is holding Karrus' school, and its students, back.
'Star Longman is the only book store in Monrovia that gives people the means to education. They have to get the books from Ghana and the US to Liberia, which makes them so expensive,' Karrus explains. This bookshop is the only glass-fronted shop I have seen in Monrovia; others are crumbling, concrete-block and tin-roof arrangements with names such as Lucky Business Centre and Looking Good Barbing Salon hand-painted in dazzling colours. The owner of Star Longman keeps her stock of textbooks locked behind glass cabinets, out of reach from thieves. The titles are enticing: Women's Empowerment in Post-war Liberia, and Mapping West Africa. Answers to Liberia's development questions are screened off, available only to the wealthy élite.
Many of Carolyn A Miller's students spend their afternoons selling items at Red-Light market after school has finished and I recognize a few faces in the crowd. A 10th-Grader is winding a wheelbarrow piled high with jeans around the puddles, and a female student sells soft drinks from a large tin bowl balanced on her head.
In 2013, some 25,000 school leavers sat the University of Liberia entrance exams, and every one of them failed – a stark indication of the deteriorating school system. Consequently, corruption in education has become a common feature.
Liberia has remained peaceful for over a decade since its 14-year civil war ended, but protracted conflict has de-skilled the country and its infrastructure is weak and reliant on outside resources: Chinese contractors are rebuilding the road from Monrovia to the country's mineral-rich interior.
Knowledge is expensive here, but without it the cost to Liberia is even higher.