By Kettehkumuehn E. Murray, Ph. D.
From the Liberia Philosophy Guide pending: “No matter how big a man becomes, he cannot deny he was once carried on the back of a woman.” Kissi Proverb
IN LIBERIAN THOUGHT —PARTICULARLY AMONG OUR ELDERS—wisdom is not invented; it is remembered. It is passed quietly, often in fragments, sometimes over a phone call, sometimes at dusk, sometimes by women whose hair has whitened but whose minds remain luminous. It was in this spirit that two octogenarian women, NaKanea and NaGamai, offered a teaching both simple and profound:
A man rests in three wombs.
This statement, at once poetic and metaphysical, invites us into a deeper understanding of womanhood, motherhood, and the unseen architecture of life.
The First Womb: The Body
The first womb is obvious, yet never ordinary. It is the woman’s body, where life begins unseen, unannounced, and utterly dependent. In this womb, a man is not yet a man—he is possibility, breath-to-be, destiny-in-waiting.
Here, the woman does not merely carry flesh; she hosts the future. Pain, patience, and prayer accompany this first enclosure of life.
The Second Womb: The Lappa
After birth, the child exits the body—but he does not exit the womb.
He enters the second womb; the lappa: once a common fabric now made sacred by the midwife’s prayers.
(The wrapper—known in Liberian parlance as the lappa—that length of cloth tied firmly across a woman’s waist, is not mere fabric. In Liberian usage, the lappa is not slung casually or slanted across the body. It is spread deliberately, rising from just below the shoulders at the back to cover the breasts in front, where it is knotted with care.
The lower half of the lappa rests upon the buttocks and is tied again at or below the navel. In this way, the woman’s body becomes fully enclosed, front and back, upper and lower creating not a strap, but a continuous embrace: a “womb” in a manner of speaking.
This deliberate method, familiar across indigenous Liberian communities—and observed among the Kru in traditional male wear—is distinct from the diagonal strapping common in parts of Southern Africa, where cloth is borne like a palm bag. In Liberia, the lappa does not hang; it holds.)
When a mother ties her child to her back with the lappa, she recreates enclosure: warmth, rhythm, heartbeat, protection. The child sleeps as the mother walks; he learns the world from her movements. Her labor becomes his lullaby.
The lappa teaches silently that life is shared, that survival is communal, and that a child’s first lessons are received through the intimate, encompassing embrace of womanhood. Yet the lappa wounds the woman as well. It strains her shoulders, bends her spine, compresses her breath. She bears it without ceremony. Thus, the lappa becomes a woman’s second womb—and a second sacred wound.
The Third Womb: Mother Earth
The final womb is entered at the end of life. When a man is laid to rest, he returns—once more enclosed—to the bosom of Mother Earth. This is not annihilation, but completion. The soil receives him as the body once did, as the lappa once did: gently, firmly, without hesitation, without question.
In this way, woman and earth mirror one another. Both receive. Both nurtures. Both endure violation and yet continue to give life. The elders’ wisdom reminds us that a man’s entire journey is framed by feminine enclosures—from flesh, to cloth, to soil.
Philosophical Meaning
This teaching challenges modern arrogance. It reminds men that self-sufficiency is a myth. No man arrives alone. No man survives alone. No man departs alone.
It also restores dignity to women’s labor—especially the ordinary, uncelebrated acts. The lappa is not decorative; it is cosmological. To dishonor women is therefore not merely social failure—it is ontological blindness. For to insult the wombs that carried us is to deny the very conditions of our existence.
Closing Reflection
NaKanea and NaGamai our twin 80-year-olds mentioned at the top of this teaching, did not quote books. They did not footnote scholars. Yet what they offered is philosophy in its purest Liberian form: truth shaped by living, suffering, and remembering.
A man rests in three wombs:
- The woman’s body
- The woman’s lappa
- The tomb
And between the first and the last, it is the woman—through her body and her lappa—who carries the longest burden.
Ju-aà-naan!
Zee-ma-neen!
May it be so;
And so shall it be!
The Ancestors are wise!
