By: Ian Yhap @highlight @followers
I left St. Patrick’s Elementary School in March 1966 and entered Ricks Institute, where I joined Dennis Hall, the elementary boys’ dormitory. Like most boarding schoolboys of that era, we organized ourselves around football. Our teams were named not after schools or neighborhoods, but after the shoes we wore. Those fortunate enough to own the popular brown Grip Skate sneakers played for “Grip Skate.” Those wearing the white Chinese-made “Green Bottom” sneakers played for “Green Bottom.” The rest of us, who owned neither, were gathered into a third team called “Great Olympics.”
There were genuine footballers on those teams. I remember Oliver Snyder with Green Bottom and James Bannerman and Tennikay Sayeh with Grip Skate. Great Olympics inherited whoever was left. I was among them. In Liberian parlance, I was a complete “feecee.” I was so inexperienced that when our goalkeeper, Varney Sarnor, rolled the ball to me to restart play, I picked it up with my hands and tried to give it back to him, conceding what was probably the easiest penalty ever awarded against our team.
Yet redemption arrived from the most unexpected place.
During a corner kick, everyone crowded into the opposing penalty area. Suddenly a goal was scored. Before I even understood what had happened, someone grabbed my hand, raised it high in celebration, and loudly proclaimed that I was the scorer. The entire elementary boy’s dorm celebrated me. To this day, I have no idea who actually scored that goal.
The person who staged my moment of undeserved glory later confessed that he thought one of my sisters was beautiful and wanted me to “burn his wire.” We were ten or eleven years old, so it was all innocent fun. From that day forward we jokingly called each other “Brother-in-Law,” eventually shortening it to “BIL.” Almost seventy years later, we still do.
That young man was Nete-Sie Brownell, Jr., uncle of Boima Fahnbulleh.
Our friendship has endured for a lifetime. He remains one of the most perceptive and intellectually gifted Liberians I know. In fairness, I must confess that while he admired one of my sisters, I also admired one of his, Nadia Brownell. She was an exceptionally beautiful young woman who would later be crowned Miss Liberia in the mid-1960s. She still exudes that beauty today.
The Brownell family has intersected with my life in many other ways. Alpha Brownell, another of Nete-Sie’s sisters and Boima’s aunts, is a gifted architect. We collaborated professionally on several projects, combining her architectural designs with my electrical engineering work. Lord Brownell, another member of the family, became one of Liberia’s great promoters of table tennis. As president of the Liberia Table Tennis Association, I worked closely with him for nearly a decade. He was dependable, visionary, and, to my knowledge, the first Liberian player ever to win an individual match in competition in China. His passing left a void in Liberian sports. May he continue to rest in peace. 
Mary Brownell, Boima Fahnbulleh’s mother, has always treated me with extraordinary warmth and respect. During one particularly uncertain period of my life, when I felt politically vulnerable, she was one of the people I trusted enough to approach for assistance. She often reminded me how much she respected my late mother and the McClain family.
My last visit to the Fahnbulleh home atop Snapper Hill was to spend time with Boakai Fahnbulleh who lives in the USA and had gone home for a visit. Boakai and my older brother Jimmy Yhap had both been members of the band Purple Haze during the 1970s. Although younger than they were, I moved within the same musical circles and played in a band myself. Decades later, Boakai and I found ourselves doing something much simpler: sitting together with acoustic guitars, playing campfire music as old friends do.
Miatta Fahnbulleh also moved within those same musical circles. She beautifully performed songs such as Amo Sake Sa and Kokolioko, which were favorites play songs among Monrovia’s children before she put the dancing beat to them. Our paths crossed, but we never really knew one another.
My first meaningful encounter with Miatta came years later, around 1998 or 1999, in Accra, Ghana. A Liberian friend invited me to what turned out to be a gathering of prominent Ghanaians and Liberians seated around a large conference table in an upscale hotel. Miatta was clearly leading the discussion, which centered on Liberia’s civil war. As the discussion opened to questions, I asked from across the table: “What about the involvement of your brother, H. Boima Fahnbulleh, in the chain of events?”
The atmosphere changed immediately. Miatta defended her brother.
Sensing that I had disrupted what had been an otherwise comfortable narrative, I became embarrassed. Fortunately, the friend who had invited me picked up where I had left off, supplying historical details far better than I could have at the time. Neither of us intended to embarrass anyone. We simply asked that history be examined objectively, as we had been taught to do.
I have long believed that Miatta never completely forgave me for that exchange, despite later attempts on my part to mend fences.
Now, to Dr. Henry Boima Fahnbulleh, Jr.
I know him well. We are not friends, but neither have we been enemies. Our professional lives occupied different spheres. His was politics. Mine was Liberia’s energy sector. Yet our paths crossed repeatedly during the Sirleaf administration. While he served as Political Adviser to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, I served as Adviser on Energy to the Ministry of Lands, Mines and Energy and later as Chairman of the Board of the Liberia Electricity Corporation. We met often at the Executive Mansion and, on more than one occasion, sat across from one another in the office of the Minister of State for Presidential Affairs, Dr. Edward B. McClain, Jr., discussing matters of national importance.
We have greeted each other warmly. We have spoken professionally. We have known one another for years.
Which is precisely why I found the repeated references to “this Yhap,” “one Yhap,” and simply “Yhap” so curious. We both know that is not an honest starting point.
For the record, Dr. McClain was my maternal uncle.
Reasonable people may disagree over history. That is perfectly acceptable. But pretending not to know the identity of the person with whom you have shared decades of professional acquaintance does not strengthen an argument. It weakens it. Whether this deliberate distancing originated with Dr. Fahnbulleh himself or with someone writing on his behalf, it does not accurately reflect our shared history. And if the article is intended to establish the historical record, then the record should begin with honesty about something as simple as this: we know each other.
Before addressing the other substantive issues in Dr. Fahnbulleh’s narrative, there is one other matter I feel compelled to clear up.
Dr. Fahnbulleh or his proxy seems preoccupied with the family into which I was born. It is true that my mother was the niece of President William R. Tolbert, Jr. That is a matter of genealogy, not ideology. I had no say whatsoever in the circumstances of my birth. None of us chooses our parents, our family name, or the social station into which we enter this world. Those are accidents of birth, not accomplishments or crimes. What we do choose are the positions we take, the causes we embrace, and the actions we pursue. Those are the things for which history should judge us.
Dr. Fahnbulleh tells his readers that once he learned I was related to President Tolbert, everything else about me became understandable. My supposed “hostile sneer,” my opinions, even my motivations were no longer my own. They became hereditary. That is an interesting way to begin a discussion about history. It saves one the trouble of answering an argument by first explaining away the person making it.
The old narrative of “the ruling class” versus “the oppressed class” has very little meaning to the ordinary Liberian today. Whether your grandfather was a president, a farmer, a market woman, a fisherman, or a laborer, we are all standing in the same long lines for electricity, the same broken roads, the same failing schools, the same inadequate healthcare, and the same uncertain future. The Liberia of today is remarkably egalitarian in one respect: we are all catching hell together.
That is the Liberia our generation has bequeathed to those who follow us.
Which is precisely why this conversation matters.
I have never suggested that the story belongs only to one side. On the contrary, I want to hear every side. I want to hear yours. I want to hear Charles Taylor’s. I want to hear Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s. I wanted to hear Amos Sawyer’s. I want to hear Tipoteh. All these PhD’s and no definitive account of the 1980 coup? Nothing on the rice riot? Nothing on the Quiwonkpa 1985 invasion? Where are your accounts? And then when I write something, you vex! I want to hear from every principal actor who helped shape the Liberia that we have inherited and that we are bequeathing to the next generation.
But tell us yourselves. Do not send proxies as it seems have been done in this case. Do not allow admirers, defenders, critics, or political descendants to narrate your history for you. History deserves the voices of those who lived it and who impacted it.
Coming out of the shadows means more than defending reputations. It means honestly explaining decisions, acknowledging mistakes where mistakes were made, and helping future generations understand not only what happened, but why it happened.
If Liberia is ever to escape this cycle, it will not be because we concealed the past. It will be because those who made history had the courage to tell it truthfully, allowing those who come after them to learn from both their achievements and their failures.
The repeated effort to distance yourself from someone whose history you know firsthand suggests that whoever has emerged from the shadows to write your response is relying more on rhetorical theater than historical accuracy. Your proxy may understand the politics of the moment but clearly does not understand the history of the relationships involved.
So, before we examine the substance of your arguments, permit me one final request:
WILL THE REAL BOIMA FAHNBULLEH PLEASE STAND UP!
