MONROVIA – The Oak Tree Academy Elementary School, located in Congo Town, celebrated their African Heritage Day over the weekend in commemoration of the African Liberation Day celebrated on Saturday 2024. By Mae Azango [email protected] The program brought together parents, teachers and well-wishers who went to grace the occasion. The audience went wild when few students from the 2nd and 3rd grade classes respectively dressed in their beautiful African outfits, greeted the audience and said goodbye in some local vernacular or Liberian Dialects including: Bassa, Kpelleh, Kru, Kissi, Kreo, from some of the fifteen Counties of Liberia.
Speaking on the Theme: “Our culture is our heritage” Madam Tupee Freeman, One of Oak Tree Academy’s proprietress of the Bassa ethnic group, gave a brief history of the Bassa tribe, and how if a man dies, his brother marries his widow as culture demands. “If a man does not marry a lady and has children with her, the children become the property of the woman and her family and such children carry the woman’s family name as in my case. I am one of such children, this is why I am carrying my mother’s family name, instead of my father’s name.
And if the man wants his children back, he has to pay for them,” she said. She further added that if a man does not marry a woman and lives together with her as married people and when the lady dies, he will be forced to marry the dead body and perform all Marital rights before the body is buried.
