BlogField Focus Blog

Meet Kou Berpa

By Tyler Roush When her father was living, Kou Berpa recalls, she and her mother were free to cultivate the family’s land. No one encroached on the 100 acres that Samuel Berpa held in Nimba County, northeastern Liberia. Kou had even planted a stand of rubber trees, a valuable commodity crop in the lush West African country. But today her rubber trees are ash, and Kou and her mother are barred from their land. When Samuel died in 2016, Kou’s uncles drove the women off. [...]