Top: Bendu Sonii, a victim of a fatal accident involving a Mano Oil Palm Industries vehicle on May 12, 2024, stands at the exact location where the incident took place. The DayLight/Harry Browne

By Matenneh Keita

BALLAH’S TOWN, Grand Cape Mount –  On May 12 last year,  Bendu Sonii, 42, a casual laborer with Mano Oil Palm Industries, left for a friend’s house. She did not know that would be the last day she ever walked.                   

As soon as Sonii left her friend’s house, a Mano vehicle ran into her, damaging her right foot.  

“The car nearly killed me. I was not to myself when the car hit me I was not even a human. They say I was running, but I don’t even know. My spirit went away from me,’’ Sonii tells The DayLight at her home in Ballah’s Town, a community on the highway in the Garwula District,  Grand Cape Mount County.

“People said I was shouting ‘Aaa my children, God my children’ but I don’t remember. I just saw myself in the hospital,” adds Sonii, a mother of eight. She took The DayLight to the accident scene, several yards off the Babangida highway.

A police report found the vehicle had a brake failure. Singbeh Jimmy, the driver, had been traveling from Gbah Jacket to Mano’s Matambo estate. He was jailed for five days and was suspended by Mano.

Immediately after the accident, Mano took Sonii to the company’s headquarters, according to Aminata Getaweh, Sonii’s sister who had rushed to the scene.

Sonii stayed at Mano headquarters for about three hours, as there was no ambulance when she arrived. Having lost too much blood and not getting any care, Getaweh protested her sister be transferred immediately.

Later, an unconscious Sonni was taken to the St. Joseph Catholic Hospital in Congo Town, outside Monrovia. There, she spent two weeks in a coma, during which time doctors advised that her right leg be amputated. She had suffered severe trauma to the foot, crushing her bones.

But there was a problem: Only Sonii, could sign for the amputation. Not even her father, who by then had joined her sister by Sonii’s bedside, could approve the procedure for her. So, they waited two more weeks for her to gain consciousness to make the life-changing decision.

After Sonii gained consciousness and was informed about the amputation but relapsed into a coma. When she finally awoke, she sanctioned the amputation “for my children.”      

Land grab

Sonii had spent two months and three weeks at St. Joseph, a period she says was characterized by hunger and grief. Mano sent L$40,000 in total for juices and additional food to the one the hospital served. 

However, Sonii said the money was insufficient as she found it difficult to eat the food the hospital provided, a claim Mano denies.

Richard Hilton, Mano’s corporate communication officer, says Sonii’s hospital bill covered her food. “When she says it was insufficient, I don’t know. I don’t know who determines whether the money is insufficient. Whether there is a policy, I don’t know.” 

Sonii was a general worker with Mano, doing all kinds of casual labor, including applying fertilizer, brushing, and weeding.  

A Lebanese-owned company, Mano, came to Cape Mount in 2021 following a takeover agreement with Sime Darby Plantation (Liberia) Limited a year before. Mano is a subsidiary of Mano Manufacturing Company (MANCO), Liberia’s largest household health and cleaning products producer.

Sime Darby, a Malaysian conglomerate, had signed a 63-year concession agreement with the Liberian government in 2009 to develop 220,000 hectares in northwestern Liberia into oil palm and rubber plantations.

But things did not go as planned. From 2009 to 2019, Sime Darby developed only 10,300 hectares—about five percent of its concession area—due to “several operating challenges.” Locally, its operations were marred by international condemnation over land grab and other human rights violations.

That ghost haunted Mano’s takeover and setups, including workers’ protests and local communities’ demands. This explains the presence of armed police at the plantation who had used the vehicle that shattered Sonii’s life.  

‘Playing on me’

Sonii was transferred to the John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital for discomfort she felt in the shoulder and neck. Doctors at the JFK solved the neck issue but did not find anything wrong with her shoulder.

So, Sonii sought a herbalist’s help to cure her shoulder. “When the herbalist came, he said ‘It is your hand that has got the problem.’ Right away, he started working on my shoulder. The second day that is how my hand sat down,” she recalls.  

Singbeh Jimmy, the driver who caused the accident, regrets the situation and is remorseful. Jimmy knew Sonii before the plantation was established.

“It is playing on me just like it is me [who] is crippled,” said Jimmy. “I am really feeling disappointed in this situation because I am not able to afford anything for her to buy a L$5 cold water and drink from me.”     

Sonii receives between US$70 and US$80 with four 25-kilogram bags of rice, the same she received before the accident. It is, however, inadequate for her family of 10 people—her husband, her eight children and herself. The shop she ran before the accident collapsed while she lay in the hospital.

Mano claims Sonii was advised to check with an insurance company over benefits.

“She should make sure to take the courage to walk after getting her benefit,” said Hilton, Mano’s corporate communication officer. He did not present any evidence or give the insurance company’s name.  “Bendu should not see it that she will be sitting down and it happens.”

Sonii refutes Hilton’s comments, saying Mano did not tell her anything about an insurance company.

Sonii has some domestic issues, too. She fears that her husband, children, and friends could abandon her.

“My husband can feel bad because I was everything. The day he gets it or doesn’t have it, I provide it. I think this is going to affect my marriage because some men are weak-minded. When they interact with another woman who does everything I cannot do, there will be changes,” says Sonii.

“Right now, I tell God thank you because changes are not there yet. He is still with me.”

Green Livelihoods Alliance (GLA) provided funding for this story. The DayLight maintained editorial independence over the story’s content.