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Leaving home to help home

By Nicole Sweeney Etter | Photo by Matthew Bin Han Ong, Comm '12

Marquette senior Lovette Merchant was only 6 years old when civil war hit her native Liberia, tearing her away from her parents and scattering her family across the continent.

When she was 16, she returned to Liberia, a country on the west coast of Africa that was first founded as a home for freed African-American slaves. She attended secretarial school and became the right-hand to presidential hopeful Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Johnson Sirleaf then asked Merchant a momentous question: "If I become president, what do you hope for?"

Merchant's request was simple: to continue her education. Then Johnson Sirleaf became the first female head of state in Africa. And so when the leader came to Marquette in 2006 to accept an honorary degree and was given a full, four-year scholarship for the female of her choice, Johnson Sirleaf fulfilled her promise to the faithful employee who had typed up her acceptance speech and done her pre-travel research on this university on the other side of the world.

Merchant, then 23, landed at Marquette and encountered a very different life. "Coming from Liberia, where we don't have libraries, we don't have books to read, we don't have light and electricity to study by … then I came here and I see so many good things happening and learned so many things," says Merchant, who is majoring in international affairs with a concentration in international economics.

She also found herself reeling from culture shock. "I never expected it to be this hard," she says. Not only was Milwaukee not as diverse as she had expected, but as a non-traditional student, she initially didn't feel like she fit in. "I was older, my mind was set, I had worked already, my interests were different," she says.

Ellen Bartel, president of Divine Savior Holy Angels High School in Milwaukee, and her husband, Michael, became surrogate local parents. "I don't know what I'd do without those people," Merchant says. "They bought my first winter clothes, they bought my first winter boots, they gave me pots to cook in, they showed me how to get on the bus. … I love them out of this world."

While at Marquette, Merchant built an impressive résumé. She used her Szymczak Peacemaking Fellowship, which she won through the Marquette Center for Peacemaking, to intern with the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She spent a semester interning for U.S. Congresswoman Gwen Moore, D-Wis., Arts '78, as part of the Les Aspin Program, and also interned in Marquette's Office of Public Affairs.

But she made time for fun, too, becoming active in the African Student Association, cheering at every Marquette soccer game and discovering a new love of bowling. "Bowling is the favorite thing I learned. I really, really love bowling," she says with a laugh.

After graduation, she hopes to find another internship before going back to school. She has already won a fellowship to study public administration at New York University.

Her ultimate goal: to apply her fire for social justice to her home country. She hopes to help Liberia improve its economic development and is passionate about humanitarian work. "I think people like me, when we get the opportunity, can help make the country a better place," she says. "I think if five of me went back to Liberia, it would be so much better … everything I do is focused around my country."