In modern-day Grand Cape Mount County, Liberia, an indigenous writing system was developed by Bukele Daulu Momolu during the early 19th century. The area was known as Jondu, and it is on the border between parts of the southeastern Sierra Leone and parts of the coastal hinterland of modern-day Liberia in West Africa. At the time, Bukele was working as a messenger for the European merchants when he noticed their system of communication. He was intrigued by the writing strokes that could pass information without the word of mouth, and it encouraged him to lay out the ideas to his very few male associates.
This prompted them to sit down and develop a system of writing that was designed to mirror the sounds spoken in the Vai dialect, and it is generally known as the Vai Script which is classified as a syllabary writing system. The men presented the idea to the Vai king, Goturu, who gave them the go-ahead to teach the Vai people. With his permission, they erected houses2 and furnished them with benches for the students, and the students were also provided with wooden tablets for writing. This initiative increased the level of literacy in the Vai script among the Vai people and the surrounding towns at the time.
The origins of the Vai script
Vai script is credited as one of the best-documented writing systems in West Africa in terms of its current users and availability of literature8. It also represents the world’s best-documented emergent writing system4, a fit that was not achieved by most ancient writing systems in West Africa before the influence of the white men. A few sources stated that Bukele, the inventor of the Vai script, was barely fluent in English and not literate in any writing system before developing the Vai script. This fact intrigued scholars of both writing and cultural transmission4 because of the circumstances in which the script was created and how continuously the written language has been used, even till this present day. For the scholars, it was a wealth of research resources that can be used to trace the culture and way of life of the Vai people.
Bukele stated, in some early recorded accounts, that he had a vision of a white man in a long coat who told him to develop written characters for his people. The man gave him a book and showed him how to write the signs in the book, but when he woke up, he couldn’t remember any of the signs the man had shown him. So, he gathered a few of his male associates, and they decided to make new signs while developing the book.
This story was told to the Vai people by Bukele and his associates, and as the story was told and retold through the mouths of many people, different versions of the same story were recorded. In March 1834, a Christian missionary stated that Bukele had seen a dream that gave him an immediate urgency to develop the characters for his language so that his people could write letters as they did in Monrovia2 (home to the freed slaves from the US2). In March 1849, another missionary named Sigismund Koelle stated that Bukele had seen a dream in which a Poro man (what Vai people refer to as people from afar) had shown him a book containing the characters and instructed him to tell the teachers of the written language not to eat certain plants and animals and not to touch the book if they are ritually unclean2.
Another account was in 1911, and it stated that Bukele had received the book from a spirit, and he was instructed to tell the teachers of the script that they should spill palm wine on the floor before teaching the script. It also instructs Bukele to let the teachers know that palm wine was their tuition for teaching the students.
These accounts leaned heavily on emphasising the presence of an otherworldly being that facilitated the creation of the Vai Script, which may not be the case, because in another statement written in an autobiography known as the Book of Ndole, it stated that six men had challenged themselves to write letters as good as the intelligent “poro”2. This account was written by Kali Bara, Bukele’s cousin, and the book is an autobiographical account of his life2.
There are also accounts of Bukele and his associates approaching the Vai king, Goturu with a gift of one hundred parcels of salt and presenting their idea to him. The king had stated that the book was most likely the one the Mandigos (what the Vai people refer to their Muslim neighbours) had said would be sent down by God to earth2 and he continued by stating that the book could raise their people to be at par with the poros and Mandigos. He then sent Bukele and his associates away, telling them, “And to make known his will, that all his subjects should be instructed by them2.”
In hindsight, those words sound very familiar to words you would hear in Bible passages or the Koran, and at the time, the Vai people were surrounded by Muslims who had also built schools to teach the Vai people and the other residents of the area the Muslim beliefs. A statement by a researcher in the 1970s said that “the Vai believe that there are only three books in the world – the European book, the Arabic book and the Vai book.” The Muslims believe in Muhammed’s divine revelation and the understanding that the Koran should only be touched by those who are ritually clean.
Following this understanding, it seems like the Vai also adopted the ways of the Muslim believers, mixing in an otherworldly being to facilitate in the dissemination of the Vai script. In 1911, a teacher of the Vai had written that the Vais believe what is taught to them because they believe that they are a favourite of the great spirits.
Before the Vai script was invented, the Vai people had a preexisting graphic system that was used during interpersonal communication, war and divination rituals2. These Vai logograms, also known as hieroglyphs, were a source of inspiration to Bukele as he was developing the Vai syllabary, but during the years of studying the syllabaries, these logograms were gradually discarded when the Vai script adopted a phonetic writing system.
Description of the Vai script system of writing
According to the standardized version completed in 1899 and 1962, the Vai script contains 211 signs, and its characters represent combinations of consonants and vowels as well as seven individual oral vowels, two independent nasals [ã, ɛ̃] and the syllabic nasal [ŋ]2. It is classified as a Moraic syllabary6 and this is because it is made up of smaller sound units that represent the weight of each sound.
Before its standardization, the Vai script had approximately twenty-one logograms and they were preexisting pictorial codes used by the Vai to spell whole words, hence the name logo-syllabograms2. But as the Vai script underwent standardization, these logograms were discarded in favour of a purely phonetic syllabic script2.
The Vai script is read from left to right in horizontal lines, and the syllable letters do not intersect5 but just like how the English alphabet is outlined on paper, the Vais syllables are displayed in a tabular format6.
The impact of the Vai script
The establishment of the Vai script began after the historical meeting between Bukele, his associates, and the Vai king Goturu. After this notable meeting, the king actively supported Bukele in building schools and encouraged his people to attend the classes. At the time, the story of an otherworldly being facilitating the invention of the Vai script inspired many to learn the secrets of the Vai script.
Through the schools that were built, students were taught how to write, which helped them craft letters and personal diaries, translate religious texts and stories, write wall inscriptions and draft government posters. Early works of this written language include a manuscript by the Vai king Goturu with a detailed description of his wars and Islamic-inspired moral apothegms, short wise sayings that convey moral teachings inspired by Islamic principles, and Kali Bara’s book of Ndole. There are also recovered assignments and texts written by students and teachers of the Vai language, pictures of government posters and inscriptions written on the walls and on handcrafted materials, for example, the ceremonial horn, used by the Vai people.
But after its promising start, approximately eighteen months later, the spread of the Vai script was disrupted when the town of Jondu was affected by war, forcing its students and teachers to flee Jondu into another town known as Bandakolo. They settled in this town and continued to teach the Vai script. Even after the town was affected by war, the script continued to spread through informal means, contributing to its resilience and enduring legacy.
Current efforts to preserve the Vai Script
The Vai script continues to be a symbol of evolution that has inspired the creation of other indigenous writing systems across West Africa. Today, the Vai script has been included in the Unicode standard (it can be used for exchanging text messages on smartphones), and it’s been taught at the University of Liberia5, enabling those who aren’t ethnically Vai to learn how it’s written and transferring the knowledge, which increases its chances of staying relevant in the wake of other written languages.
Conclusion
Due to its remarkable zealousness and its ability to withstand the sands of time, the Vai Script has become one of the oldest and best-documented indigenous written languages in West Africa. It became a well of valuable resources for tracing the culture and history of the Vai people through writing and exchanging letters, maintaining personal diaries, tombstones and handcrafted instruments. Due to its persistence throughout the years, it played a vital role in keeping and preserving the culture of the Vai people while also representing Africans’ determination and resourcefulness to achieve something remarkable when they set their minds to it.
Reference
- Ashley Cowie, “Vai script Invented in the 1800s sheds light on the Development of writing,” Ancient Origins, updated January 13, 2022, https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-general/development-of-writing-0016296.
- Issac Samuel, “Creating an African Writing System: The Vai Script of Liberia (1833-present),” African History Extra, August 7, 2022, https://www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/creating-an-african-writing-system?r=3zeilj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false.
- Kiakpomgbo, Boima. Vai manuscript, Sc MG 987, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library.
- Olena Tykhostup and Piers Kelly, “A Diachronic Comparison of the Vai Script of Liberia (1834 – 2005),” Journal of open Humanities Data 4 (2018): 2, https://doi.org/10.5334/johd.10.
- Piers Kelly, “What the Vai Script Reveals About the Evolution of Writing,” SAPIENS, May 19, 2022, accessed March 29, 2025, https://www.sapiens.org/language/vai-script-evolution/.
- r12a.io, “Vai script summary,” accessed March 18, 2025, https://r12a.github.io/scripts/vaii/vai.html.
- “Vai People,” Wikipedia, last modified December 2, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vai_people.
- “Vai Syllabary,” Wikipedia, last modified March 9, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vai_syllabary.
“Vai Syllabary,”
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