Tag Archives: monrovia

Rain in Liberia and how weather becomes an issue of health, and even life or death

A version of this article was originally published at the Georgia Straight on August 11, 2012.

Living in Liberia through the country’s wet season, I find myself nostalgic for the relatively dry climate of Vancouver. To witness a true West African monsoon is to realize that western Canada is seldom inconvenienced by more than a drizzle.

A couple of statistics to explain my point: downtown Vancouver receives an average annual rainfall of 1,590 millimetres. Monrovia: 5,300 millimetres. The capital of Liberia sees almost as much rain during the month of July (1,150 millimetres) as Vancouver does in an entire year.

For many in Liberia, weather is an issue of health, and even life or death.

On a recent visit to Monrovia’s West Point neighbourhood, Thomas Tweh, head of the community’s sanitation committee, explained the problems that come with the wet season.

“When it rains, the water flows through the streets and into the wells,” he said. “Water with feces goes into the wells.”

Lacking access to the city’s water supply, Tweh estimated that West Point relies on wells for 95 percent of its water needs.

He said that residents know that water from the wells is not safe to drink. But for many, the cost of clean drinking water leaves them no choice.

“And the little ones, they drink the well water unknowingly,” Tweh added. “This is how they become sick with waterborne diseases.”

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Demolitions ravage Liberia neighbourhoods

A version of this article was originally published at Al Jazeera English on August 2, 2012.

Pastor Justice Nyonsiea fondly recalled the time he spent as principal of a primary school that was part of a squatter settlement in Monrovia’s Mamba Point neighbourhood.

“The school was relatively free,” he said proudly. “The majority of the children’s parents were people who lived on below a dollar a day.”

Standing on the edge of the slum, as such areas are commonly referred, a vast expanse of concrete rubble spread out behind him. The school, as well as some 60 homes that surrounded it, were all demolished in May 2012, just as the students were preparing to take their final exams.

“We compressed the curriculum so that the students could finish the school year,” Nyonsiea said. “But now we don’t even have a place to sit to correct their papers. And the children, they no longer have a school to go to.”

The destruction of the informal settlement – called Coconut Plantation – scattered the students’ families around Monrovia and its surrounding environs. Nyonsiea complained that delivering his former pupils’ report cards will be all but impossible.

Problematic procedures

It’s not the destruction of the neighbourhood that bothered him, Nyonsiea emphasised. Everybody living in Coconut Plantation knew that their homes were built on private land, though the plot had remained neglected for decades, he noted. “The procedure is what I have a problem with. The children could have finished their time in school.”

Interviewed over a period of several months, dozens of people from various demolished communities around Monrovia told similar stories. Many said they were forced to move from dwellings their families had occupied for generations. Some acknowledged that they were given fair warning by the Monrovia City Corporation (MCC), the government body initiating these demolitions. Others told dramatic stories of having to run from bulldozers backed by armed police officers.

Nearly a decade after 14 years of civil conflict ended in 2003, construction around Liberia’s capital city is happening at a feverish pace. Monrovia Mayor Mary Broh describes this as progress. But critics note that the rehabilitation of dilapidated areas has brought demolitions that are displacing thousands of people.

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Liberia’s long wait to turn on the lights

A version of this article was originally published at Al Jazeera English on June 22, 2012.

Bessi Marshall sits outside her home in near-total darkness. Around her, four young grandchildren huddle close, never venturing more than an arm’s length into the surrounding shadows. Despite living just a few houses back from the main road in Jallah Town, in central Monrovia, Marsha’s family has no electricity. The only light comes from a small cooking fire.

During the night, Marshall fears for her family’s safety. “I can’t sleep,” she says. “I stand at that window and am very afraid.”

In addition to security, Marshall, says that electricity – or current, as it is colloquially called – would let her children devote more time to their studies. In the evenings, one of her older sons, Sekou, goes to the main road to do his homework under a street light connected to the city’s electrical grid. But the traffic there is constant, making the area noisy and unsafe for younger children.

The family owns one small LED flashlight – a “China light”, as Liberians call them. But it doesn’t shine brightly enough to let everybody study at once, and Marshall complains that its dim-white glow is painful on her eyes.

“I pray to God for help, for us to get current here,” she says.

Only 0.58 per cent of the residents of this West African country have access to public electricity, according to a 2011World Bank report. Outside the capital city, public power is practically unheard of. Those who do have access to the Liberian capital’s electrical grid pay $0.43 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), likely the highest rate in sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of businesses and some private homes run on diesel generators that carry a price of $3.96/kWh.

Liberia’s energy sector was devastated by 14 years of civil conflict that only ended in 2003.

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In Liberia, agriculture key to youth employment, young people vital for food security

A version of this article was originally published at Inter Press Service on June 11, 2012.

With his gold chain, baseball cap, and baggy denim shorts, Junior Toe wears the uniform of Liberia’s urban youth. Spend just a few minutes with the young man and it is evident that he possesses the street smarts to match the look.

However, Toe’s area of expertise lies outside the city, on the farm.

“Look at the pepper seed there,” he says while touring a community farm not far from downtown Monrovia. “Put it in the ground, water it a few times, and you will make some money.”

Toe is the founder and executive director of the Community Youth Network Program (CYNP), which trains young people in agriculture and livestock farming.

“Over there, we have a nursery for cabbages,” he continues. “If you try and grow cabbage in the ground now, the rains will give it a hard time. This is the kind of knowledge we share.”

Food security and meaningful employment for Liberia’s youth have long been major challenges for this West African nation. Now, a number of community-based programmes and government initiatives are working to address both. Officials say they are hopeful that this is the start of a major shift in how young Liberians participate in the agricultural sector.

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In Monrovia, Taylor supporters angry with a guilty verdict for a former Liberian president

Today (April 26), the UN-backed international Special Court for Sierra Leone found former Liberian president Charles Taylor guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity.

It was the first time since the Nuremberg trials that a former head of state has ever been convicted by an international court.

Taylor was accused of supporting and directing members of a rebel movement in neighbouring Sierra Leone during an 11-year civil war that left 50,000 dead.

A summary of the court’s judgement. And from the Guardian:

Between 1996 and 2002, the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which Taylor supported, was found by the court to have committed crimes involving terrorising civilian populations, murder, rape, sexual slavery and enforced amputations in Sierra Leone.

Judge Richard Lussick of Samoa said more than 1,000 children had the letters “RUF” carved into their backs to prevent them escaping. Children were used to amputate limbs, guard diamond mines and hunt for food. Some were involved in fighting.

….

Taylor continued privately fuelling the conflict by providing arms and ammunition to the RUF in Sierra Leone, the judge said. His clandestine dealing helped undermine the peace process even when there was a regional arms embargo in force.

I spent my morning in Monrovia waiting for the verdict at an impromptu rally of pro-Taylor supporters that formed nearby a BBC News camp.

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Ahead of Charles Taylor verdict, Liberia’s former child soldiers still struggle

A version of this article was originally published at Canada’s Toronto Star on April 25, 2012.

It was mid-day in downtown Monrovia and Mohammed Kromah and his friends were mobbing a busy intersection, jumping up and down and shouting at passing cars.

Down the street where it was quieter, Kromah explained that the boys – all in their mid-twenties and all former combatants from Liberia’s 14 years of civil wars – were trying to attract customers for a car wash.

Kromah fought with former Liberian president – and warlord – Charles Taylor’s NPFL and later, an opposition faction, ULIMO-K. He recounted that after the conflict ended, he went through the United Nation’s disarmament and reintegration programs. But those projects were short-lived and inadequate, the young men complained.

“We are so frustrated,” said Maxwell “Target” Sackor, a friend of Kromah’s and a former combatant for LURD, a faction notorious for its recruitment of child soldiers. “We’ve tried armed robbery, but we felt that was not good for us. So we left armed robbery and we went to the street and tried stealing, but that wasn’t good for us. So we brought ourselves to wash cars.”

Kromah admitted that he’s addicted to heroin, a habit he said he picked up during the conflict. “Most of us are involved in drugs,” he lamented. “It’s like the war is still punishing people.”

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Uprooting Liberia: Clearing Monrovia’s slums

A version of this article was originally published at Think Africa Press on April 11, 2012.

Julius Davies recounted watching bulldozers destroy his family’s small home on 24th Street in Liberia’s capital Monrovia.

“People came from the government and said this place was government property,” he said, looking over the empty concrete expanse where his neighbourhood stood just two days earlier. “Right away, they started beating people. They beat someone for asking why they had to leave this way.”

According to Davies, the demolitions happened so fast that many people were forced to go without their belongings. “There was no time,” he emphasised.

A mechanic, Davies lost all of his tools and spare parts. One of his neighbours, Anthony Sunday, said that he was able to pack some things, but had to leave behind his family’s only mattress. Nancy King, a mother of five, said that during the commotion she was focussing on by her children and lost everything in the rush.

“All of my things – all of my life – was in that place,” she lamented.

All the while, the Mayor of Monrovia watched from the sidelines. For Mary Broh, it was another successful day in her campaign to clean up Liberia’s capital city.

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Journalists intimidated for reporting on female genital mutilation in Liberia

A version of this article was originally published at the Georgia Straight on March 31, 2012.

When we walked into the makeshift office that a friend had set up on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia, it felt like we were entering war room.

The apartment was big and open, and buzzing with activity. On one side, a group of women sat around a table covered in papers, laptops, half-eaten snacks, and bottles of juice. Across the room, a second group had positioned themselves on a number of sofas. They also had laptops open and headphones plugged in.

It was Wednesday, March 28, and these journalists were working on a story about female circumcision in Liberia (the practice is also known as female genital cutting, or female genital mutilation). They had a scoop and were cooperating to see the news break simultaneously across a number of Liberian outlets on the morning of March 30.

What they already knew was that the Minister of Gender and Development, Julia Duncan-Cassell, had, in an exclusive interview for select members from the group, outlined the clearest position on FGC taken to date by the government of Liberia.

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Liberia’s government looking for a way to end FGM

A version of this article was originally published at Inter Press Service on March 30, 2012.

“There were three people. One person was holding me down; one person was holding my hand; and the other person was doing the job. They lay me down, and…” Fatu said of the female genital mutilation she underwent as an eight- year-old in Liberia.

According to the World Health Organization, Fatu endured what is classified as a type II female circumcision (on a scale of one to three), where her clitoris and labia minora were cut away.

Now 23 and a student at the University of Liberia, Fatu’s circumcision was part of her initiation into the secretive Sande Society, a pseudo-religious association to which most Liberian women – depending on which tribe and part of the country they are from – are members.

The Sande and its male counterpart, the Poro, shape many aspects of culture, tradition, and society as a whole in this West African nation. The Sande “bush” schools are where young Liberian women – some as young as two years old – are supposed to receive instruction on the traditions of respect, how to run a household, and how to prepare for marriage.

It is also where their circumcisions happen.

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“This Needs to Stop”: Tempers Flare over the Practice of Female Circumcision in Liberia

This article was originally published at Think Africa Press on March 30, 2012.

When Kulah Borbor’s daughter was 13 years old, she asked her mother if she could join Liberia’s secret Sande Society. Most Liberian women are members of the Sande, so her daughter’s request was nothing unusual. But Borbor, a gender-based violence officer with the West Point Women for Health and Development Organisation, immediately discouraged her daughter’s interest in the Sande.

“I told her, ‘What? You want to go join?’” Borbor recounted. “I took her in a room and I showed her.”

What Borbor shared with her daughter was one of the Sande’s open, but almost never spoken, secrets – that the society’s initiation includes female circumcision, otherwise known as female genital cutting (FGC), or female genital mutilation (FGM).

“I said, ‘That’s where they cut mine,” Borbor continued. “From that time, she hasn’t talked about it.”

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