Liberia is a
country in West Africa bordered by Sierra Leone to its west, Guinea to its north and Côte d'Ivoire to its east. It covers an area of 111,369 km2
(43,000 sq mi) and is a home to about 3.7 million people. English is the official language and over thirty indigenous
languages are also spoken within the country.
It is considered as a third world country.
According
to a documentary made by a Canadian group of journalist in 2012, Liberia is the
4th poorest country in the World. There are 70% of rape cases, 80%
who are unemployed and 50% are cannibals. Yes you read it right! “Cannibals!” Due
to poverty and drug usage such as marijuana, cocaine and heroin, people tend to
eat dead human bodies. Sex workers and brothels are also abounding in this
place. Mothers feed their children through this kind of work. Some of them are
widowed because their husbands died in war battles. If you’ll go in this place,
the first thing that you want to do is to get the hell out of it. Chaos,
pissed, shit and trash are everywhere. It’s not the right place for the
tourists. They’ll just get trauma instead of relaxation.
Malaria,
infections and aids are also occurring in this place. It’s not really conducive
to live in here. It’s tough to find potable water that’s why the residents
drink from filthy swamps. Their condition is very bad but they chose it. If the
youth is the hope of the nation, their ambassador of war believes that “more youth, more muscles, more bad things
will happen.”
But
for Joshua Blahyi, popularly known for his pseudonym “General Butt Naked”, there is still heaven in this place. I’m not
talking about the people who are longing for sex workers but for the place of
worship. You can’t imagine that these people who went on a war before and ate
the flesh of their own kind will still believe in God. If the Lord will shine His
light upon a man, there is purpose, like what happened to General Butt Naked
who was once a top serial killer. He saw a light and heard a voice that asked
him to repent and live or refuse and die. One thing that I learned from him is
“go back and see how you can repair
things.” We might think that Liberia is exempted from the word “change”.
But, I see hope in this country. If the United Nations will be eager to
help Liberia like what Blahyi is doing as a preacher and if they’ll give enough
security to the visitors so that they won’t be afraid to go there and help the
Liberian people, things will get better. I hope that if other netizens would
read this, they will disseminate it to pay attention to the poor condition of
the Liberian. We can be the change, we
can make difference.
