Monrovia – For the past six years, it seems many communities in Montserrado County’s electoral District #88 like many communities in other parts of the country, did not benefit from the district development fund, which is contained in the County Development Fund for every county.
Report by Mae Azango [email protected]
But during the campaigning period for the October 10th Presidential and Legislative Elections, many aspirants flooded various impoverished and neglected communities in search of votes, with big promises of development package.
One of such very highly disadvantaged communities is the “God Bless You” Community, which is very close to the center of Monrovia and which hosts the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Bulk of “God bless You” Community, in District #8, Montserrado County, is situated between the Foreign Ministry and the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) Headquarters.
ECOWAS Liberia Office is also located within the community.
Adjacent to this community are the Executive Mansion, Capitol Building, Temple of Justice, the Liberian National Police Headquarters, the Monrovia City Hall, University of Liberia and the Stella Maris University, yet it is so impoverished that it lacks most of the basic social amenities.
Despite residing so close to the seat of the government, residents ironically, live in abject poverty, with no mini clinics, beginners’ school, safe drinking water and public toilets.
Hence, they use the nearby beach along the Atlantic Ocean as the place to defecate.
\Many a time, places are named after founding fathers, famous people, infrastructures or activities done in the area. For this community, despite “God” being among words making up its name, it is literally a ‘cursed place.’ One may wonder why a community will be named “God Bless You” and yet it is a slum community with nothing good to show of its worth or existence.
The community was said to have gotten its name from some alleged evil activities that happened in the past. Old man Momo Kiazulu, in his late seventies, lived in the community and attended the University of Liberia as a youth.
He explained to this newspaper the shocking truth of how the community got its name.
“The name God Bless You, could signal goodness because it is like one receiving blessings from God, but it is not so. “
“In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, this area was known for ritualistic killings. Many unknown persons were frequently found dead with missing parts in this community.”
He further stated that it used to be rumored that President William V. S. Tubman, who ruled Liberia for 27 consecutive years beginning in the early 40s, had brought in a Nigerien man, who was hired to do the human sacrifices for him, the President.
“As students attending the University of Liberia, we used to walk in group to pass through the community because when you are alone, you would be chased after.”
“Most times those who escaped, after they had crossed the vicinity of the Monrovia City Hall, would be asked if you were chased and if they said ‘yes,’ people would say:
“My man, God really blessed you hoo,” because you narrowly escaped death.”
Names do have effect on those things or persons who bear them. So it is the same with the “God Bless You” Community. When two prominent sons of Liberia, the late Harry Greaves Jr., and the late Cllr. Michael Allison were discovered dead on the beach in the same community in January 2016 and March 2015, respectively, the name of the community resonated loudly.
Other than those two men, others unidentifiable human bodies are most times discovered on the beach with no trace of how they got there.
Walking through the community, one has to be very careful as its narrow paths are slippery and unleveled.
The first aroma that greets the nose is odor of marijuana (weed), being inhaled or smoked by some young people. Other things that meet the eyes are makeshift, multicolored zinc shacks, and few low standard houses built with mud but plastered with concrete.
The ersatz houses are so clustered together that a disease outbreak in the community will take no time to spread rapidly like wild fire. The beach is also so closed to these living-rough homes leaving one to wonder, what if.
Walking through the community towards the beach, there is no sight of pipe-borne water for the community. A teenage girl was seen fetching water from an un-sanitized well with a wooden top for covering.
She told this newspaper that her family and other families in their community use the water for drinking and cooking.
There was neither a single public toilet spotted in the area. A stranger touring the area would be very shocked to see women, men and children, all defecating few feet apart on the open beach with no shame of their surroundings, including the high rise UNMIL Hqs and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which houses the Offices of the President of the Republic of Liberia.
Kebbeh Mulbah, a young mother of six children, sits in her tiny one-room green zinc shack looking at the rains pouring into her room from the many tiny leakages on the old and rusty corrugated sheets on top of the house.
Kebbeh has to position pans and buckets under the leakages to stop the water from flowing under her very thin and tiny mattress lying on the unpaved floor.
“I sell cold water to get food for me and my children to eat. Three of them are not in school because there is no school in the community and they are too young to cross the car road. I am just praying for a good representative, who will come and build school and clinic because the former representative did not visit our community since he was elected,” Kebbeh stated.
Asked whether the present lawmaker of the district and all others, who were vying for political seats ever visited their community, Ma Elizabeth Cooper, a single mother of seven said, even though she has lived in the community for a number of years, she never saw the man or woman, who is representing their community in the National Legislature except that during the campaign period when some of them visited their community making promises again.
Hardly had she completed her thoughts, her son Thomas interrupted.
“There is no public toilet in this community, all of us can go on the beach to ease ourselves, but yet we never saw our Representative Acarus Gray, who we elected six years ago, until two weeks ago.
He came to tell us that he was sorry for not bringing development to this community as he had done in other communities, but if we vote him back, he will do his best to bring development to our community.
But others said that he ignored the community for over six years and did nothing because election was around the corner, he came around and made big development promises.”
Pointing to one of the private toilets, Thomas said, “That toilet is for the house near it; we are not allowed to use it because it is private, so we just come down to the beach and ease ourselves when we are jammed.”
“It is sad that when our sisters come down to the beach alone at night, they are sometimes raped by unknown men, who escape the scene before we get there,” he said.
One would imagine that the Foreign Ministry being so close, the community would be crawling with state security especially those manning the President. Sadly, it is not so and the “God Bless You” Community is one of the worst criminal havens in Monrovia.
On Tuesday, October 10, when residents of District 8, which contains the “God Bless You” Community, went to the polls, they voted to retain their current lawmaker —Representative Moses Acarus Gray.
Throughout Rep. Gray’s previous six-year term, he didn’t stop a single day to visit with these slum dwellers, who are just a few hundred feet away from his Capitol Building office.
According to them, he only showed up two weeks ago and apologized that he had abandoned them but would make up for the lost time.