I read this post from the BBC the other day and thought that I couldn't do better than it in describing some of the conditions in Liberia. This article was written by John Humphrys of the BBC and can be found directly by going here. LEAD has an office in Bong County and so we know the roads and these billboards well. This article reminds me of the importance of our work in business development, creating jobs, and poverty alleviation.
Reading Liberia Through Its Colourful Billboards
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| Since many Liberians do not read newspapers, the government uses billboards to pass on vital information |
Like many African
countries, Liberia exudes potential but has little to show for it. As
BBC Radio 4's Today's programme begins a year-long focus on the challenges
facing just one part of the country - Bong County - presenter John
Humphrys considers what the region's many distinctive billboards tell us
about its ambitions.
It takes a long time to get anywhere in Liberia. There are
only a couple of narrow tarmac roads and the further you get from the
capital, Monrovia, the more dangerous they become - pot-holes like
jagged craters so steep and deep you'd never survive hitting them at
speed. You have to do a lot of very violent swerving.
But there's one good thing about travelling by car (there's
virtually no public transport) which is that you learn an awful lot
about the country: its past, present and what they hope will be its
future.
Relatively few people read the newspapers. The rest have huge
public billboards at the side of the roads that tell them what the
government wants them to know, how it wants them to behave.
Simplistic propaganda it may be, but if these messages do get across, the country will be a better place. Let me take you on a drive through Bong County, starting in
the state capital, Gbarnga, and introduce you to some of the billboards
and their messages.
Here, as you leave the town, is my favourite: "Share ideas.
Don't miss out. Go to school." What a lovely idea - a government
exhorting its people to share ideas.
Civil war scars
But going to school is easier said than
done. It's not just the young children who need to learn to read and
write and do their sums. A generation of men and women had their young
lives stolen from them by the civil war that tore this country apart
over a bloody 14 years.
When it ended in 2003 there were vast numbers who had never
been to school - sometimes because they'd been forced to flee their
homes and their parents had been killed, and sometimes because they
themselves had been forced to become fighters.
I talked to one young man in a primary school. He is now 18
but he is in the same class as 11-year-olds. His parents were butchered
in the war. Yet he is determined to get an education. He wants to be a
doctor.
Here's another billboard: "The police is your friend." Well, that rather depends on who you are. This billboard is at one of the many checkpoints on the main
roads where drivers are routinely stopped. We're close to the border
with Guinea, and Liberians worry about what they call aliens and drug
dealers coming in. They found someone with some drugs in his car here
the other day and beat him to death.
And here's another on the same
theme. "Make Liberia gun free. No more guns… but the ballot". Again,
it's hard to avoid a slight sense of wishful thinking.
Although people in a rural area like this are incredibly
friendly to strangers like us, you sense that violence is never far
below the surface. So many of the young men you meet have hard eyes. Did
they fight in the civil war? Probably. They had no choice.
Rats in hospital
Health is a big subject for the billboards: "No woman should
die while giving life because you know what to do". Many do die in
childbirth. Another one for pregnant women: "Every full belly should be
checked for HIV". Aids is another big killer.
And here's another billboard a little further on: "Germs are
the killers of human beings. You cannot see them". Now that's a message
that has yet to be learned if the mortality figures are to be believed -
and not just in this country.
It's estimated that half the hospital beds in sub-Saharan
Africa are filled with people suffering the consequences of bad
sanitation. In Liberia, six out of seven people use the bush as their
toilet. There is no running water and no sanitation.
In Gbarnga you can see a big water tower but it hasn't worked
for years because it was badly damaged in the war. Most people either
have to pump water by hand from wells and bore-holes if they live in
villages in the bush, or they get it from creeks and rivers and streams.
And they are horribly contaminated by fecal matter. Almost as many
people here die from diarrhea as they do from the biggest killer,
malaria.
The health service is in a wretched state. The county of Bong
has a population of 350,000 people and only four doctors and four
ambulances, and there is only one general hospital. It's gloomy and
rather smelly and has virtually no equipment. There are no
defibrillators or ventilators.
In the waiting area there is a mammogram machine. It's been
there a year and has never been used. No-one knows how to use it. It's
still in its wrapping. It was a gift from a misguided charity.
As I walked into an operating theatre a large rat scuttled
across the floor in front of me. The doctor who was showing me around
did not flinch. Yes, he said, we have a problem with rats.
Shopping by lantern
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| Beneath a bridge, young men try to earn a living by washing cars. |
As we leave Gbarnga we approach a bridge over the river. A big gang of boys and young men are working beneath this bridge. They're here all day, several of them trying to get you to
leave the road and drive down to the river bank so that their colleagues
can wash your car in the river. They charge very little and they earn
about a pound a day. It's better than nothing.
The truth is, it's very hard to see how the mass of people
make a living in this country. Unemployment is hard to estimate. I was
told by many people that it's probably more than 90%. Looking at the
number of young men wandering the streets with nothing to do, that's not
hard to believe. I've never seen so many little ramshackle stores and tiny shops all selling pretty much the same stuff for a few pence.
Some of them will stay open as we drive into the night -
mostly using lanterns or torches because there is no national grid, no
mains electricity. Some of the bars and restaurants have their own
generators so, as you look out of the car's windows, you see little
patches of light here and there in the villages and the bush.
But even as you drive closer to the capital you get the sense
of a country that in some ways slipped back into the dark ages. Civil
war does that.
Yet it's also a country that is now clearly - visibly -
capable of diagnosing its problems. It knows what needs to be done and
it is using the messages on the billboards to proclaim its intentions
and exhort its people to move on.
