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THE NATION, SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 2012
H
ER eyelids met like she would catch a little nap. She didn’t. Her mottled head dropped to her chest like a daffodil starved of sunlight and water for too long. “Poor sweet child. Poor sweet child. You tried your best I know but you gotta go,” whispered a barely clad lady in her prime. She looked like bruised violet. Her name is Susan Yorose but “everybody” calls her Suzy, and the “poor sweet child” was her child. The latter was diagnosed with Cholera and cerebral malaria just before she died. Suzy’s life would be tolerable if it weren’t for its tragic amusements: Pretty, her four-year-old daughter just died in her arms. Two months earlier, Maggy (Margaret), her younger sister, died having an abortion in the same clinic and under the knife of the same doctor in whose hands their mother died “trying to remove a bastard child” (have an abortion) 11 months earlier. Her brother died fighting the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) as a rebel with the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Development (LURD) army in the civil war and she hadn’t the barest inkling what their father looked like. According to her, “He split on ma before me and Maggy grew up. He left ma all by herself…Ma was from Sierra Leone so she got nobody here when he left. Nobody to run, nobody to support but she got to be the man of the house so when the war ended, she brought us here to settle (West Point). There was nothing to do here, so ma started to hustle (hawk sex for money) so that she can pay rent and feed us. “One day, ma met this guy that front (pretended) to be a nice guy. He gave her money and bought us gifts but he split after he got ma pregnant. Ma died getting rid of the bastard child,” said Suzy. Shaken and evidently pained by her mother’s sad fate, Suzy vowed never to tread such part but she did. At 14, she had perfected the “hustle,” just like her “ma.” According to her, she needed the money to take care of her younger sister and pay the rent. Maggy only had to “be a good girl and attend school” but the latter, unknown to Suzy, had started her own hustle. “I don’t know why she did it. She never had to do anything. I had everything covered,” lamented Suzy. Now left with nobody in the world, Suzy plans to make just enough money to foot her bills out of West Point, one of Monrovia’s largest slums, and serve as her “secret fund” outside the country. “Met this nice guy. He’s promised to take me to the States (United States of America). He’s been very good to me. He aint like the fool who split on my ma. In few months, I will be in Philadelphia getting an education and a decent job,” said Suzy. She never said anything about marriage nor does she seem to be fully aware of the guy’s job or his actual plans for her. But Suzy thinks the world of him despite her fears about “cowards who like to get a woman pregnant and split.” Sina Nyenpan had no man “split” on her nor does she have to engage in full time “hustle” commercial sex work to survive. The 32-year-old native of Margibi County relocated to West Point just after the war. According to her, there were too many deaths and dreadful memories she wished to flee from, hence when her friend and neighbour told her that she and her boyfriend were relocating to West Point, Nyenpan decided to leave with them. “When I got here, I had no money and I got no one. I slept outside a small bar for two nights until I met my first husband. He never married me but he gave me everything I needed as a woman and wife. He was kind and gentle at home unlike most men in this place,” recollected Nyenpan. However, tragedy struck when Nyenpan’s husband fell seriously ill. Like most families in the shanty community, when her husband’s ailment started, the latter and Nyenpan resorted to self medication and alternative medicine; mainly herbs but they just weren’t enough. Nyenpan and her husband were unaware of the true nature of what they were dealing with. According to her, “We thought it was just malaria.” It wasn’t. When the sickness bore down on her husband at full throttle, Nyenpan wasn’t around. Hurriedly, they put him in a wheel barrow and wheeled him down to the neighbourhood West Point Clinic. Early diagnosis proved that Nyenpan’s husband suffered from Cholera, a water-borne disease. The attending doctor directed that he be rushed to the JFK Hospital in Monrovia but by the time he got there, Nyenpan’s husband didn’t stand a chance. “He died before the doctor could save him,” said Nyenpan with a heavy heart. Cholera has claimed the lives of many like him in the slums. For instance, Alphonso, a
•Too many patients waiting on inadequate health personnel is a recurrent feature in many Liberian village clinics
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Our graves are not full. They are not yet full. You see, all these people you see around have one or two sick neighbours. They have one or two very sick family members. They are all waiting for them to get better or die…not because they are bad people. No, they are not bad people. They just can’t afford to pay medical bills...
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Olatunji OLOLADE, Assistant Editor
self-styled contractor and commercial transporter lost a sister. “I told her to go to the hospital but she didn’t. She said she got no money for the bill. So I gave her money…one week later she died. Then I got to know she never got treated. She gave the money to her husband,” lamented Alphonso. Salome, a full time housewife in Paynesville, Monrovia, lamented that lack of potable water supply constitutes a grievous problem for most people in her neighbourhood. “We don’t get good water here. All we drink is rain water
•Primary healthcare remains a sorepoint in Liberia’s healthcare system
•Patients awaiting the arrival of health personnel at Phebe Hospital, Gbarnga
and sometimes water from the wells. And they are not very clean. But we have no choice. If we want to drink good water, we have to buy it…Many people can’t buy it because they can’t afford to do so. So they take dirty water and they fall sick,” she said. The statistics are appalling. Eighteen percent of all deaths in Liberia are related to illnesses caused by poor water and sanitation – illnesses like diarrhea, malaria and cholera – according to a 2008 World Health Organization report. Small children are particularly at risk. Only 25 per cent of Liberians have access to safe drinking water. Less than
one in five Liberians has access to improved sanitation facilities and just one per cent of households actually get water that way according to the latest estimates from the joint UNICEF/World Health Organisation monitoring program. Moriamo Saleh washes clothes in Paety Town, where about 5,000 people live in shacks crammed together and built of old rusted zinc. The 24-year-old widow and mother of three spends at least five hours every day filtering muddy brown water from the well for drinking, cooking and washing. The well water is unpurified and unclean, just like the rain wa-