LIBERIA: Slums In Monrovia

Slum communities in Monrovia include but are not limited to St. Paul Bridge, Banjor Fishing community, Brewerville, Clara Town, Bushrod Island, Logan Town, Sinkor, Slipway, Sonewein, South Beach Bay, West Point, Buzzi Quarter, Fiamah, Wesay, Jallah Town, communities along Soniwein, Jamaica Road, Sayon Town, Saye Town, Neezoe and the commercial hubs of Red Light in Paynesville and Waterside on Water Street. One may not be wrong to say Monrovia is a slum-enveloped capitol as well as the entire Montserrado County. Somalia Drive is a massive contributor to the county's profile. Communities such as Gardernesville, Chocolate City, Chicken Soup Factory, Doe Community and Shoe Factory are typical. Monrovia, too, is no exception: Perry Street, Capital By-Pass, the criminal den of Blagba behind the old Ministry of Defense on Buchanan Street is an integral part.

According to a 2009 Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2009, the rate of urbanization makes it very challenging to manage. A recent paper in the New England Journal of Medicine argued that urbanization is a "health hazard for certain vulnerable populations, and this demographic shift threatens to create a humanitarian disaster."

Urbanization in Africa, which Liberia is of no exception, is linked to poverty. The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UNHABITAT) defines a slum as an urban area with a lack of basic services (sanitation, potable water, and electricity), substandard housing, overcrowding, unhealthy and hazardous locations, insecure tenure and social exclusion. UN-HABITAT has also indicated that a slum is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing, squalor, and lacking in tenure security.

The UN organization's bulletin also indicated that a significant share of ill health in slums stems from poor access to sanitation and clean drinking water. Even where it is available, access to safe water is often unaffordable for the urban poor.

While it is true that children bear a disproportionate burden of disease in slums in Liberia, flooded areas and ditches, latrines and septic tanks are key reservoirs that perpetuate cholera, malaria, typhoid, dengue and yellow fever in urban areas. Infectious disease outbreaks are also precipitated by the high population density found in these areas, with overcrowding triggering epidemic-prone infections like Ebola and influenza.

Slum dwellers in Monrovia are seemingly the dominant group, who are often drug users and hawkers that are involved in street selling and street begging. Significant portion of young girls in these disadvantaged communities are likely engaged in prostitution. Slum communities in Monrovia account for many cases of domestic violence and wanton abuse of alcohol and other illicit substances. Nearly all of the 500 ghettos identified by the Drug Enforcement Agency in Monrovia alone are found in these slum communities.

Many criminals in the streets of Monrovia and its environs are unarguably mainly poverty-stricken residents of slum communities. Some of these communities also account for highest number of makeshift schools, quack teachers as well as quack doctors whose engagement with the local population continues to undermine the health and education sectors of the country.

During the war years, Monrovia was considered the as a haven as result of the presence of a number of peacekeeping forces (ECOMOG, ULIMIL, ECOMIL and UNMIL), Today Africa's oldest capital has been overwhelmed by an alarming influx of migrants chasing the green bucks (a rush to buy scrap iron and aluminum dug up along the streets and sold for cups of rice), including internally displaced persons and refugees and former belligerent troops and fighting forces.

Faced with a number of challenges, ranging from family tracing by the Liberian National Red Cross and International Committee of the Red Cross to integration and rehabilitation of IDPs and returnees from the sub-region, including those from Guinea, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, Monrovia was principally the headquarters of all the warring factions, as fighters left behind wives, concubines and children who one way or another ended up in some of these slum communities to fight for survival.

Before the war years, West Point, Clara Town, Doe community, parts of Logan Town, Duala and New Kru Town were among the few slum communities that were in Monrovia. A greater number of slum communities at the time was mainly concentrated on the Bushrod Island but sprang up to other areas as the population shifted and drifted from place to place.

The World Fact Book of the Central Intelligence Agency recorded in 2014 that the number of IDPs in Monrovia nearly exceeded "23,000 (civil war from 1990-2004; post-election violence in March and April 2011; unclear how many have found durable solutions; many dwell in slums in Monrovia)."

Internally displaced persons that resided in the two largest displace camps at Mamue 1 and Maimu 2 in Bong County up to 2004, are among many people that are residents of many slum communities even though few are believed to be well on their way of becoming middle-income earners in Monrovia.

Surge in commercial activities and peddling and street selling in Monrovia following the war years is undoubtedly a result of the illicit trade that existed among warring factions in Mount Barclay, then the buffer zone between ECOMOG, and the National Patriotic Front of Liberia and Kuwait in Duala. Rise in street selling, without any doubt, is associated with selling loots from the heydays of the civil war in1990. Anything from diamonds, gold, scraps and other clandestine transactions were exchanged for anything once the other party was satisfied with the deal.

Anything was sold at any value. No one actually value anything for that matter because no one knew when the war was going to be over. While people waited for the cessation of the war transactions were taking place. The "Gorbachov syndrome" was to sell anything for survival. "Gorbachov women" then discovered to cheat both the people who they buy from and equally cheat the ones that goods are sold to make ends meet. This trend of commercialization influenced petty trades, street selling and so forth.

Sadly for Monrovia, the slum communities, especially in heart of town, have sewage and drainage lines that are perpetually clogged. Manny homes along Soniwein, for example, empty sewage in the creek that made its way into other slum communities and finally empties in the Atlantic Ocean. This causes serious environmental concern to marine life and residents near the South Beach around the Monrovia Central Prison.

Monrovia smells with unpleasant but pungent odor every season of the year and there is no change in sight. Plastic bag-clogged drainages are everywhere. With the threat of climate change, Monrovia is slowly sinking under the weather and it has tilted to the level of an environmental time bomb.

The Mesurado River and Stockton Creek are also filled with filths from scores of slum dwellers that live in these communities, dumping feces and flying plastic bags filled with feces that pollute water resource.

Makeshift latrines are being built by community dwellers who are not often ashamed and afraid of poor sanitary condition that threaten their livelihood.

Children play and bath along the shores of these water bodies and fishermen are seen letting out their nets for a catch. Sand mining in the river, a new phenomenon, takes young men to go under the water for hours to gather sand in any other way for sale or block making.

The growing number of slum communities in Monrovia alone speaks to the fact there are looming challenges facing the Government of Liberia and its development partners. Slum dwelling poses threat to health and sanitation of women and children. While it is often said that Liberia is moving forward, it better not to forget about the urban poor who do not have comfortable environment for their children to play and learn. Think about that.

In the wake of the much publicized Agenda for Transformation much emphasis needs to be placed on low-cost housing facilities for slum dwellers so as to improve and converted the slums to paradise to reflect 21st century comfortable municipal lifestyle not only in Monrovia but across the entire country.