PHOTO: The Late NUOD president—Madam Naomi B. Harris
By Samuel G. Dweh,Writer, Author, Development & Human Rights Journalist (freelance) +231 (0)886618906/776583266/samuelosophy@yahoo.com
This article ends with recommendations (solution methods) to the current President, George Manneh Weah, on how to tackle national problems causing “heart failure” around Liberia.
THIS IS THE BACKGROUND:
Majority of today’s Liberians who were mature during their Country’s civil war (1990-2003) had not recovered from “heart pains” from seeing their loved ones’ throats being cut with knives, scissors, or cutlasses by armed persons (members of the different warring factions); from seeing houses with their loved ones (trapped inside the house) engulfed with fire from fallen Rockets fired by one of the warring factions and no way to rescue any of those in the house; or from seeing the mutilated bodies of the loved ones littered in a neighborhood after a Jet Bomber (of the Peacekeeping Group—ECOMOG) landed at their “refuge point”—after the Jet Bomber had “missed target”. (The bomber had intended launching a the safe haven of one of the anti-Government Forces)
When you press the “Fast Forward” button, you are in “post-civil war Liberia” being economically grinded by the effects of the global health issue (Corona Virus pandemic) that “invaded” the Country in March, 2020, and “pricking the hearts” of over ninety percent of the Liberian citizens on “hopelessness”. This is happening during the Presidency of global football icon-turned-politician, named George Manneh Weah. The main victims of the hopelessness are persons in the position as “sole provider of family’s life sustainability needs”. The hopelessness is related to one of the following about you—sole provider of the family::
- Sudden loss of only office job—on political reasons or ghastly accident, so you can no longer regularly provide foods and other basic needs of life for your family.
- Seizure of your goods by the Metropolitan (City) Police because the goods were placed (being displayed) at the “wrong point”, and the Police have refused to release the goods on your inability to release the money (“bribes”) they are demanding. With your goods still in the City Police custody, you can’t find an alternative job and you can no longer find foods most time of the day and night for yourself and those solely depending on you.
- Because of irregular work, you had collected money on credit from many different neighbors, with a promise to pay back with interest, to buy foods for your family, but you have been failing on your promise over four months, and the creditors are at your door during early hours announcing your indebtedness to the whole neighborhood while your relatives are present.
- One of your most loved relatives (child or parent) was involved in a life-threatening accident, which creates an urgent need blood transfusion at a medical center, but you can’t find money for urgent treatment and the person later dies in your presence.
- A person connected to the Country’s Presidency, one of the leadership of one of the other two Branches of Government, or to a historical national fraternal organization (called “Secret Society”) has “encroached” a parcel of Land you had legally purchased (and issued a legal Land Deal) with 90% of the years’ savings for your children’s education (so that your family leave tenancy-related slavery), but each of the Courts you had reported to “defended” the person (even though he/she didn’t provide a genuine Land purchase document), and finally you lost the right of ownership of the Land.
- You return home in the evening and meet your family’s personal possessions, your spouse and children in front of the rented apartment you left them. You are handed a photocopy of a Court-stamped eviction notice you were issued twelve months ago on your failure of renewal of your tenancy fees 18 months ago, which was caused by loss of job, and drastic fall in profits of your new income-generating activity
- You became “physically disabled” (blind, or move on crutches, or move in wheelchair) while you are working with a company, and your employer later “relieves” you of the job because you are no longer “economically productive” you used to be prior to your new “physical form”, so you can no longer provide your family’s needs.
- You are living with disability (crutches-mobile) and are the leader of an independent organization of disabled people (not getting Government’s financial help), and you provide your family’s needs with your share of the “balance of funding” (after implementation of the organization’s project), but the organization’s “supporter” isn’t regularly helping because of its personal “financial constraint”. On this, you are not getting money regularly for your family’s survival.
- Your family is in a jovial, peace-maintenance discussion in front of the family’s house. Few hours into the discussion, your most favorite member of the family begins complaining about “lingering pains” inside the upper part of the body, and rushes into the house to rest for the pain to calm. Minutes later, you leave the discourse point to check on the person who had left. But you meet a “lifeless body” lying on the floor, instead of the “human being” (breathing) you had expected to meet. Then your memory clicks to the cost of hosting and treatment of a corpse at a funeral home, and your mind wanders to the costs of other funeral requirements—purchase of a burial spot in a graveyard, casket, transportation of the body, etc. (The minimum cost of the funeral requirements and activities is over six thousand United States dollars—US$6,000) Your mind comes to the money you have with you right now: less than ten percent of the cost of hosting and embalmment at a Funeral Home.
- You send a “please help me” call to each of your external relatives and friends, but the total amount sent is little bit above the Funeral Home’s fee. Where will you get money for the other parts of laying your loved one to mother earth? You begin running from pillar to post—begging other people to assist, but majority of the people who wish to help are in your current financial position: penury. One month later, you can’t collect your relative’s corpse from the mortuary because you haven’t got money for a burial space at a public cemetery. The Funeral Home’s constant calls (reminders) have started engendering (causing) pounding of your head—coupled with the mental stress you had been experiencing from being bombarded with hunger-related complaints from the kids in the body of “dependents” squarely on your shoulders to provide for—foods, medical treatment, school fees. And you started feeling severe pains in at the base of your neck, followed by “strange weakness”…
MY NATION-BUILDING COLLEAGUE DIED OF “HEART FAILURE”
In the evening of the 25th of February, 2022, the Secretary of the National Union of Organizations of the Disabled (NUOD), Mr. Heylove Mark, called my telephone line and relayed a “news” that disrupted my writing-related ecstasy mood that started from the morning. “I’m calling to tell you, we lost our president and mother, Madam Naomi Harris, few minutes ago,” Mr. Heylove delivered the message. He said other things—about the cause of the death—but the first portions of the message had thrown me into temporary mental pause, so I couldn’t get the next parts of the message.
In the morning of the next day, I rushed to Madam Harris’s house to meet the bereaved family.
One of her many dependants, Maimah George (popularly called Mondayma), narrated to me the circumstances leading to the demise of her mother. She said her mother woke from bed lively as usual and didn’t complain about any sickness. In the afternoon, she sat behind her sewing machine to work on clothes of her grandchildren, and to sew Mondayma’s suit for her Church’s upcoming Convention. Later, somebody brought a document from her office—of NUOD—for her to sign.
Mondayma’s narration as her response to incidents leading to my professional colleague’s death: “Later, in that same afternoon, she started saying, ‘I’m not breathing normal, my breath is cutting…’ and she said she was going to the bathroom. About two minutes later, one of the little children in the rushed to me, and said to me, ‘grandma said you must come quick’. I rushed to the bathroom, but I saw our mother falling. I held her, began to cry for help to take her to the hospital. One of the neighbors brought his car, we put her into car, and she was rushed to the Catholic Hospital. The doctors who came to meet us examined her in the car, and later told us her pressure level was normal. But the doctors later called for a wheelchair and rushed her into the Hospital’s Emergency Room. But less than ten minutes later, the Hospital told us, my mother died.”
Madam Naomi B. Harris and I first met at an Agriculture-related Workshop in Bong County in 2016. She represented her institution (NUOD); I represented the president of the Press Union of Liberia (PUL), Mr. Kamara Abdullai (now deceased) She and I were in the same group; I was the ‘Secretary’ (note taker) of our group. My disclosure—during the Self-Introduction segment during Day One of the Workshop—of being a professional writer, Author of Books, a Journalist, and president of the Liberia Association of Writers (LAW) attracted many of the participants to me.
I became emotionally connected to NUOD—to attend all its programs and to later produce a news story of each program. I had attended NUOD’s Workshops in four different Counties—Grand Kru County (2017), Margibi (2018), and Grand Bassa—for the World White Cane (blind people’s walking stick) Day (2020) In Montserrado County, NUOD’s Headquarter is based, and where I’m based, I had attended over thirty NUOD’s program during the leadership of Madam Harris.
About a year later, Madam Harris told me the cause of her walking with a pair of crutches. “Polio hit me when I was two-year-old,” disclosed and chuckled.
But the “disability” couldn’t hinder Madam Harris from going anywhere—including moving up a bumpy staircase (no Ram) For example, in 2016 she climbed the staircase of a Chinese Restaurant on Broad Street, where I had invited her to attend a Special Dinner in my honor from the Chinese Embassy The Dinner was the Embassy’s “Special Appreciation” for my article about the “Chinese Martial Arts” exhibition, organized in 2016 by the Chinese Language Institute at the University of Liberia.
One thing I always admired about Madam Harris was her passion for impartation of knowledge (education) for her fellow women, who had been lucky for acquisition of class-room knowledge as she had. On crutches, she ran a free Evening’s Adult Literacy classes (Writing & English) on the porch of her house, for mothers of her neighborhood (Sophie’s Community), who didn’t have opportunity for traditional classroom education during their pre-parenthood days, and whose daytime trading works couldn’t permit their enrollment at an Adult Literacy School outside of the Community
Moving with crutches, Madam Naomi B. Harris began her classroom teaching work at the Voice of Education High School (2002-2006), situated on in the James Spriggs Payne Airfield community; and migrated to the Mason High School (2007-2009), situated on the Old Road, Monrovia at the Voice of Education Senior High School. She had earned a “C” Certificate—and later an Associate of Arts (AA) degree in School Administration—from LICOSES, a Mobile Teacher Training Center situated in Old Road, Monrovia.
She became president of NUOD in 2016; NUOD was founded on October 29, 1995
Her humility and assertiveness on pushing national discussion on the rights of persons living with disabilities (in line with the United Nations Conventions of Persons Living with Disabilities—UNCRPD)—attracted kind gestures (office space and funding of NUOD’s projects) from the Liberia’s Mission of an Italian International Organization empowering disabled people’s organizations in Africa. The name of the organization is Association Friends of Raoul Follereau (AIFO), which opened a branch in Liberia in 1997, and started with a community-based rehabilitation approach on leprosy, and later established a business setup program of oil palm and rice production for Liberians living with disabilities and being run by disabled people’s organizations into in Montserrado, Bong, Nimba, and Grand Gedeh Counties.
She was also popular for her personal exemplary humanitarian gestures.
One example is her payment of medical bill, with her personal cash, for 78-year-old Elizabeth Broh (the biological mother of the writer of this article) on sick bed at the Catholic Hospital (where the humanitarian later died) The elderly woman’s son didn’t have money to settle his mother’s medical bill.
The second proof of Madam Harris’s humanitarian gesture was her “begging” for a wheelchair from Monrovia Rehabilitation Center (MRC), a physical rehabilitation department of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center, for a 69-uear-old disabled man, Mr. Fred Jackson, who had been crawling (moving with his knees and both hands to the ground) over seven years due to paralysis of his both legs. Mr. Jackson had heard Madam Harris speaking on a Radio program about disabled people’s plights; he called on the show, narrated his mobility constraints, and concluded with an appeal. The wheelchair was delivered to Mr. Jackson at his residence in Gbandi Community of Grand Cape Mount County. The wheelchair was one of several donated to MRC. by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Madam Naomi B. Harris was buried on March 18, 2022 at a cemetery off the Congo Town Back Road.
Her funeral service, held at the Gracie Reeves Baptist Church, situated in the Old Road community, was attended by members of the disabled community, the Liberian Government (represented by the Executive Director of the National Commission on Disabilities (NCD), Madam Daitowon Pay-Bayee), The Carter Center (founded by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter), AIFO (the Italian organization economically empowering Liberia’s Disabled Community), religious bodies, and various Civil Society Organizations (through their representatives)
A body of her colleagues—disabled persons (visually impaired, etc.)—paraded with the car with the casket with her remains from MUSU SPOT (a popular Entertainment center in Congo Town) to the grave site.
OTHER PRESSURE-RELATED DEATHS SAMUEL G. DWEH HAD HEARD
Prior to Madam Naomi B, Harris’s “heart failure”—related death, I had received dozens of information about deaths related to “Pressure” or “heart failure”. The scenarios I listed with bullet points, above, are my paraphrases of narratives by the victims’ to their friends a different places I was present—including in public transport vehicles. The narrators spoke about the deaths in different Counties.
RECOMMENDATIONS (SOLUTION METHODS) ON REDUCTION OF “HEART FAILURE” DEATHS AROUND LIBERIA
I will be bias and be branded a “fool” if I said, or wrote, that Liberians were not suffering of “Pressure” or “heart failure” during the presidency of Charles Taylor or Ellen Johnson Sirleaf—Mr. George Manneh Weah’s presidential predecessors in post-war time.
However, each of these “heart problems” is “intense” (with majority of Liberians) during Mr. Weah’s presidency than it was during the presidency of each of his predecessors. During Mr. Weah’s presidency, getting a job, and finding money for the following: food, rent for room, medical treatment, education (school fee), and mobility (transportation fare for public vehicles)—is a pipe dream for majority of the citizens (except Government officials or their civilian praise-singers or defenders)
During Charles Taylor’s presidency, food was surplus in Liberia, and the President kept price of a bag of rice “low” (with threat to rice dealers who hiked the price of a bag of rice, which would cause push it out of the reach of a less rich consumer) During Ellen Johnson’s presidency, money was “wasting” on the increase of foreign investors in Liberia, and on presence of foreign millionaires and billionaires in Liberia and economically empowering Liberian organizations into agriculture, health, education, the media, or other nation-building sectors of the Country. These mega rich foreigners operate through their personal NGO (not-for-profit organizations) with offices in Liberia. One example of mega rich foreigners with “development presence” in Liberia is George Soros, founder of the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) The Liberia’s Office of OSIWA, headed by Madam Massa Crayton, was supporting Liberian education, the media, and many other vital sectors. But OSIWA left Liberia few months after Ellen Sirleaf’s presidential tenure came to an end in 2017.
Having highlighted the “causes” of “Pressure” or “heart failure”, I will now show the “preventive methods” (recommendations) to Head of State George Ma
The first solution method is President George Manneh Weah should READ books, commentaries, and should watch video documentaries about solutions to a Country’s agricultural, education, and health problems.
The George M. Weah-led Executive Branch of Government should properly use “Liberia’s development” funding from the American People, through the US Government; the body of European Countries (collectively called European), and other friendly developed Nations—including China and Sweden. Few months ago, the US Government “complained” (through the Ambassador of the US Embassy in Liberia, H.E. Michael A. McCarthy) against the George M. Weah-led Government on “misuse” of millions dollars (American currency) given for stabilization of Liberia’s electricity’ to prevent the current rampant “power theft”. Less than six months after the US Government’s complaint, the European Union expressed its “disenchantment” (through the EU Ambassador) on the “heaps of garbage” in various parts of the Capital City (Monrovia)—a short time after the Government received millions (foreign currency) from the EU to regularly clean the Capital City.
President Weah should allow Government’s Anti-Corruption Agencies to prosecute his Ministers and Heads of Government’s Agencies caught in embezzlement of Liberia’s ’s money from the Country’s natural resources or from any of Liberia’s foreign development Partners—USA, EU, etc. The US Government has complained many times about “presidential shielding” of corrupt top Government officials of the ruling Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC)
President Weah should declare his assets and compel his political appointees to do same. This will prove his being an anti-corruption “hero” as he sometime preaches at national events, and will create trust in Liberia’s development partners to send more money to Liberia during his presidency.
We should prevent “unconstitutional removal” of the Head of State—caused by “unending suffering” of the masses” and the masses’ “hopelessness” on the Head of State to provide “solution” to their “life-threatening problems.
The Author
Samuel G. Dweh, a member of the Wedabo Ethnic group of Grand Kru County (situated in Southeastern Liberia) is a member of the Press Union of Liberia (PUL), and former president of the Liberia Association of Writers (LAW)