A Sad Reality Indeed!

PHOTOS: (L-R) Duport Road Cemetery in 2023 and Duport Road Cemetery Dec 29, 2025

Text and photo By Frank Sainworla, Jr., fsainworla@yahoo.com/newspublictrust@gmail.com

Since four years ago, this writer has been tracking the what has become a “normal” thing in our Liberian society to turn into dumpsites what should be the resting places of our dead loved ones, family members and friends.

Because authorities had since dropped the ball on the main Palm Grove Cemetery on Center Street in central Monrovia, Liberia’s capital city, this news outlet thought to put a spotlight on a key cemetery in the major city on the capital’s outskirts—Paynesville and its major cemetery—Duport Road. And the situation has not been much different, with this resting home of our dead on the main paved street leading into the Duport Road community facing the same fate—being desecrated and perpetually turned into a dumpsite.

Back in April 2023, this is what I described in a piece published here in this news outlet after going through Duport Road:

“Well over one year and going into two years now, this is what I wrote introducing a piece on the messy condition of our public cemeteries, many hours after I had visited the Duport Road Cemetery in Monrovia’s Paynesville suburb on September 25, 2021:

A graveyard, where our dead loved ones—relatives and friends—are buried should be a place of serenity and tidiness.

But shamefully in our Liberian setting, the filth and stench in two of our major cemeteries in Monrovia and Paynesville bring tears to one’s eyes when visiting these burial grounds. Is this how their “final resting place” should be desecrated? Liberians: Why The Unrelenting Desecration Of Our Cemeteries? – News Public Trust

At that time, it was during the past regime of former President George Manneh Weah and his Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC).

Over the period not much change, given feedback I’ve been getting from reliable observers who have been monitoring the state of the cemetery.

So, this writer’s latest visit to the Duport Road Cemetery nearly two years on, today, Monday December 29, 2025 has only reinforced the old adage that says, “the more things change, the more they stay the same”, something that is unfortunately typical of Liberia.

To get a firsthand and very close look for myself, I decided to take a walk around the site and of course get some pictorial evidence of the state it’s in by the early evening of December 2o, 2025 during the regime of the “rescue” government of President Joseph Nyuma Boakai and his Unity Party.

And here is the state RIP site of our dead is in—a sad reality indeed!!

Can you imagine, the Duport Road Cemetery is yet to be fenced by a concrete wall. But at the area close to the new filling station on the right going into the Duport Road community, here is what city authorities have put as gate into the cemetery–makeshift materials made up of sticks and old banner from a printing press.