Problems Confronting the Grass Root Liberians By: Coleman J. Payne Cell #+231886893994 The Grass Roots, which in a conceptual context referred to as “Ordinary Liberians, still live today as yesterday, as if they were frozen in the past history. In the land of the Grass Root, job creation, decent homes, equity education, good healthcare, safe drinking water, and electricity are still miracles wanting to fall from heaven. And while representative democracy levitates in the forgotten Kingdom, the freedom to call on Liberia’s leaders to embrace the ordinary Liberians, to denounce deception in high places, abandon prejudice and embrace the conviction that Liberia is One Nation, burns in the hearts of the people of the Grass Root Liberians. Youth of the Grass roots are perplexed, unemployed, idled-no education, no jobs, and no hope for the future. Fathers are weary of governments that have failed to relieve them of their unhappy state affairs. Millions of citizens are hungry to struggle against the lack of opportunity and are exhausted to overcome disadvantages. Majority of its inhabitants are handymen and women farmers illiterate, and deprived. Anything higher they aspired to, was farcical and presumptuous. It is awful to be from the ordinary Liberians and have no control over your economy. It is brutal to be parents (educated/or illiterate), in the land of plenty, unemployed and trained to sit quietly and watch your kids lives go down the tube with no chance to assist. Citizens are constantly asking, “Where are our Representatives?” Our children are asking, “Where are our fathers?” And wives and mothers are asking too, “Where are our husbands, and children?” From luminous villages, towns, and cities of Liberia, as species, ordinary Liberians are an abomination. All of us-ordinary citizens-are caught in the tripartite crossfire of tribal prejudice, the illogical sense of ordinary Liberians inferiority and alienation- and ordinary Liberians lack of power. “The needs of society determine its ethics”, a Professor once said, and in the land of the ordinary Liberians the heroes and heroines are those men and women who are offered only the crumbs from their nation’s natural resources, but by their own ingenuity and courage in the forgotten land-Liberia, the words of poverty, ignorance, favoritism, nepotism, corruption, unemployment, etc, are adapted to. And most citizens don’t really, absolutely know what those words mean anymore, other than they are enemies of the ordinary Liberians’ progress, to be dreaded, and in that dead are included hostility of the powerless against the powerful, the poor against the rich, the neglected against the neglector, and the ordinary Liberians of dilapidated zincs and decaying mat houses against those of the well- fortified luxurious mansions. Moreover, the Ordinary Liberians have come over a way that with tears they been promised and heart broken as they glide on waves of deceits and neglect. Liberians are still a nation of two societies: one privileged and one underprivileged. Against this background, I am obliged to ask this rhetorical question: Why Ordinary Liberians need redemption? Because they are trapped behind the agony of unsolved miseries, 85% of its population is formally unemployed and 15% are employed; because we still remain a society of gross inequality, of social alienation, of distrust, of injustice, and of conflicting identities. Because the gross roots (ordinary Liberians) are greater Liberia and its inhabitants, among others are pastors, craftsmen/women, farmers, students, teachers, engineers, technicians, law enforcement officers, judges, lawyers, doctors, nurses, journalists, painters, market women/men, taxi drivers, motorbikes and future presidents. But we will never see their painting on the walls of hope and aspiration, unless we have the courage to set them from the yoke of bondage. More To Come…….
Posted on: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 15:23:52 +0000