Harper Stinks

Harper City is one of the oldest cities in Liberia. It is situated deep in the heartland and keyhole of the Southeastern Region of the country. It is the capital of Maryland (Liberia).

It used to be one of the best when I was growing up. But now if you were to ask me much about the City, my answer is, “It stinks!”

The offensive smell of feces and electric generator fumes hang like a thick dark cloud over Harper City.

Each time I walk around the City, the offensive smell is found everywhere. There are black scandal bags almost everywhere in which full or half loads of feces had been tossed close to the street-side and into makeshift garbage pits; garbage heaps, or the open areas in sections of the community.

In Harper, running water is scarce and sometimes non-existent in the inner-city community.

Public toilet and bathroom facilities to offer some dignity to the men, women and children are nonexistent. Men and women alike pee along the streets.

Flies, people and animals commingle in a maze of nastiness. When the wind blows, the residue of filth is felt all over your body including in your mouth. Corpses are embalmed along the riverside and roadside.

Flies quickly move from the mounds of filth to the mouths of adults and young babies.

Communities in the outskirt of the City are heavily infested with deadly disease-carrying rats. Big heavy rats run across the streets as I take my evening and morning walks throughout the City.

The filthy conditions common to most parts of the City create breeding grounds for the rodents.

We all know rats and mice spread over 35 types of diseases. And these diseases can be spread to humans in many ways.

Strayed dogs infested with rabies, pigs and other animals ply the streets of Harper without hindrance.

In Harper City that is a risk that we live with every day.

 RECOMMENDATION (S):

1.   Recruit student volunteers to help sweep streets on a daily basis for an Honorarium of $50 (US) monthly.

2.    Each Street by sponsored by an individual or group or organizations. For example, one person or group can take responsibility to pay the annual salary of each student volunteer.

3.    The project will be managed by The KudeNumo Peace Initiative Foundation, Inc. INC. (KNPIF) the author of Peace in the Peninsula

4.  Encourage international and national nongovernmental organizations to assist in environmental issues in the City for the common good of all including, asbestos removal, erosion, &c.

BENEFIT:

1.       Students will learn how to volunteer

2.       Students , while volunteering will receive an Honorarium

3.       Students, while learning how to volunteer and receiving Honorarium, will help clean their own community for their own good and everybody else’s

4.       Harper City will be a clean city and environmentally stable

I am Thomas G. Bedell speaking and working on the ground in Liberia