General Reflections - Part Two: Liberia

I come away from Liberia really surprised and deeply grateful. I had been in Liberia in 1983 for 10 days, preaching at a retreat in Gbanga for the seminarians. Gbanga is some 100 miles from Monrovia. I don’t remember much of Monrovia except that there were plenty of items for sale that were no longer available in Sierra Leone at that time. That was the good news. The bad news was the sharp and rude attitude of the police and some others. I did not feel welcome, and I was glad I was returning to a more hospitable country after the retreat. How I longed for Sierra Leone. Liberia was not a place for me, I thought.

This visit, however, changed all that. I did not see police with guns or being rude as I did in ‘83. The people I met along the roads, the people I engaged with in many encounters were most open and welcoming. I did not feel threatened nor shunned. I could actually see myself coming to serve here.

As for the many visits to offices and the various personnel, they all were very focused, professional, and committed to bringing hope and changes to Liberia. Truth will have to be told. Victimizers will have to admit their wrongs in some way or manner and reparations will have to be made. But there is a sea change in attitude. Maybe the war matured them.

There are challenges nonetheless. Unemployment needs to be addressed. Infrastructure needs to be restored. Development from the ground up needs to be a conscious strategy. But there is hope. There is pride and dignity. Yet there is also deep unresolved rage. I had the same feeling of inevitability of a return to chaos, a simmering, subtle feeling so much like what I met in the conversations with security personnel in Lower Manhatten, New York in 2003 when I visited a classmate priest who serves there. The people there told me that it is not a matter of if, but when the next attack like September 11th will come. It is a very subtle fear, but it a fear just the same and it is toxic! Life gets chocked in fear. There are Herculean challenges to bringing peace and restoration to Liberia. I pray we can be proactive in encouraging that restoration which recreates relations among people who want to live in peace.