On Tuesday morning, I skimmed through my usual chain of WhatsApp messages from friends and family until I came across a video of what appeared to be people gathered. I clicked on it to see people dressed in protective gear chasing a man and heard familiar Liberian accents. The crowd of people were chasing a man alleged to be the driver of the first person diagnosed with COVID-19 in Liberia. The clip was only about 20 seconds long, so I watched again to verify and process the information. If this man was allegedly someone with the deadly CoronaVirus, why was the crowd chasing him?
In my perplexed state, I opened a message from another friend from Liberia and there the video was again; this time it was a link from the gossip blog, Chichipoly Room. I clicked the link and landed on the blog’s page showing the video of Liberians risking their lives to chase the man down a narrow street as he makes his way into what looked like a gated building. I scrolled through the comments to get a clearer picture of the situation. Of course, there was no fact or hard evidence, just the public opinions and fellow Liberians insulting the people in the crowd and laughing at the tendency of our people to enjoy being nosey. Still, the majority of comments conveyed a consensus of anger for the obliviousness of the crowd chasing the man instead of running away from him. Some people even went as far as calling the crowd “illiterate” and “stupid” or in our way “mumu”.
Anger aside, as I read through the insults, I started to feel sorry and ashamed for our country. In recent times, the way we -as Liberians- have taken so keenly toward uplifting our country with images has been productive in erasing the stains of the civil crisis and Ebola, that cast dark shadows over our public image. This viral video was both disheartening and counterintuitive, given our country’s recent history. For a place still recovering from the trauma and stigma of the deadly Ebola outbreak in 2014, how could our people chase someone presumed to be infected with yet another deadly virus? In doing so, did they not understand the risk involved or are we (the ones watching the video) the only ones aware of the danger?
To answer these questions, we must first understand that this recording was made available to the world by someone who wanted to expose the man alleged to have the virus. In their limited knowledge, this person’s action was to ensure the infected person was brought to the hospital to avoid others contracting the disease. They really wanted to do good and spread awareness. As limited as that explanation sounds, this is the mindset that brought us that video. This is also the “community-first” mentality we all grew up with in Liberia.
The community-first mentality helped us chase down criminals, discipline our neighbors’ kids and give our last to strangers when they visit. This same mentality is what brought us that video. Trapped in that very same mentality is the ignorance that afflicts our society. The COVID-19 raging havoc across the world made its way to Liberia and our people without fear ran towards an alleged patient while others recorded it to share (yea na- yea na- Facebook Live style). It saddened me to watch, but it also exposed a part of our society we have yet to address. UNESCO reports more than half of our population as young adults and of that group, only about 55% are literate. How do we expect our people to understand or adhere to the instructions about the virus or the impact if they are not knowledgeable? Before you answer that, what more needs to be said about the importance of education before we start to make it a priority? And if you think this has nothing to do with education, you can see why it continues to be a problem.
In the 2019-2020 National Budget, the Liberian government allocated $83.4 million (15.8% of the total budget) for the Education Sector (salaries and administrative cost only). In comparison, the Public Administration Sector was allocated about $178 million (33.8%). If you think education doesn’t matter, wait until you hear that the Healthcare Delivery Sector received only about $80.3 million (15.2%) from our $526 million annual budget. If Healthcare and Education combined is not even up to a third of the National Budget, we can see where our priorities lie. What we do not see from these numbers is how this leads to more videos of people risking their lives out of sheer ignorance.
During a public health crisis as we have now, informational messages are crucial in the beginning of the crisis. Public health practitioners will tell you to minimize the spread of the virus by avoiding contacts, as most infections are caused by microbes that enter the bodies through openings like the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, etc. If we are running towards an infected person with our eyes and mouths open to take in the entire scene (in order to carry the news or gees, as our people say), it is the exact opposite of what health providers advise. How will our people be informed when healthcare is not a priority? How can healthcare providers get their message across when our government officials continue to shift their priorities? If the message ever gets to the public, how will our people read and comprehend the messages with our limited literacy?
The biggest item on the national budget is for public administration, which includes government employees and their salaries; this comes as no surprise. A popular Liberian adage says “of all my mother’s children, I like myself the best.” Our officials, in their selfish governing, continue to place themselves above the people who elected them. To have the salaries of government officials and the upkeep of their offices as a higher priority than the salaries of our teacher, healthcare workers and the upkeep of our schools or hospitals speak to why we have people chasing the alleged coronavirus-infected man.
It is this same selfishness from our leaders that led to coronavirus being brought to the country. The first person having the virus in Liberia was identified, by the Liberian Ministry of Information Culture and Tourism through Facebook (since the Ministry has not had a functioning website since 2018), as the head of a government agency returning from a conference in Switzerland (this announcement posting has since been deleted from the Ministry’s Facebook page). Despite measures in place to screen every passenger coming into Liberia, our officials -feeling entitled by “bossman syndrome”- still managed to bypass the airport and health workers. They make these regulations only for everyday citizens as they sit high above it, even at the risk of others. The man in the video, said to be the driver of the infected official, drove his boss from the airport to his home. Not surprising, the days following the boss fell ill and allegedly reported himself to health officials. Of course, the boss’s illness posed a risk to the lives of those around him, but is this not the thing we have come to expect from our leaders?
That video did more than just expose our ignorance to the number one public enemy of the world; it revealed our priorities. As a country, we prioritize our leaders and their needs at the risk of others. We also continuously place education and healthcare beneath the benefits of those we elected to serve us. Ironically, we have become servants to those we elected. We are making it easy for our growing youth population to flock towards government positions and leave our crippled private sector. We can laugh all we want at the people in that video, but they represent all of us as a nation. They say to put your money where your mouth is and for us, we’ve placed all our money in the hands of those who continue to prioritize themselves even at the detriment of the people. Until Liberians start to hold our leaders accountable, we will continue to see videos that expose our ignorance. We must remember: when we laugh and call them names, it is a reflection on all of us. It doesn’t matter if you do not like the government or reside outside of Liberia, we are united in the pride of mama Liberia just as we are in her shame.
Authored by Randell Zuleka Dauda
Featured Picture by Front-page Africa
