With hand pumps, latrines and the unimaginable luxury of electricity, the inhabitants of Cestos City in eastern Liberia are slowly rebuilding their ruined town under the shadow of epidemic illness and rumours of weapons stashed in the forest.
”The war has destroyed everything we had,” said Emmet Kay, looking around him at the barren landscape that used to be a village of nearly 28 000 people on the bank of the Cestos River, about 200km east of Monrovia.
Rivercess County was the site of some of the fiercest fighting in May of last year, pitting the rebel Movement for Democracy in Liberia (Model) against the elite anti-terrorist units of former president Charles Taylor.
Virtually all of Cestos City’s inhabitants fled into the forest, foraging for food or making their way across the border into Côte d’Ivoire, which is known to have backed Model’s uprising.
Since peace was declared in August last year, families have begun their tentative return to reclaim their fields and resume planting, amid rumours that rifles, grenade-launchers and other heavy weaponry remain hidden in the forest, awaiting disarmament in Côte d’Ivoire or a reprise of war.
A battalion of Ethiopian peacekeepers has moved in to assure the security situation but there has been little in the way of humanitarian assistance provided by the glut of United Nations organisations operating in the West African state.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has made inroads in ensuring there is, at the very least, safe drinking water and the barest of sanitation systems, building latrines and installing hand pumps around the city that now counts 18 000 residents.
”Obviously if you have no pump, no latrine, you have the chance of people getting sick,” said Kirsty Jones, the ICRC delegate for Cestos City.
Liberia has already been hit by outbreaks of cholera, a waterborne illness transmitted through improper hygiene and poor sanitation. Malaria runs rampant and there are fears that the West African state’s HIV infection rate has skyrocketed over the years of mass rape and rampant drug use among the fighting factions.
One of the most glaring holes for the community is the absence of a health facility, said Joshua Kortie, the health coordinator for Rivercess County.
”Our people are dying from common sickness like fever, because they have access to treatment only on Wednesdays” when a mobile hospital van operated by Médécins sans Frontières rolls into the area, said Kortie.
”If it is 3pm, the van leaves even if there are still people who are seriously ill. Because of the bad road condition, there is no commercial transport. We take sick people 100km away to Buchanan and 80% die on the road.”
Such problems are not only endemic to Rivercess, but are confronted by civilians across Liberia’s 15 counties. A shortage in funding for the UN mission in Liberia (Unmil) operations means that agencies have had to cut food rations or withhold desperately needed services from the war-weary population.
”It feels like these humanitarian groups are operating here as visitors; they don’t see how much we need them,” one Cestos County resident said.
Cestos City does have the benefit of stable electricity, unheard of even in the capital where only humanitarian aid groups, embassies and Unmil offices can depend on a regular supply.
”We did it because the government is not in the position to do it, and we are here to make them happy and forget about the damage done to them by the war,” said Ethiopian commander Captain Desaley Teklehaymanot. — Sapa-AFP