By Hassan I. Conteh
A group of Liberians at a former refugee camp are distasteful over their home country’s politics.
Rebecca, who is in her mid 30s, has lived in a Liberia refugee camp in Sierra Leone built around 2002 in Waterloo, the outskirts of Freetown.
”I have stayed here since before 2023; I attended Lorenzo senior school which was known then as Commercial Secondary School at Post Office in Waterloo,”
”I have taken years and years here, but I hardly go to Liberia. I don’t like to talk about politics there,” Rebecca sounded.
The Liberian woman is a mother of four and she lives a very moderate Christian life.
She shugged off the question asked about her take on her home country’s politics and development trend.
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Liberia is ruled by a former football star, Geroge Manneh Oppong Weah.
President Weah had had quite a good fortunes in football.
In 1995, he was named African, European, FIFA World Player of the Year, a rank he alone has attained as a Black African since to today’s global football mega-billion-dollars industry.
Weah’s country is heading to a general elections on October 10, 2023, which is just few days to go.
October 10 elections come after a five-year-term of George Weah, has expired, who was elected in 2018 after the sun had set on ex-President Elen Johnson Sirleaf.
However, most Liberians are not too fine with Weah’s approach to governance.
There have been questions about money laundering and hiking cost of living in Liberia which is in the bottom of the list of African poorest countries in the World.
Historically, since Liberia and Sierra Leone share commonality in terms of culture, language, lifestyle, etc, the latter had become a homage to fellow African Liberians who fled the war in the early 1990s.
And a place in Waterloo, which is roughly 26 miles away from Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, was exactly the homage and the host for Liberian refugees.
The place was called Liberia Refugee Camp or in short, Camp.
Back then around 2003, 2004, 2005, there were many Liberians from Manrovia city who lived at this Refugee Camp whose vicinity is now known as Kissy Town.
Those refugees fled the war caused by ex-President of Liberia, Charles Taylor, a then rebel leader who is now running a prison sentence overseas after being tried at a Sierra Leone Special Tribunal Court.
The former rebel financier was held for several charges and key among those charges were for aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Charles Taylor was also believed to have funded rebels who caused attrocities on Sierra Leone people,causing the loss of many lives, in a civil war that lasted between 1991 and 2002.
Speaking to another Liberian woman about her experience in Sierra Leone, Rose told us:
”We have lived here for many years since the war in our country; we have got used to living here and our children are attending schools here. We don’t dream of returning to Liberia for the time being. However, we normally talk to our family relatives back home in Liberia. But we really, really would not want to discuss politics in that country. We are with Christ. ”
The Liberians in Sierra Leone now live at what they call New Liberia Refugee Camp.
It was built by the Government of Sierra Leone through the support of UNHCR’s and ECOWAS’ local intergration project.
The New Camp is just few metres away from the Old Camp.
Like Rose and Rebecca, so many Liberians who have lived in Sierra Leone live a very good Christian life.
They seem not to be bothered much about their home country’s affairs and about Sierra Leone’s problems.
And it looks very certain that since these people have tied their love on Sierra Leone’s soil, they are not longing for Liberia anymore than their fellow Liberia refugees then who had fled home after the civil war ended in Liberia.
And a sister, a Liberian lady by the name Elenor, whom we all attended the same primary school in Joe Town, Saint Joseph, which is a mile away from Old Refugee camp told me her exeprience:
”I just could not recall the names of many of our friends we were in the same class then; some may have gone to United States or Liberia since after we had sat to the NPSE.”