The Culture Debate

LIBERIAN CULTURE: What is it?

What do people mean when they talk about Liberian culture? What is Liberian culture and what is not? What culture is practiced in Liberia? Whose way of life is it? Is it possible to separate one's systems of solutions or problem solving from his/her culture? What really do we mean when we say Liberian culture?

I submit that the issue about respecting or not respecting Liberian Culture will be addressed within the context of attempting to answer the above questions and other subsequent ones. These require some thoughtfulness and soberness. This will also require that we shed the existing image of Liberian culture that most of us limitted to Kendayah and look at culture within a braoder context.

But while doing so, it will serve us well if the discussion is about the integration of the various facets of the Liberian society(culture) into a system of solutions. But the idea of one talking about what is Liberian culture and what is not is like making fools of ourselves. If the way we interact in Liberia is not part of our culture then whose culture is it? The language, the food, the ceremonies and their protocols, religious practices, naming processes, governments, administrations, etc.. are all part of the Liberian culture and no other. The idea of Liberian culture and non-Liberian culture is the embedded in a slave mentality that was engendered during the Americo-Liberians( even the idea of Liberians calling themselves Americo-Liberians is another illusion. this is another discussion anyway) rule. It came out of ignorance. I am surprised that inspite of the increased awareness amongst many people of the globe, certain people in Liberia still think of their way of life as not part of the Liberian culture. So whose culture is it? British culture? Afghan culture? Whose culture is it? the languages Liberian speak, whether English(liberian English, Kpelle, the way we run government, or all the foods we eat).

Culture is adaptable and once it is adapted it becomes one's culture (i.e. the people who practice it.) When Western culture is adapted by Liberians, it is no longer a Western Culture, it becomes Liberian Culture. As long as it is accepted as a system of solutions. So, we need to stop creating this stupid divide or a peripheral feel good attitude. We need to stop limiting Liberian Culture to just dances, Poro, and Sande societies, etc. Everything we do as Liberian to solve problems is our Liberian Culture. It is an illusive paradise that one creates for himself/herself when he/she begins to think that he/she is a Liberian but is not a Liberian by culture. How is that possible? How can one be a Liberian yet think of himself/herself as a stranger by culture? It just happens that every culture has many dimensions and facets.The Liberian way od life is no exception.

Liberia is Paying for Obama’s Healthcare Reform

The President, Barack Obama is carrying his Health Care reform agenda to families, trying to convince Americans about his plans to overhaul the program. Majority of Americans are convinced that the cost of health care in America is directly and devastatingly so, connected to the economic hardship faced by many Americans. In the President's words: reforming health care will reform the economic lives of many Americans."

One of the President's challenges is how is he going to pay for the health care overhaul. The President has advanced a number of measures that will pay for his health reform program. Unfortunately the President has failed to include one major source of revenue to help with his agenda. The forgotten source is the Republic of Liberia. Wait and you will read/hear what I am going to tell the reading audience.

With this present campaign by the President and Congress, I began to reflect on the skyrocketing cost of health care in America. I wonder what it could if one is without a good health insurance or a health insurance at all. I remembered some years ago how I was billed close to a thousand dollars just for registering at the Triage for admission at a hospital in Pennsylvania. I waited for three hours yet I was never called to be seen by a doctor or physician so I left and went home to it be treated.. For those of you who may not know this, one of my brothers is a quack doctor. I dreaded asking him for treatment but I had no other choice.

Two weeks following my departure from the hospital, I was billed $973.00. I do not know what my bill was going be if I have taken treatment at the hospital. It could have been unimaginable. But I also remembered when my sister in Chicago was billed $30,000.00 following a three day hospitalization. Thanks goodness she had health insurance. But what about those who do not have? Can anyone imagine what they might be going through? Hell! I guess is the answer!

But in the case of some of my fellow country men and women, I say “not too fast.” Hell is not the answer. Can you imagine a minister in the Liberian government sending his wife to the United States each time she is to give birth? Or can one imagine an official of government traveling to the US for medical check up or physical examinations? The other day the Press Secretary to the President of Liberia, Cyrus Badio, was clamoring about how the President passed her physical exams with flying colors at a United States hospital. A principal at one high school in Liberia has just sent his wife to the United States for delivery.

What Mr. Badio failed to recognize/imagine was how this can happen when health care in the United States is tied to health insurance and health insurance is the equivalence of high costs. How are our Ministers, President, and now school principals paying for such health care in a country where even those with jobs here are feeling the pinches and the punches of health care cost?

The excuse for such lofty lifestyles that have being associated with a lot of Liberia's higher-ups has always being “we do not have state of the art facilities to treat our leaders." And that is quite true. Our medical facilities are in dismal state. That is expected. I do not think it requires any hard thinking to know that Liberia's health care system is close to medieval. What do we expect if those with the money and resources do not want to spend them at our hospitals? If the President of Liberia is traveling to the United States for her annual physical exams while Americans with jobs and health insurance plans are feeling the pinch and running to Canada for low cost health delivery.

Can anyone imagine if a minister's wife were treated at Redemption Hospital or at the Telewoyan Hospital how much revenues the facility could be receiving? By this time Liberia's health care could be at a desirable level. This has never being the case in Liberia, maybe when it was called Grain Coast. But this is not the point for this discourse.

So as I watch the health care debate rages on and recognize the seriousness the President attaches to this issue, I just sit and wonder how easy it is for government officials in Liberia to access the American health care system than Americans themselves. This is why I was a bit disappointed when President Obama failed to disclose one of the major sources to pay for health care reform in America. That source is Liberia- the President of Liberia, her government officials, and others, like the Principal of the school in Liberia, who are stealing from the poor to get state of the art treatment in the United States. When Americans are unable to afford paying for their own health, Liberians can. And they do so with flying colors too in American hospitals. So I hope President Obama in his next, speech, tell Congress, Liberia will pay for his Health Care Reform.