Liberian roads turn to rivers as government folds hands

Al-Varney Rogers and Stephen D. Kollie in AllAfrica.com: Major streets in Monrovia are impassable during this time of the year as vehicles are seen submerged in flood waters with youths, mainly men standing nearby to help pull out vehicles from flood waters for monetary reward.

"We can help you haul your car, you just give us something", one anxious youth told a taxi cab driver who had just gone into a deep hole in the Vai Town Community, on the Bushrod Island, a suburb of Monrovia. Residents in some communities are compelled to migrate due to flood overtaking their homes.

Bendu Massaquoi, a resident of Clara Town [commonly called Ma-Bendu] 52, sits on a bamboo chair in front of her house watching the heavy downpour of rain, grad
ually turning her yard into a pool. Ma-Bendu thinks the stockpile of dirt in the drainage and the construction of homes on the waterway is responsible for what is happening in her yard.

"Every rainy season our yard can be with so-so water because people are using the drainage to throw dirt there. So when the dirt piles up, it blocks the water from flowing, then the water starts to spread in our yard and it enters our house, this is the problem we are in," Ma-Bendu laments. Ma-Bendu explains that apart from the clogged drainages, people building homes on the waterway is another factor responsible for the flooding....

Broad Street in Monrovia on a dry day, shot by jeffrey at World66, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 1.0 Generic license