Africa: Solid wastes, hard bushes overtake gravesite of US-born-first Liberian president J.J. Roberts

By James Kokulo Fasuekoi|Editor-Publisher

Attention: Banner photograph shows a “Kekeh” rider urinating near the area where grave of former BBC/Associated Press Journalist, Klon Hinneh (died during the Octopus 1992 War), is located. Photo: James Kokulo Fasuekoi

Visiting the gravesite of former US president John F. Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, one can’t help but marvel at its spectacular beauty-adorned with marble stones and slabs, with a burning torch 24/7, even in winter.

At sharp 6:p.m. the United States Marine Guards normally march in to take down the national flag-this is characterized by a special military demonstration, one that a visitor can afford to miss. Plus, no one worries when night arrives because the site is illuminated by super fluorescent lights. 

But some 4,670 miles away from Arlington Virginia, on the coast of Liberia, Africa, at Palm Grove Cemetery, the burial site of first President Joseph Jenkins Roberts, that’s not the case; that gravesite has been swallowed by hard bushes and solid wastes dumped there by the city’s dwellers. 

As a result, the graveyard now serves as an ideal spot where local criminals, including gangsters, gather to play cards and use drugs daily. More than that, the marshy burial site has become a den of rats, raccoons and even snakes and has stayed so for years since the war ceased.

In wake of Monrovia City’s poor state of garbage collection, residents from the surrounding neighborhoods have turned to the once pretty Palm Grove, dumping their garbage and whatever wastes they produce daily while postwar administrations, including current the Weah government, paid a blind-eye. 

Because of mass graveyard vandalism in the capital, Roberts’ Family, by 1999, had built a concrete wall around the piece of plot where he and other family people were buried and had it secured with an iron gate to deter intruders from looting or damaging it. This site, a marshy land, is near the Anderson old funeral home and Public Works east of the cemetery. 

Nearby, not far from Roberts’ family gravesite lies a shallow grave that Liberia’s 19th president William Tolbert, killed in the bloody April 12, 1980 Revolution, shares with several people believed to be victims of the coup.

West of the cemetery, along Gurley Street, there is also the grave of erstwhile BBC/Associated Press journalist, Klon Hinneh. His grave is near the spot where scores of NPFL’s victims of the Taylor led infamous October 15, 1992 war were hastily interred.

A visit by this writer to the site last May in an attempt to locate late Journalist Hinneh’s grave ended futile: like thousands of graves there, Hinneh’s tomb remained unrecognizable and buried under a hoard of garbage surrounded by hard bushes. 

National Decoration Day is March 10, each year-the only  single day of the year per tradition-that Liberians assemble to clean up gravesites as well as those of loved ones, unlike in the U.S. where municipalities are required by law to hire workers who keep hallowgrounds clean 24/7.

In March, the severity of the awful shape of the capital prompted a stern criticism from the U.S. Ambassador to Liberia, Michael McCarthy, who often rides by the cemetery to meet the country’s president George Weah on Capitol Hill, Monrovia.  

Amb. McCarthy’s criticism was contained in an article published by his embassy’s website titled ”What would J.J. Roberts have to say about this [filthiness of Monrovia]?”

In April 1999, a Liberian social worker named Sam Kaba who had been away in Europe for long, returned home and undertook a self-help project in order to keep the national cemetery in a good shape seeing its deplorable state at the time. 

But Kaba didn’t receive the cooperation of the Monrovia City authorities. (See Vol 9. No 169 “Liberian Stealing From The Dead”).  

It is rather ironic and unbiblical, especially for a country that prides itself to be a “Christian Nation” to exhibit total disregard for its national burial site like in the case of Liberia because, Jehovah God is a decent God as cited in Exodus 19:10.

Funeral, mourning and taking good care of burial grounds are rooted in Christianity and examples are in Genesis 50:1: “When Jacob died, Joseph hugged his father and cried over him and kissed him.” 3 “And the Egyptians  had a time of sorrow for Jacob. It lasted 70 days.” 9 “Men in chariots and on horses also went with Joseph. It was a very large group.” 

Genesis 50:11 states that “The people that lived in Canaan saw the sadness at the threshing floor of Atad. They said, “Those Egyptians are showing great sorrow!” In order words, Joseph’s family, the King, all joined and gave Jacob a befitting funeral; an excellent example for today’s Christians or nation to follow. 

It should therefore behoove every good-God-fearing leader, especially those claiming to be Christian (whether they pay tithes, offerings, or not), to encourage cleanliness based upon God’s Word, for after all, no one shall escape death. As the Bible states, “…there is one fate for all men” under the sun (Eccl. 9:3).

But whatever the case might be, the present appearance of Palm Grove should epitomize “how well the current regime” that had initially promised a “Coastal Highway” between Buchanan and Harper, is running the nation.

JESUS IS COMING SOON! ARE YOU READY?