Attitude

In my last posting, I was very negative, for all the right reasons mind you. During the last few days these thoughts have been going through my mind, and I more and more feel that the problem with Liberia is one of attitude. How do we change this? Not an easy task, but once we are aware of the problem, there might be a remedy.

We have a very carefree attitude to our own environment. We throw things (anything) over our shoulders and hope that somehow they disappear. When they don´t, but build up into huge piles of debris all over the place, smelling up our neighborhood, we rather get used to the scent than to do anything to get rid of it. We say that it is the governments job (read City Council) to clean up the mess, so we keep throwing things in the street in that same old carefree way.

Along comes the new mayor, with her clean the city task force. What happens? We gather around with hundreds of others who happen to see them working and watch, preferably with our arms crossed. ANYWHERE ELSE, everyone in that community would have pitched in and taken part, but not in Liberia. No way.

Typical excuses:

• Nobody is going to pay me.
• I don´t want to make my shoes dirty
• I have somewhere to be
• I don´t throw dirt into the streets