It’s a piece of hell surrounded by fine sand. In West Point, a dizzying community in southern Monrovia, Liberia, mountains of rotting waste emit a pestilent smell. During this rainy season, the 80,000 residents move through muddy alleys. Here we live in anticipation of predicted coastal flooding, which is being swallowed up a little more by the Atlantic each day. But rising water levels are not the only threat. Cholera, Ebola, tuberculosis and epidemics have struck West Point multiple times. Those who survived must now face a new disaster: drugs.
On this October afternoon, apathetic figures in small groups storm into a tin barrack immersed in darkness. Inside, around thirty men smoke in the oppressive heat. Abdu, who poses as the leader of the gang, rules over this group of “Zogos,” as drug users call themselves. “Everything has been smoking for a long time. Heroin, Italian white [cocaïne]Marijuana »lists the thirty-year-old who swears he picked it up. “But here we lose the little ones. You are consuming too much Kush. It’s worrying”he complains, pointing to a little boy who is curled up on the floor, his eyes half closed and smiling blissfully. Selling for 100 Liberian dollars (50 cents) per bullet, Kush is spreading like wildfire throughout the country’s 10,000 ghettos. This marijuana-related substance emerged in neighboring Sierra Leone in 2018 and caused similar devastation there. She has a very strong addictive power.
“We need help!” », Joseph Slero, known as “Rahu,” 30 years old, suddenly shouts repeatedly to the chorus of his comrades in the galley. The man with tattooed arms sweats profusely. He was an addict for seven years and knew cannabis before Kush. “I tried to quit on my own, but I couldn’t. During withdrawal I feel cold, I shake and I have unbearable pain in my stomach. I want to stop. My girlfriend smokes too. She is pregnant. Our child will not be normal”he continues, fiddling with his bracelet, which has a shiny one on it “Jesus loves the Zogos”.
Joseph and the others carry a legacy of Liberia’s traumatic history. That of the civil wars that devastated the country between 1990 and 2003. At that time, thousands of children who were forcibly recruited by warlords turned to drugs. Opiates, alcohol, benzodiazepines… The battalions are flooded with narcotics to “harden” the young troops against the enemy. Some are barely out of childhood. From these fourteen years of fratricidal fighting, Liberian society has emerged stunned – there have been at least 250,000 deaths – and fed up with the addiction of its veterans.
You still have 80% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
