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Almost a decade after the end of a 14-year long civil war that destroyed Liberia's existing water systems, the sector's infrastructure remains underdeveloped. Only 17 percent of ... Read more »
Liberia: Pipe Dreams - Waiting for Water in Monrovia, November 2012
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Photo 1 of 8Credit: Boakai Fofana/allAfricaRefuse by the riverside next to a public toilet in Monrovia. -
Photo 2 of 8Credit: Boakai Fofana/allAfricaChildren play outside their home close to a public latrine in the West Point neighborhood of Liberia's capital, Monrovia. "The West Point of a few years ago is not the West Point of now," says Acting Town Commissioner William Weah. He points out that many of the current population of over 60,000 found refuge here as they fled the civil war. -
Photo 3 of 8Credit: Boakai Fofana/allAfricaA makeshift "hanging latrine" sits over the Mesurado River in West Point. Only 17 percent of Liberia's 3.9 million people have access to adequate sanitation, according to the international non-governmental organization WaterAid. -
Photo 4 of 8Credit: Boakai Fofana/allAfricaInside the hanging latrine. The UN's Millennium Development Goals Report, issued in 2010, described open defecation as "an affront to human dignity", noting its lethal consequences for children vulnerable to "diarrhoeal diseases and the stunting and undernutrion that tend to follow". -
Photo 5 of 8Credit: Boakai Fofana/allAfricaFishermen sometimes fish behind latrines, adding to the risk of spreading waterborne illnesses. -
Photo 6 of 8Credit: Boakai Fofana/allAfricaWhirling flies, which transmit bacteria, hover around fresh fish at the entrance of a latrine. -
Photo 7 of 8Credit: Boakai Fofana/allAfricaCooking for the family. -
Photo 8 of 8Credit: Boakai Fofana/allAfricaWoman fetching water from a well near the public latrine. Cecelia Roberts splits a daily five-gallon supply with a neighbour, who also has five children, trying to make sure there is enough for cooking and washing, with some left for drinking. She adds sodium chlorite solution to some of her supply, but is wary of local well water. "From the toilet side, something can easily go in the well, then we will drink it or bathe with it and your whole body will itch," she says.
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