Memorial Day in Liberia

The Liberian story is a journey of many facets: the black experience, burst out of slavery to build a nation on the mantra of love and liberty; the journey of African migrants moving across borders for commerce and trade, the journey of people fleeing conquests from intra African conflicts and the journey of African brotherhood and sisterhood finding a land for self-actualization. Somewhere along those lines, a common vision of one nation, one people, one destiny, has never been realized.

Unfortunately, however, the lines of diversity have been overly drawn, phasing out the beautiful bounds that should unite the men and women of sainted memories, who sons and daughters have been in search of a place to call home.

December 24, 1989 was a culmination of anger, vengeance, animosity and long standing disaster waiting to happen.

As we reflect on December 24, we come to a place of collective solitude, a place of genuine inward search of where we are as a people and our aspirations for posterity. The intersection of national reconciliation and state building is indispensable to the future of the Liberian nation. However, since the end of the Liberian civil war in 2003, successive governments have been unable to forge a genuine pathway towards national healing and reconciliation.