Editor's note: Journal Staff Writer Philip Marcelo is spending two weeks in Liberia this August to report on that country's progress 10 years after the end of a devastating civil war. This is the latest installment of an online and print series called "Rebuilding Liberia: The R.I. Connection."The project is funded by the International Center for Journalists, in Washington.
MONROVIA, Liberia --- The beach at West Point, in Liberia's capital and largest city, is a generous swath of fine yellow sand, on a peninsula jutting into the Atlantic.
It's an easy twenty-five minute walk from the high walls, security checkpoints and razor wire fences of Mamba Point, the upscale neighborhood home to government embassies (including the sprawling U.S. one) and ocean front hotels (including my own).
It also happens to be a public toilet for one of the city's largest slums.
On Friday, I spent the day interviewing residents in West Point with local radio reporter John Kumeh, a Monrovia native who focuses on water and sanitation issues throughout the country.
At the confluence of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mesurado River, West Point had been founded generations ago as a fishing community, Kumeh explained.
During the civil war years from 1989 to 2003, the slum ballooned, as residents from the country's rural hinterlands pressed into the capital city for refuge from the fighting. Today it's population has declined from those war levels.
Still its entry is unmistakable: a heaping trash pile sits at the head of the road leading into the slum.
Residents of the community are expected to deposit their refuse for pickup by the city, though its clear it can barely keep up with the ever-growing pile.
After negotiating West Point's dark labyrinth of zinc shacks and alleyways, the broad expanse of the slum's beach and the crashing surf of the Atlantic is a startling sight.
But before I can take my first step into the sand, Kumeh is there to point out the small black and brown piles underfoot.
A few yards a head, a scattering of about half a dozen or so small children squat, eyes towards the sea. Nearby, fisherman's canoes are lined up on the shore. Older youths are playing a pickup game of soccer.
Residents tell us that the city, a few years ago, prohibited adults from defecating on the beach. Only children now do so.
Two years ago, at least three new public latrines were built. About six more are set to open. They are currently locked; the official "grand opening" is next week.
For the fisherman these are welcome developments: now they can haul more of catch onto the sands or better lay out their nets for repair.
But for most residents, the investments are not nearly enough. Less than a dozen new public latrines are provided for a community of more than 50,000.
While some residents have commodes in their zinc shacks and there are some pay latrines in the slum, the beach remains the cheapest and sometimes only option for impoverished residents. As a result, water-borne epidemics like cholera are common, Kumeh says.
We made our way onto West Point's commercial sector, where fish pulled from the ocean are dried and sold along with other staples of the Liberian diet.
Among the businesses were the slum equivalents of arcades, movie theaters and internet cafes: rows of Play Station consoles where young boys played FIFA soccer; viewing rooms where small groups watched movies on a TV screen; a man on the road side offering internet access on a laptop.
Modern, everyday conveniences just yards away from where children were defecating on a beach.
We also ventured into Clara Town, located across the Mesurado River from West Point where homes, roads and alleyways are routinely flooded with dank river water.
During rainy season, which hits an inflection point in August, the only reasonable way to access parts of the slum is to negotiate a network of boulders, cider blocks and other foot stones residents have placed.
Our final stop of the day was in S.K.D., a slum named after Samuel K. Doe, the young army officer who led a 1980 bloody coup to oust Liberia's then-president, setting off decades of strife in the country.
Kumeh said S.K.D. has been steadily growing, so that it is now far larger than West Point, with nearly 100,000 residents. Out of the three communities we visited, S.K.D. appeared to have the greatest sanitation challenges.
Located within a mangrove swamp, stagnant, greenish and trash filled water is everywhere. Many residents also own canoes, which hey use to gather mud from the river and swamp bottom, which can then be turned into cinder blocks or used to build up shacks above the flooding river waters.
Here are a few photos from the day, including ones from West Point, Clara Town and SKD.
Augustine Kimba, the photographer I hired for the assignment, had many more that I'll add soon.
This may be my last post until Monday: I head back into the interior of the country to Bong County this weekend.