Under the scorching weather, sunny day, of Wednesday, November 9, 2022, 21-year old Sarah Jackson was on room-rent-hustling (begging)-tour of begging friends, which would prevent her being thrown out of a one room she occupies with her two children Joseph Chea (age 9) and Johnnel Gargah (age 4)
She was talking to herself, and concurrently wiping sweat cascading down her face, some covering her eyes.
After every three or four steps forward, she looked behind her for her daughter trudging behind her.
“Grace, car coming!” she warned the child who had drifted off from the pedestrian lane of the vehicular and commuters’ road, about a ten-tyre truck with “LWSC” written on different parts of the car. “Don’t go in the road; come closer to me! We don’t have money for where to sleep, and you want to increase my pressure with car hitting you?” she added.
This writer met Sarah with no previous acquaintance between the two hopping on her pair of metal crutches, drenched in sweat, in the LWSC (Liberia Water & Sewer Corporation) Community, Fiamah, Sinkor in Monrovia.
She was being followed by Johnnel.
The strange disabled woman’s facial expression and her physical conditions with both legs paralyzed (in metallic braces), feet in old shoes, and abnormally tiny hands, aroused empathy in this writer sitting with commercial typist along the road leading to the LWSC’s Head Office in Fiamah Community.
The writer’s empathy with this disabled mother was from his nine years (2013-2022) of writing-related interactions with Liberia’s community of disabled persons (blind, crutches-mobile, wheelchair-mobile, etc.) through the National Union of Organizations for the Disabled (NUOD), beginning with the leadership of Madam Naomi B. Harris, now deceased.
NUOD is an independent umbrella for speaking for all persons living with disabilities who are not covered by the Liberian Government’s Disability Agency and National Commission on Disabilities (NCD)
After the male stranger introduced himself to the disabled woman, and told her about his relationship with the disabled community, he inquired about reason she was trekking in the scorching sun.
“I’m under the hot sun, looking for money to get a new room for me and my two children,” she replied to the first question.
The male stranger asked about the place she’s currently occupying.
“The man who has the house is demanding all tenants to leave the place. He has given us, tenants, Saturday, November 12, 2022, as deadline of living in his house. I do not have money now to get a new room for me and my children. The children’s father abandoned me when our second child was two months old. I called him minutes ago about the house owner’s announcement, but he said he, too, is looking for rent for where he’s living,” Sarah responded to this writer’s inquiries.
To my question of whether she knew anything about NUOD, Sarah replied, “Not yet. But, when I settle this sleeping place issue, I will find the place through you.”
To confirm what she had told me, I followed her to the current house with her ‘sleeping place’. She was right! The entire building was made from sheets of aluminum sheets (zinc) containing ten rooms in two rows.
Only one person was in the house.
“She’s my blood sister,” Sarah introduced the lady to me. “My name is Poliah Jackson, her older sister. I want to help my sister on finding a room, but I don’t have money. I called her children’s father, but he didn’t pick my call. Her condition can’t allow her to do work, like selling or working for another person,” the lady said.
On the journalist’s question of beginning or cause of her disability, Sarah said: “My mother told me, it started when I was ten years old. She said, it started as high fever. But, when she took me to a hospital, the doctors told her it was Polio. That’s the Polio that crippled me today.”
After explaining the genesis of her disability, she peeped into the empty corridor of the house, sobbed and broke down in tears.
“If you can make kind-hearted Liberians and foreigners living in Liberia help me find a room for me and my little children, I will be extremely happy,” she said, still sobbing.
Anybody who wants to financially rescue this disabled single woman can reach her directly through her personal phone number—+231-770268190—or through the phone number of her biological sister (Poliah Jackson): +231-770525566.
