30/07/2025
Letter from Gbarpolu
Title: A County Without a Map
Written from Germany
This week, I write to you not from the red clay roads of Gbarpolu but from across the ocean, in the heart of Germany. And yet, as I walk the clean, ordered streets of this foreign land, my thoughts remain at home, with Liberia.
I see how county like this one, built on centuries of struggle and imperfection, rise, fall, and rise again because they possess one thing we do not, a shared map, a citizen agenda, a dream larger than any one person,
Liberia has many political parties, many leaders, and many voices. But what we lack is one vision that binds us all together. We do not have a national agenda that says, “This is where we want to be in ten, twenty, or thirty years.” And that is dangerous.
We build roads in one administration only for them to be abandoned in the next. We start programs that die with their founders. We make promises in one term and forget them in the next. There is no continuity, no long-term vision, no binding national ambition that says, this is who we are, and this is what we want to become.
So, I ask,
• What is our goal as a county?
• Where do we want to be by 2040?
• What kind of economy are we building?
• What kind of schools, hospitals, and justice systems are we working toward in Gbarpolu?
Every county that has risen from poverty to prosperity did so by crafting a unifying county agenda. Nimba did it, montserrado did it, and Lofa is doing it. They said, “We may belong to different parties, tribes, or regions, but we will agree on this one vision for our country.”
Gbarpolu County has never done that.
Instead, our leaders come and go, each with their own blueprints, their own slogans, their own people. And the county remains stuck, spinning in circles while the rest of the countie moves forward.
It is time we changed that.
It is time we stopped pretending that governance is about individual brilliance or tribal dominance. It is about building a nation.
