It is a fragment of hell bordered by fine sand. In West Point, a dizzying township planted in the south of Monrovia, Liberia, mountains of rotting waste spread a pestilential odor. In this rainy season, the 80,000 inhabitants move through muddy alleys. Here, we live in anticipation of a predicted engulfment, that of the coastline devoured a little more each day by the Atlantic. But rising water levels are not the only threat. Cholera, Ebola, tuberculosis, epidemics have consumed West Point several times. Those who survived must now face a new calamity: narcotics.
In small groups, apathetic figures rush into a sheet metal barracks plunged into darkness, this October afternoon. Inside, around thirty men smoke in the stifling heat. Abdu, who presents himself as the gang leader, reigns over this group of “zogos”, the nickname drug users give themselves. “It’s been smoking everything for a long time. Heroin, Italian white [cocaïne]marijuana »lists the thirty-year-old, who swears he has picked up. “But here, we are losing the little ones. They consume too much kush. It’s worrying “, he laments, pointing to a little boy curled up on the ground, eyes half-closed, smiling blissfully. Sold for 100 Liberian dollars (50 euro cents) per pellet, kush is spreading like wildfire in the country’s 10,000 ghettos. Appearing in 2018 in neighboring Sierra Leone, where it causes similar devastation, this substance related to marijuana has a very powerful addictive power.
“We need help!” », suddenly shouts Joseph Slero, known as “Rahu”, 30 years old, echoed in chorus by his comrades in the galley. The man with the tattooed arms is sweating profusely. Addicted for seven years, he knew cannabis before kush. “I tried to stop on my own, but I couldn’t. In withdrawal, I’m cold, I’m shaking, I have excruciating pain in my stomach. I want to stop. My girlfriend smokes too. She is pregnant. Our child will not be normal”he continues, fiddling with his bracelet on which shines a “Jesus loves the zogos”.
Joseph and the others carry a legacy of Liberia’s traumatic history. That of the civil wars, which ravaged the country between 1990 and 2003. At the time, thousands of children forcibly conscripted by warlords plunged into drugs. Opiates, alcohol, benzodiazepines… In the battalions, narcotics flow freely to “harden” the young troops against the enemy. Some are barely out of childhood. From these fourteen years of fratricidal struggles, Liberian society has emerged stunned – there have been at least 250,000 deaths – and sick of the addiction of its veterans.
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