War is over, but the rebuilding has barely begun

“When I returned back to Kolahun, I could not see one of my three houses, all were burned down. I shed tears. Everything that I had worked for before the war was used to build those houses but now I have to start life from scratch,” said Kollie, a middle-aged father of two who used to work as a cocoa buyer.

Kolahun, once a thriving agricultural town with some 10,000 residents in Lofa County, emptied during the latter years of the war when it suffered heavy shelling. Bullet-riddled stumps of walls peep out from the carpet of forest that crept over the battered ghost-town.

“Once there is life there is hope and I can still develop new houses once the peace remains. I am very happy that life is coming back to Kolahun,” said Kollie, sitting on the floor of his shattered home.

Kolahun lies in Lofa County, the base for rebel group Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) that launched their offensive against then President Charles Taylor in the late 1990s.

Liberia closed the book on 14 years of civil war with presidential elections last month. A 15,000-strong UN peacekeeping force has restored security to the country and disarmed and demobilised over 100,000 former fighters.

“All we expected after we gave in our guns was that they would give us training and job opportunities. Those promises have yet to be fulfilled. Most of our friends, also former fighters, are just sitting idle,” said Moses Daheneh who took up an AK-47 for LURD but now mopes around Kolahun, listless.

“The only thing that most of us are doing for a living is helping people to cut the grass back from their residences. Sometimes we go out and hunt animals in the bush,” said Daheneh, in his early 30s, wearing a ripped camouflage t-shirt.

But residents have not complained of any harassment from Daheneh and his friends and according to the grey-haired Town Chief, Samuel Kollie, it is even difficult to know who fought and who didn’t.

One thing that unites all the residents is the lack of basic provisions and services in Kolahun and every day, more and more people are returning to share the rebuilding task.

“Almost every week about 25 people return either from exile or from the displaced camps,” said Chief Kollie.

According to the UN, over 271,000 people have been helped from displaced camps, back to their villages and towns in the Liberian countryside, while nearly 42,000 refugees have been assisted back from camps across the region.

But tens of thousands more Liberian refugees are reluctant to leave their adoptive homes, where some have lived for a decade or more marrying and raising families, to restart life in towns and villages that still hold painful memories of war.

“I can’t go back to Liberia. My house was burnt. My sister was killed,” said Darling Peah, a Liberian refugee in Ghana who told IRIN recently that she would not be heading back to Liberia until things improved substantially.

The International Committee of the Red Cross is helping returnees to rebuild houses in Lofa County, but some are restorting to makeshift structures using palms cut from the surrounding bush for roofing material.

“We just have to do this to have somewhere to sleep for our families,” said Sekou Kromah, a father of five, putting down his machete to mop his brow and take some relief from the sweltering midday sun.

The metal corrugated roof of Kolahun’s only school gleams in the sun. The walls freshly patched and rebuilt with money donated from the US.

But inside, kids perch on piles of bricks as there isn’t a single chair or desk, there are no books and qualified teachers and chalk are also in short supply.

Wilfred Ballah helps out as a teaching assistant at the school. He’s doubtful Kolahun will ever regain its vibrancy and spirit as people simply won’t stay.

“How can returnees be encouraged to remain in this town with such problems?”