Written by F. Shelton Gonkerwon cell: 0886526186/sgonkerwon.inprofile@gmail.com
Tuesday, 14 August 2012 05:34
Four years back I had the opportunity to visit the China land. Representing Liberia through the Liberian Produce Marketing Corporation (LPMC) I was among several African delegates who attended a three-week seminar on “Grain Security”. The similar was intended to show African countries how food security is essential lifeblood as it relates to national stability, growth and development. The seminar was sponsored by the Agricultural Management Institute (AMI) in Beijing, the political capital city of China. Since three years my mind has refused to escape the recorded memories of the various sites we visited. The Great Wall, the Water Fall, the richest Farmers Village, the Olympics Stadium, the National Museum among several other places of historic importance, still have their cornerstones potentially planted in my mind. My previously structured imagination of the China land before leaving Monrovia saw its practical reality. I saw the wonders I had dreamed about. I saw the fruits of nationalism and meaningful vision that had crept in my mind. I saw the impressive foundation of the land laid by the founding members.
The foundation include love, unity, firm law, national pride, unpolluted culture, and the mindset to create a vibrant future through pattering the talents of the younger ones. I saw a discovered secret of life including realistic distribution of national wealth by which the nation has gained its place within the industrialized world. I saw compulsory primary education policy to which no child is exempted in line with the standing national conviction that an educated person is to the society like marrow is to the bone. I saw a one-child policy that controls population growth.
The policy ensures and compels the citizens to calculate and economize having children. In order words by the citizens are under the compelling obligation to have children by choice as opposed to having them randomly. Practically I saw the strength of God through the living vision of the people that seeks to perform wonder through knowledge power. Living vision has to do with creating strategies to make a decent and civilized society where life is processed in the form of modernity to benefit all and sundry. Yes, I saw the light of Beijing hanging over all other cities. The light includes creating other cities in the same image and likeness of Beijing.
In order words, what is good for Beijing in terms infrastructural growth and development is equally applied to other cities. I saw millions of uniform trees planted all over the nation aimed at accelerating the beauty of the land. The other wonderful beauty of the China land I saw was the gifts of mountains from heaven that physically appear like mushroom gleaming stars in the sky. I saw meaningful life in terms of practically living the dictates of the Scripture. Although there is little or no knowledge of God as far as the Chinese are concerned, (they claim not to know God), their life style driven by of purpose, the culture of hard work, the seeming general obedience to established law, doctrine of national oneness, the wisdom and vision to create an independent and self-reliant nation, and above all their scientific method to produce food in abundance, are all indicators that the people are Christians in reality. In my unedited opinion those who do on earth as it is being done in heaven are practical Christians.
I believe God increases the wisdom and blessings of those who have risen above corruption, those who believe in sharing love and mutual respect, those who seek to promote the possibilities of others, those who pass onto to others the secret of successful life, etc. Indeed, I couldn’t see people making bellowing noise onto God for blessings. What I saw was the culture of holistic harvesting what God has provided the nation and people. As it appears the Chinese feel that where they are is their heaven and would therefore, obligate themselves under the spirit of national consciousness to make it socially and economically comfortable. I still reserve the light and impression I gathered from my experiences. And I often sit and wonder whether my land, Liberia would grow and develop to that level and share the light I saw. It typically pains my soul seeing Monrovia sagging in darkness and constrained to host criminals against its own will. It hurts my bones when the pastors declare national breakthroughs, when in fact we care less to employ the vision and its implementation to yield such desired sanctuary. It appears comical when we stand in the middle of the water but yet cry of thirst.
Yes, we could be like the Chinese provided we consult our minds and consciences to develop a sense of national consciousness. We still consider Liberia as wilderness and therefore build our reliance on God to drop ‘ancient manna’ from heaven when in fact we have rich and abundant share of natural resources meant to be used to build our state to modernity. We still hold onto the belief that we cannot do it ourselves unless we seek the intervention of others. We fail to copy the examples of others and seek to graduate from I, me and my family mentality and pursue the culture of national consciousness. We fail to understand that we, as nation and people, are under the compelling obligation to create ideas, invent and drive our own destiny in that social comfort would always be our portion. We can only succeed when we begin to adopt the culture of hard work, cease being unpatriotic and non-nationalistic.
