Class, thank you.
Thank you for thinking with me this year — for agreeing, disagreeing, questioning, arguing, laughing, and still coming back.
This “classroom” has reminded me that when citizens think, societies grow. Before we close the year, I want to leave one lesson — not to memorize, but to carry into the future.
When my friend Gboko posted his Christmas message — “Go tell it on the mountain” — I was jolted into thinking. If we are truly going to “go tell it,” then we must tell the truth. And the truth is uncomfortable: Christmas did not begin in comfort. It began with no room, with a young couple searching for shelter, and with hope born in a stable because society had already decided who mattered.
“Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere.”
Tell the truth about who Christmas belongs to
In Liberia, go tell it at Red Light and Waterside. Go tell it in West Point, where the Atlantic claws at zinc homes. Go tell it in New Kru Town and Clara Town, in Sonniwein and Peace Island. Go tell it in the mountains of Nimba and the forests of Lofa, across the savanna-draped hills of Grand Kru and Maryland, in Buchanan and Gbarnga, in Ganta and Zwedru.
Go tell it — because Christmas is not only a season of joy. It is a season of truth, dignity, responsibility, and justice.
Mary and Joseph arrived in a crowded town — the woman in labor, the man searching desperately — asking one question at every door: Is there any space? The answer kept coming back, polite but firm: no room. No room even though life itself was pressing in.
So the story that changed the world began not in comfort or privilege, but in a place meant for animals — a space that smelled of straw, sweat, and survival. Jesus entered the world in the kind of place reserved for those who do not count. He was not born in a presidential mansion. He was not born in marble cathedrals. He was not surrounded by power.
Hope began in a stable because the world refused to make room.
The manger is not decoration
The manger is a demand:
What kind of society leaves no place for its poor, its children, its vulnerable?
If that story walked through Liberia today, it would not begin at ribbon-cuttings or conferences. It would begin where our people live closest to danger and farthest from protection: in West Point, where children sleep with the ocean at their door; in Clara Town, Peace Island, and Chicken Soup Factory, where zinc and plastic fail against every storm; in Red Light, Duala, Waterside, and Ganta markets, where small hands sell water instead of holding pencils; in mining and logging camps from Nimba to Gbarpolu and Grand Cape Mount to Sinoe, where childhood is traded for labor; on the collapsing shores of Marshall, Grand Bassa, Grand Kru, and Maryland; in border towns like Bo Waterside and Loguatuo; and in remote villages in River Cess and River Gee, where the nearest clinic feels worlds away.
Wherever childhood is replaced by hunger, fear, or neglect — the manger still stands.
Go tell it on the fishing shores of Buchanan, where boys pull nets before dawn. Go tell it in the mechanic workshops of Gbarnga, where teenagers learn survival before they learn geometry. Go tell it among the market stalls of Ganta, where children weave through motorbikes and trucks as if danger were normal.
These are not someone else’s stories.
This is Liberia.
The numbers behind the pain
We must also face the hard numbers behind these realities. Liberia’s adolescent fertility rate remains alarmingly high: nearly one-in-three girls aged 15–19 are already mothers or pregnant with their first child — a figure confirmed by recent demographic surveys. Teenage pregnancy affects educational opportunities and health outcomes and contributes significantly to school dropout and economic hardship.
In terms of reproductive health, the overall fertility rate in Liberia is high — around 4.6 births per woman — and complications during pregnancy and childbirth remain one of the leading causes of death and disability for women of reproductive age. Maternal and newborn health indicators also reflect profound challenges: the infant mortality rate stands around 53 deaths per 1,000 live births, and under-five mortality rates hover around 73 per 1,000, which are high compared with global averages.
A Christmas that avoids the poor is not Christmas — it is theatre.
Look at our streets: children walk quietly beside their parents — some guiding mothers or fathers who live with disability, others silent because hunger has taught them not to complain. They are not asking for charity; they are asking for dignity — food that lasts, schools that welcome, a country that notices when they disappear. If we cannot see these children, our Christmas lights are lying to us.
Birth should not come wrapped in fear
Christmas is the story of a birth, yet in Liberia birth too often comes wrapped in fear. Some hospitals keep mothers and newborns because they cannot pay. The baby is born — but freedom is not.
There are women who arrive at clinics in pain and are turned away because they have no money. They are told to “go and find something first,” even when time is the one thing their bodies do not have.
We are no longer reading about no room in the inn. We are watching systems that say: you cannot be treated — and you cannot leave — until you can afford to live. What kind of nation detains mothers after childbirth — and sends others home untreated?
Pregnant women whisper their fears: bleeding without blood banks, roads too bad, ambulances too late, medicines out of stock. Too often, childbirth becomes a gamble and poverty decides the outcome.
Good news must become new priorities
The new Redemption Hospital, set to open in March 2026 with a focus on mothers and children, is good news — truly. But we must ask: will it repeat the same mistakes? Will poor women still be turned away? Will mothers still be detained?
A new building without new priorities simply becomes a prettier place for old injustices. Redemption will only deserve its name if it redeems our systems — not only our image.
Optics are not outcomes
We love big words — growth, transformation, reform — but poor families do not live inside speeches. They live inside the distance to the clinic, the empty chair where the teacher should be, the “fees” they must somehow pay for a free school, the hospital bill they cannot clear, and the road that disappears every rainy season.
Corruption is not clever — it is cruel. It robs the poor first and longest. Impunity is not strength — it is decay. Noise is not leadership — responsibility is. We must stop confusing optics with outcomes.
Hope is local — but it needs partners
And yet — hope still lives here. Across Liberia, teachers still show up. Nurses stay after their shifts. Farmers coax life from stubborn soil. Families share rice and laughter even when they have little. Hope is not imported; it grows here — stubborn, resilient, local.
But hope needs partners: honest leadership, fair budgets, and moral courage.
The Christmas challenge
So here is our end-of-year lesson — and our Christmas challenge.
Christmas is not asking for louder choirs alone. It is asking for a re-ordering of priorities: to center the poor — not as charity, but as justice; to protect children in markets, settlements, villages, and schools; to treat mothers with dignity before, during, and after childbirth; to make budgets moral documents instead of political decorations; and to hold leaders accountable — while also holding ourselves responsible.
The manger says something simple and unavoidable:
Your future depends on how you treat those who cannot fight for themselves.
A nation that makes no room for its poor, its children, and its marginalized has misunderstood both Christmas — and its destiny.
So go tell it everywhere in Liberia — in markets and ministries, in ghettos and gated homes, on beaches and back roads, in hospitals and mosques, in churches and council rooms:
Christmas belongs first to the poor.
Dignity is not a favor.
Justice is our responsibility.
Thank you, class — for thinking, learning, and walking with me this year. And having told it — let us live it.
Merry Christmas, Liberia.