THE QUEST FOR BEAUTY AND BRAINS

Liberia is no doubt a land of beautiful women. I sometimes sit at strategic places just to see beautiful women and girls go about their normal businesses. I have a saying that goes “in Liberia, one can’t stare at one beautiful woman for more than 30sec cause you’ll miss the view of 5 more beautiful ones” and yet they say “the beautiful one are yet to be born”.  It sometimes answers my question as to why it’s difficult to find faithful men here in Liberia.



The older men in Liberia confuse these beauties at young ages with little money and distract these young girls from focusing on their education. These girls become consumed with looking good and keeping up with the latest fashion to have more men reach out to them. Our pride, our future mothers and sisters grow to own a cv of high profile men in their lives than a cv of high educational status and good job experiences.  Having a man who’s older than you 10, 20 to 30 years have become “the order of the day or the way of life”. The key to success has changed from education to the kinds of men in your life. What a sad thing.




What’s more than sad how hard it is to find beautiful ones who are smart and focused. This brings us to “The quest for beauty and brains in one package”. Don’t get me wrong, there are smart women and girls in Liberia, but finding one with physical beauty and brain is rare.  The cold hands of fashion and a good cv  of high profile men have diminished the learning capacity of these girls. Because we Liberians hardly see a beautiful girl with brains these days, the success of one is questioned and attributed to only her beauty. 



I remember when I first came to Monrovia from Maryland County in 2004, I was young and very beautiful then and I wanted to be in fashion and become popular amongst my peer and even beyond. The second thing was I needed support for school and my up keep. It took me four months to study the way of life here and figured out how to get all I wanted. Before joining “their way of life”, I couldn’t afford to buy lunch if I came to town nor could I afford transportation many days. But it all changed when I got we call “someone to sponsor me”. I became glamorous, I entered school, started becoming popular and life became easy. What I didn’t do was forget that I came to Monrovia to go to college. I studied hard with the boys, became known by my teachers for being smart and focus. I wanted to become popular even in school, so I studied harder so that I could be noticed in class and  I also joined student politics to become more visible.  I always wanted to make my parents who were back in Maryland proud of me. 


After a couple of years and as I went far in school and achieved most the things I wanted, I came to realize how exploiting a sponsor can be to you. I realized that what they give you is peanuts and I could find a young guy who could do the same for me. I also realized that I could also work and get the same things.  I started doing contracts with a consulting firm and getting my own money. I decided to call it quit with the whole ‘Sponsor” thing by the third year of my stay in Monrovia. I figured that what matters is not the mistakes we’ve made, but the actions we’ve taken to correct them. 



I came to realize that with education, you can get all you desire without being exploited and being a beautiful girl without brains. I do hope many you girls can come to realize the same thing. 


Beautiful girls in Liberia are faced with poverty. They can’t all the time be blamed because a girl got to survive. They are sometimes constrained to go after these men because; they are the bread winners for their families. Some can’t afford to go to school because scholarships are not being given to scholars.



More has to be done for the young generation of our beloved country Liberia. 



There are still a few beauties with brains and I do see them. All we need is to have more of them. Liberia can now boast of Madame Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Olubanke King Akerele, Jewel Howard Taylor, Saran Kaba Jones, just to name a few beauties with brains who we can emulate.

Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.  Gail Devers