I walked to Tubman Boulevard and waited for George, who usually picks me up in front of Greeland supermarket in Sinkor. It had been more than thirty minutes since he had told me that he was in front of the JFK Hospital. Usually it takes ten minutes in the morning traffic to cover the distance. Traffic was being diverted and part of the road from Vamoma to 9th street was blocked. As I stood in the hot morning sun with sweat washing away my deodorant, series of convoys, with flashing lights and deafening sirens zoomed through, in the direction of the city. Thousands of people blanketed the sidewalks and trekked towards the city. It took George about another twenty minutes to snail from 11th street to 6th street where I stood. This seems to be a regular occurrence in Monrovia: they shut down the main thoroughfare every time there is a foreign dignitary in town. High government officials are the only people allowed to move freely on the boulevard, with the rest of the city stranded in one place or forced to walk. Maybe someday, someone will figure out that they should not shut down the entire workforce because a dignitary comes to visit. If there are so much safety concerns, the dignitaries would either ride in a helicopter as Bill Clinton and George Bush did or not come anyway. I wasn’t surprised that more than three quarters of the people did not show up at work and called in to blame it on the traffic. This is not how we will reduce poverty and build wealth.

The visit by the Secretary General of the United Nations is a welcome symbol of the end of the war. President Bush was here a few months ago and now Mr. Ban Ki Moon follows in his footsteps. The United States and the United Nations have both been instrumental in the return of peace to Liberia, a process that started back in 2004. There has been much progress in getting the country where it stands today. There is no doubt that it will face the same problems that other developing countries have to tackle today. High energy cost that led to the spiraling rise in the price of food, high unemployment and other problems now forms the daily diet of Liberian life. Liberians are not alone but sharing misery with others is no consolation.

Emerging from a 14-year civil war is somehow like a new birth. Liberia now has probably more potentials in restructuring itself than ever before. The United Nations, as a peacekeeper and peace builder, has played a major role in getting the country to a state of normalcy that allows Liberians to look into the future with some serenity. The UN has played a role that it was created for in 1945 to play: that is to ensure that peace reigns. However, the road ahead could be a confusing one if Liberians are not able to work diligently with the international bureaucracy and pinpoint policies that will move their nation forward.

As Liberia emerges from instability and looks towards developing its potentials, it will have less and less need for the UN as peacekeepers. The country now needs to look inward and finds solutions to the myriads of underlying problems that turned the country into a failed state just a decade ago. Brokering the conditions for smooth transition from warfare to peace, making peace or imposing peace among warring entities is based on almost universal acceptable recipes. Therefore, the UN can adopt the same peace formula that worked in Bosnia and bring it to Liberia. However, once peace has been achieved, the next step demands a new approach. And for every nation, the needs and the resources, as well as the solutions are different. There is no doubt that the UN can help Liberia make the transition from the state of emergency to reconstruction but this must based on Liberia indigenous solutions.

The traces of UN work are visible throughout the country. Roads, schools, and clinics are testimonies to the great labor of the international body and its many agencies known as non-governmental organizations. This is where the danger lies for a country that has been battered for almost a quarter of century: Liberia has so gotten used to handouts that it has now grown to depend on. Even certain government policies are based on how they could attract aid rather than their potentials of helping the country.

More and more, aid agencies have somehow created a parallel state. A great part of the Liberian economy and its welfare is now in the hands of that parallel state. If the role and mandate of the United Nations were clearly defined from the start, the same cannot be said about the hundreds of non-governmental organizations that have since burgeoned with the return of peace. The fact that these semi-private entities are accountable to no one makes their roles even difficult to pinpoint in the reconstruction process. As the UN comes closer to folding, many of them would pull out and look for new emerging emergencies, leaving Liberia somehow stranded with its hands extended for help that had dried up.

After bridging the road to peace, the UN has now a more complex role to play in Liberia. Its new mandate must put emphasis on capacity building. This process must not be limited to organizing a few workshops here and there but listening to Liberians and providing the means to help them find long term solutions to their problems.

Recently, in her speech to the nation, the President promised to take up two challenges that could have a long term effect on the future stability and reconstructions process of the nation. The first challenge was to call on Liberians to engage in farming and put an end to their dependency on imported rice. This is the policy that got William R. Tolbert in trouble almost thirty years ago. Time has passed and now, with the prices on the world market, it becomes an imperative. The president promised to spend $16 million to launch the process. This is somewhere the UN, through one of its agencies, can help carry out. With the peace keeping budget of close to a billion dollars per year in Liberia, the amount needed to start teaching Liberian mechanized agriculture and provide them seeds will be like a drop of water in the ocean.

The second challenge the President has decided to take tackle is that of armed banditry, which a symptom of a deeper ill. Unemployment and poverty that leads many youth to take up arms as a means of survival may not be erased in one day but the UN can help control it. By investing in agriculture and by also truly providing the police with means to combat crimes. The UN has trained the Liberian police but without the necessary logistics; it is like toothless bulldogs. The new police under the Security sector reform may have undergone a rigorous training but without basic necessities such as mobility and communication, they will be of no use in the new Liberia.

After his brief meeting with Vice President Joseph Boakai, the UN secretary General faced the media and answered a few questions. No, he cannot make unilateral decision regarding the travel ban and other sanctions affecting certain former officials of the Taylor government. No, he is not disappointed that President Sirleaf was out of town when he arrived because his trip was a last minute add-on to his trip to Accra for a conference. Finally, he was in Liberia to see for himself how far the country has gone since the end of hostilities. And he was here, especially to see how the UN can help Liberia deal with poverty, disease, unemployment, and so on.

As a founding member of the United Nations, Liberia deserves a better seat on the international body and a larger role. Of course, it must first put its own house in order, put an end to endemic corruption, staff off the cliquish mentality that turns every sound policy decision into a joke and the age old attitude of “just trying to survive.” As president Sirleaf put it many months ago, this nation faces one of the greatest paradoxes of human history: the country is rich but its people live in abject poverty.

A single visit by the Secretary General of the UN will certainly not lead to a review of aid policies that have survived decades, but Liberians can start telling the UN where they want to go and what they exactly need to get going. As one looks around Monrovia, the impression is that there are too many doctors for a small illness. Confusion is starting to set in. The international community can only help if Liberians decide to confront their historical ghosts.

Welcome Mr. Ban Ki Moon, Liberia owes a great debt to the UN but the road ahead is probably more treacherous than the surface may let us think. We burned down the house, now we have a chance to rebuild on better and stronger foundations. The UN can help but Liberians must be allowed to find out what they want, what capacities they have and how they want to achieve wealth and prosperity. No amount of handouts can do that. Sometimes, it seems that there are too many doctors for an illness to diagnose.