There really is no place on earth quite like Liberia, as author Zadie Smith clearly emphasizes in her piece “One Week in Liberia”. Smith depicts her experience in Liberia in a way that surrounds readers with a first-hand look at the country. She covers everything about the country, encompassing everything from the tourism of the country to the national attitude of the country’s current socioeconomic standing. However, the author specifically emphasizes the country’s poverty and lack of development. From this poverty and lack of development is where all of the other problems such as sexism, violence and crime, and lack of education derive. Throughout her trip, the author encounters many different people associated with Liberia, the natives themselves …show more content…
In a conversation with a Liberian mother who works selling soap powder, she is asked how she decides, among her children, who goes to school and who stays behind to work with her. She responds that she sends only her two eldest children “because they will be finished sooner” (122) and that the remaining younger children help her work. The fact that this mother has to choose between her children itself is heartbreaking. Moreover, the woman makes this decision not hoping that her older children will have better circumstances from their education, but for the sole reason that it would take less time and money for them to quickly finish what little education they receive and return to working with her. Comparatively, in most countries, beginning education usually leads to higher education at universities or vocational schools. Here, in Liberia, as the author clearly suggests, education is only something to be over and done with. There is no expectation of branching out further with that basic education. Adding on to what I argued previously, not being able to go to college or a university is really not that bad compared to what these children have to face. Public, rudimentary education, even in some cases higher education, is an indispensable privilege that the greater part of the world expects. In Liberia, even receiving a low quality basic education is a blessing. The lack of privilege has humbled these children to not even expect a proper