As the sun set over Liberia's vast West Point slum, youth leader Archie Gbezay shook his head as children meandered around dense piles of trash, playing catch with jars of old hair product plucked from polluted puddles of water. Gbezay, 34, has seen his neighbours in corrugated iron shacks grapple with flash floods, a crumbling coastline and a devastating Ebola epidemic.
But he cannot come to terms with the state of the nearby beach, patches of sand barely visible beneath the rubbish. "It threatens our existence as people and poses a serious health hazard," he said of the trash. "But we as community people, our hands are tied."
