By Emmanuel Clarke and Isaac Vah Tukpah Jr., USA
Continued from last publication
Chapter 10
Early Football Journey
The name George Oppong Weah is to football in Africa and Liberia as water is to wetness. Without the game of football, George Weah would have amounted to nothing. He would have been born in Nimba County, grown up in Gibralter and would have probably died in Gibralter (a Monrovia community) without anyone knowing his name like many others. Liberian women threw themselves at him for a relationship or marriage but he never responded to them. Liking the playing style of Ghanaian football star Charles Oppong, who once played for Ashanti Kotoko and the Black Star of Ghana, George Weah named himself Oppong.
Chapter 11
The Taste of Fame
Like a hungry prizefighter, George Weah knows the taste of victory and the agony of defeat. Some pundits will say that ever since George Weah became rich and famous, he developed a hunter-gatherer mind-set as a way of preserving his wealth and status. As always, fame has more enemies than anyone can imagine. Many friends and family would rather want a person to remain right where they are in life than rise above their circumstances. As flawed and vindictive as he is seen by many, his work ethics as a footballer was unsurpassed. Though there is not yet any past or current African player that can match the fame and achievements of George Weah, one cannot rule out the possibility that it will not happen after a thousand years.
Chapter 12
The Liberian Civil War, (1989-2003)
The Liberian Civil War was created from mere disagreement and tension between two men, Samuel Doe and Thomas Quiwonkpa, and their failure to settle their personal differences. This animosity between Doe and Quiwonkpa strengthened by by ethnic tension between the people of Nimba County and Grand Gedeh County, exploited by Western countries, led to the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens of all ethnic groups. The civil war was not to have been fought in the first place, especially when there emerged no clear winner at the end of it all. The Liberian civil war proved that the United States does not have have a permanent friendship with Liberia.
To be continued
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