The crab lady

The crab lady and her family

I remember her as the crab lady. Just a couple hundreds yards from the ocean, she sat on a short, crude bench in front of her family’s “home”, cooking rice and a small amount of oily mixture to give it flavor. She smiled at me as I approached. I smiled back, but could not keep from being overwhelmed by the absolute poverty of her situation.

Her family of least six lived in a cobbled up shack. The roof was old tin, probably taken off the roof of one of the many abandoned homes near the ocean. Once they were magnificent, luxury ocean front homes. The war brought destruction and death. I was told many of the owners of these homes were either killed or had fled.

Now these abandoned homes were free housing to multiple families. These were the lucky ones. The crab lady and her family had to live in a makeshift home. The walls were woven palm leaves. The door was a piece of plywood. The floors were dirt and the roof was rusted tin full of holes. In all it was probably 12 feet by 12 feet.

This was the crab lady’s home, with no better one in sight. As she was cooking the rice on a fire outside her shack, I asked her how she bought food. She told me she went out every morning and picked up the small crabs that lived on the beach. She cooked them then took them to a market to sell.

Her husband told me of how we wanted a job, but could not find one. He told me of the despair, and how his children could not go to school. They invited me to eat with them. I was humbled at the generosity of these people who had so little.

I spent the next 15 minutes or so sitting with them on a short, dirty bench. I told them that Liberia was rich. That God had blessed their country with more than enough to live on. They agreed but they just couldn’t see how to get what God had given. So the crab lady continues to gather her crabs.

We must help Liberians see the riches God has provided. We must help them begin to use those riches. We must help them turn their hearts towards God and His Son, so their eyes will be opened. The war has devastated the country and broken their spirits. They have no vision. They are just surviving day to day. Satan has deceived them into believing they must beg from America and the UN for their lives to get better. They see the riches, but they don’t know how to get them.

So the crab lady hunts crabs to feed her family. Thank you God for supplying the crabs. Help them see they can have so much more.

Kris