Not Aestheticly Pleasing

As I see day to day life here in Monrovia, I notice very few Liberians actually try to improve their surroundings. This disgusts me at first, and I start blaming them, thinking they are lazy or just worthless. I have to stop myself and think about how I would look at my world through a conflict as brutal as the one most here survived through. Think about living in a world where anything nice was destroyed becauseyou had something nice that a rebel fighter was jealous of so he either destroyed it or claimed it as his own. At all the checkpoints, Monrovians were shot at random for appearing fat or the least bit wealthy. If it looked nice, it stood out and was either stolen or destroyed, I think of what that does to a mindset and how that would affect how I make my environment look. I dont think I would live any different then. Its not that the people here arent smart, because they are, they are people, its the mindsets and the lack of education that has crippled them(in american ideals at least) I just have to remember that its not America and that things are different and I am accepting that and just taking it all in.