Filed in by Olando Testimony Zeongar – 0776819983/0880-361116/life2short4some@yahoo.com
MONROVIA, Liberia – The acclaimed poet and prolific writer, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Augustine Kpehe Ngafuan, has with the stroke of the pen memorialized the fallen Deputy Minister of the Ministry of National Defense, Ernest Vafee
Vafee died of Type 2 diabetes at the St. Joseph Catholic Hospital early Saturday, 19 January 2019, after his blood sugar level went high and he was rushed at the hospital to be attended to medically, according to family sources.
Type 2 diabetes, is the most common type of diabetes. It is a disease that occurs when one’s blood glucose, also called blood sugar, is too high. Blood glucose is your main source of energy and comes mainly from the food you eat. Insulin, a hormone made by the pancreas, helps glucose get into your cells to be used for energy. In type 2 diabetes, your body doesn’t make enough insulin or doesn’t use insulin well. Too much glucose then stays in your blood, and not enough reaches your cells.
Ngafuan recalls that the disease that took Vafee to the great beyond first waged a war on his life when his (Vafee) motherland Liberia itself was nursing wounds inflicted by an internecine war at the hands of marauding rebels.
“During the heyday of your struggle in the late 1990’s when you were a student at the University of Liberia, Diabetes came in full ferocity, but you conquered like a courageous soldier,” Ngafuan wrote.
He continued: “In 2003, it came with reinforcement immediately after your graduation and you had to be flown out to Ghana for medical attention. Nearly everyone who saw you then gave you only a 5% chance of survival; but again, like indomitable soldier, you conquered.”
“In 2010, the stubborn Diabetes attacked again and almost led to the amputation of one of your legs; but again like battle-hardened soldier, you conquered,” the former Dean of the Liberian government cabinet, Ngafuan, further wrote.
He penned that there were countless other minor episodes of attack against the late Vafee from diabetes, which Ngafuan described as a fiendish disease, noting that the late Deputy Minister of Defense however, conquered these attacks, thus causing many including him to label Vafee then as the “diabetes expert” and referring many who had just been hit by the disease to consult with him on how to cope with the disease.
Therefore, Ngafuan could no longer hold back his grieve for the passing of his kinsman from Lofa County, as he poetically scribbled that it is piercingly painful that the diabetes disease, which he later referred to as a stubborn foe that he said Vafee had defeated all along on many battlefronts would this time around gave him a fatal blow, leaving the Deputy Minister’s two beautiful and lovely daughters, his beloved mother, siblings, relatives, comrades, professional colleagues, and his dear country, Mama Liberia, in rivers of tears.
Ngafuan adds: “And it is painfully ironic that you would succumb to your stubborn foe at this time when many thought you had a reinforced capacity to repel the enemy and at a time you had become a deputy leader of soldiers in the Motherland.”
Relishing his poetic prowess, Ngafuan concluded his tribute to his fallen friend on this note: “But as I wrote before in one of my poetic pieces, death is “the punctuation that ends a well-constructed sentence; the gusty wind that blow off the bright candle.” Your life’s candle has been blown off, but your memory remains ever bright!!! Comrade Ernest Momoh Vafee, “John the Baptist”, “Still Alive”, Rest In Peace.”
Vafee died during the early morning hours of Saturday, 19 January 2019, at the St. Joseph Catholic Hospital, according to family sources.
According to our sources, Vafee was diabetic, with the sources stating that by 3 AM on the day of his demise, his blood sugar level went high, thereby prompting his relatives to have rushed him to the Catholic Hospital for medical attention.
At Catholic Hospital, doctors there were said to have fought frantically to stabilize Vafee’s health condition, even applying oxygen therapy on him but to no avail.
Following doctors’ advice to place him under oxygen support for a while, Vafee requested that the oxygen be removed, informing the medical staff at Catholic Hospital that he could now breathe normally, one family source mournfully told Punch FM/TV’s Online Service.
The source narrated that minutes after the oxygen was removed, it was when the fallen deputy minister of defense gave up the ghost.
Prior to his appointment and confirmation as Deputy Minister for Operations at the Ministry of National Defense, Vafee served the same ministry in the capacity of Policy Analyst.
Vafee was an experienced Liberian with a proven track record in the development and analysis of social, economic, political and security policy, well-schooled in project proposal writing, project management, monitoring and evaluation.
He held a masters’ degree in International Development Policy from the Duke University, North Carolina, USA; a post-graduate diploma in Budget and Public Financial Management from the same university; as well as another post-graduate diploma in technical report writing and presentation skills, from the West Africa Institute for Financial and Economic Management (WAIFEM), Lagos, Nigeria; and a BSc in Economics, from the University of Liberia.
He has an extensive private sector service record dating back to 2002, when he served as Coordinator for the Peace and Civil Education Desk, Young Men Christian Association (YMCA), Liberia; Executive Director/Co-Founder, Youth Crime Watch Of Liberia, from 2004-2006; Speaker, Mano River Union Youth Parliament, from 2006-2012.
Fallen Deputy Minister Vafee also worked as Director of Research and Policy, in the office of the Vice President of Liberia, from 2006-2008; and as Technical Assistant/ Macro-Fiscal Analyst, at the Ministry of Finance, from 2008-2012.
