We drove south west from Robertsport to the capital, Monrovia.
Another capital with challenging traffic, particularly as we timed it badly, arriving on a Friday afternoon. This meant we had time to look around and notice things like this archway across the main route thanking the former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (known as Ma Ellen) for her efforts in establishing peace & reconciliation. The current president is George Weah, who played for AC Milan and short spells for Chelsea & Man City.
It’s bad enough trying to drive through potholed streets and gridlocked traffic once, imagine how exhausting and time-wasting if this is your daily or weekly journey. How much wasted time and energy, not to mention the toxic air pollution.
We were staying a bit out of Monrovia, so we visited the centre of town on a hot & humid Sunday afternoon.
We saw the Ducor Intercontinental Hotel, the first 5 star hotel in Africa, completed in 1956. Idi Amin allegedly swam in the pool, gun in hand and Miriam Makeba sang in the bar. Sadly it’s been closed since the civil war in 1989, squatted and stripped bare. Plans to revive it have not yet come to anything.
The very first president of Liberia was Joseph Roberts, so there’s a lot of Robert about in names of buildings, streets, airports and towns.
The first President, like all those in positions of power in Liberia was someone who had been released from slavery in the US. The ‘American’ Liberians ruled the existing population often harshly and via forced labour, so it’s surprising it took 150 years for a vicious civil war to devastate the country with 250,000 casualties between 1989 and 1996. Peace only lasted three years and a second civil war waged from 1999 to 2003.
We visited the huge Waterside market which wasn’t open on Sunday and maybe not looking its best, but was interesting to have a quick look at.
We hailed a tuk tuk (known as kekeh here) and the young driver admonished us for waiting at such a dangerous spot where muggings and kidnappings had taken place. Like Americans, Liberians seemed very anxious about crime.
Due South 