Monrovia – Liberia

Liberia is a tricky customer. Crossing from Sierra Leone, the atmosphere almost instantly changes, a little as if I was having a jolly nice dinner with my Argentine relatives and then blurting out that Jude Bellingham is in fact already a far better footballer than Lionel Messi could ever hope to be (a reference to islands, even in a fictional sense is not worth it). The people of Sierra Leone are famously cheerful, warm, and welcoming. I don’t need people waving at us as we drive past on our big blue truck but it’s nonetheless nice to feel welcome. Liberia was the opposite, heading into Monrovia – the capital – the atmosphere felt menacing and aggressive, compounded by the fact that everywhere looked like a complete dump, literally. However, before arriving to the capital, the border crossing had been relatively effortless and our first night in the country saw us driving off the main road, down a dirt track, and parking up at one of the most beautiful and convenient bush camps anyone could hope to stay at. I have a love-hate relationship with bush camps. I want to love them and in general I tend to come out the other side relatively unscathed, yet I am always uncomfortable in the knowledge that I am likely to need the bathroom. It’s a mental thing, one I’m working on and I’m sure will be discussed in more detail at a later date. What made this particular bush camp so great was that we had arrived in plenty of time, around 4pm, and it felt like we were the only ones in the region, completely hidden in an apparently never-ending network of bush land and trees. I felt like crap, possibly because the heat had been on full, and I hadn’t peed all day. Having little to do I popped a paracetamol, dug into the electrolytes, and smashed four litres of water while helping the cook group prepare dinner amongst the fireflies. Typically, I finally peed in the middle of the night, not that it was a bad night to be awake under the stars. Awake again at 6am, it was a pure joy to watch the sunrise through a placid, lingering mist holding back the heat and chaos that was about to hit us. 

On arrival to Monrovia we drove through rammed market streets where everything was exactly as can be expected of a West African capital, but more extreme; litter is piled up everywhere, dumps casually rise above the umbrellas of market stalls that are piled high with cheap goods from China, much of it wrapped in single use plastic. Water is now sold in West Africa in little half litre bags that when empty blow around like leaves on an Autumn’s day. As we crawled through one particularly crowded market the noise became almost unbearable with the cacophony of multiple handheld loudspeakers repeatedly blasting out their individual sales pitch. Having to sit at a market stall all day listening to such a thing must surely classify as torture. The city certainly took its toll on some unfortunate soul as we passed the shape and smell of a decaying body under a pristine white shawl motionless on the pavement. Liberia feels full of pain and raw emotion, unable to let go of a wicked past, still suspicious and mistrusting of anyone, haunted by the devils that still play a key cultural role out in the countryside (read Tim Butcher’s awesome Chasing the Devil). Whereas Sierra Leone has apparently made huge strides in freeing themselves from the past horrors of a brutal civil war, Liberia, despite its own savage civil war intwined with that of Sierra Leone’s, has struggled to begin letting go. But if you allow yourself to take your western head out of your western arse, beauty can easily be found. Most local towns in the UK are dying, desperate for small businesses and community spirit but failing. Not so in Monrovia, the local markets are crammed with everything you could need from tomatoes to SIM cards, flipflops, radio and car parts. You can barely move for the number of people wanting to buy or sell something. Motorbikes cruise by with umbrellas welded to them in an attempt to keep the sun from frying their passengers. People still stand out, such as the person wearing a ‘cute and grumpy’ t-shirt, something I well relate to, and on the rarest occasions you may catch the eye of a young lady, or man, and there will be the briefest but most electrifying connection formed between two people seemingly worlds apart, yet at that moment, in an alternative universe independent of the surrounding chaos. Travelling in Africa is always an emotional rollercoaster for me. Right now, I am taunted by two internal arguments. The first is a want to help, it’s the reason I left my job and went back to uni. The second is what’s the bloody point!? Africa’s population will double to 2 billion by 2050, never mind Central Asia, South America, and the Middle East, all of which have more to think about than plastic and wildlife. It makes one realise that saving the world is a very unachievable Western dream. But then I am a little grumpy towards doing the right thing as I battle with rejection from the do-gooding industry and thus attempting to justify a move back to the Middle East and intensive dairy farming.

In Monrovia’s defence there is very little of interest in any major West African city, they are all much of a likeness, a rapidly sprawling mass of people looking for opportunity and outpacing the development of infrastructure. We were there to apply for Ivory Coast visas which was extremely unfortunate as the embassy didn’t want to issue us with any. Queue lots of heated discussion and stupid ideas, the result of which led us driving around the city looking for the Liberian government office that would allow us to become residents of their country so that we could obtain visas to enter the Ivory Coast. Genius! Funnily enough, although possible, it would cost us $750 each and take a week to process, because apparently, and rightly so, Liberia doesn’t see itself as cheap and a means to an end. To cap off what I wrote in my diary as ‘quite the day’, we finally departed the city and headed to the beach. However, our truck, Aminah, decided she was in no mood to be rushed as she coughed and spluttered down the road for the final 10 kilometres despite our driver, Dean, attempting to encourage performance with a well-placed spanner. On arrival to the beach, all was forgotten as we discovered we had pulled into a rather delightful resort, one with multiple swimming pools, WIFI, bar and restaurant, and an incredible beach. Although we were told to go and camp far out of the way, that still meant putting our tents up on some decking that sat over a beautiful lake. Little time was spent grabbing beers and jumping into the pool with almost everyone following suit except for the luckless on-duty cook group. This is what makes overlanding such fun. Yeah it can be a bit uncomfortable and hygienically challenging at times, but when you rock up at somewhere half-decent, it feels like five star luxury, well, to me at least. I’m not entirely sure what five star luxury is. But then there’s the WIFI, those four little letters that can kill all social interaction, especially after not being available for several days. From the initial excitement of the pool we all headed off for our dinner, after which I was back to the bar and ready for more, but no, everyone went their separate ways and buried their heads in their phones and laptops. I went and sulked in the pool with a beer on my own, conceding to the fact that there was nothing going on in my life to warrant being on WIFI at that time of night. Yet in a momentous occasion, a large part of the group rallied a little while later, buckets of ice-cold beer were purchased before the bar closed at 10pm and once that was gone, beer was imported from the onboard eskies ensuring a classic night out and reinstating my belief in travelling and people in general. I’m being dramatic, and I am becoming an old-school traveller, but I do hate when WIFI comes between a tour group and the bar. 

14^th December 2023