Red Light

Red Light

For several years now, Topiyoo Nya Blimie, founder of the Liberian Visual Arts Project (LIVAP), has phoned me here in Suffolk every few weeks. Just keeping in touch, sometimes asking for money to help with the LIVAP Community School, once for money to hire a lawyer as he was in jail, wrongly, and once to help pay for his wedding to Shelda Clarke.

In the summer of 2011, Topiyoo phoned to ask if we could do another workshop with LIVAP. He also asked if I could award him a BA degree and bring him a laptop computer. Usually I do these workshops with Petra Rohr-Rouendaal but when I phoned her she said she couldn’t do it this time. She had a very stressful year with her mother dying. She needed a break. I was talking about this with Jacky in our kitchen one morning in October when our son Alfie came in and joined the conversation. “I’ll come and help”, he said, excitedly, “I’ve always wanted to be involved with Healthimages, ever since I was a little boy”. Well, that was that decided.

So before long I was in and out of London for a renewed passport and a visa for Liberia. My new passport cost £129 but, notwithstanding, was apparently the property of the UK government. I went to the embassy in Fitzrovia, just along from a house where Virginia Woolf had lived. I got the visa without a hitch, slightly to my surprise. In the waiting room was a framed photograph of the Liberian ambassador with the queen. The caption read ‘His Excellency Wesley Momo Johnson,  Ambassador of the Republic of Liberia presents his letters of credence to Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth 2 - June 11, 2007.’


Phonics 

In another phone call Topiyoo asked me if I could take him a book on phonics for use in the LIVAP Community School. A couple of nights later we went to supper with our friends Rachel and Gussie, both very experienced educationalists who have spent their lives thinking about subjects like phonics. Gussie is about to retire from her job as head teacher in a London school where 40 different languages are spoken.

During supper I mentioned that a Liberian friend had asked me to take him a book about phonics, whereupon our hosts rather heatedly explained that phonics was NOT the way to teach children to read. In my innocence and ignorance, I had touched on a political hot potato. As far as I gathered the political right favours the use of phonics while the left sees it as a fairly useless system that is unreasonably imposed on young children. It became clear to me that this is a huge subject about which educators have been arguing for several decades. I was actually very pleased to discover this and ended up taking to Liberia ‘Whole to Part Phonics’ by Henrietta Dombey and Margaret Moustafa, as recommended by my educators.


Graphics

Since my last trip to Liberia four years ago, I’ve worked on various graphics commissions. A logo for the Stratford on Avon Music Festival, a poster for a production of ‘Cinderella’ at the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff, a leaflet for the Crawley Blues Festival....
I touched up the paintwork on the Youth Shelter in Halesworth Town Park and had to paint over a nice figure because the kids kept adding genitalia. Had also to modify the vehicle graphics on the 4-Towns Bus, as the sponsors had changed, the original ones, Tobin Plant Hire, having gone bankrupt in the meantime. Also an interesting workshop about ‘African Art’ with children at Felixtowe High School. More recently, a suite of logos for The Black Prince Trust, a community project in Lambeth, London, in which the Coin Street people are involved.

Quite a lot of my stuff in the last few years has been to do with health work of one sort or another. Petra and I worked on a series of images about water and sanitation for Oxfam and a consortium of other aid agencies. I finished off the cover design for ‘Where There Is No Doctor’, the Portuguese version, ‘Onde Nao Ha Medico’ for use in Mozambique, Angola and other Portuguese speaking countries in Africa. TALC have distributed 10,000 copies in Mozambique so far.

Then a whole load of work, something like 300 drawings, for Unicef. They are to be included in the ‘WASH in Schools Emergency Toolkit’, which will be distributed to Third World schools. A couple of posters for an organisation called ‘Medical Support for Roumania’, for use in hospital. A logo for a company called MyRecord, which is working towards making everybody in the UK’s health records accessible to them online. And then, strangely, a few drawings for The Tony Blair Faith Foundation. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of TB, but as the drawings were going to be used at a workshop in which religious leaders in Sierra Leone were getting involved in health education, I thought it was OK.

Outsiders' Africa

It’s not easy to do much background reading about Liberia, as there are so few books on the subject. I got hold of ‘A History of Liberia’ by J.H.T. McPherson of the University of Michigan. Published in 1891, it is a mere 50 pages in length and distinctly turgid in style. Graham Greene’s ‘Journey Without Maps’ is probably the best known book about Liberia.

I was pleased to find that Tim Butcher, author of the interesting ‘Blood River’ book about the Congo, had also written a book about Liberia. ‘Chasing the Devil’, with its snappy subtitle ‘On Foot Through Africa’s Killing Fields’, is a good read but, disappointingly, focusses as much on Graham Greene’s pointless journey as it does on Liberia itself. There are some bits and pieces about the country’s recent history. He reminds us that Samuel K. Doe and his gang murdered President Tolbert in 1980. “He was killed still wearing his pyjamas, shot in the head several times, then disembowelled”. Tim also visited the National Museum not long after the end of the war. “Years of decay, caused by rain flooding through holes in the roof, meant the floorboards flaked to nothing under my footfall, just a few puny crossbeams saved me from plummetting to the ground.” He clearly has a liking for the dramatic.

I re-read ‘Journey Without Maps’ recently and thought again what a weird book it is. This silly idea about the inner journey and bullshit about searching for ‘the other’. Paul Theroux’s introduction to my recent edition is great. He writes that this kind of book is parallel to a boy’s adventure story, and speaks of “...the ordeal that the white traveller must endure and overcome (with all the stereotypical obstacles of primitivism) in order to find life-changing revelation in the remote heart of Africa. This fanciful supposition of the heroic - romantic in a pith helmet, that l’Afrique profonde contains glittering mysteries, is one of the reasons our view of Africa has been so distorted....”. Theroux’s rather sarcastic critique is welcome, I think. What on earth was Greene doing, anyway, with his lanky cousin? They took a selection of trinkets to hand out to the locals and Theroux takes pleasure in reporting that “...the natives prefer gifts of money or jolts of whiskey..." Continuing, in similar vein, Theroux points out that, in his diary, when he was at Bassa Town, Greene refers to “this silly trip” and goes on to note that in the book “...few Africans are delineated or have personal histories”. Rounding off, he reminds us of the ‘outsidercentric’ nature of ‘Journey Without Maps’ by suggesting that “Greene’s Africa is a place for an outsider to go to pieces”. Fortunately, we weren’t heading for Greene’s Africa.

Run Up to Run Off

We postponed the original date of the workshop because of the parliamentary elections in Liberia, hoping that, by doing so, we would avoid any trouble or danger. The result of the first election was that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, incumbent, got 44% of the votes while Winston Tubman, leader of the opposition Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) got 32%. The third main candidate, Prince Johnson, filmed 30 years ago helping to cut off the ears of Samuel K. Doe, won about 11% of the votes.

Because the leading candidate had got less than 50% of the votes, there needed to be a run-off. This turned out to be scheduled for November 10, just about the time of our re-arranged visit. The election had been described by several international observer teams as ‘free and fair’. The CDC, however, claimed that there had been significant electoral fraud. They refused to accept the result and announced that they would boycott the run-off election. All rather strange.

So for the next couple of weeks I kept a close eye on the news from Liberia, mostly as reported on the allafrica.com website. The CDC started to issue threats of violence. On November 7 clashes broke out between protesters at the CDC headquarters and police in riot gear. People in Monrovia were frightened because this, as one newspaper put it “...was reminiscent of the war years. People began to collect their valuables in search of safety as news of hell in Monrovia, a battered city since 1990, spread.” The CDC had vowed to ensure “a bitter Liberia” if the election results were not anulled.

Well, it certainly was a riot, police vs. protesters, and was not concluded until UNMIL soldiers in their white tanks and blue helmets intervened to subdue the riot police. There were differing reports afterwards but at least one CDC supporter was killed and possibly three.

The next day the police had begun closing down radio stations across the capital. Some stations had, apparently, been broadcasting inflammatory propaganda on behalf of the CDC. This started a debate about democracy and freedom of the press. Always a complex issue, it may be worth remembering that violence has sometimes been promoted by the media in Africa with gruesome consequences. Examples include the 1994 Rwanda genocide in which more than 800,000 people were killed; the more recent 2007/8 post electoral mayhem that left over 1100 people dead and 650,000 homeless in Kenya; and more recently still, the political violence in neighbouring Cote d’Ivoire in which the numbers killed reportedly ran into the thousands.

Journalist Gabriel Williams, writing in the New Dawn newspaper added “I am also outraged by those who try to demonize the Liberian Government by comparing its action against the media to those of the brutal and barbaric regimes in Liberia’s recent history. During the days of those dictatorial regimes....the rule of law was nothing more than a dream to the Liberian people, as the rule of the jungle existed as the order of the day. 

Under those bloody regimes in which Mr. Tubman and many of his key supporters served in high profile positions, numerous political opponents, as well as rights activists and journalists were regularly harrassed, imprisoned and tortured, and many of them were murdered in cold blood.”

Mr. Williams rounds off his report by saying “Check the background of the media entities that were fanning the flames of violence and you will know that their proprietors and top managers are mostly leftovers from Liberia’s recent evil past when warlords and their hangers-on were in control. From all indications, it appears that the CDC...has an agenda bordering on returning the country to its recent criminal past, where Liberia was the vehicle for the destabilisation of the entire West Africa region”. 

On Wednesday 9, I checked again for news. The main story was that the ELWA radio station in Paynesville had been burnt down. ELWA stands for ‘Eternal Love Winning Africa’. I’ve stayed at the ELWA guesthouse on previous visits, although these days, now that things are more peaceful, it seems to be fully booked by American missionaries.

On the Thursday, Tubman predicted that the CDC would cause “turmoil and chaos the country has never seen since the war”. It all sounded a bit worrying to me. The CDC had got nearly one third of the vote in the initial election, mostly from unemployed young people from the poorest parts of the city - shanty towns like West Point, Kru Town, Clara Town - so they couldn’t be ignored. I spoke to Topiyoo on the phone that night. He said, “Oh, Bob, all is calm here”.

The result of the run-off election was announced on Friday 11. Ellen had won about 90% of the vote, with Tubman getting just 9%. Clearly, most CDC supporters had boycotted the poll, so that overall voter participation was much lower than in the first election. Only 37% of the country’s 1.8 million voters cast their ballots. As the Carter Centre’s 52-person observer mission put it “Regrettably, the election was marred by an opposition boycott, violence on the eve of the election and low voter turnout".

Immediately after the results had been announced, Tubman was reported to have said that his party did not recognise the result but that the CDC was, however, “...prepared to heal the wounds of this country and to unite our country”. On Sunday 13, two days later, he changed his tune and called for Ellen’s victory to be anulled and fresh elections held. That evening, Alf phoned me to ask if I thought it would be OK for him to have a moustache in Liberia - it was something to do with raising awareness about testicular cancer. In the end, he didn’t have a moustache on our trip, just his customary stubbly beard. I digress...

On the Monday, one of Monrovia’s newspapers reported that “Cllr. Winston Tubman’s regular inconsistent and confused public utterances may likely be rendering him irrelevant in the eyes of thousands of well-meaning Liberians and the international community”. Again, this was strange to me. How could a man who got one third of the votes in the presidential election be irrelevant? Monday was also the day that the CDC announced that they would stage another rally, during which they would march through the streets of Monrovia to parade the dead bodies of those who lost their lives during the previous Monday’s riot.

Of the 300,000 votes the CDC received in the first round, 217,000 were cast by residents of Monrovia’s shanty towns ( I am not convinced of the accuracy of the newspaper report that proposed these figures ).The article called these areas of Monrovia “the barracks of the unskilled and unemployed and likely violent youths prone to drugs, prostitution and crime”, in a sweeping description of people who had suffered a great deal from poverty and war.

In Tuesday’s papers, the police came in for serious criticism. One article described the keepers of law and order as “underfunded, undertrained and over-anxious to use their authority. The UN forces have had to rein them in on several occasions because of their predilection for ultra-violence and the people of Monrovia are certainly sick of the harrassment and corruption which occur at their hands on a daily basis”.

As it turned out, Monday’s planned protest was postponed until Friday, the day we were scheduled to arrive in Liberia. In the event, the protest was a half-hearted affair, while we didn’t get there until the early hours of Sunday morning.

A Chat on the Tube

On my way to the Heathrow Travelodge, I had the unusual experience of having a conversation with a stranger on an underground train. I had noticed this man’s rather striking countenance earlier on the long tube ride. He appeared to be partially albino, if that’s possible, such that his face looked almost like a map of the world. As an erstwhile student of genetics I have always been interested in albinism and in the psychosocial issues that face people, in different cultures, who have this condition. It must be very strange to be an albino in a society of black people, as in West Africa, where the incidence of albinism is actually 

quite high. The rest of the man’s physiognomy suggested a far eastern origin, but it was difficult to guess exactly where. 

When the seat next to him became vacant, he gestured to me to sit down and thus began our chat. It turned out that he was an audiologist on his way home to Dublin after a week of training in London. I asked him how/why he got into audiology, as it is not a common carreer choice, and in the course of his answer I got a potted autobiography. He came originally, it turned out, from Tamil Nadu - in fact, he was a Tamil. Although our encounter was brief, it was most pleasant. He was what I think of as ‘civilised’. Another person I always think of as ‘civilised’ is Jorge Luis Borges, the wonderful Argentinian writer.

At the Travelodge I was assigned a room on the top floor. I had some time to kill before Alf arrived and found myself gazing out of the window, down the barrel of a gun, straight along the flightpath of planes coming into land at Heathrow. They flew directly over my head, not more than 100 feet from the roof of the building. The soundproofing was amazing - I don’t know how it was achieved but the sound of the planes was not uncomfortably loud. By contrast, if you were standing on the ground floor and someone opened the outside door, the noise was pretty staggering. These planes were coming over at a rate of more than one a minute. I found it scary but was chirped up by a nice ‘bon voyage’ text message from my friend Garry


Courtesy of Air France

So, next morning, we were up at the crack of dawn to get the airport bus. All went well until we were told by Air France that our flight would be delayed because of fog in Paris. We only had about an hour to change planes at Charles de Gaulle and board our flight to Liberia. (Mention of de Gaulle never fails to bring to mind his famous question - “How can I be expected to govern a country in which there are 246 different types of cheese?”)

Well, they didn’t wait for us in Paris. It wasn’t worth it as there were only four of us booked for Monrovia. After frustrating conversations with Air France personell we realised we were stuck. One of the options the pleasant Air France customer services lady suggested was to fly to Atlanta, Georgia and then take the ‘connecting’ flight from Ameriaca to Liberia. This would have meant 27 hours flying, which we thought was an uncomfortable prospect, to say nothing of our carbon footprints. We declined this thoughtless offer and were booked into an airport hotel until the next day, when we could take a flight to Casablanca and transfer to the Air Maroc flight to Monrovia, which would get us there for 3.30 am on Sunday morning, a frightening time.

We made friends with a third person who was trying to get to Monrovia. A really nice 24 year old Liberian, Jonathan Baker, who lives partly in Silvertown, in the East End of London, and partly in Liberia. He had inherited some of his recently deceased father’s businesses, which include a rubber plantation in the county of Maryland. He was well-equipped with i-phone, i-pad and macbook laptop but still having difficulty contacting his sister who lives not far from Paris. I was rather surprised to learn that he had never yet met her! She was from a different (French) mother. His dad seems to have been a busy man, keeping up the family tradition, as Jonathan told us that his paternal grandfather had had fifty-two children.

Jonathan actually left Liberia when he was just two, but now seems to spend a lot of time there. He and his mother left Monrovia in 1996, just as the rebels were approaching the outskirts. He said that they left on the last British Airways plane to fly into Monrovia and told us a dramatic story about rebels shooting at the plane as it taxied down the runway. Since then, Alfie has met another Liberian who claimed to be on the last plane out - although I don’t think he specified the airline!

It turns out that Jonathan is a bit of a star in Liberia, and recently won some award for being the best DJ. Alf and him talked about music, playing in a band and that sort of thing, which was good for passing the time, of which we had plenty to fill in the strange 
no-mans-land of the All Seasons hotel, one of the many within the airport compound.


Free Smiles

At lunchtime, we wandered into the ‘village’ nearby for a change of scenery. Roissy is a large village or a small town which, back in the nineteenth century could easliy have provided subjects for the Impressionist painters. It seems to retain just a trace of its rural past, but is now completely surrounded by the airport campus. Nearly all the people who live there work, or worked, in one role or another, at the airport. It now has a strange, surreal feel, as for a moment you can think that you are in a small town anywhere in France - pollarded trees, town square, neat park, large church and a great little bar, where we cheered ourselves up a bit. I could just imagine Django Reinhardt and his friends playing there, maybe over in a corner of the small, but perfectly formed, restaurant of the Brasserie “Le Village”.  I took one of their business cards, on which it said “Parking et sourire garantis”. 

Alf and I stood at the bar to drink our beers - he ordered Leffe, which has a ridiculously high alcohol content for a beer, and his spirits soon lifted. It was a very friendly place, Friday lunchtime, one or two early starters already a little jolly and unsteady on their feet, greeting us like long-lost friends. As well as being a bar, this establishment was also a tobacconist shop. In one corner along from the bar were several well stocked shelves of cigarettes and rolling tobacco, with “Fumer Tue” emblazoned on their fronts, together with all the various accoutrements and perquisites that the Roissy smoker might need. I toyed with the idea of buying a pouch of Gauloise rolling tobacco for the smell of nostalgia, but thought better of it. Django wasn’t actually playing in the restaurant. 

We struck up a conversation with a fellow drinker. His name was Elias and, you guessed it, he worked for Air France. He had even more complaints about the company than we did. He was a pilot and explained to us how the company had reduced staffing levels and had, generally, been in decline for several years. I told him about my recent flight to Carcassone and how the landing was one of the worst I’ve experienced. At the time, I had thought that the pilot was hopeless, but Elias explained that you have to have special training to land at Carcassonne at all, because of the Mistral. Another place for which you need special training, 

apparently, is Hong Kong, because you have to fly in between skyscrapers, as Alf experienced a couple of years ago on his way back from the Phillipines.

After an afternoon kicking our heels back at the All Seasons and a chat with Jonathan, we returned, in the evening, to our favourite brasserie. Friday night bustling, with lots of diners, a few of us at the bar, the same very friendly bar staff and one of the town drunks to whom everyone was pleasant. It was good to feel that you were in France and not entirely stuck in a faceless international airport hotel with no character and bland pictures on the walls.

In my room, the picture was a photograph of some large stones sitting in water and arranged in a semi-circle. Like an Andy Goldsworthy thing without the Andy Goldsworthy. It made me think of the constructivist art I saw in Poland, seemingly designed to have no content which might upset the Soviet authorities, or the Islamic art, wonderful as some of it is, which shows only geometrical patterns, in order not to give anyone the chance of being offended by it. I looked from the picture to the complimentary ‘Fisherman’s Friend’ which one of the North African cleaners had deposited on my bedside table and wondered what the world was coming to...


Casablanca and beyond

We woke up to a beautiful sunny Saturday morning, quite amazing for a late November day in northern Europe. Our hope today was that we fly down over France and the Mediterranean to Casablanca, wait there for six hours and then fly on to Monrovia, arriving there at about 3.30 am on Sunday morning.

One didn’t get much of a Saturday night out feeling in the cavernous single waiting area at Casablanca airport. It was distinctly drab and there was a pervading air of mild misery about the place. Lots of people were down on their knees, bobbing up and down, muttering in the direction of Mecca. A depressing spot, but a bit enlivened by the colourful garb of some of the other passengers waiting for their flights. Several other African nationalities were represented, the Mauritanians being the most interesting to look at, all waiting to go to destinations like Lome, Nouackchott, Dakar, Yaounde, Lagos......

It was good to be travelling with Jonathan. He’s a very bright, well-informed young man who’s having to step into his recently deceased father’s business shoes. Also we are with an old lady in a wheelchair called Marie. She’s a Liberian who has been living in sheltered housing in London for several years. She’s terribly sad as her husband died recently, but she was good company and, I think, glad that we took her under our wing. We made a funny little quartet, usually led by Jonathan, brandishing MacBook Pro, iPad, iPhone and Blackberry. Like many owners of such gadgets, he was very proud of them.

Phew!

We finally made it to Robertsfield airport at about 3.30 am, as predicted. I had expected Topiyoo to be there to meet us but there was no sign of him, so we had to hang around in the dark outside the terminal, along with several dodgy looking blokes offering to drive us into town. We kept close to our rucksacks. Topiyoo didn’t arrive for a long, long time and this was another low point of our trip so far.

Dawn began to break and still no sign of Topiyoo. We had been awake all night, the first time I’ve done that for a while. We had a cup of tea/can of Fanta in the large, empty airport cafeteria, wondering what on earth to do if, for some reason, Topiyoo didn’t turn up. Stupidly we didn’t have his mobile number (although our phone wouldn’t have worked without a change of sim card) and, also, we didn’t know the address of the accomodation Topiyoo had booked for us.

Then, at about 7.30 a.m., as we sat outside the cafeteria waiting rather forlornly, three figures, two of whom I recognised, emerged from a taxi and approached us. To our great relief, Topiyoo and Shelda greeted us, accompanied by Stephen, the airport security man. Jacky had managed to get through to the airport on the phone from UK, in an attempt to let Topiyoo know that we had missed our connection and would be arriving this morning. She had, luckily, got through to Stephen, who turned out to be very amiable and helpful. That morning Topiyoo and Shelda were driven to the airport by Phillip, the taxi driver, when they saw Stephen hitching to work. So here they were at last. Stephen gave me his phone number and said we should get in touch with him when we leave and he would guide us smoothly through the airport procedures. And, of course, get some money out of us for doing so.

On the way back into town we drove into the Firestone compound, to have a look at the plantations of rubber trees.

We also called in on Topiyoo’s school. I was really impressed by the improvements they had made since my last visit, in 2007. Not only do the classrooms now have doors, one classroom has had an extension built on and, best of all, they have constructed a large, detached hall called, rather grandly, ‘The Petra-Linney 

Academy’. My Health Images colleague Petra Rohr-Rouendaal and I gave them the money to buy the land on which the building stands, after our last workshop there. It is an aesthetically pleasing structure, painted orange, the school colour, and white and was to be the venue for our forthcoming workshop.

Red Light - first impressions 

We got back in the car and were taken to our accomodation in an area of Paynesville, a suburb of Monrovia, known as Red Light. The name Red Light conjures up various possibilities but turns out to be called this as there used to be a traffic light at one of the road junctions there. People coming into Monrovia on one of the few main roads from the country had never seen a traffic light so it became a landmark. Now there is no traffic light but the junction is still there. 

Our accomodation was an apartment at the top of a four storey block, set back about 50 metres from a busy main road coming in from up-country. It consisted of a sitting room with two chairs and a small, low table; a bedroom with one double bed; and a bathroom with two identical toilets and a sink with two taps and a bath with two more taps. It looked OK but none of it was plumbed in so no water came out of the taps and the toilets didn’t flush.We used water from a large blue tub. I had never before seen a bathroom with two toilets in it and spent a little time trying to figure out the thinking behind this arrangement. I’ve never thought of shitting as a social activity. For me, the crowning feature of our bathroom was the large, roughly circular hole in the end wall, through which one got a lovely view of the goings on, to-ings and 

fro-ings down below. Lovely view of ordinary Africa. By the same token, the hole also allowed people outside to see us pouring buckets of water over our heads and naked bodies as we stood in the bath for a wash.

This was still Sunday. We watched as groups of people in their best clothes made their way to one or other of the tin-roofed shacks that served as churches in that area. The noise level was just crazy. Lots of traffic noise, especially from the thousands of small motorbikes known as ‘pam-pams’, all vehicles equipped with loud horns to provide us with an incessant chorus. On top of the traffic noise were the emanations from a sound system across the road, I think like the sound systems they have in Jamaica, although I’ve never been there. Decibel levels were several times higher than would be permitted in the UK. The wax earplugs we brought are going to come in useful! The other slight disadvantage was that there was only one bed. Topiyoo and Alf went off to the market to buy a mattress but came back without one - too expensive. So, to Alf’s mild horror we were to share the double bed.

By Sunday afternoon, both of us were pretty knackered. I had started out from home on the previous Thursday.....but we had got here. I had a little wander round Red Light, enjoying the signs such as, “Successful Hairdressing Saloon” (I wondered what an unsuccessful hairdressing saloon would be like) and, on the back of a car, “God Did Not Make A Stupid Man”. Then I noticed a youg boy coming towards me pushing a small handcart. On the front of the cart, which was the only part I could see at first, was written the single word “COW”, with, underneath it, a naive painting of a cow’s head. I wondered what on earth that was about. It became clear as the boy passed me - on the side of the cart it said “Roasted Cow Meat For Sale”. A sort of mobile Sunday lunch roast beef seller.

We had another stroll in the evening, as the apartment began to get uncomfortably smelly from a fire outside on which someone was burning rubbish, including pieces of plastic which gave off an acrid smell. The disposal of waste in places like this is a big problem in most parts of the Third World. Alf and I noticed how much rubbish there was in Red Light - no litter bins and no easy options to dispose of waste properly, no bin men coming round every week. (A good book which discusses these issues is 'A Community Guide to Environmental Health' by Jeff Conant and Pam Faden. I happen to be designing a cover for the Mozambican version, 'Uma Guia Comunitario de Saude Ambiental', as we speak).

Our stroll was pleasant, chatting, waving and saying hello to lots of friendly people. We learnt from one young man that the ELWA radio mast was once the tallest, or, as he put it, longest man-made structure in Africa. In recent years, however, it became dangerous in high winds so a section of it had to be removed, making it now not the tallest man-made structure in Africa.

I noticed a bus, on the side of which was written something like “This bus is a gift from the Government of India to the people of the Republic of Liberia”. It reminded me again what weird people seem to populate governments. India has more people living in abject poverty than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa put together. And the buses in India are always ridiculously overcrowded. Anyway, at least there were a few buses in Liberia now - there had been none on my previous visits. Things are looking up (?).

We looked across at the bar from which the unimaginably loud ‘music’ had been pumping constantly throughout the afternoon. I thought it must be something to do with drugs. Most of the noise was beat - driven, hiphoppish, rappy, although occasionally some nice reggae would emerge. It was great earlier when they put on some Lucky Dube.

We were really looking forward to a long sleep before starting the workshop the following day. The sound system went on until about 3 a.m., so it was less like sleep and more like a long lie-on-the-bed-sweating. Meanwhile a tropical storm had been building up over the sea, a mile or so away, and it was great lying there listening to the thunder and the sound of incredibly heavy rain and watching the lightning. I felt very happy to be back there.


People Like Us

So, next morning, there we were at the Petra-Linney Academy awaiting the arrival of workshop participants, all of whom were either schoolteachers or trainee schoolteachers. We had been asked to provide training about how they might make and use pictorial learning aids in the classroom. We started off with a dozen or so, but throughout the morning more arrived in dribs and drabs so that, by lunchtime, there were 26 participants. I think they were all, or most, indigenous people rather than Americo-Liberians. Topiyoo said something about big organisations, like Unicef, not providing training for ‘people like us’.

It was a great day, full of hard work, a co-operative atmosphere. Alf did well on his first ever workshop day, although he sufferred a bit from the heat, having to change his sweatsoaked shirt later in the morning. Had a nice lunch, plonked in front of us unceremoniously by an obese young woman, consisting of some pieces of chicken with rice and several chunks of spam. Vegetables seem to be lower status foods even than spam!


Criminal(?) Market

On the way back in Philip’s taxi we passed through the Red Light market, which we had been told not to visit as it’s full of criminals. It’s a wonderful sight, very colourful and crowded with all sorts of interesting looking but very poor people - a typical African marketplace. The market grew up at the junction where the original red light used to be and there is, at any time of day, massive congestion on the road, which goes through the middle. So, there is always a traffic jam and vehicles inch forward at less than walking pace, so they don’t bump into people who cross in front of them carrying amazing loads or pushing handcarts. 

In one such traffic jam that day, we heard shouting just behind the car. A man was shouting to Philip, telling him that a young bloke had stolen one of his wheel hubs while the car was moving! The man had retrieved it from the thief and kindly gave it back to Philip. Turning round towards Alf and me in the back seat, Philip told us that this was fairly common at Red Light. What they do is steal something from your car and then try to sell it back to you. He laughed and concluded with his characteristic “Oh yeah”, with which we were to become familiar.

Generally, things seemed to have quietened down after the election stuff. I think most people just want things to stay peaceful. Although, in my mind, I still find the fact that the CDC got 32% of the votes a bit of a worry. Although politics in Liberia is very different...

Back ‘home’ we were greeted by several locals, young and old, as we made our way to our building. Inside, it was very refreshing to stand in the bath, pour a bucketful of water over my head, look out of the circular hole onto the busy roadway below and, of course, listen to the cheery music from the drug den across the way, all accompanied by a faint aroma of burnt plastic.

Next job was to get some supper. Although there were numerous bars and small shops nearby, there was no restaurant/cafe places. There were just roadside stalls, and I didn’t think we should risk getting ill by eating their produce - it would be silly to risk letting down Topiyoo and the people at the workshop. So, we played safe and found a Lebanese store where we could buy things like Lebanese bread and tins of halal sardines. We could get eggs and bananas from the little stalls, and tiny amounts of salt and pepper wrapped in clingfilm. Our evening meals consisted, usually, of these ingredients eaten at the low table, sitting in our plastic armchairs in our boxer shorts, perspiring. Good fun and it made me appreciate the food we had.

We had a small beer in a bar along the road, almost opposite the loudest sound system of all. Our bar also had a very loud, thumping diesel generator, which was about 5 yards from our table. So we were not short of decibels. I was quite surprised when, adding another layer of noise, our barman started up his own sound system. It wasn’t very easy to chat, so we just looked out at the streetlife, which was, of course, pretty interesting for us. Our bar was playing some soppy Country and Western song which sounded vaguely familiar. I think it’s called ‘The Coward of the County’ and sung by a man whose father seems to have told him several times that “You don’t have to fight to be a man”. We left as ‘I just called to say I love you” was beginning. Alf surprised me by  admitting “That song is one of my guilty pleasures”.

All that was left was bed with another great, cooling, rolling thunderstorm and a read of Sebald’s “The Rings of Saturn”. I’d finished “The Honorary Consul” earlier on and quite enjoyed it, as it was set in an interesting part of South America (Argentina/Uruguay border). It is, though, the familiar Greene theme of politics, the Catholic religion and male sexual fantasy. My final entertainment of the day was a vivid dream in which an old friend, in a pub in Beccles, recommended me to eat a plate of haddock, which I did. When I’d nearly finished, I noticed several pupae in the remaining fish. At the workshop we had been talking about the life-cycle of the mosquito - maybe that had something to do with it?


Red Light Noise

As Philip was not available this morning, we arranged to be picked up by a young taxi driver called Augustine. He was eighteen or nineteen years old and a sort of opposite to our other taxi driver, Philip. Whereas Philip talked a great deal, every few sentences followed by his trademark “Oh yeah”, Augustine was silent and demure in his red and blue striped Barcelona shirt. 

On our drive to the workshop we drove through large puddles, one or two of which looked as if they could be bottomless, after last night’s storm. It was a sort of obstacle course on the red dirt roads, of a kind that you might expect in the bush but not in the capital city. It was a good back route, though, allowing us to see locals on their way to work or school, in the backyards of their tin-roofed houses, hanging washing on lines stretched between trees, small 

children playing in piles of building materials, colourful clothes contrasting with black skin. It was always a lovely way to start the day.

The workshop went well again. Participants wanted me to give them some guidelines for drawing, so I had to do a long didactic session at the blackboard, something that we try, in general, to avoid like the plague. This went OK and, with help from Alf, large bottles of water, a cup of hot chocolate and a nice lunch of fish, rice and spicey potato greens. Chatting with Topiyoo, he reminded me that his mother is from Grand Bassa and his father from Nimba County. He says he is a member of the Mano, his father’s tribe. The largest tribe in Nimba is the Gio, of which, among others, Prince Johnson is a member.

At the end of the day Philip came for us - this was the routine, Augustine in the morning, Philip in the afternoon. Driving back through the ever-bustling Red Light market, we saw a display of large, colourful bags made of heavy plastic. They looked great all together. When I commented on them, Philip said that they are called “displaced bags”, as they were the kind used by people displaced during the war years. I also saw a man with a wheelbarrow piled high with big boxes of eggs. It seemed miraculous that he didn’t spill anything in such a crowded, potholed place. We passed the “God is Good Business Centre” and, among the multitude of interesting images, I recall a lorry across the front of which was written “Always Drink Hope”. I also noticed a newspaper headline which said “CDC Vows More Protests”, although it seems remarkably calm here at the moment.

I asked Philip about the palm wine in Liberia. He said the stuff you can get in town is bad for the guts because they add yeast to it. It’s only good and fresh up-country, where they call it “From God to Man” because it comes straight from God with no chemicals added. “Oh yeah”.

In the evening, we had a drink at a bar further away from the sound system. We couldn’t win, as, in the new bar, some drunken 
bar-girls were making a dreadful racket singing silly pop songs out of tune at the tops of their voices. Not the most sophisticated ladies.

The following day, on the way back through Red Light, I noticed a boy wearing a plain t-shirt with just the word ‘THE’ printed on the front. On the back number plate of a motorbike. I saw a sign which read “Seek Him First: Matt 6.33”. Philip told us a bit about police corruption - “You know billygo'? Well, we have a parable here which say ‘Where you tie de go', dat where he feed’”, followed, of course, by his affirming “Oh yeah!”.

When we got back to our place, knackered after a hard, hot, humid day’s work, the sound system was still blaring out the most revolting, rap-type, shit music, all machismo and sexual bragging, interspersed with groaning and grunting in simulation of orgasm, the kind of noise that people on ecstasy or cocaine apparently enjoy, and all free of charge courtesy, I presume, of the local gangsters. “I will be your hero, baby”, “There’s gonna be a war in the club”...

The thought of being subjected to this cacophany for another eight hours or more was not a pleasant one. We thought we would investigate the possibility of moving our accomodation to another, quieter part of town. We went to check out a place Topiyoo knew about. It was a Baptist guesthouse, intended for devout people who wanted to study the Bible in peace. The man in charge was pleasant enough and the rooms looked very comfortable, with big, soft beds, clean sheets and working showers in the bathrooms. Nobody else was staying there at the time, so our praying and study time would be uninterrupted. It was quite tempting, so we told the manager we would go and collect our luggage and move in that night.

However, when we got back to our pad in Red Light, neighbours waved and little boys came running happily up to us (Alfie had been playing and drawing with them on previous occasions already). All sorts of things to look at from our balcony, too, unlike the Baptist place which was in its own private compound behind a high wall in a quiet part of Congotown. Without speaking, Alf and I seemed to have had the same thought. “Actually, after all that, we really like it here!”. So that was that - it was Red Light for the duration, earplugs at the ready.

In Congotown we had picked up a leaflet announcing that there would be a demonstration on the 28th, the following Monday, our last day..

Philip collected us, after some time, and on the drive back explained to us that even some of the senators in parliament can’t read and write. He said, in his customary, slightly humorous way, “There is nothing in our constitution that says a senator must be educated. Oh yeah”.


They're Only Ghosts

The workshop had gone very well during the week, with a happy and co-operative group of people who appeared to value the training very highly. It was a priviledge to work with them and to learn a little about the harshness of their lives compared to our own. On the last day, everybody said a little about their experiences of the workshop. Some of the participants' names were nice and had an American quality, most using the initial(s) of their middle names - e.g. Mrs. Garmin G. Johnson, Sis. Susan T. Koffa,

 Michael S. Zordyu Jr., Regina G. Tokpah, Ozonga T.K. Gmah Jr., Glorious M. Gonyor and the musical Cephas D. Minor Jr. One of the participants had introduced himself to the group as Mr. Saah T. Williams, Founder and Proprietor of the Saah T. Williams Christian School for Children. A very nice guy who appreciated what he had learnt with us. He gave a particularly amazing speech at the end of the workshop, mostly improvised sort of stream of consciousness, shouted in a loud voice - I can only try to give a flavour of it but can't do it justice....

"Thank God for this glorious day and thank God that you are not in the funeral home you are not in the hospital....The people they have a plan in their life, their family is blessed. You must be able to manage your life, you need to have a self initiative. Everybody can't be in the office, somebody has to be in the arts and crafts, somebody have to be engineer. Everybody who has taken self-initiative, that family is bound to prosper. We came from fourteen years of war, the opportunity to study has been taken away from us. Father Linney has come to educate us on arts and crafts. We came with fear here but now you see that everybody is drawing. We need to have a vision, we need a plan. That way we will rise and shine. When I was young boy my uncle bring me to Monrovia from the interior. He was a tailor. I had to clean the yard and not go to school. Then one day he ask me 'Are you willing to do some work?' I say 'Yes, I am willing to do some work'. So my uncle give me some clothes to sell in the market. He say 'If you do not sell you will not eat'. So my decision was to learn the trade rather than go to school. I worked hard and I even washed the boss's clothes. I thought 'I will prove to my uncle that I will never go back to the interior'. I decided to go to adult education programme. I studied so hard and got promotion and graduated. I were big now - I took apprentices in tailor shop and continued to go to school. I went to university even though my uncle say education is no good. Now when I go to the interior they take my clothes - give me this shirt, give me these shoes. I am the founder and general overseer of a ministry and I am still learning. Never give up, you can make it (shouting loudly now) so Father I say unto you thankyou for the knowledge. Bless Father Bob and Alfie O God, and bless his family O God and thankyou for dis workshop O God and let it be a springboard for the people of Liberia (and, to us) thanks and appreciation to your sponsors - it will never only be limited to us but extended to all our brothers and sisters who may need it".

The daily drive to and from the Petra-Linney Academy never failed to provide interest. 

Several billboards en route - “Liberia Mines Again - Transforming Tomorrow” from the Arcelor Mittal company who have re-opened the iron ore mines in Bong County. Others included “No Hate Speech - Vote Peace”; “Women! Vote to make your voices heard”. A pretty albino schoolgirl walking through the crowded market. Dozens of  ‘barrow boys’ weaving their way around the market, making me think of Victorian London. We listened to one young man repeatedly shouting 
“Be de first to wear it!” and slapping together the soles of a pair of sandals. A shop along the road called “Petdezach Trading Lib. Inc”; a small brickworks named “Creative Block Factory”; a sign saying “Worship wit (sic) us at the Solution Temple; a line of white UN water tankers parked at the roadside; an aphorism written on the back of a taxi, saying “If God Says Yes Who Can Say No”; the “Favourite Pharmacy”; “UNMIL Quick Impact Project” painted, almost ironically, on the wall of a compound, the paint fading after years of quick impact; a little shack of a bar emblazoned with the words “Welcome to Camp Nou Barcelona”. 

That evening, I settled up with Mr. Bah, our landlord, who lives on the ground floor of our compound with his extended family. Several of his grandchildren are frequent visitors to our top-floor pad. Soon after we get home, we sit down to relax and then there’s a slightly timid knock on the door by a small hand. On opening the door we see a gaggle of beautiful little boys looking up at us with their big brown eyes - the oldest, Emir, is eight, then Pien, seven, Isaac, six, and Kevin, five. Alfie is terribly nice to them and gives out paper and pencils and plays games with them. I’m happy to see them but don’t have much spare energy to play hide and seek. Yes, better than the sterile Baptist place.

Mr. Bah, himself, is probably about my age, quite tall and somewhat distinguished, the sort of man who might have been a village elder, one to whom you could go for calm advice. What little hair he has left on his head is grey while his goatee beard is more white. He’s a dignified person. At the time he was wearing his usual shorts and slippers. He also had on a dark blue t-shirt bearing a small emblem below which were written the words “Glasgow Middle School”.

He took me into his ancient office and sat slowly on the well-worn chair behind a large desk completely covered with ‘stuff’ - piles of paperwork, unused airmail envelopes, a couple of ornaments made of pebbles glued together which, he told me proudly, came from Canada. Best of all was a jar into which was stuffed a large, multicoloured bunch of plastic flowers coated with a layer of dust. To one side of me, as I sat opposite him, was a pile of old car batteries and sundry other items. He took out his receipt book from a drawer and I handed him the $315 which it cost us for out 9-day stay. The few hotels here are really expensive - $150 per person per night - and are mainly used by people from Oxfam, Save the Children and other international NGOs of the sort that employ staff to phone you up and tell you they are fundraising. Mr. Bah carefully wrote out the receipt, counted the money and took out his calculator. As he did this, I studied the wall behind him, where I could just make out the words ‘Parker Paints’, faintly visible beneath a coat of whitewash. As we had thought, this must have been the office of the paint manufacturer before the war when that now defunct enterprise was flourishing. As I left, he said “Sammy comin’ - de boy who haul de water”. Our water butt in the bathroom needed a refill.

In the meantime, Alfie had a chat with the boy who sells us mineral water and ‘cold’ Fanta from his mum’s roadside stall. Alf asked him if he liked the music from across the road. He said no, as he has to listen to it all day long, like everyone else around here. Alf said “Why don’t you ask them to turn it off sometimes?”. The boy replied “If you do you get punched”.

We’ve both had really vivid dreams here. I had one last night in which I was at the Henham Steam Rally wandering around with my friend Garry Booth. At one point we met my Dad, my aunt Ethel and Auntie Beat (short for Beatrice). They are all long dead but it was really nice to see them again. Garry also said how nice it was to see them and I replied, casually, “Oh, they’re only ghosts”. There’s a great bit in “Rings of 

Saturn” about dreams. I quote the venerable Sebald - “What manner of theatre is it, in which we are at once playwright, actor, stage manager, scene painter and audience”.


Age Will Catch Up With Us

On the way to our last workshop day, I noticed the slogan on a taxi which said “No Food for Lazy Man”.

At the workshop on Friday, I had a look at Topiyoo’s copy of my book “Pictures, People and Power”, which I gave him several years ago. It has been well used and is now noticeably dog-eared. He had added, as marginalia, some rather corny epithets, such as “Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing”. And “Dream big, study hard and never give up”. Then “Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently”. And the last one - “Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into smaller jobs”. In the context of Topiyoo’s circumstances, including war experiences, exile as a refugee and, of course, poverty, these words have some significance.

A sticker on the petrol tank of a motorbike - “I am covered with the blood of Jesus”. A barrow boy wheeling a wheelbarrow full to the brim with individual sweets wrapped in brightly coloured wrappers. The Hassan Diallo Business Centre. Rusty corrugated iron and cement. Puddles full of mud and plastic bags. Market cries. Arguments. Cars pushing in front of each other among a multitude of pedestrians. Policemen in dark blue uniforms, replacing the original Red Light at the junction, waving their fingers, admonishing nervous motorists. A little boy carrying a huge water container. Cars overloaded with humanity and the kitchen sink. A motorbike on top of a minibus. Crappy music blaring from crappy speakers. A wheelbarrow full of plastic containers of cosmetics, pushed by a man with a nice face and surprisingly clean shoes. Deep potholes in the road, long piles of garbage at the roadsides. Women in patterned fabrics. A large 
fed-up woman trying to cross the road carrying an outsize tub of margarine on her head. A car loaded with a big pile of different coloured mattresses. The Brothers Gee Cement Depot.

Earlier in the week Philip got me a guitar, lent by a friend of his. An Ibanez AW. Like most things these days, it bears the words “Made in China”. It has three rusty strings, another short one hanging off and the two top strings absent. It also sports a broken neck. Someone has tried to ameliorate this break by tying twine tightly around the second fret, but I’m afraid it’s beyond repair. The three strings that are still there are about a centimetre above the fretboard, so my attempted rendition of the introduction to Bob Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’ (which, incidentally always comes into my head when I’m in Liberia - hardly surprising) was less than a complete success.

On the back of a big lorry - “Sanitation Is Dignity”. Philip picking us up and saying gleefully “Bob, today you gonna give me fifteen dollars!”. Where Philip lives, the representative had come second in the recent ‘Miss Liberia’ contest. She won the election because she was popular because of this. Philip explained that “People vote for who they like, not because of the policies”. He also bemoaned the fact that the return of foreign investment after the war was such a slow process. “Investor come, a lot of us old. Age will catch up with us. Oh yeah, Bob”. Passing a roadside store displaying large chunks of rock, Philip announced “When you wanna buy rock, you come here and we sell it to you. Oh yeah”. And in another of our conversations “You got 10% unemployment in your country and you cryin’. We have 80%”. Philip Toomey’s ancestors are from the Liberian county of Maryland, belonging to the Grebo tribe.

‘Patience Golden Blues Bar’.

At one point Philip talked about the time they went to the airport to meet us but we didn’t arrive. They were looking closely at each person who came out of customs (although I don’t think there could have been more than a handful of white people). The way he put it was “You gotta stretch your eyes. You gotta stretch it good”.

The motorbikes or ‘pam pams’ take passengers. Alf asked Philip if there were many accidents. “A lotta people die. We call them ‘suicide bombers’. Oh yeah”. We had all sorts of interesting conversations with Philip. “In England a man say he’s suffering but it not like suffering here. Don’t keep what you have and suffer - that’s a whore’s slogan”. We passed a big poster saying “Liberia is all we have - let us say no to violence”.

A large number of people have moved into the old Ministry of Defence building but they had recently been asked to leave. Philip explained “Yeah - they were throwing de bomb”. And then “Do you know what bomb mean?”. We looked puzzled. “Toilet in the plastic bag and then just throw it out of the window”. Talking 

about the Ministry of Health building, Philip said that during the war lots of people squatted there. They sold everything, including drugs, it was like a big market. In characteristic Liberian style and their enjoyment of words “They used to call it the World Trade Centre. Oh yeah, Bob!”.

On one of our drives we passed a small estate of posh houses, rather reminiscent of council houses in England. Philip explained that they were built by one of Charles Taylor’s generals in the war, who had, apparently, looted most of the building materials required. Philip also told us that Ellen had supported the war by helping Taylor obtain funds. Many Liberians think that this prolonged the war. The warlords were supposed to be banned from politics for 30 years e.g. Prince Johnson, who stood in the recent elections. Philip said that Ellen would have been banned but parliament did not pass the bill.


The Museum

We visited the National Museum. My first visit, in 2003, had been seriously depressing. When we got there this time the museum was undergoing refurbishment. A joy to behold! Workmen were busy (African slow busy) painting new white panels. The collections were not really on display but, rather, piled up in corners or on tables, all jumbled together. It was still possible, though, for the determined visitor to have a good look round and even pick up the objects. The great drum that was traditionally used to announce important events somewhere in the countryside was still there, just inside the entrance. The workmen had ‘refurbished’ that, too, by painting fresh white lines, in gloss paint, around some of the relief designs on its surface. It looked pretty naff to me but, on reflection, may not have been entirely dissimilar to its original appearance. 

There was just a single attendant on duty, a somewhat uncommunicative woman in a green uniform. I asked her if she was a guide but she just shrugged. Maybe it was like asking one of the attendants at the National Gallery in London, say, to give me a lecture on the painting technique of Frans Hals.

We wandered about among the workmen and the newly painted panels and the offcuts of plywood that were lying around. For me it was great to see this upgrading going on - when I first visited the museum in 2003 it was very depressing and poignant to see how sparse the collections were after the war and to look at photographs of street gun battles untidily taped onto old display boards with yellowing sellotape. So, things are looking up, although we were the only visitors. Alf and I picked up some of the exhibits, mostly wood carvings, including a ‘famous’ fertility symbol. We were also amused by a mask on which every facial feature had been turned into something to do with genitalia and breasts. Alf held it up to his face while I photographed him.

I asked the attendant, who was by now slumped half asleep across the reception desk, the name of the director and the postal address of the museum. She couldn’t tell me but I spotted the relevant information on a small noticeboard. Just as Philip turned up, impatient to take us away, the director, Mr. Albert Markeh appeared saying that somebody had been making enquiries. I said it was me. I was thinking that maybe I could help improve the labelling and signage in the museum. Mr. Markeh took me up to his office on the first floor. It was very clean and tidy - also a good sign in comparison to my previous visits. He gave me his contact details, including email address. He said he had recently come back from a visit to Rome. He had also visited several museums in China, as well as the National Museums of Senegal, Burkina Faso and a few other west African countries. Then Alf rushed up to say that Philip had been given a parking fine of fifty Liberty on account of having to wait for me, so I hurriedly left the director, thanking him for his time.

Earlier on, we had had a stroll round the town centre - Broad Street, Buchanan Street, Carey Street, etc. - and had also poked our noses into the Evangelical Baptist Church, where the Declaration of Independence had been signed. Unfortunately a service was in progress so we couldn’t linger. After a bit of food shopping we sat down at the kerbside for a rest. I was actually sitting right next to a shoeshine boy in my rather dirty brown leather shoes. We sat there for ten minutes or so during which the boy didn’t speak to us, let alone ask me if I wanted my shoes shined. Had I been in a similar situation in, say, India, there was no way I would have got away without having my shoes cleaned. It set me wondering about taking or not taking initiative. At the time, an unpleasant looking Chinese shop owner was shouting at a couple of his Liberian employees. Other businesses in Monrovia are owned by Lebanese and Indian traders.


Chop My Money

Later, back in Red Light, we were treated to the usual repertoire at several million decibels, including such classics as “You’re My Poison”, “Rum bum bum I Shot a Man Down, Man Down” and the wonderful “Chop My Money...but I Don’t Care...I Don’t Care”.

The following morning, Sunday, we breakfasted on banana, boiled egg, Lebanese bread and ‘Figolu’ biscuits, all washed down with a nice glass of mineral water. We then went up to the market to buy a few things - a couple of pieces of cloth and two second-hand sports shirts. As we were leaving the market one of the ‘pam-pam’ boys called out “You wanna bike?”. Alf said “No thanks, we like walking”, to which the boy replied, mock seriously, “That’s not good”, whereupon we all had a good laugh. By and large, people here are extremely friendly and seem always ready to have a laugh. This may seem paradoxical, in view of recent events, but, of course, it was, as always, just a small minority of bastards that spoiled things for everybody.

Thinking about Topiyoo during the night. ..He told us that two new schools have opened near his school, one just a few hundred metres away. The teachers at the new schools get their salaries paid by American NGOs. This means that they don’t have to charge school fees, or at most very small ones. The consequence is that some of his pupils have changed schools. He charges minimal fees for his pupils and, if parents from the local community really can’t afford it, he allows their kids to come free of charge, and has done since the school started 6 or 7 years ago. He is now struggling to pay his teachers’ salaries. He actually asked me if I could give him $1000 so that he could pay the salaries for the next few months. I said I couldn’t afford it, as the workshop had already cost me a lot of my personal money, but that I’d give him $250 to pay for one month’s salaries.

Thinking about Alf as well as Topiyoo... I’ve been reading a collection of Auden’s poems that Alf brought with him and was struck by the following lines 

“As yet the young hero’s brow is unkissed by battle.....he sails 

Down the gorge between the august 

Faces carved in the cliffs 

Towards the lordship of the world”. 

It has been wonderful for me to be with Alf as he enjoys his first experience of Africa.


War Damage

Sunday was the day of our trip upcountry to Topiyoo’s home town of Kakata. We again had the pleasure of Philip’s company and lively conversation. First he told us that the Red Light market was not a 'criminal market', as someone had described it to us. (This, despite having the other day had a bit of his car stolen while driving through the market ). “If a thief comes into the market, people shout ‘Thief!’ or ‘Rogue!’ and everybody come and beat him”. 

Then Shelda, Topiyoo’s wife, told us that the different 
ex-presidents are on the banknotes according to the good work they did. Her favourite Tolbert is on the $100 note as he had done 100% good work for the country. Apparently Tolbert said that government workers were “crooks and grafters”.

Philip continued the monetary theme by telling us a bit about corruption. Talking about the Minister of Education, he said “He ride twenty five thousand dollar jeep but his salary is only one hundred dollar”. Shelda said that everybody from the minister to the clerks and downwards get a little bit of the money that organisations like Unicef grant to the Ministry, with the result that the schools end up with just a fraction of the funding. She added that all government officers were corrupt and that this had been the case for many years.

The conversation then turned to ethnic issues. Shelda said “Ever since 1847 the Americo-Liberians bring boys from Nimba and Lofa (two counties in the north) to work for them in Monrovia and change their names to Johnson, Baker or something other than their native names”. Philip then said something to the effect that the one shining star on the Liberian flag represents the only independent country in Africa, set against the blue of the dark continent. I didn’t quite understand that, but still.

Passing into more open country, Topiyoo asked Philip if he had a spare tyre, as the road was full of potholes. Philip shouted, laughing, “Oh yeah, man. You want Bob and Alfie to sleep in the bush?”, whereupon we all had a good laugh. We passed another election hoarding with the slogan “Don’t change the pilot when the plane aint land yet”, with a huge portrait of Ellen and a much smaller one of her running mate. Ahead of us we saw a car driving along with its bonnet up so the driver couldn’t see in front of him. Philip, Shelda and Topiyoo laughed when we commented on it. Then a little more about money and love and how they might be related. Philip argued that you need money to keep a good girlfriend or wife. “Oh yeah, you gotta get some money to make your love STRONG! Is that how it is in your country?”. Then we stopped by the roadside to buy some roasted plantain - very nice, if a little filling. Our friends assured us that it was good for the digestion.

This journey to Kakata was the first time I’d been outside Monrovia - it had been too dangerous on my previous visits. The war damage at Kakata, just 45 km out of Monrovia, was terrible - burnt out and shelled buildings crumbling into rubble. Topiyoo said that further out, it was even worse and that every part of the country had been damaged by war - guns, rockets and aircraft had all played a part. We passed by a place en route and Topiyoo said “This is where the war started”. He actually meant that this was the place where what Liberians called the “Octopus War” started. This was the time in around 1992 when Taylors forces and allies advanced on Monrovia, like the tentacles of an octopus, finally surrounding the city.

We called in to the BWI, the Booker Washington Institute, on the outskirts of Kakata. This was where Topiyoo had been to school. Booker T. Washington (1856 - 1915) was an amazing man. He was born into slavery in America but fought against it throughout his life. He was a great speaker and educator and was one of the precursors of the later civil rights movement. A postage stamp with his head on it was issued in the USA in 1940. He wrote several books, including his autobiography “Up From Slavery”. The BWI is now a sad reflection of its former self. Topiyoo said that it used to be a well run establishment, site also of the Kakata Teacher Training Institute. Now it is quite run-down. One new building has been built. Topiyoo said that this is the one they always photograph for calendars and things, but all the other buildings are in a state of disrepair.

We went on to the town itself. Topiyoo pointed out the many ruined buildings. “That one was the cinema”, he told us, pointing out a war-damaged structure without a roof. Then a burnt out building - “That was a good shop run by a Lebanese man”. He explained the former use of several destroyed buildings, telling us what they had been when he was growing up there. 

There has been almost no reconstruction, the streets were potholed in the extreme and the people we saw were suffering from dreadful poverty. We stopped the car and walked across to where his family’s house used to be, only to find the remains of the house, burnt to the ground and a strong smell of shit, the garden now in use as a public toilet. It was so very sad. Alf struggled to hold back his tears. It was really shocking and brought home to me, more than any other experience I’ve had, the tragedy of war. 

I don’t know how Topiyoo kept from crying as he stood there looking, for the first time since the war, at the place where he spent a happy childhood. Unbelievably awful. I now understood just why he had fled to Danane, as a refugee in neighbouring Cote d’Ivoire, which was where I first met him back in 1997. On a very sad afternoon, we ate oranges and small bananas sold to us by a woman who remembered Topiyoo and his family. On the way back to

Monrovia, Topiyoo talked about the ‘80s under Doe, when Bong mines were active. Apparently, they mined out so much iron ore that the mountainside collapsed, taking with it the house of the mineworkers and killing many people. “What benefit was that to the country”. Topiyoo mused, “when all the profits were taken by Doe?”.

Heavy Water

The next morning I went out to get some glucose biscuits from a little shop along the road. I was just telling the shopkeeper what I wanted when I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, some movement to my left. I just managed to get out of the way as a two-metre high stack of water bags, enclosed in larger plastic bags, unbalanced and collapsed onto the floor of the shop. For me it was a narrow escape - water is heavy! The small group of men sitting outside the shop, drinking large bottles of beer at this early hour (it was 8 a.m.) had plenty to say about it, though I didn’t notice any of them getting up to help the shopkeeper restore order. 

On the way back with my glucose biscuits, I greeted the mother of the nice young boy who had, by now, sold us several dozen litres of ‘Aqualife’ mineral water - it gets pretty humid in Monrovia. She was a large lady, wearing an odd-looking t-shirt on which was printed the dietary imperative “Eat Mor(sic) Chicken”. “Mornin’”, I said. “Mornin’-O”, she replied cheerfully.

Later we went into town via the Freeport area. Progress was very slow as there was lots of traffic. It was nice and warm in the car and we had plenty of time to converse. Again, our friends told us some stuff about the wartime. At one point there were so many factions that “nobody had any trust in anybody”. Talking about Taylor, Topiyoo told us that people in Banga suggested putting white flags on their cars and houses to show they wanted peace. Taylor, when he visited Banga, told them, in a threatening way, “If you really want peace you should shave your head and put whitewash on it”. We got badly stuck in traffic near the Freeport. Topiyoo’s phone rang and we heard his explanation of why he couldn’t meet up with the caller - “I got some stranger here”.

Topiyoo explained that, originally, the famous Mamba Point area of the city was inhabited by a tribe of small people called the Mambam. The area was then known as Mambambasa. He said the people were “small in body” and that “they legs were all dried up”. 

While edging along the Freeport road we saw some interesting sights as we passed through Vai Town and alongside Clara Town, very poor slum areas. We were amused by a truck carrying two armchairs in the shape of hands with their fingers sticking up. Finally, we crossed the bridge into the town centre, looking out 

towards the sea and the worst of Monrovia’s slums, which some bright spark had named West Point.

I wanted Alf to see the Americam embassy - it’s one of the biggest, if not the biggest, US embassy in Africa and quite impressive in a security-conscious sort of way. Everything’s smart, new and tidy - something of a contrast to the rest of the city. Not far from the embassy is the place where woodcarvings and other 

handicrafts are sold. There’s not a large selection but some interesting artefacts. Alf bought a bird mask and I bought a figure like the large fertility symbol we had seen in the Museum. Like many of the other objects, this had been made in Nimba or Lofa county, in the north. I also got a beautiful, circular Dan mask, and a necklace of beads. And three long thin pieces of metal which used to be used as currency - rather sharp. Current Liberian banknotes carry pictures of this old form of money. 

We then had the best meal we’ve had here so far from a street stall. The lady gave us one dish. I said, in characteristic western individualistic style “Can we have two, please?”. But Topiyoo said “There are two spoons”. I felt a bit bad but soon got over it and Alf and I both tucked in from the same dish. Nice, African style grated cassava, onion, chunks of the ubiquitous spammy frankfurter, pieces of fried plantain and bits of fish, all topped with a large, expressive spiral of tomato sauce, squeezed out by the lady as a sort of coup de grace. Delicious!

I told Topiyoo that I could give him $250 to pay his teachers’ salaries for one month. He looked terribly downcast and said “Oh, Bob - small, small”. I said if I could afford it I would give him more, and added that, if someone said they were going to give me $250, I would be quite pleased. I suppose he thought we had spent too much on our souvenirs.

We then drove back to Red Light, taking a look at the beach in Paynesville. It is all very familiar to me, having stayed at the ELWA guesthouse there on two previous occasions. We went round the back of the guesthouse, as the door was locked, and met William, who recognised me, so that was nice. We had a chat about old times and had a look round at the rooms, all four of them, which had been ‘upgraded’. This upgrading, in the room I had last stayed in, meant only that they had replaced the old, torn curtains with new ones. Two of the other room, though, now had air conditioning. So now you had the choice of not being able to sleep because of the heat or not being able to sleep because of the noise from the a/c unit. The sound of the ocean, just a hundred metres away, was always lovely, though. I took from the small 

collection of books the copy of “Tales from the Alhambra” by Washington Irving, which I’d read there 

previously and somewhat incongruously.

In the evening I had a chat with a 15 year-old boy who is staying downstairs from us. He said his name was Titus, which he pronounced, under the influence of American ‘English’, Tardis. It threw me momentarily - he didn’t resemble a telephone box. He and his family, who live outside Monrovia, have come to town to attend the Jehovah’s Witnesses conference at the Samuel K. Doe sports stadium. “It was a very good conference”, he told me seriously. I asked him what he wanted to do when he left school. 
“I want to be a missionary”, he replied without hesitation. A very nice boy, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of European football teams and players. He knew a lot more about the Premier League and its personell than I do. Like many of the other young men here (e.g. Augustine the Silent), he supports Barcelona. When I was in 

Monrovia four years ago Chelsea were the most popular.


The Che Guevara of Liberia

Topiyoo came over and, as it was our last night, he joined us for a beer at one of the local bars. I don’t know what they put in the beer here but it seems to work. I had one large and one small bottle, while Topiyoo and Alf had one large bottle each. I felt distinctly tiddly after a while, as, I think, did the other two.

Alf and Topiyoo had an incredibly animated conversation about Liberian politics which lasted for nearly two hours, during which Topiyoo’s eyes seemed to open wider and wider in the dark, while Alf’s voice got louder and louder, against the background music from down the road. After they had solved the problems of Liberia, we wandered a little unsteadily back ‘home’. Alf has christened Topiyoo ‘The Che Guevara of Liberia’.


Atheist Duo

Our last day there was a public holiday, it being former president Tubman’s birthday. He was the father of the current CDC leader Winston Tubman. There was not much available from the local vendors for breakfast, so I asked Mr. Bah where we could get some bread. “The bakery”, he replied. Fair enough, I thought. He asked one of his employees, a nice, very hairy young man from Lofa county, called David, to take me to the said bakery. We chatted as we walked. “It’s very cool in Lofa now, nearly like snow”, he told me. Sounded good. I bought a fresh loaf (not from Lofa county) and some rolls and had a close look at the wood-fired oven, a sort of large clay-covered mound with a mouth in the front. David took me to a little place where the man fried me an omelette and wrapped it up in tinfoil for me. I took it up to our pad for breakfast - Alf was well impressed!

Some of Mr. Bah’s grandchildren came up to see us. Alf got them to do drawings and gave them one of his in exchange. He’s really good with them. It was all quite sociable, as Titus had also appeared and sat down on the floor, reading outloud to himself some articles from yesterday’s ‘New Democrat’ newspaper. 

I tucked into my omelette roll. Later, we went back to the bakery, as I wanted to take some photos, particularly to take a pic of the oven. It’s a lovely shape and, also, I’ve got a potter friend at home,  who I thought might be interested in seeing it. The baker’s a really nice guy, surrounded by piles of wood and stacks of empty baking tins. I told him I baked bread at home so we had a bit of a chat about it. There were several quite large, rusty pieces of corrugated iron lying around - he uses them to put onto the fire to dampen it down if it gets too hot.

His wife was there, too, busy grating a cabbage. They do catering as well as baking. The baker was about to fry some good-looking pieces of chicken. His wife had, in front of her on a table, a large tray full of what they called ‘crayfish’. They were the smallest crayfish I’d ever seen, not much more than a centimetre long. “We use it to flavour the food instead of Maggi cubes”. We said we’d go down to her stall at lunchtime to sample their cooking. Generous of us.

On the way back I bought two lovely big coconuts from a boy at the roadside. Alf took his back to the flat but I fancied drinking mine there. While drinking the delicious nectar, I got chatting to another young man. After greeting each other, he surprised me by saying “Do you know Charles Darwin?”. I thought “Oh dear, he’s a creationist” - there are lots of them about in Liberia. I asked if he was religious and was thrilled to bits when he replied “No, I’m an atheist”. We talked a bit about evolution and that sort of stuff. I told him I’d done a Ph. D. in evolutionary genetics, using Drosophila and studying the mechanism of natural selection. It was very refreshing to have a conversation like that, being, as we are, surrounded by people who are deeply Christian. I gave him my email address and asked his name. “Frank”, he said. I asked what was his surname. “Duo”, he replied. That makes two of us, I thought. Atheists.

So, on to the stall of the baker’s wife. Sounds like something from Chaucer. We had a Ghanaian dish called Waakye. While eating, we had a chat with a bloke called George, who worked for a Chinese company that did something with rubber. He was travelling to Freetown the next day, overland - via the border crossing at the Mano River, then Kenema, Bo and Freetown, leaving at 6.00 a.m. and arriving in Freetown at midnight, if all went according to plan. Then another man joined us. He had rather strange, slanted eyes and looked a bit dodgy at first. We got talking and it turned out that he was at university here. He told us proudly that he was a Muslim. Alf asked if there were many Muslims in Liberia. The man said “No, but they are gradually increasing by natural means”, meaning, I suppose, that they like big families.

The boy Samuel, whose job it was to supply the water butt in our bathroom turned out to be a bad lot. Everybody else here has been very friendly. By contrast, Samuel has been consistently surly. I didn’t see him smile once while we were there. All he did was to bring up a couple of buckets of water one day, wash the bathroom floor once with a cloth and take some of my clothes to wash. The clothes didn’r re-appear for two days and I was getting fairly smelly, so I asked Samuel to bring them back urgently. Two days later, and after asking Mr. Bah if he could help, Samuel brought the clothes back in a bucket, washed, it is true, but still soaking wet. A real pain, in this heat, not to have any clean clothes. Then, before we left he came and demanded $20 for the work he’d done. I said that was outrageous - the schoolteachers we had been 

working with earn $40 per month. Men on building sites, working all day, in the hot, humid climate get around a dollar a day. Samuel was really pissed off but I stuck to my guns for the sake of fairness (I’m not really mean!) and gave him $5. A great fuss was made about this, including meetings with Mr. Bah, who told Samuel he should change his ways. And then, just after Shelda and Topiyoo arrived to take us to the airport, Samuel came up again and went over the whole thing again. After listening to him for a while, Shelda told him, in no uncertain terms, where to get off and he slinked away looking nasty and aggressive. A very unpleasant person.


Tassili

On the way to the airport, Philip asked “Do you have counties and states in the UK?”. No states, just counties, we told him. “How many counties do you have in England?”. Good question, to which we could give no answer. Later on the journey, we started talking, for some reason, about milk. Alf said his girlfriend’s father was a hill farmer in Wales, with cows and sheep. Alf said he really liked the creamy milk, straight from the cow. Shelda asked, in all seriousness, “Do you suck the milk direct from underneath the cow?”.

At the airport, our friends left us in the capable hands of Stephen, the security man. Stephen assisted us, unnecessarily as it turned out, through the airport procedures. At the end, I wanted to give him a bit of money, as he had been helpful earlier, and was about to get a note from my pocket, when he said “We should go to the restroom - this camera is watching. I could get into trouble”. So I gave him his present, clandestinely, in the gents. 

I was actually amazed at how the airport had changed from the pile of rubble it had been on my first visit here. The departure lounge was clean and tidy and had air conditioning. Apparently, the Americans are upgrading the airport, which they had originally built during World War 2. Even more amazingly, departure was right on time. We had a good flight via Conakry, during which I watched Benda Bilili and listened to the wonderful new album by Tinariwen, ‘Tassili”. I think this is one of the best albums to have come out of Africa for years - lovely stuff to doze to.

Jacky had phoned to warn us of the strike by airport immigration workers at Heathrow, timed exactly for the day of our arrival. Apparently the BBC had been reporting that there could be up to 12 hours wait in a queue and that people shouldn’t go to the airport but should postpone their flights. We had a few hours wait in Paris and then boarded our connection, wondering what Heathrow would be like. When we made our way to the arrivals area, we passed two large tables loaded with bottles of water, ready for the thirsty people in the predicted queues. To our amazement, we sailed through immigration and baggage in the fastest time ever. Everybody seemed to have heeded the dire warnings and stayed away! We arrived at the meeting place 20 minutes before Jacky, who had expected us hours later. We drove out on totally empty roads within the airport and nearly empty roads, including a not-very-busy M25, for several miles outside Heathrow. It was incredible and I’m sure a once in a lifetime experience. Brilliant!


Uphill All The Way

Topiyoo phoned to see if we got back OK. He’d also phoned Alf at his flat in London and apparently said “I love you, Alfie”. The two of them had got on really well. Then Stephen phoned for Jacky and said “I have put Mr. Liney on the plane and am looking forward to seeing you here in Liberia”. I think he’s taken a shine to her.

So...back home again, reading Katherine Mansfield’s great stories “In a German Pension”, and checking out my new guitar book “Unaccompanied Django” in front of the fire on a dark winter evening, looking forward to Christmas. Such different worlds...

Well, it’s taken me ages to complete this blog - partly busy with work partly laziness - so now it’s August 2012. By this time, Charles Taylor has been sentenced to 85 years in jail by the International Criminal Court in the Hague. I watched quite a lot of the trial proceedings live on the computer. He didn’t look so cocky as he did when he told people in Banga to whitewash their shaven heads. Absolute bastard, although many Liberians still like him, I gather. The trial was actually only about the criminal activities relating to his activities in respect of Sierra Leone. I guess they don’t need to go through all the atrocities for which he was responsible within Liberia itself.

Topiyoo is in regular contact with both Alf and me. He’s been disappointed by my unwillingness to award him a bogus degree from Health Images and can’t seem to get it into his head that I just can’t help him with that. He tells me that no-one will ever find out but that’s not really the point. More recently, he phoned as they had a big storm which blew the roof of one of the classrooms off and also destroyed his house, which was mainly made of rush matting. It’s hard to know how people carry on in the face of such 

continuing adversity. We have no idea. I sent him some money but couldn’t, again, give him the full amount he needs. He has since told me that they’ve managed some rebuilding and are coping. Their water situation has been bad, too, as the pump broke down. Not because the vandals took the handle. I contacted Water Aid on their behalf but they didn’t help, as Paynesville is not in one of their Liberian project areas. Topiyoo and some other people from the local community have, however, managed to construct a water collection system at the little river that runs below the school. Then it’s uphill all the way to the school. 

Most recently, a woman who works for the Health Service Executive in Ireland contacted me. She must have typed in Liberia and come up with my earlier blogs. She contacted me because she is looking after a young Liberian girl who got separated from her family during the war. They wanted contact details for Topiyoo, as the girl, whose family lived in Paynesville, (Red Light is an area in Paynesville), remembered a schoolteacher called Topiyoo. They have now managed to speak to the girl’s mother by phone, so hopefully they will be re-united at some point. It’s nice to think that my slightly off the wall scribblings may have been of some use....