Monrovia is built on the coast, at the mouth of some wetlands (euphemism for a swamp, did someone say malaria?). One can see how it must have been a breathtakingly beautiful setting at one time (it’s still breathtaking, but now it’s more just because you don’t want to breathe in), and I think I would have decided to build a city here too, if I were into that sort of thing. There is a small raised bit of land protruding out into the ocean, which some say is the highest point in Liberia but I think that’s a lie because it really is more of a bump than a hill, never mind a ‘peak’; but anyway, this slightly elevated real estate was at one time home to a beautiful seven-story five-star resort hotel, overlooking the city on one side and the ocean on the other. Sometime in the early 1990s, the hotel was taken over by Charles Taylor’s people, beginning a steady decline during the war years into its current eerie dilapidation.
Approaching the hotel (barely breathing hard, it’s really not that high), the first thing one sees is the swimming pool, empty but for some garbage in the deep end. The pool deck has been swept clean by the same women who are scrubbing their laundry and laying it out to dry, a few of the hundreds of displaced Liberians who have taken up residency in the empty rooms. We were met by a hoard of children in a random assortment of used clothing (Bugs Bunny t-shirts, Charlotte Hornets jerseys, etc.) who took us inside to see their ‘school’: three blackboards (one with drawings and words to match – ‘cup’, ‘chair’, and ‘mortar’ - !) and a few benches built by one of the Mercy Ships crewmembers during the last outreach, in the stripped ballrooms whose floors still smack of marbled decadence. Everything of value in the hotel has been absconded with long ago, so all that remains are clues to its former elegance – spiral staircases, balconies overlooking the palm-lined beach, elevator shafts and the lifeless entrails of electric circuits – and the effect is quite spooky.
Walking up the stairs while descending into darkness, a little girl named Blessed and her brother Franklin who had attached themselves to my hands - they thought it was funny that I kept tripping in the shadows - took me to meet their mom and aunt, living in a stark but neatly kept room on the sixth floor and making a living by selling little plastic bags of charcoal in the hallway. Blessed’s mom gave me a picture of her ‘to carry’ (I can’t really figure out why, but it’s cute so it’s hanging up in my room). From there we continued to the old restaurant on the top floor, where we could see the entire city, including the port where the ship is docked. I showed Blessed and Franklin ‘my house’, the big white boat in the distance. I think they were a little confused by that, but they still wanted to come home with us. I would have taken them too, but kidnapping is generally frowned upon here at Mercy Ships, so we left them with a ‘God bless you’ and headed back down the gently inclined slope of the highest point in Liberia, photo of Blessed in hand.
Approaching the hotel (barely breathing hard, it’s really not that high), the first thing one sees is the swimming pool, empty but for some garbage in the deep end. The pool deck has been swept clean by the same women who are scrubbing their laundry and laying it out to dry, a few of the hundreds of displaced Liberians who have taken up residency in the empty rooms. We were met by a hoard of children in a random assortment of used clothing (Bugs Bunny t-shirts, Charlotte Hornets jerseys, etc.) who took us inside to see their ‘school’: three blackboards (one with drawings and words to match – ‘cup’, ‘chair’, and ‘mortar’ - !) and a few benches built by one of the Mercy Ships crewmembers during the last outreach, in the stripped ballrooms whose floors still smack of marbled decadence. Everything of value in the hotel has been absconded with long ago, so all that remains are clues to its former elegance – spiral staircases, balconies overlooking the palm-lined beach, elevator shafts and the lifeless entrails of electric circuits – and the effect is quite spooky.
Walking up the stairs while descending into darkness, a little girl named Blessed and her brother Franklin who had attached themselves to my hands - they thought it was funny that I kept tripping in the shadows - took me to meet their mom and aunt, living in a stark but neatly kept room on the sixth floor and making a living by selling little plastic bags of charcoal in the hallway. Blessed’s mom gave me a picture of her ‘to carry’ (I can’t really figure out why, but it’s cute so it’s hanging up in my room). From there we continued to the old restaurant on the top floor, where we could see the entire city, including the port where the ship is docked. I showed Blessed and Franklin ‘my house’, the big white boat in the distance. I think they were a little confused by that, but they still wanted to come home with us. I would have taken them too, but kidnapping is generally frowned upon here at Mercy Ships, so we left them with a ‘God bless you’ and headed back down the gently inclined slope of the highest point in Liberia, photo of Blessed in hand.
1 comment:
hey just so you know we're out here i'll leave a comment instead of emailing ! the posts are great, lady. i kinda love the urinate here sign. never seen that one before in africa (i blurrily remember seeing it once in a urinal in a house of blues somewhere in my past, who knows where that was !) hope you & josh meet up ! if you get a chance & can find it, check out the book mask of anarchy by stephen ellis - about the war in liberia. scary; sad. don't forget to fill out yer ncaa tournament brackets ! spring came today, the football has moved back outside.... m
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