On the beach with Ellen

True dat! I’m back. Confident, proud and self-made. Have had a good week since we last kissed and now I’m ready to tell about it. First, a disclaimer: I was stupid enough to pass this along to some “friends” here in Liberia who, I’m sure, will now attack me if I engage in any hyperbole or start faking the funk. I hope this will not make the blog more boring but I must admit I feel I’m being watched. I can’t brag about my jungle adventures freely anymore. Such a mistake.

I went to Robertsport with some NGOers last weekend. It was my first time actually outside Monrovia and Montserrado County (unless you count the airport and, of course, the 26 years I’ve spent outside Liberia) and I loved it. Driving out of the city was an eye-opener because you get to see some pretty crappy parts of the city. There are a number of human dwellings literally in gigantic garbage heaps (no wonder cholera epidemics are common), it stinks; the rain has left gigantic puddles of muddy water that just sits outside some houses – I saw a naked kid wade through it up to his waist. We drove over the Mesurado bridge, which I recognized from pictures of the war. A number of fierce clashes happened over this bridge, especially in 2003 when LURD launched a major offensive against Monrovia and Taylor’s government troops. The two bridges function as a bit of a bottleneck to get into the western part of the city. We also drove past the Club Beer brewery which was the sight of a number of battles as well. During the war it was virtually the only steady source of revenue for the government (not counting illegal diamond smuggling and timber) and, thus, a pretty important strategic asset. Club is still the beer of choice here and is, all in all, not too bad. It’s a bit of a gamble taste wise because you never now for just how long the bottle has been sitting out in the sun. I snapped a picture in Dualla Market. Check out the building in the background.


Anyway, it took us around 2 hours to get out to Robertsport, which is relatively close to the Sierra Leonean border. It’s a Vai-speaking town, very calm, and the capital of Grand Cape Mount County. It was also taken by LURD in February 2003 during their advance towards the capital. Trivia #3080 ‡ It is also ranked as Africa’s third best surf spot. 3 ex-pats were there fronting like they discovered the place when we showed up. Oh oh oh, and it was a submarine base for the allies in World War II (I only found out about that upon returning though, could’ve been cool to check out).

There were kids all over the beach – no parents in sight – playing with each other, selling coconuts, playing football. Liberia, like many countries in Africa, is experiencing a so called Youth Bulge. This means that 43% of the population is under 15 years old (compared to 17% in Sweden. Liberia’s median age: 18, Sweden’s: 41), which has spawned a heap of literature warning against impending doom. Unemployment (85% in Liberia) + youthful energy = war. At least to this popular security equation. There is some truth to it I suppose but it glosses over more than it reveals. To begin with it confuses correlation with causation and makes the mere ‘youthness’ of would-be rebels as the cause of conflict as opposed to the material and cultural realities around them. Youth bulges aside (hahaha) as a visitor you can’t help but notice just how many kids there are around. The flipside of that, of course, is that you rarely see very old people.

What? What’s that? Did some one say funny story time? Well, goshdarnit, why not… Prepare to laugh. Hard… Call in your friends, because this will be a big one:
So, I am at the beach, okaaay, and there’s a little kid doing push-ups (more like showing off in front of us since we were literally surrounded by staring kids the whole time). I was in a frisky mood so I did some right next to him. The mood quickly changed in to one of competition. He wanted to challenge me to see who could do the most push-ups, going toe-to-toe. Never one to back down from the prospect of humiliating a ten year old by using my physical abilities I accepted the challenge but asked to wait a few minutes so I could catch my breath (I had just finished doing, like, a trillion push-ups). With a straight face, the guy goes: “oh, I see. You need to rest longer than me because of all of your stomach fat…”
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I guess you had to be there. Anyway, here are some pics from the beach trip. Including of some fishermen dragging in their net. They basically laid out a really really long net from one side of the bay to the next and then just closed in on each other by pulling it from the two ends.




My work week has had one major highlight – meeting President Sirleaf. For those of you who do not follow these things, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is Africa’s first female president. She beat out former soccer pro George Weah in the run-off elections and is still relatively popular from what I can tell, especially with the international community. She ended a career with the World Bank to come home to Liberia and has, since, attempted to do some major housecleaning in government and has shuttled around the world to seek funding. She came to formally launch Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC); the format chosen by Liberia to address all atrocities that have happened between 1979 (Master Sergeant Samuel Doe’s military coup against President Tolbert) and 2003 (the signing of the Accra Peace Accord). The TRC model was created in South Africa in the aftermath of Apartheid and has, since then, been replicated in Ghana, Peru, Sierra Leone, East Timor, etc. The general concept revolves around a less punitive approach to the past than, say, a tribunal, and, in South Africa involved giving amnesty to perpetrators of violence if they would acknowledge and speak about their crimes. In a society where so many people have been involved in crime it may be a practical impossibility to jail all perpetrators and detrimental to peacebuliding if punishment is too severe. The idea, then, is to get it all out on the table, avoid rumors and speculations over the war, and have victims and perpetrators meet face to face in an effort to break out of the cycle of violence. Liberia’s TRC is a bit different, however, because it does have a clause that lets its commissioners recommend prosecution of gross violators. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Those are Ellen's body guards



Ok that’s it for now. I will post some music in the upcoming days because I made a couple of “mix-tapes” for Anna (mein Schwester) and figured I may as well share them with you all. Thanks to all who emailed their congratulations for my birthday. Everyone else…I still love you!