One region, two planets

The first thing I thought when I got to Monrovia, Liberia? "Yep. It's Monrovia all right." Deep, I know. The thing is, Monrovia is the first big West African city I've been to where my own mental image of the place before arriving was remotely accurate. Dakar? More sprawling than I expected. Freetown? Much prettier. Monrovia? Well, it was perhaps a bit harder to find bullet holes than I thought it would be.

Otherwise, it was pretty close to what your mental image of Monrovia probably is. Lots of crumbling buildings, burnt out war damage, garbage in the streets, and a whole collection of dubious smells. The sea coast was there, but you could rarely see it. About what you'd expect from a city that, until 2003, had been a war zone for 20 years straight.

I should stop here, though, lest it seem that I didn't like Monrovia. I actually had a great time there. It's certainly an odd place to be, as a backpacker. The city gets a ton of foreigners, but I'd be surprised if there are more than 1 or 2 tourists a year. The rest are there for shady business deals, to work for the UN, or to do aid work. In all cases, they create a market for accomodation and resteraunts that's way out of my budget. The cheapest regular hotel in town runs close to 65 American dollars, and I wasn't having it. Thanks to a recommendation from an online message board, though, I found my way to Monrovia's only budget option... the illustrious Princess Motel.

When I showed up, it took 15 minutes to explain that I wanted a room not for an hour, but for 3 nights. This caused much confusion and phone calls with the boss, but after a bit of cajoling, I was happily paying 15 bucks a night for a little concrete cell with a thin mattress and an amount of nightly noise (this being a brothel) that could wake the dead. Thankfully, one of the fistfights broke the stereo... To their credit, the staff adapted well, and even held a little conference with the resident prostitutes explaining that I wasn't there for their services. They gave me sulky looks for the next 3 days, but stopped pounding on my door.

The city itself was a pretty pleasant place to wander, aesthetics aside. I walked to and fro around much of it, stopping to chat with an endless parade of incredibly welcoming Liberians, whose Americanized African english was a joy in and of itself. It's quite a pleasant way to pass a day, with everyone thanking you for coming and talking about their hope for the future of the country.

Other than wandering about and drinking the 750 ml liberian monster beers, there is precious little else to do in Monrovia, so I followed the lead of other white folk before me, and ate like a pig. Monrovia's an excellent place to do this - the prices are high, but so is the quality. After months of mostly rice and sauce, sitting down in an air-conditioned sushi bar for a feast with a beer and a fine espresso after was pretty close to orgasmic. Same goes for the next day, when I chowed down on cheap and delicious Indian food (the UN soldiers in Liberia are Indian, Nepali, and Bangladeshi, making for a happy tummy for me as restaurants pop up to serve them).

After a few days there, I set out on the road for Cote D'Ivoire. Another standout characteristic of Liberia is how little of it is accessible by road, especially in the rainy season, so I stopped where I could along the reasonably good road, sitting around for a few days in the little towns of Ganta and Gbarnga. From Ganta, though, it was go time - Cote D'Ivoire called.

This was, by far, the dodgiest journey I have undertaken (or will undertake) on this trip. The northern half of Cote D'Ivoire has been outside of government control since the 2004 civil war, and when I reached the border just before closing time, the rebel soldiers didn't even look at my visa. Most of them were illiterate, in any case. Let me not imply that they were unfriendly, though - they were actually reasonably nice people, demanding bribes with a smile on their faces. I got through with a US$1 bribe, paid mostly because I had no other use for the bill.

From the border, though, it was a journey that was a whole combination of things I didn't really want to be doing: riding a motorbike, on a slippery mud road, in the dusk and dark, in rebel territory, uncertain of who was lurking in the bush, with a giant thunderstorm approaching. Grrmph. Sometimes, though, you have no choice - and I at least had a travel companion, a Liberian UN staffer who had masochistically chosen to travel overland. There were plenty of checkpoints along the way, which I somehow made it through without paying a bribe - a mix of backslapping jokes and willingness to snatch your passport from the soldier's hands can work wonders, I say. The journey to Danane passed without incident, but it wasn't without a good bit of worry.

Still, things swiftly looked up. I got my SIM card and a good meal, and got my passport stamped the next morning at the police station, without a single handout. I finally was forced to cough up at the checkpoints along the road to the regional capital of Man, but I at least was able to bargain them to locals' rates - the rebel soldiers even happily broke bills and gave me change! Such efficiency. Never did they even pretend to look at my passport - that was for the government suckers down south.

Man, the regional capital, was once a big tourism centre. It's in an incredibly beautiful setting, and the villages around are renowned for their dances and other cultural attractions. Since the war, though, not so much. Indeed, there was some palpable hostility towards white people there, most of which disappeared when I explained I wasn't French (the rebels, and most other Ivoirians, have some distrust of the French - hostility against French settlers led a lot of them to leave in 2004, though tons have come back). In general, the situation was tense, with elections coming in November that everyone worries will bring a return to conflict. I was watching my back a bit in town, but it was a pretty pleasant place to hang out, otherwise, with all the joys of Francophone Africa - croissants and espressos, sipped at sidewalk cafes full of rebel commanders with aviator glasses, berets, boots, and gleaming pistols. Surreal.

Man was expensive to stay in, so I booked it into government territory the next day on the bus (a scheduled bus! On a paved road!) to Yamoussoukro. Yamoussoukro was the home village of the first President, Felix Houphet-Boigny, and he made it capital of the country. Ministries? Nope. Offices? Nope. Business? Not much. Just a surreal collection of 6-lane highways to nowhere, weird architectural experiments, and the Basilica de Notre Dame de Paix, which the President had built at staggering cost in the late 80s - It's bigger than St. Peters! Walking around it was a bloody weird experience in itself, sitting as it does in the middle of a desolate field, surrounded only by gardens slightly larger than the Vatican. Odd - and it sparked a discussion I'd like to raise later. For now, though, the narrarative calls.

I spent a couple days there, then hit the road to Abidjan, the real capital. What a contrast to Monrovia it was when I rolled in, on a 6-lane freeway, with dozens of skyscrapers in the distance. Cote D'Ivoire may be suffering now, but for some time it was the most prosperous country in the region, and Abidjan got a ton of money poured into it. The Downtown, Le Plateau, is pretty shocking if you've been rolling around the region for a while. Fancy resteraunts, malls, skyscrapers, all that. It's not completly un-African, though; there's still plenty of street chaos, and plenty of city outside of downtown.

I've had a chance to experience more of that than I normally would thanks to the fact that I'm couchsurfing here with Erikson, an affable Ivoirian computer consultant who's putting me up in his apartment in the burbs. It's great fun to stay in a regular neighbourhood (his is all middle-class small apartments and the like) and cruise the town with him on his rounds. Tonight we're hitting some reggae with his friends; Abidjan is the big spot for reggae in Africa. I'm looking forward to it. After some recovery time in the morning, though, it'll be onward for me. I'm headed for Ghana, and don't want to get stuck with slow sunday schedules. A long sit on the beach is in the near future, and it's nice.

So, for once, this journal is actually caught up! I'm sure it won't last, but for now
Peace
Josh