We Have Landed. Monrovia, Liberia!

Day 1: Travel & Acclimation

This, my friends, is a very long post. Such an eventful day. So many things to share.

Part 1
Monday, March 28 9:53:56 AM Accra, Ghana time (5:53:56 AM Florida time).

As I type this I am sitting in the Accra airport, gate 4 (five total gates at this airport, it seems), waiting for our flight to Monrovia. Xane to my immediate left, Tim to his left - both asleep. We met at JFK and climbed aboard a 227-passenger plane, with 2-3-2 seats.

The Accra airport experience is this: “Please come,” accompanied by finger snapping. Upon arrival to Accra, some nine hours after we departed NYC, we exited the plane, descended the rolling, covered staircase and waited for a bus to carry us to the terminal, about 200 feet away. The thick air is warmer and more humid than Florida (believe it or not).

Aboard the plane, during the flight, every passenger was handed two forms to fill out, a health form and an arrival form. “Oops!” Xane and I realized as we deboarded and approached the first check-point. We forgot our forms (incomplete) on the plane.

The first checkpoint was for health. Every passenger had to walk in front of two heat scanning cameras, the attendants watching for hot faces, fever. Unsure of what to do about our missing forms, Xane and I whispered quietly (and frantically) as Tim demonstrated his gift of “African diplomacy”. He chatted up the nice lady just doing her job at the checkpoint who wanted our forms while we resigned ourselves to return to the plane, cross the tarmac and head back up the stairs. Just as we turned to head back, the nice lady motioned for us to just pass through, past the Ebola posters, past the checkpoint. Turns out, with genuine and pleasant small talk, it is not that uncommon to find yourself on the other side of a once impassable attendant. Tim is good.

For the next hour, Roberta guided us through the entire process of transferring airlines, Delta to Kenya Air, and the many checkpoints along the way. Roberta was a young, tall, slim, smartly dressed young lady. She made it her job to route the three of us and two Liberian ladies heading home with a young son, through each step. We got past the gentleman who wrote our names and passport numbers in a giant, well-worn ledger. Past the attendant in the glass booth who checked our passports and asked where we were going. To the Kenya Air ticket counter where they found our names and circled them on a printed-out list. Outside the terminal and then back in again to go through the security and yet another giant, well-worn ledger in which our names now sit.

Every attendant along the way was very well versed in “Please come” as a general, all-encompassing command of direction. While they all speak English, and other tongues I do not recognize, their words are spoken with a thick accent which I can’t put my finger on.

All of this was done while we walked through a haze of tiredness and pushed by a rush of enthusiastic adrenalin. The tiredness a result of a nine-hour red-eye flight with occasional bouts of deep rest (no sleep), which was proceeded by a four- to five-hour night of fitful sleep on Saturday night. And the adrenaline a product of the exciting moment.

Roberta was rewarded for her diligent and relentless assistance by a dollar deftly palmed to her with a firm handshake from Tim. Tim, by the way, navigates his way through each step of this system, befriending each airport worker with a kind conversation. He is very comfortable here.

And so we sit right now, as I write this, at gate 4 waiting to board our flight to Monrovia, about two hours away.

One hundred twenty minutes later...

The flight from Accra to Monrovia was fine. The Air Kenya plane was very hot prior to takeoff. (Did I mention it is hot here?) We couldn't wait to get in the air so it would cool down. They served us a fine hot lunch for the short 1:40 flight. Best sleep I've had in two days. And at the Monrovia Airport, Roberts Field, we were the only plane there.

Monrovia airport, inside and out

Part 2
It is now 9:23:16 PM Liberia time as I write this. I am sitting on a bed in Jay's house in the middle of Monrovia. So many things to say about Liberia. Let's start with the mundane fact that I have been wearing the same shirt for 37 hours. As for the rest of the day, here we go...

I'll start at the end of the day. Right now as I type, Xane is in the bathroom next door bathing. Only, it is not bathing as you know it. The bathroom, by all appearances, looks like a standard bathroom: sink, toilet, tub, mirror, etc. What is unusual, by American standards, is the giant plastic barrel of clean water that is also in the bathroom. Xane is bathing by pouring buckets of water on himself to soap and rinse himself off. I am next. And toilet use requires the use of the same bucket of water. 

Jay's house is exceptional, especially for Liberia. Let's start with the animal-life, specifically lizards. Look how freakin cool this orange and black lizard is!

And, if you're like me, you were so amazed by the colorful lizard, that you completely missed the camouflaged one on the right. I was so wowed by the fiery one, that I didn't even see the other when I took the picture. I first saw it after I downloaded the shot and blew it up. Here's another picture of an orange lizard.

Well, I tried to get another picture of the lizard, and you can kind of see the lizard's orange head behind one of the bumps on the wall. But of course, the most obvious thing about the picture is the razor wire. Jay owns a half acre lot. Around the perimeter of the entire lot is this seven-foot high cinderblock wall topped by the razor wire. The only way into the compound is through the seven-foot tall, solid steel doors through which cars can pass. Here is a shot of the house in which I am now typing.

And here is Jay showing Jane and Tim the well from which the house water is drawn. The well is inside his compound.

By the way, Just outside Jay's compound, about 100 feet outside his gate, is a neighborhood water pump. Both times we've driven by it, it was being used by locals.

Not only does Jay have his house inside his walls, but he also has two similarly sized houses being built on his property. The bedrooms of his house each has their own air-conditioner (Thank god!). And, as an added measure of security, beside the razor-topped block wall, Jay has two locals who work as sentries on his property.

We returned from dinner about an hour ago. What a treat! We dined at a fantastic resort called the Kendeja (promo picture below), just down the road from Jay's house. We dined with six of Tim's Liberian friends. All are young, ambitious and optimistic about the future of their country. All are part of the country's Youth for Human Rights national program. Well-educated, active and energetic, they are all fine leaders. They are helping us organize our project. Also, at the dinner was a gentleman who runs a two campus, 2000-plus-student school here in the city. Our two-day presentation will be at his school. This will be for some 80 teachers and youth leaders. I will be leading the presentation. Wow! Tim made a punchy speech about what the plan was for the week. I gave them my bio and an idea of what I would be presenting at the workshop. Tomorow our first meet and greets start. First visit: Minister of Information.

The bulk of the day was spent traveling from the airport to downtown Monrovia to pick up packages from Fedex, water from the grocery and gas for the truck. This meant we got a grand tour of the city. What an experience. I spent the first hours taking it all in, trying to think of what I was going to include in the blog. There was so much to digest. I wasn't sure where to start, what to include, what to leave out.

Let me start with some photos to help set the scene. Two shots that capture the essence of what roadsides are like. Everywhere we drove the sides of the road are teeming with people. People walking, hawking, biking, talking, peeing, dancing, selling, building, eating. In the city, these same scenes were even more compact. Outside the city the red dirt dominated. The picture at the start of the blog was from today.

The buildings and structures that line the roads are just as all over the map in terms of uses and sizes and quality and colors. There were countless half-done cinder blocks skeletons. Many abandoned buildings. Relics from governments past. Ramshackle.

An advertisement for a doctor.

Finally, there's the driving here. I swore under my breath more times than I can remember. Frequent horn use is mandatory. Cutting between bikers and pedestrians and oncoming cars at full speed is expected. One more layer of paint on the side of the truck and we would've been in three accidents. Toddlers, teens, adults, elders and people on crutches and wheelchairs think nothing of darting in and out of traffic.

Until tomorrow...