After being taxed like hell in Sierra Leone, I finally made it to Liberia. I landed just before dark, parked the aircraft and in no time I was out the door. My unexpected friend, Richard Zawiea was already waiting for me with a bill from civil aviation authorities for their services. But he seemed extremely nice and is just an employee of someone else, so he can’t do anything about it. This airport in Liberia is far from being cheap (very much like Sierra Leon) and having a USA aircraft does not help. They think that the USA can afford it, but they don’t stop to think if every individual can afford it though.
I got into a taxi and was greeted by nice, calm and easygoing gentleman, Mr. Alfred Kromah, who drove me to town which was about 60-70km away from the airport. I was glad that I was not still in Guinea, otherwise I would have been asked to pay 20-30 times more than we agreed on to take a taxi.
Alfred was very patient with me (which helped a lot) as I tried to find a hotel within my budget. He drove me to at least 6 of them and all were extremely high priced. Because of his patience, I told him that I needed him for the entire next day. This made him feel good and gave him some work that he deserved. Patient pays off at times.
Finally, I got a hotel. It was still past my budget, but after seeing the ones just before this that were in such awful condition, I had no choice but to pay this price. At least for the $50USD, I did not have to worry about hearing strange noises all night long…
The next morning, I attacked the media right away and had a very successful day overall. I did five national newspaper, 1 national television and one local radio interview. Thanks to Jerome W. Toe and his boss Kenneth Best at Liberian Observer, Joe K Roberts at New Democrat, Mr. Musa Kenneh (which gave me two interviews, one at Real TV and Truth FM 96.1 radio station), Mr. Nicholas Dweh Nimley with the News, Doe S.K. Davies with the In Sight newspaper and finally, Philip N. Wesseh with the Inquirer newspaper. I owe all of them a lot for their time and the attention that they dedicated to me. They were all extremely happy to know that they were really appreciated by the people of Kosovo and our government.
Thanks to the Deputy Chief of Protocol Mr. Rancy S. Torkpa who dedicated some time to my visit, even though I had not pre-arranged a meeting. He also was grateful to know that we Kosovars respected his country and had lots of appreciation for the people and government of Liberia.
The people here are very friendly and open. They all seemed to be talking and saying hello to me, even though they didn’t know me. This is such a great thing to experience in a new country, especially one so far away from home. I suspect that their reception of me, may have something to do with a long history of US-Liberian relations. This country, Liberia denotes “liberty” and was originally founded and colonized by freed American slaves and other slaves that were freed from local slave-trading ships. It’s capital city, Monrovia, was named after James Monroe, the 5th President of the US who was a prominent supporter of this colonization.
During a time when they themselves are trying to recover from some of their countries past, the people of Liberia seem so enthusiastic and positive about everything In the 1980’s, Liberia suffered two brutal civil wars and many people died. The effect of these wars are still seen on the economy today, as many people here live on less than $2/day.
Still, this country seems to be doing better than the past few. There is a much better infrastructure here. It felt so great to go into an air-conditioned store here and have supplies from all over the world. Not to mention the luxury of having coolers that work where I could get a real cold drink. It’s been awhile since I could get something cold to drink. Many of the stores that I have had to visit recently have much difficulty keeping proper items and foods in the stores and also keeping the shelves, cans, etc. free from dust and dirt. Lastly, the taste of fresh tropical fruit with a nice cold drink really helped me to maintain some sanity! Of course, where there is tropical fruit, then there’s definitely tropical weather, which means that it is very wet and warm down here too…
The one familiarity of the past few countries and Liberia is one that I could have done without… the shortages of electricity happened daily. This did not help to keep up on all of the communication that I must do through the internet. At least here, they still managed to keep everything working and neat. The UN definitely has a big presence here, they are seen everywhere.
Now it’s time to head for Ghana and attempt to overfly the Ivory Coast. Wish me luck ladies and gentlemen because that country is currently in it’s own civil war right now and has had a lot of political unrest. Hopefully, in 7 hours time, I will be in Ghana.
Daily OBSERVER
The INQUIRER
